Consider my reading

Feeling at loose ends tonight.

I (finally!) finished The Robber Bride (and I promise that's the last time I'll write that title again – it was a good book, for sure, but I'm unsure how long it'll stay with me), and not really in the mood to start any new fiction for a day or two. Unfortunately I'm in a bit of non-fiction reading slump. (For those that don't know my reading habits, I try to have both a fiction and non-fiction book on the go at the same time. I'm a bit of a multi-task reader, although I think it has more to do with my increasingly limited attention span. When I bore of one, I can move to the other...) Well, less a slump than a quandary. For a while – some might say too long of a period – I was reading books on the miserable, horrible, disgusting, pitiful, embarrassing, stupid, silly, spiteful (there's too many possible adjectives to use) Bush Administration. Some might call it an obsession. I read two of the biggies back to back: Jane Mayer's superb The Dark Side and Ron Suskind's The Way of the World. And on my bedside table are two more: Angler (about the evil Dick Cheney) and Philip Shenon's book about the 9/11 Commission.

I think, however, I'm (finally!) fatigued with U.S politics. I've been so caught up in this past election – and I've been following Obama (with joy and amazement) since 2004 after he gave that scintillating speech at the Democratic National Convention – that, now that it's over, a letdown seems inevitable. Maybe even necessary. The lead-up to this year's election involved my continued frustrations at the last eight years of the Bush rule, and the petty, corrupt politics it represented. With a new administration coming in, maybe it's time to put aside the Bush books and look toward the future – something more hopeful, optimistic. More to the point, do I really need to be continually reminded of how sickening the last 8 years have been? In the end, I'm spent.

Listening to: the soundtrack from Once, Charlie Haden's Rambling Boy.
Watching: the Toronto Raptors (another loss)
Reading: David Foster Wallace's Consider the Lobster, the Nov. 17 issue of the New Yorker.
(I'm thinking of making this a new feature of the blog – a quick survey of my music, reading and tv/movies habits.)