Catch-up/closing tabs

Oh dear, it is now officially the time in the semester when I admit that I am never going to get on top of all this work and that I'd better just stay calm and ride it out!

So busy this week that (most unusually!) I have not even had a chance to write my race report from the Princeton 70.3 on Sunday. (Short description: fun but hot; bicycle woes, ultimately transcended; sore feet!)

About to head out of town again to see friends and family but more particularly to go to the memorial concert for my mother's dear friend and longtime colleague Don Kawash.

Next two weekends will be mercifully at home, then on Oct. 15 I head to Dublin for the Swift symposium (paper not yet written - that, the overdue tenure letter and a letter of recommendation due Oct. 1 are the three work bits most immediately and guiltily on my mind!).

I'm teaching a graduate seminar this semester that basically features a novel a week, so less light reading than usual (on the bright side, work I can do on trains). Up Monday: Godwin's Caleb Williams, a favorite of mine. Train reading?

Symptom of being overly busy: huge number of unclosed tabs!

Here goes:

Manhattan swimmer replicates fictional Cheever feat! (Sort of.)

Heath Lowrance's ten favorite Westerns.

Lavie Tidhar's selfie horror story.

What makes for a brilliant book cover?

A conference I really would be keen to go to!

Helen DeWitt's library on display at the Artists Space on Greene St. through early November.

"Go to Work on an Egg."

Coach David's wife Megan takes the 50K trail championship!

Anna Deveare Smith on artists' discipline.

Eighteenth-century maven Devoney Looser (a.k.a. "Stone Cold Jane Austen) on the roller derby revival.

Good tip from Nico about an upcoming Britten performance: I have a ticket for Oct. 30.

Ebola watch: we ain't seen nothin' yet.... (More Ebola - that story's from a couple weeks ago and already feels ominously out of date.)

Meager light reading around the edges of an extremely busy September: Willy Voet, Breaking the Chain: Drugs and Cycling - The True Story (Voet is a remarkably unsympathetic character, but it is a fascinating account regardless); Darryl Gregory, We Are All Completely Fine (I really like this guy's books!); M. M. Kaye's The Ordinary Princess, which Katharine Beutner made me think of; and Lauren Beukes, Broken Monsters. Was alternating this week between Kipling's stories and the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy (shuttling back and forth between different bits of light reading is pretty invariably a sign of deep fatigue), but fell back last night in state of utter exhaustion on Seanan McGuire's new October Daye novel, which was more what I was in the mood for.

Wonderful but overly busy schedule has also included breakfast with the author of a favorite book of mine, a black-tie Johnsonian gala at the Knickerbocker Club, a class visit from and dinner with the excellent author of an excellent book I taught last week in LTCM and the second meeting of the Manhattan Supper Club (we convene at G.'s place on Greene St. - we being me and my brother, sister-in-law and niece - and dine on pizza and associated delicacies at Arturo's, with optional add-on ice-cream module to follow!).