Some Words

Every time I tell myself it’s time to cut back on the booze, I got to work. Getting home from work is a distinctly booze inducing experience. I’m not drinking too much, but more often than not these days, I get home and think, sure I could relax, but a drink will make it faster. Then on days off I find myself thinking, hell, it’s happy hour and there are 2.75 pints at the BLB. Two pints, and a good book, later I find myself wondering about my alcohol intake. This is a distinctly American pastime. While we make fun of the French, they would never be so unmanly as to think a drink or two every day was a problem.

I just finished Special Topics in Calamity Physics two days ago. I think I am going to write a review and put it on Iceland Spar, but for the moment I will just say that it was not bad, not as good as I first though, but not bad.

Immediately after finishing it, I started on Mrs. Dalloway. It has proven to be a much slower read. Despite being only 194 pages in the edition I own, so thoughtfully emblazoned with “The book that inspired ‘The Hours,’” it has proven a small challenge. Having really only read Orlando before this, it was intresting and oddly pleasurable, to find out what all those people had been talking about when they said she had intimidating sentence structure. The opening fifteen or so pages are nothing in construction like the rest (or what I’ve read, I must admit I’m not done yet). Part of this is the way that she uses words, and part of it is the fact that she uses semi colons like she’s getting over wartime rationing. After that, it calms down into a much more easily read book.

It has started me thinking about novel length again. Dalloway is short and compact. I was surpsied be the number of characters who get stuffed in, but so far each of them has feel fully fleshed and real, if uncomfortable. It makes Calamity Physics seem almost lazy in its wordiness. I don’t really know what to make of that. It will come up over at Iceland Spar, no doubt, but I will leave that to my post there.