The Education of Henry Adams

Yay!

A favorite quote:

One never expected from a Congressman more than good intentions and public spirit. Newspaper men as a rule had no great respect for the lower House; Senators had less; and Cabinet officers had none at all. Indeed, one day when Adams was pleading with a Cabinet officer for patience and tact in dealing with Representatives, the Secretary impatiently broke out:—“You can’t use tact with a Congressman! A Congressman is a hog! You must take a stick and hit him on the snout!” Adams knew far too little, compared with the Secretary, to contradict him, though he thought the phrase somewhat harsh even as applied to the average Congressman of 1869;—he saw little or nothing of later ones;—but he knew a shorter way of silencing criticism. He had but to ask:—“If a Congressman is a hog, what is a Senator?” This innocent question, put in a candid spirit, petrified any executive officer that ever sat a week in his office. Even Adams admitted that Senators passed belief.

I love both Catch-22 and Love in the Time of Cholera. I own One Hundred Years of Solitude so that I can read it one day.

Megan, definitely read Atwood's Penelopiad for fun when you get a chance. Given that you re-read the Odyssey relatively recently, I think you'll love it.

I own One Hundred Years of Solitude so that I can read it one day.

I used to own it so that I could read it one day. And then I moved cross-country and decided it was never going happen.

Megan, definitely read Atwood's Penelopiad for fun when you get a chance. Given that you re-read the Odyssey relatively recently, I think you'll love it.

Oh, I'm sure I will. I just added it to Shelfari. This list was more based on a "what am I embarassed not to have read" concept.

My two big ones on that list are Paradise Lost and the Divine Comedy. I have a copy of the latter but need to buy the former still.

Divine Comedy is on the list in my mind, but, since I'm supposed to read 2 books a month, I tried to limit the long ones. Already getting through Don Quixote, War and Peace, and the two volumes of Le Comte de Monte-Cristo should be quite a challenge.

I read Purgatorio and Paradiso for completism's sake.

There's a reason people only talk about Inferno.

megan -- When you get to the Count of Monte Cristo, nag me and I'll try to mock up the chart I scrawled at 3 AM to keep track of who was related to who. Granted, I'm terrible with names, so you might not need it. But someone should benefit from things I did on an all-night reading binge.

Which is to say: it's an excellent page-turner. So it may not take as long as you expect to read.

Speaking of, I'm looking for a good version of PL with comprehensive notes since Milton is so challenging and I haven't studied it formally. I've come across a Norton Critical Edition and Penguin Classics edition. Looking at the reviews, it seems the Penguin might be better, but I've had good luck with Norton Critical Editions in the past. Anyone familiar with these (or another annotated version) and have advice?