Reading list - oh my!

Well, I am still having some sort of internal upheaval. Blood tests on the way.

In the meantime, since I had so many requests about my book bingeing, here is a small taste of what's on the dockets (ones I haven't yet mentioned in the blog. These are in addition to Proust and Cervantes):

Fiction:
Voyage in the Dark, Jean Rhys. Couldn't help starting this one (it's relatively short). If you can stand the patented Jean Rhys downer, this is GREAT.
Margherita Dolce Vita, Stefano Benni. Just started this one, too. (See what I mean?) I MUST quote passages from this next week in blog. I actually burst out in giggles while reading. Brilliant voice. Stay tuned to hear more!
The Stories of Stephen Dixon. I've read two of these so far. He's very original; I haven't decided on how much (or little) I really like his stuff, though.

The Story of the Cannibal Woman, Marsye Conde
Why Did I Ever, Mary Robison
Everyman, Philip Roth
The Road, Cormac McCarthy
Kafka on the Shore, Huruki Murakami
All Aunt Hagar’s Children (Stories), Edward P. Jones
The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis

Nonfiction:
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, Simone de Beauvoir
Muhammad, Karen Armstrong
The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm, Juliet Nicolson
Edith Wharton, Hermione Lee
The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls
Tales from the Heart: True Stories from My Childhood, Marsye Conde

Criticism/Theory:
The Lonely Voice: Study of the Short Story, Frank O’Connor
Expanse of Vision: Essays on the Craft of Henry James, Laurence Holland
Lectures on Don Quixote, Vladimir Nabokov


Just to leave you hanging, I'm going to save the three "finds" I pounced on at a local bookseller that, alas, is being forced out of business. (To make room for some Gigantor Sports Equipment Store. As if we need another one of those!--)anyway, one of them in particular I think is a real score. I couldn't even find it on Amazon.

Houston, we have a problem!

Impulse control: zero, and falling...

1. I just said, "What do they expect me to do, pull it out of my butt?" to my boss about some statistics Sales asked me for.

2. Two nights ago I injected fried calamari and two shrimp tacos into my piehole and washed it down with 3 glasses of Sangiovese. All within two hours. (I didn't have to drive. I just nattered some poor innocent BART rider's head off for 25 minutes.)

3. I just toggled this screen up in front of my boss, who eagerly read the title and will certainly run a web report on it.

4. I can't seem to stop buying books. I suppose that will end once I lose my income.

GOOD GOD. I am OUT OF CONTROL. Thank god, I do not seem to have enough street smarts to connect with pushers on the street, and nurse a distinct aversion to needles and smoking. Else, I would be writing a chick-lit version of Trainspotting morphed with Naked Lunch. "The Devil Snorts Smack."

Penny for somebody's thoughts, not mine

Work: bad.
Me: irritable beyond human endurance and outside the scope of being attributable to PMS.

Speak, Eudora, speak!

From The Eye of the Story, Selected Essays & Reviews, Eudora Welty:

A narrative line is in its deeper sense, of course, the tracing out of a meaning, and the real continuity of a story lies in this probing forward. The real dramatic force of a story depends on the strength of the emotion that has set it going. The emotional value is the measure of the reach of the story.