“Let there be some uncertainty about your departure”

1. Book I Put Down and Don’t Plan to Pick Back Up: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. Seriously. After about the 50th “for reasons I cannot reveal now” or “I’ll tell you later,” I decided I didn’t care enough to be told. What a boring slog.
2. Book I Am Enjoying Right Now: Serena by Ron Rash. I’m about halfway through it. She is spooky bad, that woman.
3. Book I Loved So Much I Want to Marry It And Have Little Booklets: The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker. I know. Nicholson Baker. Read it anyway. It’s funny. It’s sweet. If you are a poet or like poetry or ever studied poetry, you’ll like it. Also listen to this Bookworm podcast. Maybe wait till after you read the book. There are a couple of spoilers. But it is such a lovely, quiet little interview. And Baker sings a couple of the little poems-as-songs from the book. If you haven’t read any poetry for a while, it will make you want to read poetry. If you never read any poems by Louise Bogan before (I hadn’t), it will make you curious. The title of this post is the last line of her poem “Words For Departure.”
4. Book I Am Slowly Picking My Way Through a Chapter at a Time: Don Quixote, the Edith Grossman translation. I’ve never read it. I know a couple of the songs from Man of La Mancha. Does that count?

I have finished 47 books so far in 2009. That’s one book more than a book a week. I started quite a few more books, but I don’t wait around for them to get better any more. Time’s a-wastin’ and there are piles of unread books to get through!

Face Off

These two elephants currently sit on the shelf over my desk just above eye level.

The one on the left is heavy Baccarat crystal. I bought it for my mother a long time ago. She collected elephants. I don’t really know why. I took this one home when we cleaned out my folks’ house after my dad died.

The one on the right used to be in the toy drawer at my maternal grandmother’s house. There was a closet in one of the bedrooms that had three or four floor-level drawers under the closet doors. One of them was the toy drawer where the few toys that lived at Grandma’s house were kept. Whenever we were going to spend time at Grandma Mae’s, my sister and I would race for the drawer. I don’t remember that we played with the things much. But we would pull them all out and handle each one as if counting and inspecting them. Taking a toy census.

I like them. I think they’re kind of funny juxtaposed like this. Today they make me think of those large apple-shaped women who worked hard to look after us and love us. Even when we weren’t particularly loveable.

Bright Line Rules

Recent events in the news have me reconsidering my view that you ought to consider the art without regard to the politics or personal peccadilloes of the artist – unless those politics or peccadilloes are part of the art.

I’ve been so angry about the Hollywood people snuggling up to Roman Polanski that I’ve mentally composed a boycott list as long as my arm. The list is entitled “Jerks Who Think Raping Eighth-Graders Is Somehow Excusable And Therefore Should Not Make Another Dime Off Of Me.”

So, yeah,  the art/artist rule is clashing with the “44-year-old men can’t sexually assault 13-year-olds and get away with it and anyone who thinks they can ought to be hit repeatedly with a shovel” rule.

Hmph. And I named this blog after a bit in a movie by one of the Polanski apologists. Who, of all people, probably ought to just shut up about older men who force themselves on young girls.

Seriously, what is wrong with people? This ought to be a gimme.

I Came in Here For That Special Offer

Why did I buy this stuff? It makes me sad. It tastes like punishment.

The Rules of Hair

According to the immutable Rules of Hair, I will have a bad hair day tomorrow.

Fact: “Make hair appointment” was on my to-do list today.

Fact: My hair looked pretty good when I got done with this morning’s ablutions.

Fact: I did not make a hair appointment.

Therefore, tomorrow my hair will have three-inch dark roots and lie on my head like a dead animal.

Culinary Truths

1. That extra-lean turkey bacon will never crisp up, no matter how you prepare it. Well, OK, you could deep fry it. But that probably defeats the purpose of the extra-leanness.
2. Weird but good: leftover rice with olive hummus (or probably any kind of hummus — I had olive) mixed in. Nuke. Not too hot. Eat.
3. Fennel is not edible. Beets are not edible. I don’t know what you people are thinking.
4. My rice cooker died several months ago. Turns out I don’t miss it. Rice on the stove top isn’t hard to make and doesn’t make that sticky stuff on the bottom of the pan.
5. Splenda is nasty. Overly sweet. Cloying. Icky. I’d rather drink a regular HFCS soda than a diet one with Splenda. Give me aspartame or give me death!*

*Heh.

FAIL!

My son is not a reader. I know lots of teenaged boys aren’t readers. Still, I’m taking this as a personal failure.

I read to him lots when he was younger. He liked it.

My mother read to me lots when I was little, until I practically wrenched the book from her hands to show her that I could read it myself.

This did not happen with my son. He never wanted to take the book into his own hands. Unless it was to chew on the corners of the board books. He liked to hear books, not read them himself. His Harry Potter “reading” has all been from the wonderful Jim Dale CDs. And he never did listen to the last one.

I read. A lot. My husband reads. Our kid does not read. FAIL!

Oh, he reads plenty of stuff online. Mostly sports websites and Facebook. Most mornings, he’ll scan the sports section of The Tattered Remnant of the Formerly Great Los Angeles Times.

The joke is that the sole AP class he’s taking this year is AP English Language. Yeah. The boy who does not read is taking AP English. He did finally read two of the three assigned summer reading books – the two short ones. And chunks of the third book. But I know he mostly used SparkNotes to find out what happens in the third book. For someone who doesn’t read, he writes pretty well. So maybe he will be OK in AP English anyway.

There are lots of dire predictions about the end of reading or the end of reading fiction or the end of reading dead tree books and periodicals. I don’t think any of them will really come true. Even though I bought a Kindle in February, I still read a lot of paper stuff. Towering stacks of books and magazines. And young people do still read, even if a lot of it is fluff. Young Adult books seem to be pretty popular.

But my kid doesn’t read them or much of anything else. It makes me sad that he doesn’t get the joy and comfort that I get from time spent with a book.