Geeeek!

I love the beginning of summer. In the beginning of summer, I am incredibly motivated. Ok, Rita, I think in the royal plural with which I typically address myself, we have just finished off another excellent year of our education and we will now undertake to become the best person that ever lived. We will read every book and every magazine article we had to pass up during school, on top of, like, everything else important ever written in the last 2,000 years. And we're going to work out and not be a lazy, fat schlub. And we're going to see the city and become spectacular in general. And hot--we're also going to turn hot. In general, in the beginning of summer, I have every intention of completely defying every aspect of my nature.

This desire and drive winds down within a couple weeks as I settle into a routine of sleeping until noon, waking up to read five pages a day of whatever before falling back asleep, eating cereal for lunch, and then sitting online until 9 pm, at which time I occasionally give in to the weight of self-loathing and go out for a run. That's about the time when I start pining for school to start again, and visiting gurl.com regularly.

But this summer will be different. For one thing, I'm only going to be home until Wednesday. For another, I will be all alone in (hopefully) exciting Washington for six weeks. And finally, I will spend the rest of the summer in Hyde Park, where things are dead, but probably not as dead as Skokie, where the median age of the population is like 75 and they are literally, dead. Plus, Alex will be there to hopefully beat me if I start relapsing into sloth-hood.

So, since I'm convinced this summer will be different and I will actually triumph against my evil nature, I've launched into my self-improvement projects with great gusto. I've even created a mental syllabus for my summer reading that requires more than five pages a day. And so, without further ado, my overly ambitious summer reading list:
Eichmann in Jerusalem - Arendt
Fabulous Small Jews - Epstein (greatest title ever, btw)
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
title TBD by John Dewey
Thoughts on Machiavelli - Strauss
title TBD by James Thurber
reread The Great Gatsby and undertake another Fitzgerald book
The Road to Serfdom - Hayek
title TBD by Edmund Burke

Additionally, things to read in excerpts because I am undisciplined and LAZY:
On War - Clausewitz
Montaigne's Essays
The Federalist Papers
selected other American history primary source material
selected other American literature (please suggest!)

Also, please suggest some contemporary fiction for me. Less profound is preferable to more profound. I am a heathen.

Right, so this is going to be a fabulous summer!

Or, you know, there's always gurl.com...