hmm...

Maybe one reason I've been down lately is that I haven't been reading books. I carry them around all the time, buy them every few days, stack them up around my apartment, but I haven't been able to sit down to read one.

Yesterday morning I finished up Jessica Hagedorn's Dogeaters for my reading group (which ended up not meeting yesterday afternoon anyways). It was great to get around to the novel finally, after reading about it so often. Still processing it.

There is still something very important to me about actually reading, more than just acquiring the ideas or sensations of a book. Just as important, there's a great sense of accomplishment I still get from finishing a book (probably because my track record isn't very good on that point lately -- I just skim through books for class, research, etc.). There is still something about absorbing the totality of a book, especially a work of fiction where the quality of writing is taken for granted, but also a work of non-fiction that aspires to poetry like in Eve Sedgewick's writing.

I'm going to sit down today and start reading Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost. I'll interweave chapters of Richard Goldstein's The Attack Queers: Liberal Society and the Gay Right which I started yesterday.

oh yeah

scapegoatee made me a shiny new icon that's now the centerpiece of my other page.