Because there will always be more

Miracle of miracles, I've actually managed to get a whole lotta reading done over the past reading week! I am still committed to my goal of devouring my library, and the gears are huffing at full speed. Technically, it's not really a goal, since there's no deadline or M.O.... and I keep making false progress by re-reading certain books, instead of turning to new ones. You know how that goes... some environmental or emotional trigger inexplicably drives you to a certain novel or collection that has kept you company in the past.

The weather seems to be a trigger for me, when it comes to old, familiar books. On late-winter days when the wind is cool but has soft edges, and the sidewalks are dry, and people are flapping their bathroom mats against the railing of their stoops to get all the bits of kitty litter out, I always crave The Way I Found Her, by Rose Tremain. It reminds me of Paris, even though I read it long before going there. I borrowed it from my Aunt Mary, who keeps a wonderfully loose and shaggy library of incredible books, squeezed onto a few shelves in the narrow hallway of her Toronto apartment. It seems to me that I used to be in that apartment often, and I read that novel lying on her couch with her cat Daisy watching me warily from another chair. I know that I was fourteen and felt like momentous things were going in my life (I was partially right), and that it was spring, which explains the weather connection.

A few months ago I found a copy of it for sale at a used bookstore downtown, but then I had one of my "responsible spending" attacks and put it back on the shelf. About twenty seconds later the bookstore went out of business. I guess I could just order a copy, but that's not the point - the craving is almost better than the book itself.

I'd already read Housekeeping and Mean Boy when I picked them off my shelf this week, but I re-read them anyway. I had a lot less patience for Housekeeping this time around, but re-reading Mean Boy was illuminating - it's about a league of creative writing students and the self-important English faculty members who alternately teach, coddle, and neglect them. Since reading it three years ago, mostly while lying in the grass on UC hill at Western with the very eyes of the English faculty staring down at me from the tower, my frame of reference for who those characters are has completely changed. I guess personal experience really does colour the way you receive other people's fictions! Who knew?

Other news:
Thanks to Ingrid, I now have good reason to toss out all of my "flimsy excuses" and just go ahead and get a dog. Or maybe two of them?

I'm thinking that maybe, when cardio is over .... action-figure yoga?

And lastly... ever since Viv snapped it 24 hours ago, this picture has been making me laugh out loud (LOL, guys!):

I don't even know what chris & I were looking at. An empty wine bottle maybe?

--Off to restock the cabinet