‘TIS NO SIN FOR A MAN TO LABOR IN HIS OBSESSION: Erika Singer writes with recommendations based on my post below. I did really like The Power and the Glory, although for whatever reason it didn’t compel me as much as The Comedians and the beginning and end (but not the slack middle) of Brighton Rock…. You know, I’m thinking I should have added the figure of the “comedian” as another obsession. I always wished someone would do that post on humor and joking in Watchmen that I never did….:

On the desire for greatness, self-understanding or lack thereof, and not being able to make your mind shut up, Kay Jamison’s memoir An Unquiet Mind is good, and so is the movie Pi.

The Power and the Glory is still my favorite failure book; I’m sure you’ve read it, but…

On better late than never as applied to forgiveness, The Corrections

On college as the land of lost content, Scott Fitzgerald’s non-college works, especially the short stories and Tender is the Night

And on realistic parenting, I haven’t read it yet, but maybe Marilynne Robinson’s new Gilead?