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thisnewdayBeen reading actual hold-em-in-your-hand, bound and printed BOOKS for the past month due to internet exile imposed by crashed hard drive on less-than-year-old computer. And so had decided, one 'netless night, to consolidate all Barnes & Noble gift cards, take a trip down to their brick-and-morter manifestation on Erie Boulevard, and browse the biography section.
Which I couldn't initially find because the local B&N has turned itself into an effin' appliance store with about a third of available floor space now turned over to effin' IPad/Kindle/techie crap which meant that something had to go and of course it was mostly the section devoted to literary bio. So, when I did find it, it didn't take much time to peruse the leftovers and, surprisingly, find something I was actually interested in reading.
Now, I have this mostly futile habit of writing down book/song/movie titles I hear on NPR (usually while driving home alone from the casino) on odd scraps of paper such as traffic citations, grocery receipts and gum wrappers and then never finding them again. This time, however, the right synapses had fired at the opportune moment, the mostly random notes were somehow magically at hand as I exited the car, and there in front of me, when I got to the shelf, was Lyndall Gordon's Lives Like Loaded Guns, a recently-published study of the family life and times of Emily Dickinson.
Admittedly, it was a slow read at first--Lyndall Gordon is a research fellow at Oxford University and I'm seriously not used to reading much above the level of Dr. Suess, although this year we did graduate to The Magic Treehouse series thanks to the recommendation of my grandson's second grade teacher who had also very thoughtfully provided a couple of the gift cards.
I'd also retained this terrible--and again futile--habit of highlighting every other line as if preparing for a freshman intro to lit class. It slows me down, results in the total defacement (did I just invent a new word?) of a perfectly good book and necessitates an embarassed apology to anyone I might offer to loan the book to in the future.
Anyway, it took about a week to ruin, er, read that one and I've since acquired and devoured A Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay and Zelda, both by Nancy Milford. Savage Beauty is also available to loan and Zelda soon will be. (I'm happy to say that I've put aside the highlighter while reading the last two, so they're relatively intact. Relatively so because one day last week, when I managed to sneak away for a personal beach day, I momentarily rested Zelda against my wet swim suit and rippled the bottom of a few pages. Zelda was OK with it, said it reminded her of those warm days and hot nights with Scott on the Riviera. OK, so what if I'm old and she's dead?)
Maybe one of these days I'll actually say a few words about the contents of the books to, you know, confirm that I've actually read and comprehended some part of them. For now, though, I'm just happy to say that I'm once more reading...
LPK
LiveJournal
8.4.2011
Which I couldn't initially find because the local B&N has turned itself into an effin' appliance store with about a third of available floor space now turned over to effin' IPad/Kindle/techie crap which meant that something had to go and of course it was mostly the section devoted to literary bio. So, when I did find it, it didn't take much time to peruse the leftovers and, surprisingly, find something I was actually interested in reading.
Now, I have this mostly futile habit of writing down book/song/movie titles I hear on NPR (usually while driving home alone from the casino) on odd scraps of paper such as traffic citations, grocery receipts and gum wrappers and then never finding them again. This time, however, the right synapses had fired at the opportune moment, the mostly random notes were somehow magically at hand as I exited the car, and there in front of me, when I got to the shelf, was Lyndall Gordon's Lives Like Loaded Guns, a recently-published study of the family life and times of Emily Dickinson.
Admittedly, it was a slow read at first--Lyndall Gordon is a research fellow at Oxford University and I'm seriously not used to reading much above the level of Dr. Suess, although this year we did graduate to The Magic Treehouse series thanks to the recommendation of my grandson's second grade teacher who had also very thoughtfully provided a couple of the gift cards.
I'd also retained this terrible--and again futile--habit of highlighting every other line as if preparing for a freshman intro to lit class. It slows me down, results in the total defacement (did I just invent a new word?) of a perfectly good book and necessitates an embarassed apology to anyone I might offer to loan the book to in the future.
Anyway, it took about a week to ruin, er, read that one and I've since acquired and devoured A Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay and Zelda, both by Nancy Milford. Savage Beauty is also available to loan and Zelda soon will be. (I'm happy to say that I've put aside the highlighter while reading the last two, so they're relatively intact. Relatively so because one day last week, when I managed to sneak away for a personal beach day, I momentarily rested Zelda against my wet swim suit and rippled the bottom of a few pages. Zelda was OK with it, said it reminded her of those warm days and hot nights with Scott on the Riviera. OK, so what if I'm old and she's dead?)
Maybe one of these days I'll actually say a few words about the contents of the books to, you know, confirm that I've actually read and comprehended some part of them. For now, though, I'm just happy to say that I'm once more reading...
LPK
LiveJournal
8.4.2011
