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Nearly a month into my new life in a different city, I have already joined a book club and been to the first meeting. It happened to be a over book I had already elected to read, Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Nazario, so I just jumped right in and it was great. The next month’s book is Nicked and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by In America by Barbara Ehrenreich. I finished it a couple of days ago and am going to write down a few compelling quotes for the next meeting.

Yay! More bookishness in my life.

I also picked up a book on running from the library, as well as The White Spider by Heinrich Harrer, author of Seven Years in Tibet. I’m getting better at random selections in areas of interest.

Lastly, I’m contemplating re-reading the works of one of my favorite authors. I’ll have to think about who. Maybe I’ll just read the neglected works by a few of my favorites? Time will tell, and the library is less than a mile away!

I finally picked up Postcards from the Edge by Carrie Fisher, and it was a great read. She’s really funny, and I’m glad she found a good guy at the end, though I haven’t read the sequel, so I’m just going to revel in the happy for now, regardless of what’s happened since.

I’d been meaning to read this for a while now. Yay!

I just finished reading the book Women Runners: Stories of Transformation – it’s a compilation of essays and fiction pieces which center on running – and I really enjoyed it.

I went to the library today and read from The Iliad, completing two of the 24 books (chapters). Now that I am getting into and understanding the story better, I’m enjoying it. It still helps me to have a crib sheet of all the major characters, gleaned from a Spark Notes book, written down in my notebook. I keep it in front of me, so I can glance at it and quickly discern which Gods are for which fighters, which people are orators, and who is probably only mentioned once or twice, etc.

What else I love? More goal dovetailing. It’s fall, the sky is gray, and I feel okay, because I completed a third week of great runs and have eaten well and drunk plenty of water. I’ve even been eating an apple when I wake up. So, this increase in physical activity helps me sleep very well at night, and it also makes my rest days very important.

Sunday is the day I read from The Iliad (and the rest of the Plan books, whenever I get to them), and it’s also a rest day. I found myself grateful to have something to set my mind to, to take it off of the fact that today, I must ignore my running shoes and take it easy. I was also more able to focus on what I was reading (when I wasn’t falling asleep – the library is COLD!).

It will probably be at least another month before I make it through this book, but maybe today was enough to synch the habit of this on Sundays. Hopefully.

I’m asking myself this question, but the answer is pretty clear – I went for a more immediate gratification, and progress on other goals, by reading Harry Potter in Spanish and the Susan Isaacs book and I just finished Born Standing Up by Steve Martin, which I loved.

So it’s okay, but I want to reaffirm to myself that I will spend at least 30 minutes reading this book, probably Sunday at the library. I don’t have to read the whole thing in one sitting (and could not)! Baby steps.

So, I tried the game from the 52 Projects book about searching for favorite authors and reading something by the next author, and I’ve turned up a really fun read: Shining Through by Susan Isaacs (the favorite author I chose is John Irving). I wasn’t able to sleep a wink and so I just kept reading this book until I was done. It was great fun. She writes some snappy dialogue.

I was flipping through this book called 52 Projects: Random Acts of Everyday Creativity by Jeffrey Yamaguchi, and one of them jumped out at me; you go to a bookstore or library, seek out your favorite authors, see who is next on the shelf, and read one of those books.

I’m going to try this sometime.

I like this story so far. Having already seen Troy, as well as having a copy of the Iliad Sparknotes from my local library, I am fairly well able to piece together what’s going on so far. I made a map of the personal connections between the characters, based on the Sparknotes summary, in three categories: the Achaeans, the Trojans, and the Gods and Immortals. This has been great to reference while I read, and I’m keeping a thumb in the endnotes, which I’ve read as I have gone along.

Something I read spurred a memory of a part of Gilgamesh toward the end where, seeking help from some god or caretaker of the underworld, Gilgamesh must run through a giant tube-like tunnel just as the sun exits it and make it through the tunnel in the 12 hours it takes for the sun to circle back to the tube’s beginning. I may go back and look at that again. It has great power of metaphor and I want to hold onto the story details.

In addition to this project, I checked out a CD resource from my local library on Philosophy – it’s in the ‘Great Courses’ series – and I listened to part I of V. The lectures spanned three main problems of philosophy, those of knowledge, conduct, and governance. Along with the CDs, there is a course booklet which has suggested reading and companion essays.

The idea came to me that I could listen to the CDs as a rough introduction to the time period I am reading about in the Plan, which means that I have a dozen more books to read before moving on to the second CD. I don’t really know if I’ll supplement the Plan books with the others listed in the course booklet; 10 years ago I would have said I would do that and more while walking to the moon blindfolded and juggling starfish, but now, I just say, “Erm, I’m not sure.” Time will tell.

The best part of this experience was having a very good reason to pull my Hayes’ Ancient Civilizations textbook off the shelf to see if I could find Uruk on the map. From Stephen Mitchell’s notes, I was able to find it: Erech was a city in the Fertile Crescent in Ancient Sumer, just west of Ur (which is where the wheel was reputedly invented, if I’m not mistaken).

I have a feeling that a lot of the pleasure I’m going to get out of this jaunt will be not only in reading the literature itself, but in reading about the literature. Probably, I will seek out external references for the stories I just can’t get enough of, and as for the rest, I will wait until life sets things before me, and I can think, “Oh, I’ve read that. What’s this, now?”

I’ve also begun a book journal so I can record my journey. One morsel of goodness I came across in this translation was from the Introduction, and thus was written by Stephen Mitchell: “Projecting evil onto the world makes me unassailably right – a position as dangerous in politics as in marriage.” He also likens Gilgamesh’s instincts to kill the monster Humbaba to Bush’s invasion of Iraq and his ‘Axis of Evil’. It’s been in writing for at least 2700 years, and it’s now.