How does time manage to feel like it has flown by and yet still feel like it is going along at a regular pace or even passing slowly? That’s how I feel about summer. It is August already and I want to say, wow, has the summer flown by! But yet it has felt slow and full, pleasantly busy. Anyway, here we are well into August.
I feel like I have been reading a lot. Well, except for this past weekend when I felt rather brain dead for some reason. I am blaming allergies. I am still reading The Crisis of the European Mind by Paul Hazard. I don’t know why it is taking me so long to get through it. Well, yeah, I do, I don’t spend enough time reading it. And it’s not because it isn’t good. My goal for August is to finish it. It is my April NYRB subscription book, it is time to be done. I did read my June NYRB book, Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban. I finished it last week and will be writing about the book tomorrow most likely.
Stag’s Leap by Sharon Olds is still lingering too. I am almost done, have only a handful of poems left. And I have also been picking away at The Collected Poems of Edward Thomas.
Tristram Shandy, I am almost done. Will probably finish later this week. So much fun! For those of you who have read it, I am in the midst of Toby preparing to make his attack on Mrs. Wadman. What a hoot!
I just realized how close I am to finishing several books. How exciting! Perhaps August will be a month of finishes, especially finishes of the lingering sort. I need to come up with some fresh books to linger over.
In July I had hoped to start reading Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel. That didn’t happen. And I had hoped to start in on something by Patrick Leigh Fermor. That didn’t happen either. Oy. I did start reading The Nature Principle by Richard Louv, a book about “Nature Deficit Disorder.” It had such a promising beginning but after about thirty pages I gave up on it because it was going in circles; the same thing over and over. If one is going to write an entire book, one has to have something more to say than “nature is good for you” repeatedly. Bah.
I received a marvelous book from the kind folks at Pomegranate, Floating Worlds: The Letters of Edward Gorey & Peter F. Neumeyer. Neumeyer is a children’s book author and he and Gorey collaborated on a number of books. These letters cover about two years of time in the late 1960s. It’s a gorgeous book and some of Gorey’s hand-painted envelopes are reproduced in full-color. I am about 50 pages in and enjoying it very much.
Upcoming reading this month includes the next Slaves book for discussion, Excellent Women by Barbara Pym. It will be a reread for me, but I read it so long ago the details are fuzzy. And Pym is always delightful. It will also serve as a pleasant antidote to the fall semester starting up next week at the law school where I work. The 1Ls have orientation and they will be wandering around lost, anxious, and eager to impress. I should probably find my copy of Pym soon and get started on it.
Bookman also tells me I have to read Heavy Weather by Bruce Sterling. I have no idea what it’s about. Wait, let me look… Ah storm chaser hackers. Well that’s something you don’t read about every day. It’s science fiction and takes place in some future time. Bookman says it is excellent and I have been kind of wanting to read some SF lately, so.
Will I manage to get to Mantel or PLF this month or will they drop off the radar for a few months? The RIP challenge starts in September so If I haven’t started them by then, they will have to wait until November for another chance. And there is no accounting for a surprise book or two. Who knows when my turn will come up for a few library requests I am in line for?
Now, to go finish some books!
I do so love a month in which I finish books that I have been reading for a long time. Heh, I cannot wait for that to happen with War and Peace in December!
I hope you enjoy all of the remaining pages in the books you are reading. As for Bring Up the Bodies, I am trying to think of a way to incorporate it into RIP (it probably has death in it, but that’s as far as I get)..
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Iris, it is a good feeling. As much as I might be enjoying the books it starts to feel a bit drawn out and tiresome. Bring Up the Bodies a RIP book is brilliant! There will be deaths for sure and then I assume there is psychological terror. That should count, right? 🙂
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I hope my August is also a month of “finishes”! I feel like I’ve been reading some books for months now. I finally even had to return some un-read books to the library. I hate it when that happens. Oh well, they’ll be there to check out another time. Have fun finishing your books in progress!
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Iliana, it is sad when the in progress pile gets boring to look at because the books are so familiar. I too, don’t like returning books unread to the library. I hope August turns out to be a month of finishes for you too!
