There is no pattern...

I grab chunks of time to read. There is no rhyme or reason to what I consume. For a while I was reading Maigrets just so I could bid them farewell, and head them to Bookaholic.

It is tough to read anything serious if you can only read in spurts. I may just have to abandon or totally restart my reading of The Seekers. I have to absorb and understand, and there aren't any long uninterrupted period in which I can do that, or even want to, these days. Maybe it's just the subject for now.

My shelves are mounting with other volumes that beckon. I realize that many of the books I have had on my wish list for so long have taken residence here. I picked up and have become absorbed with Lahiri's The Namesake. Why I have become interested in India-American writers recently, I am not sure, except that their names have topped many recommended and commended lists in the past few years.

Cleaning house

I have determined to thin out the library a bit, rereading the Maigrets and sending them off to Bookaholic. I know Simenon was quite a change from the popular Christies of the era, but neither the plots, or characters really seem to want me to revisit them. It is a bit better to visualize Paris, having my own memories of last fall, but still, it is hard even to know what decade they depict without looking at the copyright.

Now that the studio is almost ready to move back into, my poor homeless books can be pulled off the floors of the other rooms. Maybe even new bookshelves! Maybe.

One of these days I may even coordinate my wish lists, both written and virtual (Powells, Amazon, and more temporary and spontaneous, Hamilton and Daedalus.)

I am looking forward to the fall sale at Borders. It is not as not much fun without A but it is still a good reason to splurge.

And speaking of splurges, I sprang for an ipod and subscription to audible.com. I am trying to be very selective and pick books that I probably would not read. It is a bit hard to describe, a good listen is subtly different from a good read, especially one that you might want to go back and revisit. I started with Jeanette Walls's The Glass Castle. Parts of it just make my hair stand on end (oh, wait, it already does stand on end) - two parents who were so supremely self-centered, and negligent, yet instilled values that (I think) enabled their children to survive and become mature, reasonably sane productive adults. (Thank you, Sonja for the recommendation)

Squeezing in reading time

For many reasons, I haven't been devoting much time to reading, not as much as I would like anyway; it isn't time, maybe more a lack of discipline and focus.

I am nearly through with The good, the bad and the difference. A New York columnist examines ethical questions posed by his readers. It is interesting, and thought-provoking, although I do not agree with all of his conclusions. He is distinctly a New Yorker, Jewish, a man who does not appear to be a parent. Actually I think the questions themselves and what they say about us today, are as intriguing as his responses.

*Sigh* I am still not finished with The Seekers, but each time I delve in I learn bits and pieces more about my cultural heritage (Western, Catholic) and how our traditions, ideas have evolved as they have. OK, I did not take Western Civ when every other Jayhawk had to, but would I have appreciated it? I doubt it. So, it is illuminating now.

Oh, yes, I have been treasuring Vreeland's Life Studies. How very special they are! She imagines the contemporary ordinary people whose lives are touched by a variety of Impressionists and post-Impressionists - van Gogh, Manet, Monet, Morisot, Cezanne, Modigliani, Renoir and more. The stories are sometimes sad, but always moving.

Spring reading

I am settling back into Boorstin's The Seekers. So far it has been an illuminating overview of the origins of our great thinkers and great ideas of the Western world. All those concepts we just take for granted - the structure of our universities, the roots of the ways we think and believe. How much we owe all those 'dead white guys.'

I have been intrigued with philosophy for some time - I don't know much about it, it sounds abstract and dry (a negative) but I know that I like to see the big picture - to understand the background of things, and see how they all fit together - (a plus). So this book should provide me with a frame of reference and spark to explore some more.

Borders has their spring educators appreciation weekend, and a stack of books followed me home. I had the sense this time to go with a specific list - which helped.

I finished Teacher Man about two weeks ago. It was a startling find at Bookaholic - it has only been out a few months (still in hardback) and I picked it up for about 6.50. Anyway he is a good storyteller, that is his strength, not necessarily a great writer. In this his third book his self-deprecation was starting to get annoying though (you made it, you are a Pulitzer Prize winning best-selling author, OK, Frank?)

Reflections

Eats Shoots and Leaves is a hoot. A funny bewailing of the lack of attention to punctuation. The author does not really divide it this way, but there is the punctuation lapses that really confuses ordinary communication, and there is the fussier stuff that I think 95% of English-writing people do not really understand. She addresses both. I never completely understood the use of colons or semicolons and I think my writing skills are pretty decent. Well, it was fun in a dry, witty way.

In The Seekers, Boorstin remarks on how Socrates and Plato deplored the written word. The dynamics of the spoken word, they claimed, is the true source of knowledge. I assume they meant the exchange of ideas, rather than a one-way bucket-into-brain transfer. What would they think of art, of any our media today??

Sharing

Jeannie has asked to borrow a copy of Imitation of Christ. I will try to find one of her own this weekend or just let her borrow mine.

I think Kalli would like to read The Phantom Tollbooth since she was kind enough to loan me Eats Shoots and Leaves and she is an secondary ed English major.

I will make it through the Marquez's stories yet. Plus I am absorbing, however slowly, Boorstin's The Seekers. I get distracted by brain candy and SuDoku, of course, but as long as the breaks aren't too long I feel OK about it.

I am thinking about going through the Maigrets and with a once-through read, moving them out of my collection. I can't really convince myself to really like them enough to keep them around.

Holiday fun

OK, I finally finished Breach in the Wall. It had long lost its charm but I wanted to make it through. It ultimately did widen my perspective of 20th century China, which was pretty narrow from the start.

Took the Borders gift card and a coupon, plus a stack of volumes to "recycle" at Bookaholic to add to the charming fun I got for Christmas. Anissa took inspiration from my wishlist, to find books I might like. Yay! Instead of feeding each other food to express our love, we give each other books to feed our psyches!

Newest (unpurchased) find -Vreeland's Life Studies