merely talk

I've decided to have a slacker day today. Well as much of one as possible at least. I did have to go grocery shopping this afternoon...but that really is the only errand-like constructive thing I plan to do today. And I only did it, because it's quite tricky to make myself a fabulous dinner with no food in the house.

But other than that, I had no plans for the day. I need some major time away from my job and Whyte Ave right now. And I know the two days I have off right now aren't going to do it, but I don't get to take a vacation until September...so this is just going to have to do.

However I'm thinking of trying to make a dent in the pile of books by my bed. Even though I'm not that hopeful about it. I keep falling asleep when I try to read and it has lead to me not being able to finish anything I've started in the last month. Which makes me sad. It also doesn't help that the last book I finished (East of Eden by Steinbeck) was so epic and lovely, that I'm not sure I'm ready to get involved with anything else yet. This happens to me sometimes. I commit myself to one book and get so swept up in it that when I finish it I need time away from books, especially more epic and lovely books. East of Eden was such an involved read. I couldn't be lazy and had to be actively engaged with Steinbeck to stay with it. And sometimes just the way he describes his landscape or a turn of phrase he used leaves me breathless. So I'm a little gunshy about starting something new I think, at least I think that's what's happening. It's all unconscious, but it's the only thing I can think of to explain the full stop on my literary adventures.

You see, in the last four weeks I've started and not finished:
The Book of Disquiet by Pessoa
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Vanity Fair by William Thackeray
The Sound and The Fury by Faulkner
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
Justine by The Marquis De Sade
The Serpent and the Rainbow by Wade Davis
Franny and Zooey by Salinger (Well I read Franny, but not Zooey)
Nine Stories by Salinger (but to be fair I read 8 of the 9, and then had to return the book to the library...so it almost doesn't count, and I'm planning on reading that last story at my earliest convenience)
Mean Girls Grown Up by Cheryl Dellasega

And that's only the ones I remember, and doesn't include everything I started at work (like A Room with A View...).

And it's not like I didn't find these books interesting. What I read of all of them, I found very interesting. But I kept putting them down, and forgetting about them, and then starting the next one in the gigantic pile. I mean this list doesn't even include the ones I've bought recently that went straight to the bookshelf because I knew I wasn't going to read them for many, many months.

Sigh.

Despite all of this, I went and got two new books from the library this afternoon. One is InkSpell, which is the second book in Cornelia Funke's Ink trilogy. I read the first one, InkHeart a few months ago, and it took me all of a day, so hopefully this one will kick start my reading again. And the other is A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. I figure anyone who has the balls to call his book by that title deserves to be read. It also helps that it comes greatly recommended by many of my favourite customers...

And in good news I did read and finish a book off the New Years list. Margaret Atwood's Penelopiad. I enjoyed it. Sort of. It was an interesting take on the story, but I wish she had gone a little deeper into the story than she did. I didn't ever really connect with Penelope at all, which is actually a problem I've had with most of the Atwood I've read (the only exception being Offred in Handmaid's Tale, which continues to not only be my favourite Atwood, but one of my favourite books of all time). And I guess that's just a symptom of my problems with Atwood. I've always found her writing to be some what removed and cold. And I'm sure this is a stylistic choice, but not one that I enjoy. I'm still going to read her. I was recently told that The Blind Assassin is an excellent read, so I'm going to try it.

I guess in the end I'm just disappointed with the Penelopiad, even though it was a quick, fun read, it could have been so much more. I remember being surprised by how thin it was when I got it from the library. I really like the idea of re-viewing history through women's eyes. Orson Scott Card is doing this fabulously with his Women of the Genesis trilogy, and I guess I just expected Atwood to do well with it as well. So I guess my expectations were just too high for it, which led to me not liking it as much as I could have.

C'est le Vie, you can't win them all I guess.

Labels: Books