The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Winter Break Reads

So I´ve done a fair bit of reading this break, thanks to our amazing library system. Here are some standouts.

The Good:
How We Decide (Jonah Lehrer) - I guess I just love reading about psychology. This got me really excited for my seminar on Psychology and Economic Rationality! Only down side - much of this info was old news to me, thanks to intro psych last semester.

The Bad:
Ten Days in the Hills (Jane Smiley) - I love Jane Smiley (A Thousand Acres is one of my favorite books ever), and I liked the idea about a bunch of different characters and a book that deals with the War in Iraq. However, this just read like a mishmash of endless (should have been edited) conversation and the characters felt flimsy under all that talk. I should have picked another one of her books to read.

The Ugly:
Cleaving (Julie Powell) - Woah, TMI! Ok, actually, I really don´t mind TMI, if it´s in the right context. But this book was basically one big, festering, self-centered puddle of whine. And while the sentences were well-written, there didn´t seem to be any message or meaning that was effectively conveyed through most of it. To me, this is the kind of dirty details you write in a journal, but until you´ve gotten your shit together and made some sense out of all of it, you definitely don´t go and PUBLISH it. Seriously cringe-worthy.

Love this poem.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

--Mary Oliver