I think the majority are like me, but some think it's badly written, that it is all hype, and it would be much better to teach the students about "Alice in Wonderland"! I've thought about that - should we restrict the curriculum to those things written well? The problem I see is that HP's...

I read The Celestine Prophecy; haven't even heard of The Shack. I remember thinking "Stars, this is awful" when I was reading Celestine. I had many despairing thoughts about humanity's rational capacity when I heard how popular and how "acclaimed" the book was.

A story by Jorge Luis Borges called "The Library of Babel" http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/library_of_babel.html starts this way: "The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries, with vast air shafts...

Probably my favourite text resource for poetry is The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. I mean there is everything in that book. I can feel my head expand just looking at it sitting on my desk. It was expensive but, I think, worth everything I paid for it.

I read Name of the Rose when it came out twenty five years ago or so, and liked it a lot. Will have to dig out my copy. Also liked the movie. And Eco's follow up book Foucault's Pendulum . I really loved Foucault's Pendulum. I really like Eco's semiotic references to scholastic philosophy. The deba...

I read several things at once typically, but the most fun thing I am reading right now is The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination by Wallace Stevens. Here is a link that explains a little. http://books.google.ca/books?id=9KAZxUt4FywC&pg=PA450&lpg=PA450&dq=The+necessary...

You know I read a lot of "high brow" stuff. I mean, I read Heidegger for fun. I have come across several accounts whose authors had "wearied" of Potter and his rages. I know there are a number of critics who pooh-pooh the Potter books for similar reasons but I think they are just...

Eco seems to me to be deeply concerned with certain themes in his works (e.g. nominalism, source of meaning, what does truth mean, given the nature of reality that all this points to, how should we behave, what should we believe). These come through in things he says. For example, on his website he ...

I was interested in the mentions of Emily Dickinson earlier. I find her ideas about grace and nature really interesting. I have a copy of her Herbarium. http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/DICEMI.html It is a delightful book. On the site there are links to other works about and by her. One I really e...

Mr. Pessimistic wrote:Right now, to start my pleasure reading off, I am reading "The Blank Slate" by Stephen Pinker.

Excellent choice. That was a fun book to read.