Make time to read at least one book per month in 2007

I’ll be brief since everybody knows them already. Sometimes I am a bit out of touch with popular things. Either that or just late catching up with them! Anyway, Calvin is all impulse and imagination, and Hobbes is his philosophical counterpart. Calvin is like a poster child for all the super-charged six year old boys The Man tries to keep down with Ritalin. Calvin can make you both want to be his mommy and give thanks you’re not. Mostly the giving thanks you’re not part. :D But I think he deserves a better dad!

I still have one more book to enter for 2007!

And I got off to a great start for 2008 by reading an entire book already! Almost in one sitting! You just don’t know how much I’ve missed that. (Hence the exclamation points.) The ability to focus for so long, the desire to do it. Oh, how I’ve missed that desire to get lost in a book for hours. Apparently the trick is to get away from home. I do have one more entry to post on this goal though. I’m still writing it.

That’s difficult, isn’t it? The author on love and desire: love seeks closeness, but desire needs distance. Love enjoys knowing everything about you; desire needs mystery. Love likes to shrink the distance between me and you, while desire is energized by it. And a quote from Gail Godwin: the act of longing will always be more intense than the requiting of it. It’s true, isn’t it! I like how Oscar Wilde put it: in this world, there are only two tragedies. One is getting what one wants, and the other is not getting it. So now what? Oh hell, it’s past 3 a.m. and I’m tired. I’m going to bed. You can read it for yourself. :D

But I will tell you there’s a chapter called “Democracy Versus Hot Sex: Desire and Egalitarianism Don’t Play by the Same Rules.” Guess what that’s about? And the last chapter: “The Shadow of the Third: Rethinking Fidelity.” !!

I have the unsettling feeling I don’t recall anything I read in this book. It’s probably one of those things where you just learn by doing.

Yeah, yeah, I know. It hardly qualifies as a book. Just over 90 pages and I think half of them were pictures! I read it over lunch. And . . . it seems too simplified to me. And too deliberately didactic? Not sure that’s the right word. Preachy? But it’s a fable, I guess, so maybe the simplification is as it should be. I think I should have read it when I was much younger, though.

However, I could try to take a lesson from it, if the lesson weren’t an uncomfortable one. I could challenge myself more! And it did remind me of the need to do that.

Pop Surrealism: The Rise of Underground Art

What I like about pop surrealism is that it surprises me. It’s weird, and I like that. A lot of it’s dark, and that’s not really my taste (I prefer more whimsical art), but I like to look at it all. Just wouldn’t want it all in my house!

I learned that I like Marion Peck. She does a great still life. :D Look and see. I know it’s strange, but come on, how many more still lifes can you look at? I like all those little eyeballs. At least it’s something unexpected.

Mark Ryden is another one who fascinates me, even though his work is often too creepy for me to love. His painting Little Boy Blue is utterly chilling. Here you have this little boy dressed in baby pink and blue riding his tricycle outside his peaceful little house, and this kid is so sinister. I’ll put the link up but don’t click on it if you’re celebrating Hanukkah right now, because of the historical reference. It might be upsetting! Little Boy Blue.

Isabel Samaras also does some fun stuff. Like Secrets of the Batcave Part 2. :)

Bookmooch has really helped me achieve this. I’ve gotten several books (well, more than that) that I’ve felt I had to read right away. It’s been great.

So, I’ve already read 3 books representing the remaining 3 months of the year. I will retire this goal and most likely start it up again in 2008.

most of this sudden burst of energy re: reading books has to do with, besides the end of baseball season, the advent of bookmooch.

I am getting several books courtesy of bookmooch.com, and I’m anxious to read them.

mostly because baseball season ended and I have more time!

I am in the middle of a mystery, and I just started Diary of Anne Frank. Having a good time.

so it should be easy, eh?

I’ve already started, finishing Wonderful Tonight, the new Pattie Boyd book about her marriages to George Harrison and Eric Clapton.

I started the Eddie Fisher autobiography last night. I almost couldn’t put it down. You feel like you’re living that life, with those people. Wow.

I will try for some heavier-hitting material, I promise. But in the meantime, I’m having fun!