Saturday Morning

I know I haven't had as many updates as I should. Part of the reason for this is because I have failed to keep some of my "resolutions". Namely I had my dance class end and did not re-enroll. I haven't cooked something new for myself in a few weeks. I haven't tried excessively hard to meet new people.

However, I have been busy. Some of the structure of my original ideas has been laid to waste to make way for unplanned for new experiences and people. Instead of cooking something new for myself last week a very nice old/new friend came over and cooked something marvelous. Instead of dancing in class I go out with a friend and support her while she tries to brave new social contacts for the first time.

I've finished two books since my last update. Which seems sad to me because there was a time when I could read three a week. Still since I am no longer a college student with the hours that go with it and since there is no longer someone like Brian in my life to constantly chatter about books and ideas with me the slower pace is, for now acceptable. Maybe.

The Ground Beneath Her Feet- Salman Rushdie

Initially I was a little hesitant about reading this book. It was the first book in a while I had picked out for myself and I picked it based on a scholarly paper that referenced it on the topic of the Sleeping Beauty story. I had read part of Rushdie's Satanic Verses several years prior and found it uninteresting. The images and characters from India were difficult for me to relate to, the mythology that interplayed with so much of the story had been over my head, and the story itself was a little weirder than what I was looking for at the time.

The Ground however was the other side of the coin. In this story Rushdie brought his India characters out of that world, without leaving any of it behind, and into the western world, more specifically into America. In doing so he gave voice to interesting ideas on major topics of love, life, death, fear, fame, and rock and roll from a more universal approach. It's been a long time since I felt a deep desire to underline in books, or even to bookmark important pages but this book re-awoke some of those habits.

There were moments in the story when I felt bored, when I wished to just "get on with it", or I felt like the details were unimportant. Maybe this was a short coming with myself as the reader, failing to appreciate the moments in each characters life that built to the climax. Still I didn't always feel it "building" anything.

Overall, it was particular scenes and lines that truly drew me into the book. Little golden treasures of words stored in between an average book. I will probably never read it again, but I will probably find myself using lines or moments from this book to reflect on life for the rest of mine.

How I Became Stupid- Martin Page

It was a quick read, done in under two days. Maybe its wrong, but I've always like a book that feels like it's reading itself to me. I found it on a whim while straightening the store at the end of the night. Its a story about an over educated intellectual who has experienced the ecclesiastic problem of sorrow that comes with knowledge. He tries three was of letting go of all of his mind crushing ideas in three ways. First he tries to drink it away, then he tries to kill himself, and finally he tries to become stupid via pills called Happyzac.

Here again, I liked particular moments but overall I felt like the story was a moralizing, lecturing, cliche. Which it told me initially it would be but I still felt slightly cheated when it was. The commentary on society was nothing I hadn't heard before; the jokes, while funny failed to be original; and the characters were rather unimpressive. It may be the "International Cult Classic" as the cover claims because it relies on the same ideas that have been circulating among those "cults" for decades now.

It was an average story told in an average way.