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Finally, my library had a copy of the book the Slaves are reading! I haven’t started it yet, though. I’m about 1/3 of the way into TransAtlantic by Colum McCann and I need to finish it this week. It has a waiting list and I can’t renew it. But I think I can tackle the Pym after that and have it finished by the end of the month and be able to participate in Slaves for a change. I haven’t made a dent in my big stack of new books, though – except A High Wind In Jamaica, which I finished last week. I would love a weeks vacay in a hotel on Tybee Island, ocean view, where I could sit out on the balcony and do nothing but read, eat, and sleep. Someday.
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Grad, hooray! Pym reads pretty fast so you should be good. I am glad you’ll be joining the Slaves discussion this time 🙂 Glad to McCann’s book is good. He was in town here speaking not long ago. I wasn’t able to make the event but I heard it was well attended. A week in an island hotel to sit on the balcony and read sounds like a lovely idea!
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I was only thinking this morning that surely yesterday was April and that I had no idea where the intervening months had gone. I know I am getting through a fair number of books but it isn’t anything like what I wanted to read. And now you’ve put another into my tbr pile. I really ought to read something by Barbara Pym. How have I come to miss her? I need a twenty-six hour day.
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Alex, if you figure out where to get a 26-hour day and how to fill those extra hours strictly with reading, let me know! Pym is delightful. She has one of those comforting voices that can say the funniest, most sarcastic things and unless you are paying attention they drift right by.
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Your post made me feel not so alone in plugging away at several books at once! I have three on the go – Devil’s Peak by Deon Meyer, The True Secret of Writing by Natalie Goldberg, and the Collected Poems of Edna St Vincent Millay. I had to send by my book on Sylvia Plath to the library, Mad Girl’s Love Song, which I was really enjoying. I’m debating buying it now in hardcover, or if I can manage to wait until it is in softcover.
I have William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition which I would love to read before RIP, and I have been looking for Stag’s Leap for a while now. I did find Of Mutability by Jo Shapcott, which I really enjoyed (library book). Now looking for a copy of it, some of the poems have really taken hold in my mind, unexpectedly. I hope you enjoy all your finishing! I know I will, it’s so satisfying. You should get bonus points for finishing Tristram Shandy, too! 🙂
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Susan, you’ve got a lot on the go too! I’ve got the collected Millay on my shelf but have never read it from cover to cover, only dipped. Perhaps one day I’ll read the whole thing. And Pattern Recognition too. I’ve had that one for ages but can’t seem to get around to reading it. I am in the midst of reading the Paris Review interview with Gibson from 2011 and it is so very good. It’s online if you are interested in checking it out!
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I know that feeling where you feel busy and as if you are making progress in books yet not actually finishing anything! Even with an extra day off I still didn’t manage to accomplish much this past weekend–so I guess I was suffering from the same brain dead syndrome! I am about halfway through the Hoban and am trying to finish it this week (I had to finish an overdue ILL over the weekend, so that slowed me down). I have not even started the Hazard, so, good for you to be making progress. It looks good, but it looks, too, like a slow and thoughtful read–too much for me this summer but I need to maybe get started (and hope to finish by the end of the year…). I have the Pym out for a reread but now I wonder if I am overextending myself again so we’ll see if I get to it–I hope so. The book of Gorey letters sounds great! Read it soon and let us know how it is — I love his artwork! Will catch up on the rest of your posts soon….I need more hours in the day it seems.
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The finishing line can be so satisfying to reach! When you have read a really long book, or several books, it is both exciting and slightly anxiety inducing to think what to read next. Tend to be reading fairly short books just now – enjoyed Richard Brautigan’s Watermelon Sugar recently and he was a new author to me. Also PD James’s Talking About Detective fiction which covered familiar ground in an enjoyable way.
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Ian, finishing can be very satisfying for sure! It is great fun trying to figure out what to read next. I’ve not read Brautigan but I’ve heard good things about him. I’ve not read the P.D. James book either, can’t make up my mind if I want to, but your assessment seems to be the common one which doesn’t help swing me either way! 🙂
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Danielle, I understand needing more hours in the day! As it closer and closer to the time where I have to pick up Pym or I will never finish it in time, I am feeling reluctant. I know I will enjoy it very much but there are so many other books too. If it weren’t a reread I would feel more compelled. Hopefully this weekend I can get myself motivated. If not, then it’s all over for Pym this time around.
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