I was one of the weirdos in my jr. english class that actually enjoyed The Scarlet Letter, so I endeavored to read another one of Hawthorne's novels, and finished The House Of The Seven Gables just this evening at work. After a short break from reading whence I doodled on my pad, I began to read Pynchon's The Crying Of Lot 49, which some say is his most accessible novel. Though I did not plan this at all, the Pyncheons depicted in THOTSG are based on the ancestors of the real life Thomas Pynchon, whom I just mentioned.