Here’s a a head-scratcher: How is it that I didn’t already own a volume of White’s letters? And another: How did I land atop the request list for the recently released fourth volume of the Thursday Murder Club series? Well. The house is tidy; I’ve walked four miles and mowed and trimmed the yards. Yes, I’m curled up on the couch with The Last Devil to Die.
A few new books.
The University of Chicago Graham School’s short course on The Moonstone concludes tonight, and I’ve finished Cervantes’ Don Quixote, an Open Yale Courses program. In the coming months, I will participate in Victober and two APS Together book clubs, take a deep dive into the work of E.B. White, and conduct a close reading of The Magic Mountain. Latin and music will round out my fall and winter studies.
After brunching / snacking at Taste of Chicago, we headed to the Printer’s Row Lit Fest, events we haven’t attended since we lived in Chicago.
A few new books.
No alarm; a beautiful hike at a state park; Chapter 4 of Absalom, Absalom; music practice; a bizarre chat with a customer service representative; two episodes of Only Murders in the Building; delicious luncheon; Bananagrams; and now? More of The Moonstone.
Recent acquisitions.
Although I had hoped to finish sooner, I only just listened to Lecture 17 of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, an Open Yale Courses program, this morning. (The course comprises twenty-four lectures delivered by Professor Roberto González Echevarría. Absolutely excellent.)
Somehow I finished Nights of Plague in time for a wonderful book discussion last night. I began reading as soon as I finished The Republic earlier this month but was happily sidetracked by an invitation to a reading group tackling Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd; then family came into town for several days. Finishing Orhan Pamuk’s tome really was a feat, then, given how little time I had.
Naturally, although I followed the #FaulknerinAugust discussion, I needed to set aside the book for most of the month, but I am back to a chapter a day in Absalom, Absalom.
I’m also reading Adrienne Brodeur’s Little Monsters.
After only three rehearsals, we have a break from band this coming week, so for the next few music practices, I’m focused primarily on my current étude, the Mozart duet, and the middle of the second movement of the Stamitz concerto. (I spent much less time on this over the last two months than originally planned.)
And though my Latin studies stalled in the second week of the month, after a vocabulary review, I’ve cracked open the next unit.
The heat warning ended, more books arrived, and really? Nothing is right with the world, is it? But Friday still becomes Saturday and Saturday, Sunday, so here I am, reading Nights of Plague for a book discussion, practicing Florence Price’s “Juba Dance” for band rehearsal on Monday, and wondering whether I should walk first this afternoon or do the yard work first. And with a thud of all-at-onceness, such banal dithering has made me as uncomfortable as my first encounter with Ilya Kaminsky’s poem.
(forgive us)
But new books are cool.
Check your neighbors. Stay hydrated. Find a cool place. Don’t worry about that training session until Friday, okay? Take care.
The local library’s summer reading program includes an adult category. One must log six hundred minutes over eight weeks to finish; I had completed it by the end of the first week and dispensed with the online log after entering more than 2,300 minutes. Ordinarily, my August calendar includes a “Pick up library prize” note, but the lackluster selection last year coupled with the rapidity with which I finished effectively put the program right out of my head — until I received the library’s weekly newsletter, which advised readers that the prize room was closing at the end of the month. I had been meaning to read Crying in H Mart for a while, in part because of this review, so I am glad I caught the reminder before my fall semester schedule got underway.
Well, actually, I just finished Far from the Madding Crowd — what a thumping’ good book! Now I will move among the other three until finished.
