Years ago, I worked with an educational content provider. They assigned me topics to research, and after identifying grade-appropriate online resources, I submitted short descriptions of the websites to help young researchers choose the most appropriate for their projects. One of my first topics was cuttlefish, so I thought I knew a bit about them — until I beheld flamboyant cuttlefish at the Shedd Aquarium on Friday. Unfortunately, it was all but impossible to capture a good photo of them, so here’s a link, instead.
Rather than cuttlefish, then, you get a photo of my July reading stack. Love in the Time of Cholera and Infinite Jest are for Roundtable courses, and Pattern Recognition is the next selection for the philosophy book club. I’ll be rereading Ulysses for another month and a half. (Speaking of rereading, I first encountered Love in the Time of Cholera about forty years ago, about five years before I first encountered Ulysses. Perhaps it’s not so much that books are wasted on our younger selves but that they often land so much more effectively on our older selves: These have been much richer experiences.) My older daughter gave me the Kanakia (which I think I first heard about at Jared Henderson’s site), and the Jansson biography is for a project a friend and I will begin in August. (With this same friend, I recently read Jon Fosse’s The Other Name, which we will discuss tomorrow.)
PSA: The heat wave loosened its grip on our area Friday night, but the weather has been difficult, hasn’t it? Wherever you are, be careful; be safe.
Nerdishly 
The last time I read IJ was in a group, and after we’d read Ulysses as a group. I knew IJ referenced Hamlet. I hadn’t known it referenced Ulysses; that was nice synchronicity. I had detailed reading guides for both books that helped me wrestle with the many details.
After IJ, I read DT Max’s biography (too worshipful), Lit by Mary Karr (a good corrective to the Max) and, unwittingly, for a writing class, “Xmas, Jamaica Plain” by Melanie Rae Thon which surprised me by its resonances to IJ. I then discovered that Thon and DFW had taught in the same literary department for a semester.
I very much loved Pattern Recognition and the other two in that trilogy.
I’m not sure I want to re-read IJ or Ulysses. Twice for IJ and once for Ulysses may have been enough. But I wish you well on your journeys through them!
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Great to hear from you, Kristin! As it turns out, I’m not going to have time for the IJ reread… a big change occurred in my schedule. Perhaps it’s for the best?
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