Saturday, December 08, 2012

Day in the life

It was an extremely demanding week, full of all the sorts of thing I usually do at work only more so. Everything went fairly smoothly, though, and I've now very beneficially had twenty-four hours off from work: went to see Restoration Comedy at the Flea (it is delightful!) and had dinner afterwards with G. at Petrarca, then had a beautiful morning of exercise at Chelsea Piers. One more day of teaching, and then I've got meetings on Tuesday but few other campus commitments for the rest of the semester, barring end-of-term grading responsibilities and a couple dissertation chapter conferences.

Light reading around the edges: I was rereading the first of Edward St. Aubyn's Patrick Melrose novels for class, and one of the characters is reading Valley of the Dolls, which for some reason I had never read. Amazingly it was available at the Kindle store, so I downloaded it and began reading it immediately. Its portraits of women are at times so grotesque it feels actively malevolent, and I thought several times with relief that times have changed considerably since those days, but it is still a very good read.

1 comment:

  1. And yet reading Valley of the Dolls as a thoughtful adult can't possibly compare to reading it as a smut-seeking youth, back in the days when smut had to be sought...

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