Finished Another One

I have finished another book, Forbidden Knowledge by Roger Shattuck. It's about one half literary criticism and one half cultural/social criticism. I really enjoyed the first half in which he analyzed literature that uses the idea of forbidden knowledge. Some of the texts he used in the Bible, Paradise Lost, Goethe's Faust. I read the first half during the school year. The second half is mostly about science and how it should be cautious in its desire for knowledge. For those who know me IRL, you understand how good finishing this books makes me feel. I really don't do non-fiction very much at all. I'm a literary fiction snob and proud of it. :-) The second half of the book was very interesting too, but I thought Shattuck never really answered the question of whether some knowledge should be forbidden. He did, however, caution against unbridled discovery without concern for the effects on ourselves, others, and the world around us.

Since this has become my week of reading, I have already started a new book, Dear Zoe by Philip Beard. It's not very long, less than 200 pages, and is reading fairly fast. I will probably finish it in a couple of days. Of course, I will let you know what I think of it when I've finished it. So far, so good. It's about a girl who was somehow complicit in the death of her sister on Sept. 11, 2001 (not in the terror attacks though). She is writing to her dead sister, working through her grief.