Ah, so this is what we've been missing all summer: hot, sticky, uncomfortable evenings because of the humidity. Let's just say, that crazy rain aside, I can live without this summer weather. Give me cool, fresh summer nights anytime. Humidity blows.
Since I couldn't sleep this morning, I thought I'd cobble together a quick post. I've been going through a variety of moods of late. Some of it is because of job-related stress and continued frustrations in my workplace. I've also been dwelling (too much, I think, and probably irrationally) on aging, feeling life is starting to proverbially "pass me by." It's always dangerous and foolish to compare one's life to others, but sometimes I can't help observe the activities of the friends and acquaintances around me and wonder if they're doing it "right." They're buying houses, getting married, having children. There's a sense of progress there, while it seems my life has been somewhat stagnant.
Anyway I don't mean this to be a lament. But I figure it was on my mind this morning (and of late), so I thought I would share it. (For those of you that might be worried, don't! As per usual, this will pass.)
In other news... I've decided, after reading 123 pages of TC Boyle's The Women, that I'm going to return it to the library without reading the last 200 pages. It's not that I wasn't enjoying the book per se - Boyle is a great craftsman, and the narrative is engaging - but I realized when I was about 100 pages in that I didn't really care all that much about these characters. Nor did the book seem to have any relevancy and insight to the particular moods and thoughts I'm currently experiencing. It made me realize how important that type of relevancy and immediacy is to me when I read. I don't read to escape; I read to understand, to involve, to make some sense out of my own life. That doesn't mean I require a narrative that's comparable to my life and circumstances, but I need something I can relate to. Perhaps offering some wisdom into solitude, or relationships, friendships, family. The Boyle just didn't have that going for me (as entertaining as the story was), so I'm giving up on it. Life is too short to spend with a book that just isn't working for me.
Instead I picked up another Saul Bellow: Humboldt's Gift. I was hooked from the first few paragraphs! It's not nearly as complex as Herzog, but it contains all the elements I love about Bellow, namely the richness and wonder of both his language and the characters. It's going to be an engaging read. And the thing that resonates (which is why it has relevancy for me) is the theme of literature (and its so-called purity) vs. crass commercialism. More on this in another post, after I finish the book.
Is it a fact of life that CBC's Metro Morning has to play the same crappy music almost daily?
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