Just finished A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift, or rather, I should say, just finished A Modest Proposal For Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burthen to Their Parents or the Country, and For Making Them Beneficial to the Public by Jonathan Swift. That title is practically longer than the essay. It's an essay arguing that a way to cut down on the poor is for the poor people of Ireland to use the first year of their babies lives to fatten them up and then at around age one to sell them for food (No, that is not Sarah Palin's policy for the poor. It was only nine pages but still I believe it'd be a stretch to believe that she could finish it. I ked! I ked!). He stated that one benefit of this program would be the reduction in the number of Catholics. I feel like I shouldn't even have to state that it is of course a work of satire.
Next up is another selection from the book, A Modest Proposal and Other Prose, A Tale of A Tub. It's also rather short, but still much longer than A Modest Proposal.
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Jonathan Swift is good for marking things off your list quickly ;) First time I read that I was horrified that a clergyman would come up with such an idea!!
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