Day 37: The fine art of neither exceeding nor falling short
So much has happened in the last week that I want to talk about, and meanwhile I'm so insanely busy all the time (even at work! :-0) that I can't find the time to write it. It would be therapeutic to talk about, some of it... and other things would just be more in the vein of keeping the record, the everydayness of a journal, but every day I get more and more behind. So I think I'm going to just pick up where I left off in my last entry, and write about one day each day, although almost a week in arears, and just hope that nothing of interest or import happens in the next few days and eventually I'll get caught up.
So. Where was I? Books. Thanks, everyone, for your suggesions. They've all been noted for investigation. Of course, in typical me fashion, I ignored all of you and just went to Borders and bought three paperbacks that were on a 3 for 2 table, and have already devoured the first one, mainly by staying up way later than i should reading. The book is No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy, and I think it's really good, and it very much caught and held my attention, although I can't say that 'enjoyment' is really the right word for it...the book is very stark and violent but almost like Hemingway, there is a lot beneath the spare surface of it. I don't know. I'm not like Aaron, I'm no reviewer. I used to have that ambition, thinking that the ideal job would be to be a book critic. But as I was sitting in Borders the other day reading the first pages of this book, I realized that if I had to be reading it from the perspective of forming opinions about it from the get-go, I wouldn't be enjoying it nearly as much, and I had a moment of gratitude that there are others to review books so that I can just read them. Almost like I'm grateful for garbage collectors, though obviously there's the issue of degree and scale in that analogy. It's a good thing to be reminded of now and then, as I continue to struggle with the question of what I might be happy doing with myself for a career for the next 50 or so years... to be reminded that some things you love precisely because you don't HAVE to do them, and to try to make them your career would be to deprive yourself, ultimately, of one of your life's joys.
So. Where was I? Books. Thanks, everyone, for your suggesions. They've all been noted for investigation. Of course, in typical me fashion, I ignored all of you and just went to Borders and bought three paperbacks that were on a 3 for 2 table, and have already devoured the first one, mainly by staying up way later than i should reading. The book is No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy, and I think it's really good, and it very much caught and held my attention, although I can't say that 'enjoyment' is really the right word for it...the book is very stark and violent but almost like Hemingway, there is a lot beneath the spare surface of it. I don't know. I'm not like Aaron, I'm no reviewer. I used to have that ambition, thinking that the ideal job would be to be a book critic. But as I was sitting in Borders the other day reading the first pages of this book, I realized that if I had to be reading it from the perspective of forming opinions about it from the get-go, I wouldn't be enjoying it nearly as much, and I had a moment of gratitude that there are others to review books so that I can just read them. Almost like I'm grateful for garbage collectors, though obviously there's the issue of degree and scale in that analogy. It's a good thing to be reminded of now and then, as I continue to struggle with the question of what I might be happy doing with myself for a career for the next 50 or so years... to be reminded that some things you love precisely because you don't HAVE to do them, and to try to make them your career would be to deprive yourself, ultimately, of one of your life's joys.