Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Hormonal hijinks...

I don't know what is going on with me lately - my moods are all roller-coastery. I'm happy one minute and sad the next. Maybe I should start worrying about some kind of serious winter depression...at the moment though I really think it's the combination of endless boring work hours and holiday stress. Either way, I'm totally unpredictable. And so will this post be...

I watched last night's Daily Show this evening...and for some reason Lincoln Chaffee (did any of you see the show?) really tugged my heartstrings. I really liked the guy (shock: he's a republican). And I sort of felt bad that he'd lost. He was so....sad and...pathetic. He seemed like a decent guy. After the show was over I "wikipedia'd" him and found out that he's not so much a republican as...a rebel republican. His voting record seems pretty stellar. Am I just hard-wired to only sympathize with/like liberals? Creepy.

Book quest news: I finished Time Travelers Wife and enjoyed it. I think that's all I'll say about it. Now I'm reading Possession:A Romance. I need to make a confession in regards to the book. Warning to M and A: this might contain some spoiling info...but seeing as I'm not even halfway through the book I can't ruin it too much for you. However, if you don't want to know anything about the book, stop reading now.

My confession: I keep skipping large passages in the book. In total I've probably skipped 10 pages. I know, it seems like a lot. The book is a literary mystery. The plot revolves around academic geeks who are researching two poets. Of the made-up variety. Anyway, a lot of the research is actually part of the book and a lot of that research is in the form of poems. Epic poems. I keep skipping large chunks of poetry. I never signed up to read poetry. And I confess that I don't really understand or enjoy poetry. The poetry in this particular book is probably fairly important or "deep" but at the same time, I can get the big picture of the book without reading all of the poetry.

A thought that keeps popping up when I'm reading the book is that written correspondence is a lost art. I like to pretend at times to be a letter writer (although not recently, sorry all you distant friends). But the true enjoyment and delight of letters has been lost. A casualty of technology?

2 comments:

  1. i felt the same way about that republican on the daily show! he seemed awesome, and i felt, i dunno, like you said - bad for the guy.

    sorry i suck and didn't get to write you today, it was a crazy busy day - i'm still thinking about you a lot and plan to write tomorrow. - al

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  2. I recommend something like the Icelandic mystery JAR CITY by Arnaldur Indridason. Since throwing off the shackles of a pure literary reading list, I've been blissed out with Scandinavian mystery writers (even when they depart and write dramas). Many read Mankell, but I'm digging Indridason's uber-scene-based approach to JAR CITY.

    Kerstin Ekman is righteous too. Her novel BLACKWATER is killer, as is her tetralogy. Anyhow...
    -cK

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