It's partly that I've been busy, but it's more that I've been sad and discombobulated in the wake of my friend K.'s death, and thrown further off balance by a lot of additional obligations in the way of telephonage and friendly and/or memorial gatherings. Blogging mostly happens effortlessly for me as a consequence of curiosity and natural exuberance, but when exuberance is damped down, I am much less likely to flag things mentally as interesting in the first place. Anyway, gradually regaining some equilibrium.
Read a very good long novel that I am reviewing for Bookforum (I am not sure what the rules are, but I always consider titles under embargo until the issue is published!); got that review drafted yesterday and need to revise it to send before I go to New Haven on Thursday for NEASECS.
Dinner on Friday night was much superior to the play, but on the other hand I am not entirely sorry to have seen what is surely the very rare professional theatrical production with a prominent role not just for bicycles (they are mostly represented by a single wheel and stem/handlebars, which the actors jog around on in a fashion that's reminiscent of those pogo-stick-style inflatable balls that children ride on - someone had fun making these) but for a stationary trainer as well.
It is the week of Pamela-Shamela convergence in both of my classes!
I am on two university committees this year that are both going to be quite demanding, in very different ways. That plus three students on the job market and the usual fall spate of letters of recommendation are going to keep me busy. I had a horrible moment last night - really I hadn't forgotten it as such, just hadn't quite fully remembered either - I was thinking, oh, I don't teach till 11:40, if I do one more hour of work now and then get up at 7 I will have plenty of time to do all the absolutely necessary preparations for class etc. and also go for a run - then it suddenly came to my attention that I had a committee meeting from 8:30-10 and a student meeting scheduled for 11 and that my notion of running was an idle fantasy....
Light reading around the edges: Jonathan Lethem, Dissident Gardens (excellent); Robin McKinley, Shadows (I loved it - it is perhaps too similar in its contours to Sunshine, which has the more complex and memorable voice of the two books, but that just means that if you like this kind of book you should read both - I will read any book by Robin McKinley with pleasure, but I liked this one much more than her last two - basically if there were an infinite number of books like this, I would read one every day). Halfway through Chimamanda Ngoza Adichie's Americaneh, which is very much living up to my high expectations for it.
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After that book I loved, whose name I am too annoyed I have forgotten and too lazy to look up, the one that keeps starting over and has the Blitz, I do think Americanah is my favorite book of recent months - only I keep forgetting about it I try to think of what I've read lately! Hmm, distasteful theme here, not purposefully aligning with your experience of last night!
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