Sunday, January 24

Finished: Guns, Germs, and Steel I never came around to this, much, and finished it only because I felt I must. I guess in the end I picked up some big-picture info I wouldn't have absorbed any other way, but I never did like this author's writing style or his apparent complete lack of wonder. I did dig--think I said this before--the too-short section on languages. And a chapter toward the end that outlines the development and structure of bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states is interesting.
Edited to add, several weeks later: I think the CD I listened to most have been substantially abridged. Julian keeps mentioning whole ideas that weren't in the version I heard.

Finished: The Jane Austen Book Club

I seem to be inhabiting a fairly small literary world these days. Reading lots of Rex Stout and lots of Jane Austen, I suspect for the same reasons. And, as it turns out, Stout once said this, late in life, to his biographer, John J. McAleer: "I used to think that men did everything better than women, but that was before I read Jane Austen. I don't think any man ever wrote better than Jane Austen." Too true.

I know why I read them both: good sentences. I love good sentences. I could spend days in one, and sometimes do. I dream of writing one. Someday I hope to live in one.

Oh, and I know another reason. Both writers immerse you in orderly worlds, where there are rules and ways. Sometimes (often) those rules and ways are transgressed, and often therein lies the plot, but there is an elegant structure in Wolfe's daily schedule and his refusal to talk business at mealtime, just as in the way class inhabits and directs every interaction in Austen, and etiquette is--if sometimes breached--understood by all. In contrast, my life feels like constant chaotic disruptions against a backdrop of chaos.

So, anyway, I read Rex and Jane, and it turns out Rex loved Jane, and then I watch the Jane Austen Book Club movie, and that sends me back to reread the book. Which left me cold the first time, and which I find absolutely wonderful this time.

Saw: Where the Wild Things Are. Much discussed by Ryan and me, not so much by the boys.
Hamlet (CoHo Theater)--not an adaptation, but a skillful streamlining, lasting 2-1/2 hours with five superb actors. There were a couple of choices that didn't make sense to me, but overall: exquisite.

TV: too much, but the important ones are Lost (we're trying to get up to speed before the new season starts) and (dare I say it!) A Nero Wolfe Mystery (the only series I own complete, and I'm watching it for the first time, from beginning to end)

Reading: plays I'm working on (directing, not writing--well, I wrote one of them)
The Terracotta Army of the First Emperor of China, a kids book with a ton of great pictures

And just started listening to Where Men Win Glory

Also reading a crapload of email and catalog copy for work. Well, it has to be done.