In an effort to prioritize

A downside to reading several books at the same time is the feeling that progress is being made in none of them--1,200 plus pages read and no end in sight! I need a change of strategy.

First, foremost, finish The Age of Innocence this week. I love Wharton and I now regret buying a leatherbound copy of this one at the used bookstore. It's lovely, but I want to mark favorite passages!

Also, get caught up in Don Quixote. I postponed last week's reading and will have to get through ten chapters this week.

Next, finish Everything You Need. I'm more than halfway and would have finished by now if not for starting the Wharton to read with A.

S. and I are reading Heart of Darkness together. Don't know how much we'll get through before he leaves for camp, but we ought to get it finished before drama workshop begins.

I've read Emerson's Nature and "The American Scholar" and can now resume reading Emerson Among the Eccentrics, with the appropriate essays from the Forties to follow once I've finished the chapters on the Forties. This is going to have to be a long term read.

A Short History of Nearly Everything--another long term read. I'm happy S. is now reading it. He says he'll never look at phosphorus in the same way.

Short stories? Whenever I can work 'em in.

A Summer of Faulkner

Oprah's chosen three Faulkner novels for her book club this summer: As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, and Light in August, and they're being issued as a box set, complete with study guide, I do believe.

Sometimes you just want to hide your head away. . .

As always, remember to check out The Ark on Fridays and the Carnival of the Cats on Sundays for a round up of the best and latest pet blogging photos.


Larry McMurtry gets asked really dumb questions in an interview touting his latest, The Colonel and Little Missie : Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, and the Beginnings of Superstardom in America,and runs out of patience:

What, exactly, do you think cowboys represent, other than the triumph of alpha males?

Cowboys are a symbol of a freer time, when people could go all the way from Canada to Mexico without seeing a fence. They stand for good ol' American values, like self-reliance.

Maybe some American values, but you can't say that cowboys were ever interested in spreading democracy.

No, they were interested in spreading fascism.

If you put it that way, how do you explain your own fascination with Buffalo Bill?

I never thought about it. (NYTimes)

Hee. Of course, my favorite part is when he goes off on Pres. Bush's ranch:

"I find it hard to think of it as a ranch. Crawford is basically a suburb of Waco, and I have been through it a million times. The president has this obsession, which he inherited from Reagan, of brush clearing. I don't get it. What do you get when you clear brush? You get a photograph of yourself with a chain saw and a cowboy hat."

And, of course by now we've all seen the list of the ten most dangerous books of the 19th and 20th century and all the runners-up as selected by the conservatives. (Human Events) The only thing keeping me from hiding my head away in shame since I've read exactly one book on the list is that that one is the most dangerous of all! I fared better with the supplementary list. Decide for yourself which books are the most dangerous.

LW and I were trying to remember yesterday where we'd heard N.C. Congressman Walter Jones' name before. She thought maybe he was the one who thought rape victims couldn't get pregnant, but I googled last night and found out he's the one responsible for having the menus in DC changed to say "freedom fries" instead of "french fries." Perhaps we'll remember his name this time round: he's introduced a bill in response to children in Wilmington having access in the library to King and King:

"Dubbed the Parental Empowerment Act of 2005, the measure if passed would create local review boards of five to 15 parents who would have the authority to review and make recommendations on elementary school library and classroom materials before they could be purchased. Under the law, introduced May 11, states that failed to put the parental panels in place would lose all federal education funding." (School Library Journal)

Jones said, “I can’t understand why parents [can’t] have the power to oversee what children are reading."

See, I was under the impression they could. I just didn't think they should have the power to decide what other parents' kids should read.

Pardon me while I go listen to Dwight Yoakam's "Dangerous Man". . .

And it was on this day in 1977 that the writer Raymond Carver quit drinking. . . .He died of lung cancer 11 years later, but he once described those last 11 years of his life as "gravy, pure gravy." (Writer's Almanac)

THE PARTY

Last night, alone, 3000 miles from the one
I love, I turned the radio on to some jazz
and made a huge bowl of popcorn
with lots of salt on it. Poured butter over it.
Turned out the lights and sat in a chair
in front of the window with the popcorn and
a can of Coke. Forgot everything important
in the world while I ate popcorn and looked out
at a heavy sea, and the lights of town.
The popcorn runny with butter, covered with
salt. I ate it up until there was nothing
left except a few Old Maids. Then
washed my hands. Smoked a couple more cigarettes
while I listened to the beat of the little
music that was left. Things had quieted way down,
though the sea was still running. Wind gave
the house a last shake when I rose
and took three steps, turned, took three more steps, turned.
Then I went to bed and slept wonderfully,
as always. My God, what a life!
But I thought I should explain, leave a note anyhow,
about this mess in the living room
and what went on here last night. Just in case
my lights went out, and I keeled over.
Yes, there was a party here last night.
And the radio's still on. Okay.
But if I die today, I die happy--thinking
of my sweetheart, and of that last popcorn.

--Raymond Carver

Read it and squee

Dark Horse Comics provides a five-page preview of the first Serenity comic. Publication date is July 6.

The young man was sincerely but placidly in love. He delighted in the radiant good looks of his betrothed, in her health, her horsemanship, her grace and quickness at games, and the shy interest in books and ideas that she was beginning to develop under his guidance. (She had advanced far enough to join him in ridiculing the "Idylls of the King," but not to feel the beauty of "Ulysses" and the "Lotus Eaters.") She was straightforward, loyal and brave; she had a sense of humor (chiefly proved by her laughing at his jokes), and he suspected, in the depths of her innocently gazing soul, a glow of feeling that it would be a joy to waken. But when he had gone the brief round of her he returned discouraged by the thought that all this frankness and innocence were only an artificial product. Untrained human nature was not frank and innocent; it was full of the twists and defenses of an instinctive guile. And he felt himself oppressed by a conspiracy of mothers and aunts and grandmothers and long-dead ancestresses, because it was supposed to be what he wanted, what he had a right to, in order that he might exercise his lordly pleasure in smashing it like an image made of snow.

--Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

Carol Peters was in town last week teaching a seminar and presenting her thesis as she finished up requirements for an MFA at Queens University. I attended student readings with her on Friday afternoon, was introduced to program director Fred Leebron, for whom I swiftly performed faux pas tricks such as inquiring after Robin Hemley (how am I supposed to keep on top of who replaced whom where?!?), poet Cathy Smith Bowers, and after a dinner with several students, attended readings by Ann Cummins and Robert Polito.

I bought Rebecca McClanahan's Word Painting based on Carol's recommendation, and will be seeking out Naeem Murr's work--opinion was evenly split among my dinner companions on whether I should start with The Boy or The Genius of the Sea.

Saturday Carol sent me a copy of the first chapter to her novel, which is, I'm happy to report, an absolutely brilliant piece of work: dead-on gorgeous language with plenty of narrative drive to boot. I can't wait until Place of Refuge shows up in the bookstores.