Here's the thing. I had intended to read the Christmas Stories first but they were too difficult to find online (OK, I guess I could have if I had really put my mind to it but I was lazy and there were too many other things to do close to Christmas and Chubby's wedding) and so Christmas came and went with the two Christmas books unread.
And now it's after Christmas I don't feel compelled to put those books first. Other than The Christmas Carol and Cricket on the Hearth, I didn't really care for most of the stories I have read. But nuff about that. I will get to it in its proper place when I finally pick up Books 1 and 2 and give them the required once over, stopping every so often to ponder.
Business? Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence, were all my business.
Three guesses for who said that and where it's from.
OK, OK, I'll start for real now.
I was reading a book about pilgrimage (the Camino, sort of, well a pilgrimage of sorts that terminates in Santiago de Compostela) and finding it hard going. It's a mixture of description of place and the inner journey. But I don't think the author (who is wrestling with lack of faith and a rejection of the church and finding herself amidst believers, breaking out in hives, losing front teeth and having panic attacks) is kind of jerky. In places, the prose sings, but more often than not, well, it doesn't and I was supposed to have been done with it by now and I would have if it was as well written as most of the memoir-type books that I love. But this one...I am not sure...it's sort of like a pebble in the shoe, minor irritation, doesn't quite come off.
Anyway, I abandoned the book for a while and opened up my Sketches by Boz on the iPad. Now, I had attempted to read this book before and not gotten past page 22. At the time, coming off Hard Times (I think it was Hard Times, it may have been something else) I couldn't appreciate the mastery that went into this book. Now, with the other book to contrast it to, I found the sketches, fluid, flowing, funny...(I seem to be on an alliterative kick here). I made it to page 30. And I only broke off because it was late and I was tired.
So I look forward to resuming the book (I skipped ahead to see how many pages this book has and, um, it's like 943, I mean to say, what?).
I need to finish it as I want to start on my Shakespeare/Woolf kick and I'll feel guilty if I start that without having finished this one first.
I am thinking of starting with Romeo and Juliet just because Mark's friend Andrew asked me if I knew the rest of the "Parting is such sweet sorrow" quote and I didn't. And he did. And he sells medical devices for a living. And I write. I mean to say, what?
