[misterbug]

I read "Devil in the White City" a few months ago. I got it because I originally read a book about the killer-HH Holmes-that was rather sensationlized and seemed to take some liberties vis-a-vis the known facts of the case. "Devil..." is more scholarly. The description of the architecture of 1893 Columbian Exposition was interesting as well. The other book was called "Depraved" (I think, and if not, it is by the author who wrote the serial killer book called "Depraved"). It did not really reveal too much about the Expo.

I was less intrigued by the serial killer's spree than by the building he designed & built--it was a large block of store fronts on the ground floor with bizarre murder rooms of different sorts on the other floors. Ghoulish, I know, but fascinating to read about. At the time, I was studying "psychoanalytic approaches to art" and was interested in Holmes's structure because it containing awkward angles, claustrophobic spaces, strangely configured corridors, secret rooms and passages, etc. Since most serial killers don't have the money, ambition, desire, or ability to build such a structure, I thought the details (few though they were) about Holmes's so-called "castle" were extremely interesting from a psychological standpoint. Architecture is a realm of creativity in which one rarely sees a serious criminal take part, and clearly it is psychologically revealing.

Otherwise, I have been catching up on James Patterson novels I have not read, as well as some fun Freud texts.