Four out of the last six days were good ones.  Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday--each day I had a good appetite and few stomach problems.  We went out for steak on Monday night, and if I didn't exactly clean my plate, at least I ate all the protein.  And I indulged myself at lunch on Friday with Topeka's best chicken tenders (fried food isn't usually the wisest choice) and suffered no ill effects.  I needed a two-hour sleep every afternoon, but then generally had a good energy level.  Wednesday and yesterday weren't so good (and I got progressively grumpier yesterday, especially as I watched OU fumble a victory away), but I'll take 4 out of 6 days any time.

I've read my way through four Thomas Hardy novels in a row in this order: Far from the Madding Crowd, Jude the Obscure, Return of the Native, and Tess.  Hardy isn't exactly feel good reading.  All of the novels are set in the countryside, and there is no romanticization of the "pastoral" life.  There are no cities; London is a distant world.  The novels feel pre-industrial; the land (and always the weather) is unforgiving, and the work is still backbreaking, though there is a frightening scene at the end of Tess where she is standing on a giant, shivering threshing machine; she is exhausted, and I expected her to fall into the iron blades at any minute (she doesn't).  Dreams and aspirations are inevitably frustrated, and both social institutions and nature are indifferent at best.  Hardy's style is old-fashioned (third-person omniscient and intrusive) and often clunky.  Both Jude and Tess are marred by grotesquely melodramatic scenes near the end.  Hardy loves to show off with esoteric references to myth and poetry and with obscure vocabulary.  (My favorite word was 'pachydermatous,' which I'm sure I can work into a subsequent discussion of Republican politics.)  And yet I read my way through all four without a break and enjoyed every page (or screen since I was reading on a Kindle).  Far from the Madding Crowd, which I had never read before, fit my preconceived, but ill-informed notions of Hardy's work.  What kept me reading perhaps was how different each of the next novels was, despite their underlying similarities.  Jude I found the most fascinating, especially in the portrait of Sue Bridehead, who is at least as interesting as Jude.  Indeed, all four of the novels are marked by strong and willful female characters.  If I were teaching a course in 19th century novels, I'd feel fairly comfortable teaching Far from the Madding Crowd; I don't think I'd have the courage to tackle Jude.  Equally intriguing was Tess, a novel with really only one main character.  We're in Tess's consciousness from page one till the end, and despite the infrequency of dramatic incident, Tess commands our attention at every turn.

After Hardy, I thought I needed a complete change: non-fiction certainly and perhaps something upbeat.  I succeeded on the first count, but failed miserably on the second.  Amazon, which of course has a complete profile of my likes and dislikes, recommended The Price of Inequality by the Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.  It was on sale for $3.77.  How could I, a member of the 47% who feels entitled to his social security and Medicare and bargain books, resist?  It's the most discouraging book I've read in a long time as Stiglitz describes the relentless increase in inequality that has marked the last three decades of American life--the unconscionable concentration of wealth at the top, the hollowing out of the middle class,  the indifference to the poor, the end of the American dream, and the general 'immiseration' (Stiglitz uses this word a lot) of the 99%.  The data are frightening, and Stiglitz is very good at analyzing them.  He's also good at analyzing why so many of the 99% cling to the belief that the middle class is strong, and if they're not there yet, it's still a clear possibility, that is, why so many vote against their own self-interest.  Although the description and analysis are clear and sophisticated, Stiglitz could have used a good editor.  There is sadly too much evidence that the book was rushed to print so that it could appear before the election.  There is a lot of repetition.  I don't know, as just one example, how many times Stiglitz tells what the term "median income" means, as if we didn't get it the first time (or his editor didn't notice that he'd already explained it two or three times earlier).  There's way too much "as we saw in chapter three" with a repetitive summary or "as we'll see in chapter seven" with an anticipatory summary.  Stiglitz's prescriptions for change are also disappointing.  It's not that they're wrong from a liberal's point of view; it's that there is little new and little sense of how politically they could be accomplished.  Those quibbles aside, however, the book is a clear-headed look at the state of American economic, social, and political life during the last thirty years  Not all of the data will be surprising, but some of them will be, and their integration into a purposeful pattern is alarmingly convincing.

Now, Amazon, how about a cheerful recommendation?  I'm counting on you.