Doing the right thing is rarely easy.

I’m reading Great Books by David Denby and am frankly swept away. A review from amazon: As a former classics major, I have followed the debate over the western canon with a great deal of interest. But after slogging through Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon for over a year and a half, this book was an absolute delight. I totally agree! I’ve been slugging through The Western Canon for a few days, not a year and a half, and I’m finding Denby a delight. His responses to the books and poems aren’t those of a critic or stuffy academic – they are the reactions of a reader. OK, I guess that isn’t totally accurate. Denby IS a critic – he has written for The New Yorker, among others – but I guess his responses just seemed more natural than Bloom. He is exhausted, horrified, delighted, bored, etc. It feels like a post-class debriefing with a friend – not a lecture during which you’re likely to fall asleep, then get yelled at by the prof. I love it and feel bad that I didn’t finish the book the first time I started.

Oh, my apologies to those whose emails I cite in entirety or in part herein. Sometimes, as above, I really like the way I expressed something and don’t want to try to rephrase it. It’s not a crime to self-plagiarize, is it?

Joe dropped off his photos from Sarah and Hannah’s party – and there are a few of me! How nice to have proof that I was at this party. I think he and Nate felt bad because there weren’t ANY photos of me from Good Friday other than Newman’s. Lots of photos of Amity this time, just like there were lots of Jen from Good Friday. Funny how the center of attraction and energy ends up being the source of the most photos.