Been awhile since I've posted anything here I see. I have been reading quite a bit in the meantime, but a lot of it has been the 'comfort food' of re-reads.

I've burned my way through five Outsider trades. Not bad, not great, not inspired enough to pick up the series regularly, that's for sure.

Re-read all of Byron's Don Juan; a whack of Shakespeare's Sonnets and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Of course I read that Potter book when it came out a few years back, and I remember it immediately becoming my least favourite of the bunch. But upon re-read, I found it wasn't that bad. If you go into it knowing that Harry is a pratt throughout, I found I was more able to see WHY Harry was a pratt throughout. Everything was just finally getting to him, and he IS only a 16 year-old-boy. The shit that kid's gone through, I think I can excuse his pratiness. And man, Delores Umbridge was a pretty good villian.

I did finally pick up a new book yesterday, which I started this morning; A Year in the Life of Shakespeare: 1599, by James Shapiro. Its fictionalized history, which I've always had a fondness for, and its about Shakespeare, so how can I go wrong? Shapiro has decided to focus on this year in Shakespeare's life because this is the year he writes Henry V (which is one of my very favourite plays), Julius Ceasar, As You Like It, and his masterpiece, Hamlet. It is a year of incredible creative growth for Shakespeare, and Shapiro wants to examine the history of the year in which Shakespeare was living and see if he can find a clue as to why this became an almost seminal year in Shakespeare's writing. I thought this was an admirable thesis, and so I'm very interested in reading it.

Speaking of a thesis, I started my hypothetical one as well. That's right, my 'prove Lancelot was indeed the best knight ever by doing a sports-like statistical analysis of all tournaments and battles the knights were in.' I'm about half way through the first volume, and right now, my poor, tattered Penguin editions of Le Morte D'Arthur are now furiously scribbled in all over as well. But I'm having a great time, and at some point, I'm going to talk to one of the mathematitians I work with about how to go about the actual statistical side of things. I also told Nat about this entire endevour of mine, and she thought it was a great idea. Nice to hear that from a fellow academic :)