What I've Been Reading Lately and Will Be Reading Shortly

One of my resolutions this year (actually, my only resolution this year, and one that may stretch to two or three years) is to read the three volumes of Shelby Foote's Civil War trilogy cover to cover to cover to cover to cover to cover. We are 5/12th of the way though the year, and I am about 5/16th of the way through the first 1/3. That's OK; lots of time to read and smoke cigars on our new deck. Here are some comments I made on the occasion of Mr. Foote's death.

I got some books out of the library the other day, too.

• Glut, by Alex Wright, which I am about 1/2 way through right now. This is about the way that information has been organized and disseminated from prehistoric times through the present. So far so good! I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff. It sort of reminds me of a book I read years ago, A History of Knowledge by Charles Van Doren. (Proofing note: First full paragraph of page 11, you have "scrict" instead of "strict.")
  
• The Black Swan, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I like the quote on his site: "My major hobby is teasing people who take themselves & the quality of their knowledge too seriously & those who don’t have the courage to sometimes say: I don’t know...." Here's a separate Wikipedia page on the Black Swan theory.
• Gilligan's Wake, by Tom Carson. Here's it is on Google Book. About dot com review here.
  
• Two of the "Southland Tales" graphic novels. Saw the movie a few weeks ago, watched it twice in a row. It's one of those movies (like Videodrome, which I just watched last night for the first time in years) that I know I will be coming back to over the course of coming decades and finding new ideas and content. Side note -- Interesting category on the Videodrome page -- Motif of harmful sensation.