Reading List: June 2012

During the month of June, 2012, the books I was reading included the following.

Caputo, Philip. Acts of Faith. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. 669 pages. ISBN 0-375-41166-6. $26.95. Started on 4 June 2011 and completed on 11 June 2012.
I took a big hiatus in the middle of this book, but it is a marvelous, engaging novel about the strife in southern Sudan.

Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government. A Critical Edition with an Introduction and Apparatus Criticus by Peter Laslett. Revised edition. New York and Scarborough, Ont.: New American Library, 1963. A Mentor Book. xiv + 576 pages. Bibliography. Index. $1.95. Started 30 March and finished 6 July 2012.
One of the great books of the Western World, and a must read as an antidote to the nonsense said about the ideas upon which the United States was founded. Yes, "was founded," not "were founded."

Prose, Francine. Blue Angel. New York: Harper Collins, 2000. 314 pages. ISBN 0-06-019541-X. $25.00. Read 4 March - 20 June 2012.
Francine Prose is a marvelous writer. In Blue Angel, she gives away the plot in the title, but she brings her penetrating observation and sardonic humor to bear on late twentieth-century ideas of political correctness.

Proust, Marcel. A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs. Paris: Gallimard, 1988 [1919]. xxviii + 568 pages. Started on 1 July 2004. As of 8 June 2012 I was on page 172.
This is the second volume of A la recherche des temps perdu, known in English as Remembrance of Things Past.

Russo, Richard. Mohawk. New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 1986. 418 pages. ISBN 978-0-679-75382-7. $15.00. Started on 3 February and completed on 26 June 2012.
A really terrific first novel from the (future) author of Nobody's Fool and Empire Falls. Growing up in a dying small town in Upstate New York.

Smiley, Jane. Good Faith. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. 417 pages. ISBN 0-375-41217-4. $26.00. Started on 18 May and completed on 14 June 2012.
Like Independence Day, a novel about a real estate agent in the Northeastern United States in the 1980s. But not like Independence Day, in that her protagonist is notable for his lack of angst. A very good read.

Zola, Emile. Germinal. Paris: Bookking International, 2993. Phidal pour le Canada, 1995. Original publication 1885. 473 pages. ISBN 2-89393-465-X. Started 1 July 2004 and finished 28 September 2012.
I probably made my life unnecessarily difficult by choosing to read Germinal in French, but it's been an interesting experience.