August 7, 2006
the same, and leftover pie
The long long weekend has been spent with ease. I’ve read four books which has brought my total to 100. Also, soppy films, frisbee in the park, ice cream, Kensington afternoon, and we cooperatively baked a strawberry pie. I made the pastry and Stuart made the filling, and just as we were about to put it in the oven, Carolyn and Steve invited us over for a bbq, so we took the pie to their house and partook in a rooftop feast. It was wonderful. The pie was absolutely perfect and I was quite impressed with us. Today is more of the same, and leftover pie.
Germaine Greer on Brick Lane. Kate Atkinson has a new book out! Rogers loses millions due to misplaced comma. On why women read more novels than men do.*
My obsessive compulsive public library borrowing is interfering with my Great Summer Re-Reading Project. I just finished reading Circling the Drain by Amanda Davis. I’d read her Fat Ladies Floated in the Sky Like Balloons already, and I really loved this collection. Though, as it has been said, the parallels between the stories and Davis’s death were impossibly spooky at times. I do wonder sometimes, the extent to which we write our own lives.
As soon as the rereading project is done, I am going to read Laurie Colwin. Sometimes an author’s name just starts appearing so often, it must be taken as a sign from the universe. In a recent column, Heather Mallick mentioned having read one of her novels recently, and when I entered Margaret Drabble into the Literature Map, there was Laurie Colwin again. Until September, however.
In tacky billboard news, it would be fair to suspect that the turnout for “We Don’t Regret Our Abortions” would be way bigger than this crowd.
*Why I believe that novels are more effective than non-fiction to learn about the world (particularly in terms of current events): This is not a well-developed thought. There are gaps in my ideas here, particularly that I detest historical fiction, which makes no sense. (What a start!) I believe in novels for the same reason I disbelieve in the virtues of decisivesness, political alignment, and principles (except principles in theory- these are ok, and necessary). The world is complicated and stupid, and anyone who can sum up anything is leaving something out of the equation. I like novels for their hypothetical-ness, novels test out realities and one’s reaction to that reality. I feel that is a far more educative tool than a non-fiction book, which is primarily instructive and more obviously biased.
