Nonfiction a-go-go continues: Now into The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt, about the Renaissance rediscovery of Lucretius' poem "On the Nature of Things." I had requested it from the library even before it won the National Book Award for nonfiction. I'm only 50 pages in and I haven't hit real traction but that's not the book's fault -- it's more readable than I had thought, even. So here's the teaser (the rule is two sentences from a random page, post the link in the comments section of the Should Be Reading blog. Or if you don't have a blog, you can just post your teaser in the comments):

"Despite the vigorous efforts that Thomas More made, during his time as chancellor, to establish one, England had no Inquisition. Though it was still quite possible to get into serious trouble for unguarded speech, Bruno may have felt more at liberty to speak his mind, or, in this case, to indulge in raucous, wildly subversive laughter." (p. 236)