Tangled threads

Anissa and I both feel a bit lost and cranky if we can't escape into reading. Her extremism finds her taking books into the bathtub. In desperation, I have found myself reading almost anything in print put in front of me. In one printmaking class at KU, one fellow classmate got a charge out of finding me reading the newspapers that protected the worksurfaces.

Newby's life in Tuscany is a soothing summer escape, although his (requisite) Italian terms throw a jolt into the narrative, especially if you are only able to pick up the book a few pages at a time. His strength is the ability to evoke environment, however rustic, so that the reader is filled with such longing. I am surprised, though, that he just brings the book to an end without much ado, - just a litany of who died, they left, goodbye, the end.

I have moved on to Marquez's collected short stories. Not good light reading, lots of voices of people observing the twilight after death. They are arranged in the order of creation, so it will be interesting to see how his work changes with time.