All right, let’s do some digesting before we get to the meat of the day, later on.
Writing: Lots in this space – on books, movies, politics, eucharistic coherence and what have you. Just stroll back through the pages to see.
I’ll be in Living Faith tomorrow. Go here for that.
Need to be working on another batch, since that’s due next week.
Waiting to hear about a book proposal.
Worked on some fiction. Am wrestling in my head with a non-fiction idea, but I can’t grab it yet.
Oh – related – today is B16’s 70th anniversary of ordination to the priesthood. If you are interested in a super-simple intro to his thought via his writings during the first few years of his papacy, you can download a pdf of the book I wrote for Word Among Us press here.
Reading:
Currently: Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis. I read it as a teen – must have been in between my Austen and my Hardy stages in which I was determined to Read All The Books – but not since. I am always just hankering for some good social satire these days, for some reason.
You can read about most of the recent past reads around here.
Also recently: Another Country by James Baldwin, about which I have half a post written.
Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forster
On the proverbial nightstand, just checked out from the library:
When Women Invented Television (Mostly looking forward to reading about Hazel Scott in this one)
Plus a slew of magazines. Come back on Friday for that summary.
Oh – that estate sale where I got an excellent stash of books a couple of months ago had part II last weekend. It seems to me the daughters were trying to do an initial clean-out so they could have more space to get the house ready for sale, and this past weekend was just the rest of it. Still quite a few books, but not as much fiction. I did pick up a novel I initially got excited about, thinking I might have found another long-lost Catholic Classic, but when I got home and looked it up, I saw that while it sold well, it got fairly uniformly negative reviews. I will still skim through it, though. The Thirteenth Apostle by one Eugene Vale, published in 1959.
Watching:
As mentioned, we finished up Mad Men. Started The Sopranos, but then my viewing partner said he really wasn’t up for another big show commitment right now – very understandable! So we’ll just do movies.
Although I did watch a few episodes of Shtisel last week – the Israeli show, an international hit streaming on Netflix, about a Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) family. I enjoyed it, but hesitated in going beyond those first three episodes for, well, the same reason my son called a pause on the Sopranos. Do I really want to commit to this right now? But then, of course, I realized…you know…you don’t have to binge it. Idiot. You can watch it the old-fashioned way and take in an episode or so a week, and then maybe it won’t seem like such a life-dominating, guilt-tinged experience. So I think I’ll keep on.
Also recently:
Discussed on the blog:
This son hadn’t been around when the other one and I saw it in the theater – but it came out on DVD last week, so we watched Nobody, which I enjoyed just as much this time as last.
Last night, he and I watched Spectre – he wanted to finish off the Craig versions. Tonight he watched Interstellar, which he hadn’t seen before, and I popped in the room for those last emotional 30 minutes or so.
My quest for the week is to get my hands on the theatrical cut of Amadeus, which is far better than the “director’s cut” with the random, stupid nudity that’s in the latter, with the random, stupid suggestion that Constanze Mozart tried to offer herself to Salieri. Yeah, I know it’s a play, not a biopic, but still – that’s so off and so not the point of the piece that it’s just a silly distraction. Anyway, the director’s cut is the only streaming version at the moment and the most recent DVD version. When I showed it to Musician son last year, I know I checked it out from one of the library branches I frequent, that’s nearby, but it’s no longer anywhere to be found in those branches. It is in a couple of branches further out in the peripheries, so tomorrow I might take a field trip and search it out.
(Yes I could buy a copy, but….I’d rather not.)
Cooking: People haven’t been around much, so not a whole lot of that. I did some good oven baked ribs on Sunday, and that’s about it, honestly.
Travel: Nowhere for me, although others are out and about, including way out West. Got a brief phone call after a multi-day backpacking trip last night, so at least I know he wasn’t eaten by a bear yet. I keep blathering on about going somewhere in mid-August and, realizing that’s less than two months away…maybe I should get on that. Because if we don’t go somewhere then, there will be no more travel until November, and given the music schedule for the fall, maybe not even then….
Charlotte was Both 