Saturday, August 20, 2011

Where Has He Been?

Dear Friends, please forgive me for not blogging much lately. I would not blame any of you for not even reading this current blog here, I am so inconsistent. And not only this, but I don't visit your own blogs nearly as much as I want to.
Thing is, the emergency lobotomy I received a while ago -- it didn't go as well as predicted.
Doctor says I should be ship-shape soon, though.
Amazingly, during my convalescence I have been doing some reading -- through the gauze over my eyes, as it were.

Falling Man, by Don DeLillo. What a fabulous book, maybe the best thing I have read this year. A story of how the events of September 11th, 2001 affect the lives of several New York residents. Five puddles©.
Going After Cacciato, by Tim O'Brien. A squad of American soldiers in Vietnam -- and how they end up in Paris. Or not. An artfully constructed narrative that at times lost me due to its dual possibilities -- as in, I found it difficult to differentiate between the use of realism and hallucination. [Confusion may have been caused by my recent brain operation though…]. Three puddles©.
Eclipse, by John Banville. My first reading of Banville, but not my last. A compelling first-person narrative about a washed-up actor returning to his childhood home to try and find himself. He learns a lot from the current inhabitants, some of them ghosts, others, still very much alive. Five puddles©.
Currently I am reading a wonderful book called Loving Frank, by Nancy Horan.
I have always had an interest in Frank Lloyd Wright, the famous American architect. This is a fictionalized account of his love affair with Mamah Borthwick Cheney and it is wonderfully written. Truly engaging. I'm dying to get back to it, even now. For a long while I have wanted to make a trip out to the remote wilds of Bear Run, Pennsylvania for a tour of one of Wright's most well-known buildings, the house known as Fallingwater.
Happy reading to y'all!
I'm on vacation again….. starting right now…. Yayyyyyyy!
[Oww! I shouldn't yell like that…. not until I'm fully healed….]



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2 comments:

Merisi said...

I am glad you are enjoying your convalescence! ;-)

I have Banville's "Esclipse" on my to-read stack.
Somehow I never warmed to DeLillo. The mention of Tim O'Brien immediately evokes his "The Things they carried" and what a kind and friendly human being he is. Falling Waters somehow eluded me, never made it there, only a photo book found a place on my shelves.

Stefanie said...

Enjoy your vacation and your convalescence! Say, do you have a really wicked scar you can scare little kids with? ;)