Age, reading, and old friends

Can some books only be enjoyed at a certain age? That’s the premise of this post in the Guardian, which got me thinking about books I enjoyed tremendously at one time and now can’t quite get that same excitement from. Or even get through, in some cases.
For example: Breakfast of Champions. I LOVED this book [...]

books, daily.

Wired magazine had a blurb on Daily Lit, which will send you books by installments in your email or by RSS. The books seem to be mostly classics — stuff that’s in the public domain.* Still, if you’ve always wanted to read, say, War and Peace, now you can work your way through it on [...]

I want to go to sleep camp, too.

I’ve started reading Karen Russell’s debut story collection, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised By Wolves. It is a far-out place to take your brain, this book. And I like it.
This is not surprising. You may remember my crush on “The Barn at the End of Our Term”, a story that is not in this [...]

Aliens invaded my city and left my ears ringing.

A riot of sirens woke me at 4:26 this morning. The sound of the fire trucks, or ambulances, or whatever they were, were accompanied by a piercing, persistent, awful sound. I tried to ignore it, but it actually hurt my ears.
I ran through the usual checks. Sniff. OK, house not on fire. I listened… The [...]

Zipper goodness

Several people have asked me how the beloved boots are, now that they’ve been um, repaired.
If you judge boots on, say, whether you can get them on and off, which I have now learned is the only real metric that should be used for judging boots, my boots are now in the top tier of, [...]

I’m lost in my desk. It’s, like, a metaphor.

I can’t see the top of my desk for all the paper piling up on it (OK, and some dishes, and books, assorted notebooks, USB cords, pens…). The desk is the least of my worries, but it symbolizes my life right now. Cluttered, disorganized, topped with things I’m avoiding, or need to leave behind and [...]

scenes from urban working life

1. I’m at the gym, on the elliptical machine, which faces out the window to the street. They’ve installed TVs on the machines at the gym, which I hate — the screens block the view outside, and TV does not help me unwind after a day at work. So I turn off Fox News, or [...]

maybe I can do this

This morning I got up an hour early to write before work. I know I am going to feel the lost hour of sleep at oh, about 3 pm, but I am not regretting it right now. I worked on the story I have been ignoring, and that’s worth it to me.
I didn’t even realize [...]

My boots are in the shop.

It’s taken me several weeks to be able to write this post because I was too irrationally angry and humiliated by the events to be described below to write about them right after they happened. I needed some time.
But before I get into that…Remember the story of my boots? And what might have seemed like [...]

Sunday morning, 7 a.m.

I woke up before my alarm went off this morning, my brain churning and swirling with details. It was my turn to take the dog for his morning walk, and instead of trying to return to sleep for a short time, I got up to take him out. My brain was restless. (The dog, it [...]