Books/other thing like plays I need to read, but have not read!
Waiting for Godot
Wikipedia:
Waiting for Godot follows two days in the lives of a pair of men who divert themselves while they wait expectantly and unsuccessfully for someone named Godot to arrive. They claim him as an acquaintance but in fact hardly know him, admitting that they would not recognise him were they to see him. To occupy themselves, they eat, sleep, converse, argue, sing, play games, exercise, swap hats, and contemplate suicide — anything "to hold the terrible silence at bay".
The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap
Kirkus Reviews: Placing the American family in its historical, cultural, economic, and philosophic context, Coontz (co-ed., Women's Work, Men's Property, 1986) identifies the myths--and their sources, functions, and fallacies--that Americans generate around family life, as well as the terrible burden these illusions create. Violence, abuse, poverty, ignorance, alcoholism, dependence on government support--in
brief, all the social ills attributed to the breakdown of the family--have in fact been a part of American social life since Colonial times, Coontz says. She further argues that our ideal of family life is primarily an invention of the 50's, projected in TV sitcoms such as Leave It to Beaver, and is an ideal as pernicious as are the social problems it supposedly prevents.
A Particular History of the Five Years French and Indian War in New England
I don't entirely remember why I need to read this but I'll take my own word for it.
Between Heaven & Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death With John F Kennedy, C.S. Lewis & Aldous Huxley
Looks like this is actually about Christianity, but eh: I don't care. Even if it ticks me off, seriously. John F Kennedy, CS Lewis and Aldous Huxley floating around in the afterlife talking at each other.
Litigating Morality: American Legal Thought and its English Roots
"This volume is a thematic study in legal history that uses past and present landmark court cases to analyze the legal and historical development of moral regulatory policies in America and resulting debates. Five moral policies are included: abortion, sodomy, pornography, criminal insanity, and the death penalty."
Law and Justice as Seen on TV
"Beginning with the history of courtroom drama on TV and its various contradictions and shifts, since the late 1940s to the present, the book analyzes the various entertainment series and genres that have so proliferated in recent years, giving special attention to such popular and influential series as "Law and Order" and "Cops." The second section begins by charting the complex and contested history of the coming of cameras to the courtroom and the way in which that legal decision led to televised trials and to the rise of Court TV. It examines as especially interesting and important the major trials—such as those of the Menendez brothers, O.J. Simpson, and Timothy McVeigh—which helped to shape the way television came to frame trials and their social implications for public consumption. From there it examines major social issues—gender violence, youth crime, family dysfunction, victims' rights which, with the rise of the courtroom as a major political and television arena, have come to be viewed largely as legal issues to be discussed and determined in legal terms by Americans in general."
The Idea of Decline in Western History
"Examining the idea of decline in Western history, the historian Arthur Herman explains how the conviction of civilization's inevitable end has become a fixed part of the modern Western imagination."
Erik the Red's Saga
Someday, I will buy a bottle of alcohol and I will recruit a few friends to have a party. At this party, we shall read as much of Erik the Red's Saga as we can. From what I remember reading, it is the funniest work of literature in existence on so many levels.
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