Just Wondering

Does your town/city have a special event (like a fair or festival) to celebrate during the summer?

Have you ever been to a country fair?

When you were a kid, what was your favorite thing to do after dinner on a summer evening?

Good Morning

The Friday Five

Are you ready for the Summer?

1. Have you ever been to summer camp?

2. If so, was it fun or did you hate it?

3. If not, did you ever wish you had?

4. What movie says "Summer Time" to you?

5. Did movies like "Friday the 13th" put you off summer camp?

Book 39 - Quin Monzo "Gasoline"

Quin Monzo "Gasoline" (Open Letter)






Heribert is a renowned painter whose work is scheduled to be shown in a double exhibition in less than a month. However, he cannot find the motivation to create anything that pleases him. Instead of working on his paintings as the deadline draws near, he spends his mornings lying in bed for hours idly watching the second hand of his clock, and his afternoons and evenings in sex shops, restaurants, and in the company of lovers who bore him (and the reader), as he obsesses about his never present wife, Helena, who is seemingly having an affair of her own.

Our man is felled by an absurd accident which prevents him from completing his assignment, similar to a lazy child who claims that his dog ate his homework. Humbert, a young and unknown artist who happens to be his wife's lover, submits his paintings in his place, to rave reviews, as Heribert wallows in the muck of existential angst.

Gasoline was a thoroughly maddening read, as I found Heribert to be a useless, pathetic and intensely dislikable tortured artiste. This book was supposedly about the creative process in art, but none of its characters captured my attention or earned an ounce of sympathy from me.

Mind

Book 40 - Sylvia Plath "The Bell Jar"

Sylvia Plath "The Bell Jar" (Faber & Faber)



Esther Greenwood is an intelligent, promising young woman who might seem to have everything going for her. But, overwhelmed by her choices for the future, stifled by the realities of her present, and trapped just on the wrong side of the sexual revolution, she finds herself becoming detached and suicidal.

It's a dark story, examining depression, self-hatred, and the inability to integrate into our flawed culture. Plath was able to write about the epidemic we have today with widespread depression and suicide, well before it became a major problem.


It is maybe a little surprising that i have gone this long without reading the paperback, after a year or so languishing on my to be read pile. I am glad to have done so now. It is well-written and the characterization feels deeply realistic. But I have to admit, I had to keep almost forcing myself to pick it up. It was just entirely too depressing for the current beautiful weather. I feel like I should have saved it for the depths of winter.

Sunny Again!

It is a wonderful day. Already sunny and warm. ESA Retail money in my account today rather than the Monday. A big YAY ! Two short-ish books now finished before i go back to two larger tomes i am slowly progressing through. That is the problem; i look at the 600 pages plus books, read a bit from them, then pick up a shorter book again - so i laugh to myself - must finish the larger books first ..one day.

Friday Music Selection

What am 1? Avid reader and avid music lover.So - here is some music -

Animal Collective -My Girls

( More music here )

Enjoy.