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So is it possible that now the end of the semester has arrived I'll have time to finish my summer reading list?

Maybe.

Toobin - The Nine

I actually finished reading Jeffrey Toobin's The Nine in four days, but I haven't posted my grade on it until now. It's a fairly easy read, solid narrative, and a compelling political analysis that is essentially about the judicial and political significance of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and her remaining days on the Court. It's a biography of her last years and days on a Court that she so dearly loves yet is so anguished by its extreme conservatism.

FINAL GRADE: A

Next book on my list? French Theory by Francois Cusset.

I forgot about this one

I normally buy all my books new or used. I used to go to the public library all the time when I was a kid. I stopped checking books out many years ago when I found some pages in a book ripped, torn, and marked up making the text unreadable. It also made me think about who had the book and what was done to it before me although that is definitely my wild imagination leading me astray. Since then I never bothered to go back to the library even though I should continue to support it. My girlfriend goes to the library for just about everything. I rather go to B&N or Borders or even better a good used bookstore before I resort going to a library. I know. It's quite a contradiction if I'll buy used books but not patronize the public library for free. I don't get it either.

But in a very rare moment, my girlfriend placed herself on the waiting list for one book that I was intending to read, but I forgot after my attention turned elsewhere. That seems to be a rather common theme for me ... Anyways ... the first book that I am officially reading to begin my summer reading list is ...

• Toobin, Jeffrey. The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court. New York: Doubleday, 2007.

And I'm already hooked on it. It's a very solid read. Here's an excerpt from the first page that caught my attention:

The architect Cass Gilbert had grand ambitions for his design of a new home for the Supreme Court -- what he called "the greatest tribunal in the world, one of the three great elements of our national government" ... How could Gilbert convey to visitors the magnitude and importance of the judicial process taking place within the Court's walls?

The answer, he decided, was steps. Gilbert pushed back the wings of the building, so that the public face of the building would be a portico with a massive and imposing stairway. Visitors would not have to walk a long distance to enter, but few would forget the experience of mounting those forty-four steps to the double row of eight massive columns supporting the roof. The walk up the stairs would be the central symbolic experience of the Supreme Court, a physical manifestation of the American march to justice. The stairs separated the Court form the everyday world -- and especially from the earthly concerns of the politicians in the Capitol -- and announced that the justices would operate, literally, on a higher plane (1).

Recent Purchases

I just ordered the following books for my highly anticipated summer reading list. Some of them are research related, but I am not in a rush to read any of them. In fact, I'm looking forward to reading Francois Cusset's French Theory. Distinguished scholar, and now NY Times contributor, Stanley Fish blogged a really favorable review about it that generated over 600 responses and a second post about the impact and political value of postmodernism and poststructuralism in the United States. I'm also interested in Richard Thaler's and Cass Sunstein's book Nudge and their concept of "choice architecture," that is, how productive and positive decision-making can be best achieved from coercive social forces ... sounds like how hegemony functions. I'm sorry to say but there's no fiction thus far; there's nothing that caught my eye but I also haven't been looking either.

• Hay, Colin, Michael Lister, David Marsh, eds. The State: Theories and Issues (2005).

• Malthus, Thomas K. An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798).

• Cusset, Francois. French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States (2008).

• Fish, Stanley. There's No Such Thing as Free Speech: And It's a Good Thing, Too (1994).

• Foucault, Michel. Abnormal: Lectures at the College de France, 1974-1975 (2004).

• Thaler, Richard and Cass R. Sunstein. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (2008).