Book Agenda

So much reading to do and so little time! I only have a few chapters left in The Watchmen. It's an amazingly written and drawn story, and I'm really enjoying it, but it's also incredibly upsetting and dark, so it's been somewhat slow going. But at least I'll easily wrap that up before the movie, if it ever comes out. Then I need to hurry up and plow through The Name of the Rose, in like, 3 weeks (a daunting task) before Umberto Eco gives a three day lecture series on campus (I love my university!). I'm guessing after that I'll need a palate cleanser in the form of some Kathy Reichs or maybe the next Wrinkle In Time book. Then I promised some friends I would finally tackle Atlas Shrugged. I put it off for a long time because I'm a sucker for a strong rhetorical argument, and I worried that if I read it before feeling like my own thoughts about the world were fully formed, I would be an easy target for manipulation. Not to say I expect my thoughts about the world to remain unchanged forever, just that now I would feel more comfortable that changing my mind in response to a strong argument was a legitimate weighing of the pros and cons of a debate rather than my early 20s brain still being formed and me being easily manipulated.

And that's not even touching on the stack of magazines I have backlogged by my bed. I only subscribe to two (Mother Jones and Ms.) but neither is the kind of magainze you can lazily flip through on a Sunday afternoon.