One book down, so many to go

Finished Resurrection by David Remnick last night, and came in to the office today to get some things and find a new book. There are so many great books here, I can't decide what to read next!! After watching Angels and Demons, I'm dying for another book on symbolism! I loved the last one I read called The Savior and the Serpent by Gaskill. Sad I don't have his Lost Language of Symbolism with me. We do have The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment, but I think they are giving that as a gift to someone. I have been wanting to read some Hugh Nibley works for a while!

Dan Brown's books, or even books like The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, always get me so excited about learning! They make me want to go back and read about all the great thinkers of previous ages--I've decided I could spend the rest of my life going to school and never get enough of it! I still entertain the thought of going to law school to focus on international law...don't tell my parents haha I sometimes wish I could go back and study psychology, sociology, history, international relations, and philosophy! Luckily, public diplomacy has a mix of these, and for the rest I can just keep on reading!

I thought about reading something in Russian to practice the language (I have forgotten so many words that I used to know!), but there are a lot in English I would like to read. I have Atlas Shrugged at my apartment--it has been on my list for a while. But there is also a 60 page Emory International Law Review booklet called "The Future of Religious Liberty in Russia" that would be interesting, or there is "Bosnia: A Short History," or "History of Russia." Either would be really interesting. And there is a huge textbook style book called "Religious Human Rights in Global Perspective" that's about 600 pages....this is going to be a great summer for reading!! Might as well read the 60 pager on religious liberty in Russia, and go from there...

I really liked this last bit from Remnick (published in 1997):

In trying to analyze the situation in Russia and the Russian prospect, all analysts, myself included, tend to grope for analogies with other countries and other eras. The rise of oligarchy summons Argentina, the vacuum of power evokes Weimar Germany, the dominance of the mafia hints at postwar Italy, the presidential constitution recalls de Gaulle's constitution on 1958. But while Russia's problems alarm the world on occasion, none of these analogies takes into account the country's possibilities...
The most famous of all nineteenth-century visitors to Russia, the Marquis de Custine, ended his trip and his narrative by writing, 'One needs to have lived in that solitude without tranquility, that prison without leisure that is called Russia, to appreciate all the freedom enjoyed in other European countries, no matter what form of government they have chosen....It is always good to know that there exists a society in which no happiness is possible, because, by reason of nature, man cannot be happy unless he is free.' But that has changed. An entirely new ear has begun. Russia has entered the world, and everything, even freedom, even happiness, is now possible.