Magic!

20% silly, 80% genius.  Thanks, Mom and Dad.

S’mores

tonight

Infinite Jest

What kind of person rewards herself for reading 52 books in 52 weeks (almost 16,000 pages “officially,” a few hundred more if we count the books I started and didn’t finish) by buying and starting to read a 1079-page book?

52 Books in 52 Weeks: Final List

Hooray!  The 15 I loved most are marked with asterisks (which is not to say I didn’t love many of the others, but these are the 15 I keep bringing up and telling people they must read).

1. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
2. Against Happiness by Eric G. Wilson
3. How We Got Insipid by Jonathan Lethem
4. Diary of a Bad Year by J. M. Coetzee
5. I Was Told There’d Be Cake by Sloane Crosley*
6. The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan*
7. After the Quake by Haruki Murakami*
8. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
9. Independent People by Halldor Laxness
10. Pretty Little Mistakes: A Do-Over Novel by Heather McElhatton
11. Modern Man in Search of a Soul by C. G. Jung
12. Blankets by Craig Thompson*
13. Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences by Lawrence Weschler*
14. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
15. A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oe
16. When We Were Romans by Matthew Kneale
17. All the Sad Young Literary Men by Keith Gessen*
18. What is the What by Dave Eggers
19. Love is a Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield
20. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
21. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
22. Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri*
23. Can Love Last? by Stephen A. Mitchell
24. Dawn by Octavia E. Butler
25. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
26. Abnormal Psychology by David H. Barlow and V. Mark Durand
27. Adulthood Rites by Octavia E. Butler
28. Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far by Stefan Sagmeister*
29. An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks
30. The Ballad of the Sad Cafe by Carson McCullers
31. Heat by Bill Buford
32. A Year with Swollen Appendices by Brian Eno*
33. Lilith’s Brood by Octavia E. Butler
34. Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me by Javier Marías*
35. Break It Down by Lydia Davis
36. The Loser by Thomas Bernhard
37. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
38. Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag
39. Reborn: Journals & Notebooks, 1947-1963 by Susan Sontag, David Rieff ed.*
40. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
41. Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo
42. Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry, by Leanne Shapton*
43. Ambient Findability by Peter Morville
44. The Song Is You by Arthur Phillips
45. In America by Susan Sontag
46. Epileptic by David B.
47. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace*
48. Lowboy by John Wray*
49. The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
50. Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees by Lawrence Weschler*
51. The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
52. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Project-less

I have two short-term post-52-Books-Project goals:

1. Learn a lot of words.  GRE words.
2. Read Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, as part of this big group.  Which, incidentally, seems like something DFW probably wouldn’t be that into.  But whatever.

I’m not done with The Brothers Karamazov yet, but I’m making good progress, and I’m on vacation this week, in various middle-of-nowhere locales so I’m pretty sure finishing won’t be a problem.

Charles, Ray, and Louis C. in Every Corner

…If only I were talking about my home and not my mail…

I hope I bought enough Eames stamps last year to tide me over until the USPS comes out with a reasonably nice design again (and yes, I know the two 1-cent stamps on every envelope are sort of ridiculous, but at least they’re Tiffany… I do it in the name of modern design!).

Vacation starts today!  I planned to sleep in, but birds woke me up at 4:30 (after neighbors, drunk and on a patio, kept me up until 2 or so).  I think they (the birds) are conspiring against me.  You would not believe how much damage (temporary) they did to my car while I was at work yesterday.  Hose it down or hope for rain….?

Best Weekend of June, Maybe Summer

1.) Westword Music Festival (or whatever it’s called)
2.) Art Students League of Denver art sale (one block away!!!).  I thought I’d be able to afford something this year, but now I’m not sure…
3.) Plethora of garage sales (I kind of want a bike!  I just don’t want to lug it up and down three flights of stairs!)
4.) Denver Public Library Book Sale (which, perhaps most importantly, includes $1 cds)
5.) Gluten Free fair (I missed it)
6.) Hot dog eating contest (also missed it)

Weather is still nice, too — barely hitting 80, with thunderstorms periodically.  I love it.

One book is leading me to the next — ordered in Seeing is Forgetting the Thing One Sees, Lawrence Weschler’s biography of / interviews with Robert Irwin — very, very good.  Weschler says that in writing it, he was influenced by Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer, which was book #51.  Liked that one quite a lot, too, and see the relationship between the two books.  Not sure what will be #52…  Might try The Brothers Karamazov again, since I have a full sixteen days…

Danger, danger

There is a restaurant in Boulder, Spud Brothers, that serves only French fries.  I went there today, and I definitely approved of my classic fries with parsley and garlic aioli.  It’s probably a very good thing I live so far away.

I wish I hadn’t only bought healthy food at the store this week.  What was I thinking?

When I’m Blocked I Make Lists

• Decided never to wax my eyebrows again.  From here on out: only threading.
• Listening to Bill Callahan and St. Vincent.  Night and day.  Both fantastic.
• My week in concerts: Neko Case Saturday, where I received tickets to St. Vincent on Tuesday and A Camp on Saturday.  St. Vincent conflicted with the lovely Leonard Cohen, so I tried to give those tickets away.  Couldn’t.  Leonard rained out, rescheduled for Thursday.  Went to St. Vincent Tuesday. Leonard Cohen Thursday.  A Camp (with opener Elin Palmer) Saturday.
• I think everyone who goes to see Leonard Cohen has a respect for sadder, darker feelings.  One should not attend if one does not wish to revisit some heartbreak, right?
• Ex-boyfriend avoidance is in full swing.
• Leonard Cohen is 75 years old and skips off the stage.
• The woman in front of us (us = me and my Craigslist concert buddy) asked us how long we’d been fans.  “Since college,” we answered.  “Me, too.  He wasn’t famous yet when I went to college in Montreal, and we’d just walk down the street and see him play.  My 50th college reunion is this summer.”  Her first Red Rocks concert was in 1964.  The Beatles.  She wins.
• She is also my neighbor, and lives in my favorite apartment building, and asked who cuts my hair and is going to pay Liz a visit.
• It’s been almost a year since I donated my hair.  I don’t miss it.

This is How I Felt for 80% of April

Better now.  Still not writing much.  Obviously.