Monthly Roundup - June 2009

Reading Snapshot:

Light in August by William Faulkner
Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? by Raymond Carver
Love, Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
The Man of My Dreams Ed. by Chris Navratil

Disconnected Musings:

Because of Light in August, I am seriously considering a section entitled "Life's Too Short", wherein I highlight books I have abandoned over the month and why they made me want to open a vein. Faulkner drags, epically. The Line of Beauty is shaping up to be better, more beautiful, and sexier than The Swimming-Pool Library. Love, Stargirl is just not up to the original. Carver is uniformly wonderful. The Man of My Dreams is pretty much high-grade erotica which I got for a dollar at half-price. The central premise of the Marquez book pisses me off.

I haven't been following my canon reading - partially because of my time constraints, but also because reading the Faulker was like chewing peach pits. Attempted A Mercy, by Toni Morrison, and it was the only book I can remember of hers that I just simply could not stand. I read Beloved in a single night, I carried The Bluest Eye around with me from the moment I pulled it off the library shelf - I read while walking to class, eating, lying in bed, it is one of less than a dozen books I have reread in my life. I am a huge Morrison fan. But this book was a terrible trial.

I am taking up the canon reading again, using The Line of Beauty as a starting point. I might as well read something I can stand. Here is a quote from The Line of Beauty, in which the protagonist is entering a party already in progress:

"Drinks were being served on the long terrace, and when he came out through the French windows there were two or three small groups already laughing and glowing. You could tell everyone had been on holiday, and like the roses and begonias they seemed to take and hold the richly filtered evening light."

It's pretty dope.