A spate

Just finished up several books, most of them non-fiction, as my taste seems to be in that direction at the moment. In short order, I polished off The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman (which left me feeling pretty depressed), Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling by Ross King (Excellent, and it makes me happy to read lighter takes on art history, because I'm so bad about struggling through the heavy takes on art history for my thesis), Caroline Walker Bynum's Holy Feast, Holy Fast (again, because I love her and because she's very relevant to my thesis - in fact, I have to struggle to not quote her in one giant 15 page quote and then go "what she said"), and a collection of essays edited by Bynum and one other guy, called Last Things, on of the Apocolypse and other eschatological concerns in the Middle Ages. And now I'm wondering if I spelled eschatological correctly. I managed to sneak in a reread of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and then went on to Ian Pears' very thought provoking The Dream of Scipio. I enjoy Ian Pears' more serious work, but man, no happy endings in sight, really. Sometimes, it's more than I can handle. I finished off my little spate with a super-quick read, Tulip Fever, which, I have to say, sucked pretty hard. Very standard plotline, no character development at all, and if it hadn't been set in an interesting place, historically, I never would have made it through the whole book. I still have a copy of Fast Food Nation to get through - but I'm almost scared to read it, because I know it's full of things that will make me go ewww and that I will have to struggle to forget the next time I wander into the drive-thru line at McDonalds. Not that I go all that often, but I do go, and maybe this book is what I've been needing to spruce up my diet?