And I!!!
I picked an awful weekend to come home to pick up my W-2s and some t-shirts for the gym. My sister is out on a date with a guy who doesn’t like books (he bought her a Kindle, dear god). My dad is, genuinely and with no irony, mourning Whitney Houston (The Body Guard is his favorite movie, he’s really an incredibly odd man). And my cat is even too tired to want to hang out. I’m on my third almost-bay breeze (no pineapple juice and I have rum instead of vodka), although I must be making them pretty weak because I don’t feel a thing. I’m reading Jennifer Egan’s novel Look at Me right now. It’s really phenomenal so far, the narration is so well done and all of the characters are really intriguing.
As you may have guessed starting a new book means I finished What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank which was really amazing, it worked so well on the level of individual short stories and as a whole work. Honestly, I don’t usually find myself drawn to stories that don’t settle or solve or triumph over the darker sides of human nature, they usually feel pessimistic or bleak in a forced way, but Englander’s stories manage to show this less-flattering light of humanity in such an honest and judgement-less way it actually felt refreshing. And after listening to that NPR interview I’m really dying to read the Haggadah translation he worked on with Foer. Oh and next week he’s doing a reading/lecture at NYU which I absolutely wont miss. Living in the city has just given me infinite literary opportunities, I can’t even begin to get over that.
