Reading List, week of 2015-11-01

Reading List 2015-11-02:

*Knausgaard, Karl Ove. My Struggle, Book Four (transl. Don Bartlett) (finished)
*Fletcher, John, and William Shakespeare. The Two Noble Kinsmen (Arden 3rd series, rev. ed., ed. Lois Potter) (reread/in progress)
*Vollmann, William. Rising Up and Rising Down, Volume 1 (stopped)

I've already got a major change to my current reading plan--I'm dropping Vollmann's Rising Up and Rising Down. I very rarely do this; I am one of those types who force myself to finish whatever book I start, love it or hate it. This is a bit different. It's not the length alone, although over 3,000 pages is enough to give any reader pause, avid or no. In this case, there exists a one-volume distillation, but I'm not going to read that either. I appreciate what Vollmann is doing (examining whether there is ever an ethical and moral justification for violence), but I just found it unrelentingly grim. I gave it 240 pages, and I just had to stop. Life, my life, right now, is just too short for this. It's really a pretty bleak world out there, and probably every thinking person should be aware of the many issues he brings up. Go for it, and tell me what I'm missing.