Cottage Renovations

[OT from cottage renovations]

Alain de Botton: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (ISBN 978-0-375-4244-1)

[OT from cottage renovations]

Thomas Pynchon: Against the Day (ISBN 1-59420-120-X)

treated myself to this a couple of weeks ago but haven't had enough quiet time to sit with it.  the train back from NJ could have / should have / would have provided an excellent opportunity for discretionary reading so I sought out the quiet car for the purpose, but the ride was rough: track condition has deteriorated and the equipment didn't seem to be going along with the desgnation as there was much noise and vibration from the wheelsets below as well as from a malfuncting door mechanism at the end of the coach.  a loud passenger sitting right next to the "quiet car" sign while carrying on to a hapless victim about the details of his fascinating business life was bad enough but I gave up when somebody else brought a screaming infant aboard and tried to soothe same by carrying it up and down the aisle, ensuring that all could share in the audible manifestation of its tiny distress. 

(image gacked from the subway knitter)

having been-there-done-that as parent I probably have more sympathy and tolerance than most in such a situation but there wasn't any point in trying to read so I set down the book and headed off to the café car where ambient noise is just as irritating but within reasonable expectation. 

[OT from cottage renovations]

Laura Hostetler: Quing Colonial Enterprise (ISBN 0-226-35421-0)

started this on Amtrak but got bogged down.  living proof that not every PhD thesis should turn into a book.  but it picked up at the end. 

Christopher Benfey: the Great Wave - Gilded Age Misfits, Japanese Eccentrics and the Opening of Old Japan (ISBN 0-375-75455-5)

another Christmas present to Taunton, which he has lent me back to read.  way good stuff. 

[OT from cottage renovations]

Liza Dalby: The Tale of Murasaki (ISBN 0-385-49794-6)

finally finished this, it was too good to just rush through it.  two aspects of it have stayed with me:

• a communications protocol based on dispatching a messenger bearing a branch with blossoms or buds, accompanied by a note or small scroll on which is inscribed waka [traditional verse form predating haiku] chosen from classical sources and highly metaphorical and allusory.  an interesting contrast to, say, Sherlock Holmes' telegraph messenger boys, my late mother's fax machine, and contemporary methods such as email or this journal. 
   
• letting go of the world and taking up a contemplative and reclusive existence.  though I have not the basis of Bhuddist or other faith, it is in effect what for a variety of reasons I have already been doing, though not in a conscious way.  reading of it in Dalby's novel brought it to my attention. 

it's time to Taunton to claim his gift (see entry for 1 May). 

[OT from cottage renovations]

Liza Dalby: The Tale of Murasaki (ISBN 0-385-49794-6)

a gift for Taunton, whose turn to read it will come after his finals.