Whatever happens to strike my fancy, but surely some sort of fiber content.
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| Like The Queen Whatever happens to strike my fancy, but surely some sort of fiber content. |
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1 Comments:
I'm particular about the books I read, too. There are so few good ones out there that I hoard them until I have a long plane or train trip to read them on. No point in wasting their goodness at home when I have plenty of other entertainment options. Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Friday, January 26, 2007 I woke at dawn today - or 4 a.m., and though I am sure I should have tried to go back to sleep (which I can do sometimes, just by trying) I started thinking about TheKipFee and how sweetly it felt, after ripping out all the mismathed stitches, to load those stitches on my slick little #3 Addi Turbo and start knitting that P&P checkerboard again. And then I remembered that there was a stitch missing on the left sleeve and I got to trying to remember if that had always been so and I know it wasn’t and does that mean there is a dropped stitch in that sleeve. And then I got to thinking about our book club lunch today and how I had tried and failed to read the whole novel by T. R. Pearson, about Louis, the New Holden Caulfield, (Oh la, another weak man fixating on how much he’s disappointed his parents) schlepping through New York’s mysteries and drooling over call girls. And then I thought about that really fine Bourbon Santos coffee I picked up yesterday, waiting for me in the refrigerator and you know, really fine coffee is good anytime of day and then, when your dog makes a little sound in his throat that sounds like "Maw-um, come get me. I want to get up in the big bed" well. It’s just easier to get up and start your day. The book is Glad News of the Natural World - a sequel to Short History of a Small Place. I am always captured by the lure of a small southern town written about by a real southerner, because you never know. You might stumble upon a gem like Raney or Run With The Horsemen. But most of the time you get mired in Mitford’s sugar syrup, or you grow bored waiting for shiftless, if harmless, guys to giiit upoffit - which they never do. That’s why they’ve gone to New York. Nobody will notice and they can check out the scene forever. Like the perpetual university student, another looser type that can be puffed off as witty and charming, the perennial people watcher often makes a good date, a fascinating seat partner on a city bus or subway. But in the end, you just can’t care enough about him to care what happens around him, even if he can describe it to you in the most entertaining manner. This type of book - the unconnected man looking out at the world from his burrow of self-doubts (Pat Conroy) - is one of the guy categories I mentally shelve books onto. Along with the grim-spy-mystery-adventure story (Tom Clancy) and or the esoteric convoluted puns-in-seven-languages book - (Umberto Ecco, James Joyce) this is the sort of book a man would write, but not a woman. It’s not that men don’t write books about people with no feelings. It’s more that the men they write about are the ones about whom you say with relief "whew! glad he got away!" Or more cynically... they're your first husband. It’s no wonder to me that Loose can’t find a woman. He’s too ... arrested in his development. He’s too ... unhappy. Come to think of it - can you imagine Harrison Ford/Jack Ryan ever being happy? Or even telling the sort of joke that just makes you laugh till tears tickle? I sometimes feel like men write about people you will never connect with no matter how much they reveal. And then I wonder if it’s just me who can’t connect with these guys, or if it’s all women. It’s no matter. If the plot has enough purpose, a cliff hanger of a rescue a la tom Clancy, or a tender conclusion, as Clyde Edgerton offers, I can enjoy the read. If our sensitive hero just sort of keeps on keepin’ on - or looses everything in the end, well, thanks, but ... no thanks. I guess, when it comes to novels, I am no ENFP. I want to come to conclusion and I can’t get no satisfaction if I don’t. I left Louis Benfield in his dreadful Ford, picking up another out of reach, inappropriate woman who won’t love him anyway. I don’t think I’ll check back with him again. This is a comment I tried to post on C’s blog. Blogger wouldn’t let me and I might as well share it here. I'm reading You on a Diet - but it's a real struggle. It's put together like those awful ...for dummies books with the bad typeface, cheasy paper and fleshcrawly icons snapping their fingers in Eureka moments. Fairly or not, I consider this another type of Guy Book feature and it really puts me off a book. I buy them for the library, but I seldom read them. After slogging up to Chapter 3 I’ve finally found an interesting tidbit of info. The authors claim that High Fructose Corn Syrup doesn’t register in the brain as food so you can eat and drink this stuff forever without ever getting the chemical information that you’ve been fed or quenched. Now that’s something worth reading a nutrition label for. I’m not supposed to be eating anything with HFCS in it anyway so here’s all the more reason to get vigilant. Funny how it’s more interesting, and thus easier, to refrain from eating something because you know it’s going to act like vinegar and baking soda on your hips - or brain! I understand how deeply personal the book thing is but I wouldn’t own this book. It’s a one read book for me. I’m reading the library’s copy. posted by Bess | 7:07 AM |
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