<p>Nichomachean Ethics is on the reading list for Human Being and Citizen Winter quarter, and Kant's Metaphysics of Morals is on for spring. (The Republic is read in Classics of Social and Political Thought, Greek Thought and Lit, and maybe a few others). I'll be honest in saying these dense books weren't really my cup of tea, yet I did find a lot of value simply in struggling through them and listening to my classmates dissect them.</p>
<p>The Westing Game is a sort of whodunit that takes place in an apartment building. It's only about 50 pages long, and it's got huge text and small pages, and the chapters are short. It was one of the books that got me to like reading.</p>
<p>Books/Play
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Les Mouches by Jean-Paul Sartre</p>
<p>Right now I'm reading The Sagas of Icelanders, Makers of Rome by Plutarch, and Buddhist Scriptures, edited by Donald S. Lopez, Jr. As far as movies go, I love both Full Metal Jacket, directed by Stanley Kubrick, and Pi, directed by Darren Aronofsky.</p>
<p>Music
Radiohead, O.K. Computer
Dead Kennedys, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables
U2, Under a Blood Red Sky
Pink Floyd, Atom Heart Mother (and pretty much anything of theirs)
Dr. Dre, The Chronic
Richard Strauss, Eine Alpensinofie
Bob Marley, anything</p>
<p>The Corrections is such a good book. I'm also a huge fan of Franzen's essays (I remember reading "How Not to be Alone" and loving it).</p>
<p>Darren Aronofsky came to the U of C last year to premiere "The Fountain" at Doc Films. I didn't go (I had something else going on, I forget what) but everybody who went said it was amazing. I haven't seen any of his stuff, and I'm told not to see Requiem for a Dream by myself.</p>
<p>Books and such: Plato's The Republic; Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer; Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise; Anything Mencken; Anything Garcia-Marquez</p>