Am reading

•  Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl by Donald Sturrock. A guy got to know Dahl and his family for a while. After Dahl died, he left the official biographer responsibility to one of his daughters, who then passed it onto the guy, Mr. Sturrock. So now we have this book, of which I've heard good reviews. I am liking it okay but find Dahl's own writings and accounts of his life more interesting, even in cases when they contain lies!

• Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory in Everyday Life. Started it in Jan. or so and haven't been good at keeping up reading it, though it is quite straightforward and interesting, because I started it on a train and want to be on a train when I finish it. That's life, I guess. But yes, good book, should take it to work sometime and make myself finish it already, the thing is short.

• The Blank Slate by some guy whose name I can't see on the bookshelf right now. It's about nature vs. nurture but in a relevant and interesting way (so far), in case you're one of those people who thinks it's a dead issue. I started reading at work and will probably pick it up again once I run out of children's fantasy novels.

• Edgar Allen Poe & The Juke Box by Elizabeth Bishop. I thought that I had read all the poems of my favorite poet,  but then this book appeared on the market. A thick, prettily bound selection it is, of works in progress, works unpublished, and little pieces of things, as well as drafts on drafts of "One Art," the poem (besides "The Fish") that you are likely to have heard of. You know, "The art of losing isn't hard to master; / so many things seem filled with the intent / to be lost that their loss is no disaster." And so on. Yes, a beautiful edition, with photograph copies of the handwritten pieces and everything, yet it makes me feel like I'm intruding in a way that's been unfairly formalized. Elizabeth Bishop was a perfectionist with her work; she was very selective about what she would allow to be published. Would she be/have been upset to know of this book, or happy that there is actually a group of admirers intent on studying her process? This is not as bad a moral battle as whether to read Vladimir Nabokov's last unfinished novel, written in notes on notecards (he told his son not to publish it, but Dmitri did), but Edgar Allen Poe & The Juke Box has stood new-looking on my shelf for a year and a half now.

• Father Seraphim Rose, His Life and Works  by Heiromonk Damascene, nice thick book about this blessed man's interesting life. Have been working on this one for months. I like the part where the monks get along so well with the forest creatures. Started reading it in...the summer? Oy, it's probably been a year now...