The turn of the calendar found me sitting on the futon in my apartment watching Nathan cross stich and listening to Regis Philbin drivel mindlessly about Times Square.
I'll just allow the depths of how pitiful that is to sink in.
I also found out that about six of my friends from high school ended up stranded in my town, and none of them called me. They knew I was here, and I didn't hear from them. Really know who your friends are, don't you?
To pass the days, I've gotten myself in the middle of about four books. Why read one when you can read several?
I've almost finished Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. It's out of print, but I'll give a quick endorsement anyway. Douglas Adams, the man who brought the world The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, also wrote The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul and it's prequel, the book I'm reading. For anyone who has read Tea Time, Dirk Gently is on the same lines, but in some ways not nearly as exciting.
Where Tea Time can often take the reader entirely by surprise, Dirk Gently is, for me, much more predictable and not quite as nicely compact. Comparing the two, the interconnectedness of all things is much more interconnected in the second. Although by no means do I believe the first deserves to be out of print. Dirk Gently provides the introduction to Svlad "Dirk" Cjelli that the second one does not allow: his methods seem in Tea Time to need a little more explanation, which Dirk Gently provides.
In addition to that I'm trying to read The Mill on the Floss all the way through. I began on the book in fifth grade when we were told to bring a book to class to read. Just when Mrs. Glegg agreed not to take back the five hundred pounds she loaned Mr. Tulliver, we were told it would be necessary to use the book we were reading in class to give a "Book Talk" to our classmates complete with a "visual aid" (generally a Lego model or some sort of food).
Mine was the generation for which the Goosebumps "books" were "written". Most of the kids in my class read them with passion. My friends, however, were reading Patricia C. Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles, which I had introduced them to. They're great children's books, but lacking in the social commentaries and moral fibre found in Eliot.
I realised immediately there was no way I could make a book talk about Floss to my ten year old classmates. I picked up the next thing on my bookshelf, The Adventures of Tom Saywer, and read it in a week. At least there was something there fifth graders could relate to, right? After I gave the talk my teacher told me, with some amount of shock, that she first read it in high school. Apparently it was well out of my leauge. Obviously she hadn't noticed what I had first chosen.
Subsequent book talks included "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH", and "My Side of the Mountain". I studiously avoided Floss for years. In high school, of my own accord, I read Middlemarch. I dare say it would make a very good independant film. It has compelling characters and plot lines, and I say independant film because if the major studios tried it it would have all sorts of horrible things imposed upon it so that it might "sell".
Middlemarch reminded me of Floss, long forgotten on my bookshelf (which disappointed my father greatly; he loved it when I read his college texts), and so now, almost eleven years later, I am reading my way through. I have caught up with my ten year old self at this point, and it is time to see what will happen next.
In my opinion Eliot is much better reading than Jane Austen. I have read Emma and Pride and Prejudice, and I just cannot think them much more than silly twelve year old girls. If that is any window to what society was really like, well, I suppose it has not changed, but I don't want to read about it.
This has been a rather bookish entry. I am uncertain whether to apologise or not. In real life, people hate listening to this sort of thing, but I suppose I haven't forced anyone to read. And perhaps as a result someone might read something. That's an encouraging thought.