Summer always affords good book reading opportunities, and I have bolted through a few in the past month. My first journey was into The Change with “Dies The Fire”, a sci-fi novel taking place in 1998 from moments before a cataclysmic event which renders all engines, electronics and explosives useless. The aftermath is brutal; a struggle to survive in a suddenly lawless world, described precisely by S.M. Stirling. I look forward to continuing this series… “The Beach” by Alex Garland is another world of savagery that festers then erupts on a utopian tropical wonderland and was a huge challenge to stop reading at any time.
A great quick read: Food Rules by Michael Pollan. It sets forth the smartest guidelines I’ve ever seen to eating well. All 64 “rules” are so commonsensical and simple, shaping a diet that would be so much healthier than what most Americans eat. Unsurprisingly, the emphasis is on old world eating habits, citing French and Italian diets (recent personal confirmation) and stuff your great-grandmother would recognize as “real food”… Even if you end up breaking a few rules now and then (daily for me thus far) the book offers a great look at our obviously problematic food supply and may inspire more awareness of what are really eating… Not always pretty.
And to David Foster Wallace. Thank you… Your writing astounds me. Who can delve the truth like you? You write so much about every detail and yet are so economical with words that explode with meaning. Your media report about media reporting McCain2000 is what it is. We all know it but are unable to say it like you. Flying back from Europe, I had tears streaming down my face from laughter at your piece about GRAMMAR! Who knew SNOOTs were so funny? And today, reading a 1990 piece on American Fiction and Television that demonstrates the alienating loneliness and self-mocking nature of pop culture while alluding to a futuristic “net” of telecomputers that had the potential to break the entertainment monopoly and “free Joe Briefcase from passive dependence on his furniture”, I am thrown back in time to my first interactions with The Net on BBSs and email, all communative in nature, and how amazingly revolutionary that was, even if I didn’t understand the larger, 20-year context then… You did! Anyway, I’m sorry you’ll never read this because you killed yourself but I hope you somehow know how much I appreciate your work.
Alaina downloaded “Consider the Lobster” on her kindle, for which I traded my old-school paperback. Books Be Gone! The experience of reading this collection of non-fiction was enhanced by the e-reader; DFW is a copious footnoter and big-word user so the ability to bounce between the text, footnote and dictionary (which still lacks a good number of words he uses) is easier on the Kindle, although it is even easier on MY IPHONE, on which I just downloaded all of Alaina’s Kindle books (Twilight Series next?) and another DFW, “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again”, and am enjoying with touch screen efficiency. Is it different from holding a book? Yes. Is the information contained the same? Yes. Does it sometimes run out of batteries? Yes. Do I love having Infinite Jest in my pocket? Yes.