April 30, 2007

Summer

Myself was grappling with the problem of Tolstoy, and how I want to read Anna Karenina, but just not now while I’m returning to the world of 9-5 (which is going to cut into my reading), and I’ve got a too many other books I am dying to read to devote myself to such a big one. Which I guess makes it sound like I don’t really care if I read Anna Karenina at all, which also might be true. But the great thing about self-discipline is that you can give it a break just to keep things fun. And so I am totally cheating for my May Classic. I’m going to read Summer by Edith Wharton, which is so tiny and not even old enough to actually qualify for my Classics Challenge, but oh well. I was inspired to read it after reading about Hermione Lee’s new Wharton bio in the LRB. (As an aside, predictably I am obsessed with the LRB, which so far has led me to read with fascination about things in which I have little to no interest– case in point Colm Tóibín on Beckett’s Irish Actors). And so that is that, which is all she said.