Reading:

The first book was About The Author, which I had been reading half-assedly before my laziness kicked in. In fact, I had read about five pages and then discarded it as another novel bought simply because I liked the idea of buying a book that day (my greatest vice -- well, no, not really). Fortunately, my Jessa-inspired disgust with myself made me to pick it up again and whiz my way through, and oh dearie, it was wonderful. The recommendations on the back cover compared it to Hitchcock, but it wasn't nearly as cinematic. True, it was very suspenseful and tense in parts, with lots of sex and blackmailing and talk of killing people, but it balanced out with the nice meta literary twist/loop at the end, which I liked. Just the right combination of snobery and popular appeal to bring me back to books.

Second, of course, was Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (speaking of which, can someone please explain to me why the US edition was changed to Sorceror's Stone? it makes no sense whatsoever) in preparation for this weekend when I should receive my copy of Harry Potter V through the lovely postal system. This, too, I raced my way through since I have read it at least twice previously and basically was just scanning it for anything I had forgotten. My original intent was to see if I could read all four books before Saturday, but I got bored of reading old things, so I moved on.

Most recently, I have been reading Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, having been determined to read something of his since first finding the Cat and Girl comics. Before this I had no idea who this was, and until I went to the library, assumed he was a philosopher. Not so, dear friends. A novelist is what he is, and all the better for me, I thought. I picked up a copy of the novel, checked it out and proceeded to spend the next few days struggling to get into it. Which, of course, I could not because (and apparently everyone knows this besides me), Gravity's Rainbow is "one of the longest, most difficult, most ambiguous novels in years." Well, fuck. Also, according to Mimi, it is often perceived as more difficult than Finnegan's Wake, which I already know, after a year's worth of listening to my Modern Lit prof's much-talked of obsesssion with Joyce, is a damned hard book to crack. So yes. I basically decided to get back into reading by putting my toe in the water, swishing it around, and then jumping straight into the deepest part of the ocean. Wearing a lead swimsuit and carrying the entire western canon. Fuck.

Saturday is fast approaching, however (3 days!), so I may be forced to set Pynchon aside in favour of some more sweet wizard eye candy. Then, maybe, to aid my strugle, I'll find myself a better copy of Gravity's Rainbow to work with. The copy I took out of the Mississauga Central Library is missing half of its front cover, the back is falling off, and most of the pages curl up in different directions, and I am a firm believer that a book's appearance can greatly enhance my willingness to read it. In fact, I put off reading Pride and Prejudice in first year for six months merely because I didn't like the cover. Once I got myself a nice embossed leather copy of the book (which was hiding in the basement at home and which I have subsequently stolen) I breezed right through the book and felt so much more intelligent than anyone else in class who had to use the crummy Oxford Classics edition.

Finally, A Note To My Future Self: no more alcohol at lunch. No! I met Lara at Milestone's and we both had orange margeritas and now I feel ever so wobbly and I have no patience for typing out letters. But I must! Sigh.

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