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'the hedges, all strengthening in the sun'
Everything is going wrong but the Happy Pills seem to be working because I find myself quite cheerful. One reason is C back at work, even in the painful fallout of her father's sudden death. Place doesn't function without her, is why it's dangerous to have an irreplaceable person in any organization. Or a position no one else wants to take, so that whoever has the position becomes irreplaceable. Other reason is going down to the laundry room and finding all the sheets and blankets neatly folded and put away in their baskets, which means Melanie has been at work. Even I, the Laundry Queen, can't be arsed to fold sheets, and *especially* not the infants' fitted ones. 'She's a keeper,' the cook agrees, and if only we could; but her career path is the biosciences, and she only works with us for fun.
Just finished?
And I mean just this evening: de Barri, The Bucks and Bawds of Bonny Doon ahem London Town. Much information here comes from eight years' trawling through his Barrymore ancestors' papers. So, history, yes. Not sure if Regency England was quite as egalitarian as he wants it to be, an enlightened interlude between the savagery of the 17th and early 18th centuries and the hypocrisy and cruelty of the Victorian age. (Burckhardt too wants to believe that Renaissance men saw women as equals. If Regency was an enlightened paradise, why are all those clubs he talks about limited to men alone?)
On the go?
(groans) Everything else. Burckhardt, Ondaatje, Jemisin, Carmack... No end to the buying of books, and much reading is a weariness of the flesh.
And next?
The Blue 'n' White's bargain bins tempted me, and I did buy: a couple of Barbara Vines and a Banana Yoshimoto. Hot weather reading. Wanted to buy the Complete Verse of Kipling, but didn't. It's all online anyway.
Have also from the library an American Tokyo-visitor's book of short stories set in Tokyo. If it's about gaijin, fine, but I'm not sure I want to read a hakujin's take on the Japanese.
However. Long weekend coming up. Something might get finished
Just finished?
And I mean just this evening: de Barri, The Bucks and Bawds of Bonny Doon ahem London Town. Much information here comes from eight years' trawling through his Barrymore ancestors' papers. So, history, yes. Not sure if Regency England was quite as egalitarian as he wants it to be, an enlightened interlude between the savagery of the 17th and early 18th centuries and the hypocrisy and cruelty of the Victorian age. (Burckhardt too wants to believe that Renaissance men saw women as equals. If Regency was an enlightened paradise, why are all those clubs he talks about limited to men alone?)
On the go?
(groans) Everything else. Burckhardt, Ondaatje, Jemisin, Carmack... No end to the buying of books, and much reading is a weariness of the flesh.
And next?
The Blue 'n' White's bargain bins tempted me, and I did buy: a couple of Barbara Vines and a Banana Yoshimoto. Hot weather reading. Wanted to buy the Complete Verse of Kipling, but didn't. It's all online anyway.
Have also from the library an American Tokyo-visitor's book of short stories set in Tokyo. If it's about gaijin, fine, but I'm not sure I want to read a hakujin's take on the Japanese.
However. Long weekend coming up. Something might get finished