In progress (a good book)

It is odd reading The Toss of a Lemon shortly after reading The Valley of Horses, because I find that the same lengthy descriptions that I criticized in Valley I am admiring in Lemon.   Is it because these are true, or is it just better writing?

Toast? White bread? Sinful!

My family is eating toast for supper.  Devouring it.   Last night I fixed frozen shrimp, tater tots and corn.  They ate it--mostly--but I should have just pulled out a loaf of bread and the margarine.

I really need to start cooking again.

Cats and me

I have a new job description--bowel stimulant.  I get up in the morning; cats use litter box.  I get home in the evening; cats use litter box.  If I slept in one day, would they get constipated?

How to make really tedious traffic seem almost bearable

For some idiotic reason I got started listening to Middlemarch in the car.  Is this like the largest word count of any book in the English language?  Will I be able to keep the CDs from the library long enough to finish it?

The reader confounds me--she goes on and on and on, never needing to clear her throat or correct a misreading.  Never seeming to get tired at the endless roundabouts and dissolutions and meanderous poeticity that the author tacks on to decorate a rather slim story.  It reminds me of an illuminated manuscript--a lot of style and very little substance.

For all that griping, I'm still listening to it.  The CD player does have an off switch--I know where it is.

Followup on Wifey

By the way, I found a foreword for Wifey by Judy Blume and I also read all of the auto-biographical data on her web site.  Norman is not a real person--she says--but many of his characteristics were borrowed from men she knew.  The breakup of her first marriage inspired the book--maybe not the sexual liberation parts, but definitely the ideological liberation ones.  She left the marriage and took her two kids, and I'm sure she believes shedid the right thing.  Maybe the reason she didn't end up Wifey with a decisive, glorious breakup was a sign of the strength of her writing.  She's making us readers write our own endings...and lovely they be.



Meanwhile....

I finished Melanie Martin Goes Dutch by Carol Weston. 

I need to be careful which kids books I choose to read.  Some, like Saffy's Angel, are funny at any age.  And others, like The Great Brain, have a classic charm that wins you over.  But this one wasn't "age appropriate" for me.

I think I'd have adored it when I was younger.  I'd probably have clamored to be taken to the library so I could check out the rest of the series.  But, since I don't really know what I would have thought, I'll refrain from giving it a "star" rating on Goodreads.com.  It's not fair to take a chance on skewing its rating with my old fuddy-duddy opinion.

Blah. So glad when this is over.

After I write my thoughts on Wifey, I'm going to go look at Judy Blume's web site to see if she hated writing the ending as much as I hated reading it.  You know how they describe people as enablers when they allow an abusive person to continue their behavior without challenging it or attempting to prevent it?  There was no "abuse" in this book but there was definitely an enabler...which maybe means, there was abuse.  Isn't it considered abuse if a person continually hurts another's feelings and makes them feel bad about themselves?

I think I just wrote a big fat spoiler, but that's okay.  The book was published in 1978.  Anyone who was going to read it already has.  As usual, the people who might benefit from reading it, won't.  A person as controlling, rigid, and thoughtless as her husband wouldn't recognize himself--if he were capable of seeing how awful he was, he wouldn't be so.

So let me talk about the woman.  IMHO, she gets what she deserves.  I'm sorry for her, truly sorry, but what she needs is to get out, make herself a life, and then see if she wants to go on with this miscarriage, I mean, marriage.  The implication is that she's going to try to work things out gradually, from within.  She's going to try and she's going to fail--every word, phrase, and tone of voice in the husband's last remarks shows that clearly.  He's not going to change.

I'm reminded of the wise phrase--
           You can't change the world.  You can only change yourself.

Enjoying a light mystery

The No, 1 Ladies Detective Agency
by Alexander McCall Smith

I just loved this book.  It seems slow-paced but never drags--it meanders like a springtime walk in the woods.  It only took me a minute to fall in love with Mma Ramotswe and I'm eager to read all her adventures as the first lady private detective in Botswana.  It's not Sherlock Holmes vs. Moriarty, but who cares?  Sherlock Holmes gets boring when he's always one step ahead of the rest of us.  Mma Ramotswe is right there beside us, drinking a cup of tea and relaxing in the shade of her acacia tree.