"Autobiography," John Stuart Mill

John Stuart Mill was one of the original liberals, back when that word meant "person who believes in individual rights and free trade" and not "weakling who hates America."* I've had to read this book twice, and each time I dreaded it, and each time I ended up reading the whole thing with ease. Mill's reputation as being dry as dust helps, because when you get to the parts about his nervous breakdown and the paeans to his wife, you're pleasantly surprised.
* I personally don't believe that liberals are weaklings who hate America, but then again it's not as if you can find an American who will willingly call him- or herself liberal anymore, so debating whether liberals are nasty or not is a bit like debating what color of rock candy the Big Rock Candy Mountain is made out of.

"Confessions of an English Opium-Eater," Thomas de Quincey

There are two versions of this book; I read the first edition, which is the comparatively straightforward tale of a boy, his adventures roughing it in early 1800s London, and his addiction to opium. The second edition was greatly expanded because de Quincey was not the type to pay his bills and he needed something to hook the readers in a second time, I suppose. Therefore there are long sections about the grandeur of the Whispering Gallery and so on.

De Quincey is a "philosopher," which means that he will go off on his favorite subjects (David Ricardo, how exactly he got a friend to help him raise money with a Jewish moneylender, why doctors are wrong about the effects of opium) at any time. Reading this style of memoir was a pleasant break from the modern addiction memoir, where the addict is generally so horribly enslaved that you never hear about anything else other than their sufferings. Maybe de Quincey was boring to his contemporaries, though, and I just find him interesting because he's quaint to me. I'm sure that Coleridge and Wordsworth flipped through the pages til they got to the good parts, where he freaks out and sees crocodiles trying to eat his walls.

"Mrs. Dalloway," Virginia Woolf

I'm afraid that I don't have much to add to all the commentary there must already be on this wonderful book, so I'll just say that I absolutely adored it and read it in one sitting. I am embarrassed that a reading list was what finally got me restarted on the book, having unsuccessfully tried to read it all the way through a few years ago. I'd like to think that I now love Mrs. Dalloway because I am a grown woman and not a green girl, but it's probably just that I don't have cable anymore.

It was interesting to compare to Saturday, in that Saturday is supposed to be a homage to Mrs. Dalloway - yet the reader only gets one perspective in Saturday, and Woolf lets us into all her characters' thoughts. It certainly makes for a much less monotonous read, even if the only one anybody ever remembers after finishing is Clarissa.

Vivat my book blog!

I've decided to start a book blog for 2008, mainly because it should keep me reading - through the spirit of competition - and because I need something else to procrastinate with, now that I'm writing papers and have to spend more time worrying in front of the computer.

I will try to read 50 books this year, although I'm not sure whether I should count books for class in that total. I promise not to bother with reviewing anything too scholarly, unless it's ridiculously bad and I want to rant about it or it's a book I think might be interesting to somebody outside the academy. So there are the ground rules.