Book stuff

Just finished The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. It was good, not in my top ten but I'm glad I read it and would recommend it. The last chapter was my favorite, he talks about animals regarding philosophy and society. He states how animals were viewed as having souls just like people up until the 1600's when Descartes (the "I think therefore I am" guy) described them as soul-less machines. The idea took hold and western society still believes Descartes theory today.
The next book on my list is Symposium by Plato. I actually got the idea of reading Symposium from the book I just finished. Kundera talks about a story from Symposium in which humans once had four legs, four arms, two heads, and so on. Some were male, with two sets of male sexual organs; some were females; and some were hermaphrodites, with one set each of male and female sexual organs. We were twice the people we are now, and the gods were jealous, afraid we would overthrow them. Zeus decided to cut us in half to reduce our power, and ever since we have been running all over the earth trying to rejoin with our other half. When we do, we cling to that other half with all our might, and we call this Love. I think that is a cool story!
After Symposium I'm going to check out a book recommended by my friend (thanks Sheedeh!) called , Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez. Nikki and I read one of his books a couple of years ago and loved it, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Hopefully this book will have that same sense of surreal/magical realism.
Nikki is currently reading Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov (and probably will be for a while, its a long book but well worth the read!).