Books for Spring Break

I'm going to Miami, Florida on my spring break today. The most important thing to pack for a beach vacation (besides my huge pink straw hat, of course) is reading matter. There should be enough variety in it for all kinds of moods, weather conditions, and activities. On top of my regular subscriptions to newspapers and magazines that I get on my Kindle, here are the books I will be taking with me:

1. I got this book as a free gift from the New Left Review.  Zizek is one of the most important philosophers living today, and I absolutely adore his writings. In case you've missed these posts, I wrote about him here and here. Some conservative journalist (whose name I don't remember right now) referred to Zizek as "the most dangerous contemporary philosopher." So you can imagine how fantastic Zizek's writings must be.

I couldn't wait to start this new book and began reading it yesterday. Zizek's writing is clear and incisive, as always. For now, I'm loving First As Tragedy, Then As Farce. Of course, I will write a review of the book, as soon as I finish it.











2.                                      









Since Spanish mystery novels are my new research interest, I feel completely justified in reading as many of them as I can. So I'm bringing these three to the beach with me.

I love my profession. :-)











3. I just discovered that Louise Penny has a whole series of mystery novels set in Quebec. How amazing is that?? I miss Quebec dearly and will love reading about it during my vacations.

I can even kind of justify reading this novel from a scholarly point of view. I do need to familiarize myself with mystery writing in all languages in order  proceed with my research into Spanish detective fiction.

Hopefully, the university will pay for all these books when our money gets unfrozen.