I can only give you a general good book recommendation. Read "Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal" by Christopher Moore. It's hilarious. I read it very quite happily this summer.

Hi Sean!

I just finished Stiff by Mary Roach and really enjoyed it. It's basically about all sorts of different things that can happen to a human body after death (when you become a cadaver). Although it seems like a rather morbid topic, it's handled humourously but respectfully. It's a nice mix.

In terms of novels: Winesburg, Ohio. I just reread it for tutorial this week and was completely amazed by it once again. It's a collection of inter-related short stories about some people who live in a small town called Winesburg. Very beautiful and poignant.

Ok, in terms of anthropology books, the best I've read so far is "In the Realm of the Diamond Queen: Marginality in an Out-of-the-Way Place" by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing. It deals with concepts of identity, citizenship, marginality, tradition, self vs. other, etc, etc. It's basically this ethnography of Meratus people in the rainforest of Indonesia, but done in a very experimental, post-modern (ha) non-traditional way--all about not creating solid definitions of "culture," "community," power, and people in general. Yup.

Even just reading the Preface and the Opening is totally worth it.

Also: haven't yet read your Plan. However, I'm printing it out and taking it to work with me tonight.

Bonuses include: this assures I'll be sober; and, I'll thoroughly enjoy it, as I'll be using it as an escape from customer-service-reality. Thanks in advance.

Yay! So many comments, so many books.

G: You are awesome. (Though I'm not convinced that the simple fact of you being at work assures sobriety. But I suppose it's nice to think so...)

P.S. Tsing's book is awesome. I have no idea why it's in the Marlboro library collection (only ~50k items altogether), but sometimes you get lucky.