Fall Schedule Watch
email exchange with Nate, yesterday to this morning
I think I've at least broken a months-long streak of ineffective pleasure reading (which trailed off into a lingering, ultimately futile attempt to stay interested through the last quarter of Mark Kurlansky's Salt) by impulse-buying a rather large Joan Didion compendium over the weekend. Last night's chapter was what sounded like a very trenchant critique of Doris Lessing, although I admit it would be easier for me to evaluate that description if I'd ever read anything by Doris Lessing. But, the important thing is, reading deliberate and well-constructed prose spiked with little metallic slivers of alienation makes the summer swim along a bit better.
And I'll have time in Portland to find independent coffee shops and sit down and read Joan Didion for a while. I don't know if this counts as "hip," but it's as hip as I'm going to get.
Do the kids still say that? "Hip"?
I suspected for a while that this year's pleasure-reading drought had something to do with its new worktime-reading glut, but my simpler theory now is just that without a family vacation I didn't get the usual influx of smarty-pants beach reading.
David Robertson, I add for no real reason, is conducting two concerts with the New York Philharmonic in October, including one that I still immediately think of as an "all-Boosey" lineup.
Pete: wow I just saw you post that new post on the blog
like, I was reading the APizza post, and when I came back from the comments, a new post was up
me: awesome
it's like, live blogging
Pete: totally
twitter
me: hang on
Nate: As a complete aside right now, I don't know why I do this to myself but going over David Robertson's concert season programming always makes me feel like I should be living in St. Louis instead of wherever else I am.Seriously, the longer the middle of this summer goes on the more it feels like I'm looking forward to stuff in the fall: the concerts and cultural oases, the legitimate Pittsburgh sports action (no knock on Jeff Karstens). There are music festivals around here, but I seem to have let them slip by again, just like last summer and the summer before that. Going to Portland for a week helps that, not that I'm broken up about going to Portland for a week.
Jack: Well, you can always browse this one instead.
Nate: I don't know, I've never really cared for their interpretation of "@ Patriots".
I think I've at least broken a months-long streak of ineffective pleasure reading (which trailed off into a lingering, ultimately futile attempt to stay interested through the last quarter of Mark Kurlansky's Salt) by impulse-buying a rather large Joan Didion compendium over the weekend. Last night's chapter was what sounded like a very trenchant critique of Doris Lessing, although I admit it would be easier for me to evaluate that description if I'd ever read anything by Doris Lessing. But, the important thing is, reading deliberate and well-constructed prose spiked with little metallic slivers of alienation makes the summer swim along a bit better.
And I'll have time in Portland to find independent coffee shops and sit down and read Joan Didion for a while. I don't know if this counts as "hip," but it's as hip as I'm going to get.
Do the kids still say that? "Hip"?
I suspected for a while that this year's pleasure-reading drought had something to do with its new worktime-reading glut, but my simpler theory now is just that without a family vacation I didn't get the usual influx of smarty-pants beach reading.
David Robertson, I add for no real reason, is conducting two concerts with the New York Philharmonic in October, including one that I still immediately think of as an "all-Boosey" lineup.
* * * * *
Pete: wow I just saw you post that new post on the blog
like, I was reading the APizza post, and when I came back from the comments, a new post was up
me: awesome
it's like, live blogging
Pete: totally
me: hang on
5 Comments:
I agree that Robertson is conducting some interesting concerts there. Worth it to live in St. Louis? Probably not.
Robertson is coming to Ann Arbor with the group. Looking forward to that!
Also, I've been doing pleasure reading this vacation period as a change from the dissertation reading. So far, I can highly recommend Middlesex and Never Let Me Go.
Oh- and the trendy term now is pelvic. Your pelvicity will thank me for that tidbit.
It took me all morning to make the connection between "hip" and "pelvic." (You think I'd know by now, Dan, that if you say something inexplicable it's just an obscure pun.) In any case, no one is calling it that.
Thanks for the book recommendations. For some reason it almost never occurs to me to read contemporary novels.
Why are you knocking St. Louis, Pete? Don't hate on it till you've tried it. Personally, I get the sense I'd be much happier there than in Miami.
I think I mostly wanted to leave a comment since I was there at the time, and choked initially, since I had already wasted my Rouse bashing on our google chat.
Yeah, multimodal Internet communication is hard. Or maybe we're just too old for it.
We seem to be on at the same time yet again. I'd better go actually eat lunch now, though.
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