What I'm reading *

I've always read. While growing up, reading was a refuge when I found life too unpleasant or stressful. Consequently I've bought a lot of books over time as well.

 
Now that I'm no longer in the rich corporate phase of my life I've rediscovered the library. Dayton's library may be maligned by some but is still a great resource. One type of book I like to read is gay fiction and I was surprised to see a lot of it in the Dayton library's catalog. Plus you can even ask them to buy particular titles, and they will!

Below you can see the five most recent books either that I'm reading or that I've acquired. You can search my books, or you can see all my books. Also my classes page has links back to this page for the books for each class.

Class: CPL310

Date
ISBN
 Title Author
Class
2004-09-30 0826407277 Plays: Before Daybreak, The Weavers, The Beaver Coat Hauptmann, Gerhart (ed. Reinhold Grimm and Caroline Molina y Vedia; trans. Peter Bauland, Theodore H. Lustig) CPL310
  This is not one of the required books for this class, but each of us had to read a play or novel from a supplemental list and report on it to the class. Hauptmann's play "Before Daybreak" was one of two for the first report day and I am also reading Hauptmann auf Deutsch for my GER361 class, so that made my choice easy. CPL310 is in English and not limited to German authors, so this edition is a translation. "Before Daybreak" was fairly entertaining, even though I could tell early on that Loth was pretty much a shit who was going to break Helen's heart.

A warning about this edition, however: if you click on the ISBN to bring up the Amazon page for this book, you'll notice that Seth Davidson says in his review that "[t]his translation published by the German Library is unreadable." My professor, Dr. Hye, prefers another translation as well (though Seth Davidson hasn't reviewed it), but considering that he put it on two-hour course reserve at Wright State's library while I could check out this version from UD to peruse at my leisure, this was the one I went with.
2004-09-14 0773488693 The Moral Dilemma of the Scientist in Modern Drama: The Inmost Force Hye, Allen E. CPL310
  This was not actually an assigned text for CPL310, but it's written by the professor teaching the class and covers the theme of the class as well as many texts we're reading not only in this class but also in GER403. Wright State's copy is on reserve for the course, but I was able to check out a copy at UD.
2004-09-01 0385720793 Copenhagen Frayn, Michael CPL310
  This play has just three characters, German physicist Werner Heisenberg, his former mentor Danish physicist Niels Bohr, and Bohr's wife Margrethe Bohr. All are long dead (Heisenberg in 1976, Bohr in 1962), and they are looking back at a visit Heisenberg paid the Bohrs in 1941 in Nazi-occupied Copenhagen. About the only thing certain about what happened during that visit is that no one can be certain what happened, a clever tie-in to the Uncertainty Principle developed by Heisenberg. Reading the play is sometimes confusing as there is only dialogue, no stage directions, and thus it's sometimes difficult to understand where characters really are and why one talks in the middle of the other two. Dr. Hye told us that when he and his wife saw the play in New York, the staging was minimalistic, with characters circling around each other like atoms. There is a PBS version, a part of which we saw in class, that makes who's saying what and where clearer, probably because it was actually filmed in Copenhagen.
2004-09-01 0393964582 Frankenstein Shelley, Mary; J. Paul Hunter (ed.) CPL310
  I also read this book for ENG204, but it fits in with the theme of science and morality being covered in this class.
2004-08-23 0553269151 Inherit the Wind Lawrence, Jerome and Lee, Robert E. CPL310
  Based on the famous Scopes evolution trial in Dayton, Tennessee but with the names changed to protect the innocent, this play shows the politics involved in the clash of science and religion and of truth and tradition. Lawrence and Lee wrote this in the 1950s, feeling pretty exasperated at McCarthyism, and they probably wouldn't be surprised to see how religion is being used in the name of politics 50 years later.

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