For better or worse it’s pretty clear that either Hegel or Marx is the most influential philosopher of the 19th century. Nietzsche isn’t even close.

Lydia Millet’s “A Children’s Bible”. I’d give the first 80% of the book a solid B-, which was why I got to the end. It was just barely good enough to keep going. But the end was just wretched on so many levels. It was sloppily plotted for one thing; she literally falls back on a deus ex machina to get out of the corner she wrote herself into. But what’s worse the allegory and moralizing just punch you in the face. It’s the kind of ham fisted garbage you’d expect from a freshman taking his first creative writing class. It honestly makes a Chick tract look subtle and nuanced.