I think that, more often than not recently, I have been engaging in promiscuous reading (which may be a term coined by Austin Kleon) - starting more than one book at once. Sometimes I finish them all, but sometimes more than one falls away. Sometimes they all fall away. I am very fickle. Also, I no longer feel any kind of compulsion to finish something that I don't like. I don't know where we get this idea that we have to finish reading something we don't like - is it an idea left over from school, where we had to read whatever it was that was assigned to us? Is it fear of missing out, are we afraid that the book we're reading will somehow magically stop being terrible and something cool and fun will happen? I'm not sure. Someone I'm close to recommended Striver's Row, by Kevin Baker, and I have started it but it has not grabbed me yet. What has grabbed me, though, is Eve Babitz. Here she is playing chess with Marcel Duchamp: I'm reading I Used to Be Charming: The Rest of Eve Babitz right now, because it's the only thing that my library had available as an ebook other than her novel Sex and Rage (which I also checked out, but have not started.) I am really enjoying it - I read it on my commute and on my work breaks - it's nice and long, with some shorter essays that were published in magazines. It begins with the making of The Godfather II, which was very charming for me as I have a soft spot for Francis Ford Coppola. My favorite story so far is "Skin Deep": "What would you do with [a leopard skin] anyway?" my nine-year-old sister wondered later that night, when we lay in the same motel bed with the horrible highway outside with horrible trucks and I longed for my bedroom in Hollywood – Hollywood where everyone knew you could have everything. "Do with it," I cried. "Lie on it naked when men were in love with me. What do you think?" Eve Babitz is just a very good, glamorous time, and I need a little glamour injected into my very unglamorous-at-the-moment life. I can't have nails at work (not because of Rules or anything like that, just because my nails have found creative and painful ways to break while I'm at work), and I have to wear jeans, which are not my favorite things in the world. I keep trying to make going to work look good, but it's been difficult, especially because I can't shop as much clothes-wise. I am not complaining, though. I'm just happy to have an income at this point.
The last book that I finished was Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, and that was a good time. I also have started Each Moment Is the Universe, by Dainin Katagiri Roshi. I still have Beauty's Kingdom on the back burner and am about halfway through Story of O, and I'll have to finish Story of O in the next two days if I want to finish it as I am unable to renew ebooks. I'm not sure if I want to finish it, though. I guess I'll find out.
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AuthorArtist, essayist, divinity school dropout. Here for a good time, not for a long time. Archives
February 2024
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