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Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Pist

Just a note to say that bottle of Semillon/ChloeSauvignon must've been off. I feel a tad wobbly.

Choice of restaurants on the Ping river: too loud, too crowded, or too trendy. I went the trendy one because I could read from my selection of second-hand book treats in peace.

The choicest: either Longinus on "The Sublime" [As in the human body, so also in diction swellings are bad things...], or a 1960 paperback of Dylan Thomas's Adventures in The Skin Trade. Close third: three of Strinberg's plays in an early Penguin Classic edition, followed by Jean Rhys's second novel Quartet, followed by a Signet edition of One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich and a great treatise on Babylonian Heavan and Hell poems - quite pertinent!

There were many exquisite books for the taking, but I have only so much time left - that's why all of the above purchases are compact (no swelling!), with nothing over 200 pages.

E@L

11 comments:

Dick Headley said...

That's odd. I just started reading 'Wide Sargasso Sea' again.

Chuck says hi. Wants to know if you've seen anything of Bruce? We both enjoy hearing what he's up to.

expat@large said...

Dick: Bruce passed away last year sometime. (I'll have to check my arhives for exacitude.). I picked the Rhys out of guilt for not having finished WSS. I found it tough going. Funny, because Rebecca was such an easy read.
Say hi to Chuck. His namesake is alive and well in Nan and Chiang Mai.

Momentary Madness said...

;-)

Dick Headley said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dick Headley said...

Never sure what to think about Jean Rhys. Minority taste. Have you read 'The Blue Hour' by Lilian Pizzichini?

Sorry to hear about Bruce. Any idea what happened to his hard drive? Mine is set to self destruct soon after me

expat@large said...

MomMad: :-) regarding which joke? All of them?

Dick: he bequeathed his HDD to me thankfully. I pick an episode here and there on occasion, when the occasion seems apt.

Rhys, mmm yes, she is a very (without wishing to offend) feminine writer, I think. Usually I have no trouble with that, more power, etc... but that book was obviously aimed much more sharply at Venus than at Mars. In essence - nothing much happens, which a male reader often finds frustrating. Having said that, I enjoy a lot of Japanese literature, in which often "nothing" happens for long stretches of delicately described and subtley respiring time. (I insert the wordf nothing in quotation marks becasue for other readers lots of things that I miss (or find peripheral or uninteresting) might be happening.)

expat@large said...

Pizza who?

expat@large said...

Yes I know, nothing ever happens in Beckett either, yet it is not a feminine nothing that is not happening.

Enough triple negatives?!!

Dick Headley said...

I expect the nothingness depends on the sex of the person who isn't reading it.

Lilian Pizzichini's biography of Jean Rhys talks a lot about that feminine stuff. Jean Rhys certainly had a chip on her shoulder about something.

savannah said...

is now a good time to talk about







p.d. james


xoxox

expat@large said...

Dick: she does eh? Good, that means I wasn't making it up after all.

Sav: Talk about the good Dame amongst yourselves, if you must.

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