sometimes a book is so good you never want it to end... you've heard that... but in my case the books are so good i can't wait for them to end... can't hit the last page soon enough... to begin the next... and i'm a very slow reader of good novels... very slow... and that's ok i guess... a person could jog through the Art Institute or National Gallery, but what would he see? a blue blur... a green... a flash of bronze...

recently finished: chinua achebe's Things Fall Apart... this is required reading for all seniors, and i've assigned it as partial summer reading for the incoming ap class. some of us are having an email conversation about it... a fairly slow conversation so far... it seems i'm not the only slow reader at Carmel...

two days ago i knocked off anne michaels' Fugitive Pieces... another summer reading assignment for the incoming world lit honors crowd... a good book... you know... poetic as hell with sentences like

The dead passed above me, weird haloes and arcs smothering the stars. The trees bent under their weight. I'd never been alone in the night forest, the wild bare branches were frozen snakes.

it's a complex, philosophical book... possibly not the best for a summer reading assignment if only because it needs discussion... cries out for it... aside from the poetry, it's got some tricky narrative maneuvers and some profound themes... needs an index...

yesterday i began virginia woolf's Jacob's Room... her third novel... and have been thoroughly pleased...

The proximity of the omnibuses gave the outside passengers an opportunity to stare into each other's faces. Yet few took advantage of it. Each had his own business to think of. Each had his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart; and his friends could read only the title, James Spaulding, or Charles Budgeon, and the passengers going the opposite way could read nothing at all-- save "a man with a red moustache," "a young man in grey smoking a pipe."

but a slice like this doesn't do it justice... woolf's magic happens as much in the shifting from one scene to the next... and the diving into any given moment that raises treasure...

woolf to be followed by pynchon or calvino... to be followed by erdrich... to be followed by...

that's really all my days consist of... a walk jog, breakfast, a shower, a read... a long slow read to lunch (often just breakfast redux)... more reading... a doze with music... more reading... dinner... somewhere in there i fit in an hour or two online...

i've been ignoring the garden... a number of perennials installed last year have not re-arrived... the pampas grass, the coreopsis, the shasta daisies, the primrose... what has popped up are roses (though not the ones i added last year), lavender, coneflower, mint (an aggressive invader, but i love the way it smells when i rip it out), and three healthy clumps of something whose name i've forgotten (if i ever knew) that puts out great purple spikes all summer long...

so i need to get in there to plant new stuff and rip out the weeds there in my purple/white/red plot... the bunnies have devastated the small yellow plot... i need some ideas for that spot... but will probably settle for whatever frank's and home depot have to offer...

looks like a quiet summer in the making - i hope. jay's moving out to joliet soon... ed's also in transit... just me, bob, and dom for the duration.

o.. also... we broke down and treated ourselves to a good cheap dvd player... i've finally been able to watch carné's Children of Paradise... a feast... and miyazaki's Spirited Away... very cool... and renoir's The Southerner... and... I Am Trying to Break Your Heart... a fine documentary on Wilco's Hotel Yankee Foxtrot adventure...

and so it would appear that some part of my time has not been passed in an utterly monkish state.. alas... hooray...

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any other exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object.

Henry David Thoreau

 

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