Books and Worries
Searching for particular books in our house is a massive undertaking, one that could take days on end. Inevitably it ends with nothing but frustration, sweat, and dust.
I miss my copy of Betty Smith's A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. I'm sure it's lurking around the house somewhere amidst the massive piles and shelves of books that seem to populate every room, but I have no idea where to start looking. We had two copies, one of them seeming to just pop up out of nowhere a few years back. When I was younger, I read it with the same obsessive interest that some people had for Plath's The Bell Jar or Salinger's Catcher In the Rye. It's the literary equivalent of comfort food for me.
I've also been looking for Samuel Shellabarger's Prince of Foxes. Maybe it's partly due to my new addiction to the series The Borgias--and in particular with Cesare and Lucrezia--but I'd always adored the lushness and romance of the text, and I absolutely fell in love with the way Shellabarger wrote the character of Mario Belli. He was by turns sinister and tender, tragic but not pitiful, and always so, so clever. I think I have a particular weakness for historical fiction. I like my facts to have a little imagination woven in.
At the moment, I'm reading Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones. It's all right, but I'm not fascinated by it. My father once said it was too morbid for me to read, and I actually disagree. I don't find it unduly disturbing, although I could attribute that largely in part of my other far more morbid reading and watching material. I'm also going through Charles Burns's Black Hole. It's got a very nightmare-ish quality to it which, in my current mood, isn't very conducive to relaxing, so I've put it aside for the moment. The art style is interesting, though.
Someday, when I have my own library, I'll have them all sorted according to author names, I think. It appeals to the OCD side of me that has me storing all my comic books alphabetically.
Reading my old books is a comforting escape. Lately life seems to be complicated and disorienting; it's so much easier to climb into a plot and get lost into it, although sometimes I know that my concentration on the novel is shattered when random thoughts and worries steal into my head. I'm calmer now than I have been the last couple of days, though last night... more new issues cropped up. Not bad things, but rather confusing ones. Things that I thought were impossible have become possible... yet at the same time, they are still impossible. At least, they seem so to me. Reading that sentence, it sounds ridiculous and circular, but nonetheless it's true.
It raises up a whole new host of questions, which I'm not sure I can deal with at this point in time. Particularly not with other things weighing on my mind. Right now all I want to do is escape by watching episode after episode of The Borgias, and work on my writing for a bit.
I miss my copy of Betty Smith's A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. I'm sure it's lurking around the house somewhere amidst the massive piles and shelves of books that seem to populate every room, but I have no idea where to start looking. We had two copies, one of them seeming to just pop up out of nowhere a few years back. When I was younger, I read it with the same obsessive interest that some people had for Plath's The Bell Jar or Salinger's Catcher In the Rye. It's the literary equivalent of comfort food for me.
I've also been looking for Samuel Shellabarger's Prince of Foxes. Maybe it's partly due to my new addiction to the series The Borgias--and in particular with Cesare and Lucrezia--but I'd always adored the lushness and romance of the text, and I absolutely fell in love with the way Shellabarger wrote the character of Mario Belli. He was by turns sinister and tender, tragic but not pitiful, and always so, so clever. I think I have a particular weakness for historical fiction. I like my facts to have a little imagination woven in.
At the moment, I'm reading Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones. It's all right, but I'm not fascinated by it. My father once said it was too morbid for me to read, and I actually disagree. I don't find it unduly disturbing, although I could attribute that largely in part of my other far more morbid reading and watching material. I'm also going through Charles Burns's Black Hole. It's got a very nightmare-ish quality to it which, in my current mood, isn't very conducive to relaxing, so I've put it aside for the moment. The art style is interesting, though.
Someday, when I have my own library, I'll have them all sorted according to author names, I think. It appeals to the OCD side of me that has me storing all my comic books alphabetically.
Reading my old books is a comforting escape. Lately life seems to be complicated and disorienting; it's so much easier to climb into a plot and get lost into it, although sometimes I know that my concentration on the novel is shattered when random thoughts and worries steal into my head. I'm calmer now than I have been the last couple of days, though last night... more new issues cropped up. Not bad things, but rather confusing ones. Things that I thought were impossible have become possible... yet at the same time, they are still impossible. At least, they seem so to me. Reading that sentence, it sounds ridiculous and circular, but nonetheless it's true.
It raises up a whole new host of questions, which I'm not sure I can deal with at this point in time. Particularly not with other things weighing on my mind. Right now all I want to do is escape by watching episode after episode of The Borgias, and work on my writing for a bit.