I always look forward checking my feedreader on Monday, Wednesday and Fridays because I know that one of my favorites comics, xkcd will have a new strip to read. I got a special kick out of today’s, http://xkcd.com/501/, in part because I think that most commercial EULAs are from the devil 🙂 and I simply love the story of Dr. Faustus.
It’s funny because in many ways, I’m not your typical English/MLS graduate. Most librarians (and English majors for that matter) have a real love for reading just about anything. Me, not so much. Part of it is simply being busy, part of it is that I actually enjoy reading technical theory much more than general fiction, but it’s very rare that I find myself actually sitting down to read much contemporary fiction.
Now with that said, there are a handful of books in my life that I simply cannot live without and re-read over and over and over again. One of those books is Christopher Marlowe’s Faustus. It is one my favorite versions of the Faust story and a book that I find my self reading, 4, maybe 5 times a year.
I have a few other books that I find myself re-reading with great frequency. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Shakespeare in general (though MacBeth specifically), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (her’s is more of a tragic tale rather than a monster story), and a book of collected works by her husband, Percy Shelley as well as works by Coleridge and Lord Byron (actually, I read a number of works by writers from the Romantic period).
I find a lot of comfort in the works above, as well as an incredible depth by the writers — in so much that every time I read the Ancient Mariner or Mont Blanc I find the writers telling me something new. It’s an interesting exercise — in part, because I think it tells me something more about myself as well — as my own perspective changes as I get older — seeing how my relationship with this set of authors, and their works with I’ve come to know quite intimately, change.
Anyway — the xkcd comic definitely put a smile on my face today.
–TR