SHIT, I forgot Reading Wednesday again! How could that happen?.....well, I think I actually got all caught up in reading, and thus had less time to screw around on the net. Also, we have a really shitty cable connection -- yes, yes, we are the last people left with a cable connection, just as we were the last people left with DSL, back in the early 00's. It's fun to be retro! -- or, as it used to be called, 'too broke to squander money on toys.' Most of our money gets squandered on stuff like rent and pancreas-friendly groceries and insurance-free prescriptions. So I've been offline more, because as far as I can tell the cable wires are all bundled together in a huge thick wad on the outside of the building, and the connection constantly dies when it rains. In Seattle.
ANYWAY, reading yes!
What did you just finish reading?
I've been trying to screw my courage to the sticking-place and not wash out of the Magic Mountain read, so I've been taking....day trips in the funicular, I guess. Heh. I read In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain, the joint biography of Klaus and Erika Mann (except it basically ends after his really tragic suicide), which I expected to be light and gossipy but was quite profoundly moving. Then I got all wrapped up in Death in Venice, which blew my mind for a bit. I really should write a review, or at least attempt it, but it's like my brain's still immersed in it, like when you just wake up from a compelling dream. One outcome of that is I now want Klaus's novel Mephisto and I'm planning to read Doktor Faustus after MM.
What are you reading now?
Just started Angels and Insects by A.S. Byatt -- I've been putting off reading it for years, partly because it sounds a little whacky, and also because I think after this I've gone through all of her fiction except for The Children's Book, and once I'm done with that I think there's nothing left but her essays and some short stories. I hate running out of favourite authors. Some friends of mine take that as an opportunity to reread the author's books all over again, often in chronological order, but I'm not that good-natured.
What do you expect to read next?
MM continues to loooom. I might try to squeeze in a few more books before August 12th. I'm not sure if I'll be able to read other books alongside it -- I used to be able to read two or even three books at a time when I was younger, but that ability vanished during one of my long stretches of depression and it comes back only fitfully now. We'll see.
descensus Averno facilis est