What I'm Reading
Ihad to give up on the Updike bio. It's huge, dense, and overdue at the library. When I applied for a new library card, I discovered I never returned a book on Vincent Van Gogh I took out in 2013! The fine is commensurately large. I'll check out the bio at another time, maybe the Christmas holidays.
I'm reading Stephen Fry's Moab Is My Washpot, about the years before he entered Cambridge and it is one of the best memoirs I have ever read. Stephen was an unalloyed little shit, a kleptomaniac and deliberately provocative. (Having been a petty criminal in my late teens in London, there are tons of things I identified with, except for being gay). My personal opinion is that he downplays the effects of caning and rape. Because his parents were still alive, he equivocates about his father while letting the reader know what a cold, uncaring tyrant he was. I'm looking forward to the book after this one, when presumably Mr. Fry had passed on. It's funny and touching (how much of a cliche' is that?). Plus I love the many, many three and four syllable words. I noticed quite a few Amazon reviews mentioned this as a problem. I didn't have to reach for a dictionary because Fry provides definition and/or context. He frequently goes into long digressions, which are entertaining. Fry also does quite a bit of self-serving self-laceration, which manages to be strangely boastful.
How To Be Ultra Spiritual: 12 1/2 Steps To Spiritual Superiority by J.P. Sears is a hoot. I follow him on YouTube. He's a serious life coach who's makes videos called "Ultra Spiritual Life". As someone who feels so much of that side of life is unalloyed hooey, this speaks to me. His serious videos are excellent, too, but I'm too impatient to watch them all the way through. My favorite video is "If Meat Eaters Acted Like Vegans", where carnivores are insufferable to people eating broccoli, etc.
Sidney Furie by Dan Kremer, a friend of mine, is a study of the filmmaker. It's like trying to read Indian Pudding.
That's about it. There are a smattering of other books on my desk, but they're there for research or because I "should" read them.
I'm reading Stephen Fry's Moab Is My Washpot, about the years before he entered Cambridge and it is one of the best memoirs I have ever read. Stephen was an unalloyed little shit, a kleptomaniac and deliberately provocative. (Having been a petty criminal in my late teens in London, there are tons of things I identified with, except for being gay). My personal opinion is that he downplays the effects of caning and rape. Because his parents were still alive, he equivocates about his father while letting the reader know what a cold, uncaring tyrant he was. I'm looking forward to the book after this one, when presumably Mr. Fry had passed on. It's funny and touching (how much of a cliche' is that?). Plus I love the many, many three and four syllable words. I noticed quite a few Amazon reviews mentioned this as a problem. I didn't have to reach for a dictionary because Fry provides definition and/or context. He frequently goes into long digressions, which are entertaining. Fry also does quite a bit of self-serving self-laceration, which manages to be strangely boastful.
How To Be Ultra Spiritual: 12 1/2 Steps To Spiritual Superiority by J.P. Sears is a hoot. I follow him on YouTube. He's a serious life coach who's makes videos called "Ultra Spiritual Life". As someone who feels so much of that side of life is unalloyed hooey, this speaks to me. His serious videos are excellent, too, but I'm too impatient to watch them all the way through. My favorite video is "If Meat Eaters Acted Like Vegans", where carnivores are insufferable to people eating broccoli, etc.
Sidney Furie by Dan Kremer, a friend of mine, is a study of the filmmaker. It's like trying to read Indian Pudding.
That's about it. There are a smattering of other books on my desk, but they're there for research or because I "should" read them.