Reading for a Monday Evening

I like haiku but I'm not sure I like it enough to read Modern Haiku, a serious journal devoted to the study of haiku.

Jared Diamond, who has a geeky sort of Uncle Sam look about him, is getting around these days. PBS is doing a series on Diamond's Pulitzer Prize winning book Guns, Germs, and Steel. He's also on the interview circuit for his latest book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, not to mention the reviews here, here and here for example. I haven't read either book but they sound interesting, terrifyingly apocalyptic sort of like the rash of books several years ago about the coming world-wide epidemic of a horrible contagious disease. It also sounds like the books are filled with lots of stuff for liberals to throw at Republicans which would explain why he's getting so much play in the liberal press. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, I consider myself a liberal, but people, did you not read Lakoff's book Don't Think of an Elephant? Heck I haven't even read it and I get what he's talking about. It's about the story not the facts.

In case you haven't read it already, be sure to read Ruth Franklin's NY Times essay which takes on the fantasy reading life that is Levenger. I must admit though that I am a Levenger catalog drooler and have even made purchases from them. I love their page points and their bottled ink is good stuff as is the Parker Sonnet fountain pen I bought from them many years ago. Franklin, however, makes some very good points.