Another book has joined my pantheon of all-time favorites. It is Forsyte Saga, by John Galsworthy. Really a series of three novels that chronicles the lives of members of a extended, upper-middle class British family from the 1880's to the 1920's, the Forsytes, naturally. One can get a sense of the scale of the work by flipping to the page marked "Family Tree." There about 30 individuals interlinked through four generations on that tree. Granted, the author do focus on about six or seven of them, but the large family as a whole is living, breathing being.

If I were to summarize the plot it may seems like an rather melodramatic soap opera, full of shocks, family feuds, jealousies, betrayals, dramatic reversals and unrequited passions. What makes it remarkable and great is the force of its characters. Take Soames Forsyte. Objectively, he is not a particularly likable character, a stiff and greedy attorney, who committed an atrocious crime. At the hands of a lesser writer, Soames might remain a stereotype of the grasping man of property who the reader may comfortably sneer at. But the author made him the most complex character in the novel. Along with his unlikalbe exteriors, we also see his desire for love and beauty, his rigid but admirable sense of honor, and the subtle thawing of his personality with the birth of his daughter. The characters in Forsyte Saga evolves over long period of time and text, as opposed to receiving literary epiphanies in the manner of Moses and the burning bush.

So now, Tom's Offical List of Favorite Books stands as follows:

One Hundred Years of Solitiude, Cosmicomics, His Dark Materials Trilogy, and Forsyte Saga.

Reading Light in August by William Faulkner. Chose it because it was the only Faulkner work at the library that wasn't disintegrating into dust, and I really wanted to read something by the man who said this.

Look at this sentence taken from p 245.

". . . . He was just yelling and cursing. "I am going to frail the tar out of you!" he roared, "Girls! Vangie! Beck! Sarah!" The sisters had already emeraged. They seemed to boil through the door in their full skirts like ballons on a torrent, with shrill cries, above which the father's voice boomed and roared."

For some reasons it just impresses the hell out of me.

In tribute to 9/11, here is New York Defender.

Along the way home there was a information stall setup by a student socialist organization. Before I knew it, one of them accosted me, and asked me point blank: "Are you a fighter for justice?"

I replied: "No."

Yeah, I know, what a lame comeback. Of course only a few dozen steps after this encounter, many zingers popped out of my mind, any of which would have made my escape more graceful than a brutal "No," which is just one notch down on the Scale of Evil from "Yes, I work in a Nazi concentration camp and feast on the blood of new-born babies."

But the truth is that I don't have the passion or conviction to be a "fighter for justice." I prefer to let others do the fighting. Maybe I will be on the sidelines, and hand them Gatorade and towels or something. So my answer might serve just as well.

In other news, in the class I am TAing, a fellow TA's name is Tom Sutton. The professor suggest a shorthand to distinguish us: Tall Tom, Short Tom.
Three guesses on how I feel about this arrangement. I am holding out for "Vertically Challenged Tom."

Lifted from another website,

The History of Medicine

2000 B.C. - Here, eat this root.
1000 A.D. - That root is heathen, say this prayer.
1850 A.D. - That prayer is superstition, drink this potion.
1940 A.D. - That potion is snake oil, swallow this pill.
1985 A.D. - That pill is ineffective, take this antibiotic.
2000 A.D. - That antibiotic is artificial. Here, eat this root.