(no subject)
Wednesday, July 8th, 2020 07:58 pm Seven years ago on this day the heavens opened and a month's worth of rain fell on TO in the course of a few hours. This isn't the first time it's monsooned on the anniversary, but it kindly hasn't done it for a few years, so today's storm was a bit unquiet-making. It went in for the extreme winds rather than the wet, though there was a lot of wet, even if Environ Canada calls it 'rain showers'. Showers as in 'full force from the nozzle', maybe. Lights flickered but fortunately didn't go out. Temps dropped from 32 to 24 for maybe 90 minutes, then bounced right back again. Thus this summer.
I zipped through almost all of Judge Dee in a little over a week and now must give him a break because I have a substantial library book on the go (Rena Barron's Kingdom of Souls) and another waiting for me (Goudge's The Little White Horse) though I won't be getting that one until next week because the first slot for curbside pickup was Tuesday next. I wonder what the other Aged do to arrange pickups, because the pickup app won't register on my outdated desktop's OS. There's a bookmobile service that will bring books to the door, or at least there was before this started. Presumably also the Aged have children or grandchildren with laptops and cell phones who do it for them.
Before the Barron arrived I'd started on Karen Lord's newest, which gives me the oddest frisson of Gladstone's Three Parts Dead. Very random things will remind me of Gladstone, which is fine because Three Parts Dead is one of my favourites. I'd like to get back to Lord, but can't read it in tandem with anything else because it would be like smoking while eating an omelette aux fines herbes.
Otherwise there's still Tristram Shandy for will-less couch reading, which as I feared is not as entertaining as I thought it in my twenties. The Net curtails one's patience in a horrible fashion. 'Oh get *on* with it,' I mutter, as Sterne goes wittering on forever. I know, I know, there's no it to be got on with. But Sterne sounds so very much like all those blokes who have no idea how not funny their funny stories are. Am ready to bet Rabelais and Cervantes are just as tedious and bumptious. And what's always puzzled me is that these thumping great tomes, longer than any fantasy trilogy, were written by hand in either candle- or daylight, and read the same way. The premodern era: that thought it entertaining to read long long loooooong novels in cold rooms in the dark, ce qui est une grande preuve de la mélancolie de vivre.
I zipped through almost all of Judge Dee in a little over a week and now must give him a break because I have a substantial library book on the go (Rena Barron's Kingdom of Souls) and another waiting for me (Goudge's The Little White Horse) though I won't be getting that one until next week because the first slot for curbside pickup was Tuesday next. I wonder what the other Aged do to arrange pickups, because the pickup app won't register on my outdated desktop's OS. There's a bookmobile service that will bring books to the door, or at least there was before this started. Presumably also the Aged have children or grandchildren with laptops and cell phones who do it for them.
Before the Barron arrived I'd started on Karen Lord's newest, which gives me the oddest frisson of Gladstone's Three Parts Dead. Very random things will remind me of Gladstone, which is fine because Three Parts Dead is one of my favourites. I'd like to get back to Lord, but can't read it in tandem with anything else because it would be like smoking while eating an omelette aux fines herbes.
Otherwise there's still Tristram Shandy for will-less couch reading, which as I feared is not as entertaining as I thought it in my twenties. The Net curtails one's patience in a horrible fashion. 'Oh get *on* with it,' I mutter, as Sterne goes wittering on forever. I know, I know, there's no it to be got on with. But Sterne sounds so very much like all those blokes who have no idea how not funny their funny stories are. Am ready to bet Rabelais and Cervantes are just as tedious and bumptious. And what's always puzzled me is that these thumping great tomes, longer than any fantasy trilogy, were written by hand in either candle- or daylight, and read the same way. The premodern era: that thought it entertaining to read long long loooooong novels in cold rooms in the dark, ce qui est une grande preuve de la mélancolie de vivre.
