I read a child's comment about the Harry Potter books, that he loves them so much because there is more fun per page than in any other book. Tangentially, that's not true of the fourth and fifth, where pointless dialogue stalls action and defies logic even more than in the first three; primarily what I came here to say is that clearly that kid had never read The Count of Monte Cristo. Swashes are buckled in every sentence. It's great fun, and I love the language, formal and on its way to being archaic--unlike Harry Potter, malheureusement, whose influence is so vast that, as with Stephen King, I weep at the simplicity and stiltedness of its prose.
I have just got to a bit where the Count says someone has two strings to his bow, just as Leopold Bloom says of a woman he sees in the street. Because all books are one book.
Later...all books are one book: a chemist by the name of Flamel is mentioned, who I surmise is the alchemist Nicholas Flamel from Philosopher's Stone.
Last Thursday we went to Barbie and Sabrina's booksigning at the Tattered Cover. Besides being a really pleasant evening altogether--tapas beforehand at the Fourth Story and dessert afterward at Mel's, seeing Butterfly and Danger Kitty and Margaret and Spenser and of course Barbie and Sabrina, finally using a gift card for War and Peace and The Brothers K--it afforded a few minutes between tapas and signing to peruse the 85%-off table in the rear of the event space.
One title made me seize the book and hoot. I might have perused it more but I was actually speaking to people (and have I mentioned how much better I am feeling these days? Verging on confident even). What I gleaned was this: Lyme Disease and the S.S. Elbrus: Collaboration Between the Nazis and Communists in Chemical and Biological Warfare.
What an absolute wackjob Rachel Verdon, its author, is. First, the theory at all. Second, even aside from the mediocre design, the lack of copyediting on its very first page convinced me that Elderberry Books is a vanity press (and so it is). Third, one of her first premises, that Lyme Disease was allegedly new in the '70s, is nothing anyone believes. Fourth, even I could see through some of her rhetorical devices (paraphrase: Such and such happened in November 1963 and so was clearly part of the JFK assassination), and anyone could see through her paranoia (robber barons and the military-industrial complex targeted Glastonbury, Connecticut, unsurprisingly her hometown; also unsurprisingly she has had Lyme Disease). According to her, many neurological illnesses, such as Lyme Arthritis and multiple sclerosis, are the result of Mengele's experiments and shipped into the United States at the following ports: Portland, OR; New Orleans; New York; and Boston.
Elderberry claims "Rachel Verdon has been much in demand on national airwaves to discuss her blockbuster new book: Lyme Disease and the S.S. Elbrus. Read it for yourself and see what's got the nation's media in a lather." I'll get right on that.
Two 3.8-mile city rides.
Also, I saw my first robin. Denver has robins throughout the winter, but I've read that our winter robins come south from Canada, while our summer robins winter in Mexico or wherever. This was the first robin I've seen in my own yard this year, and therefore I count today as the first day of spring.
I scrubbed the pantries and the walls and trim around them. The water that started out bright green with TSP substitue wound up gray with the grease of years. Also the paint on the trim of the sunroom doorway came off under the brush, because whatever genius painted the entire upstairs gunmetal gray did so straight over glossy.
Also I painted one side of the removable shelves in semi-gloss. Blake had had a hard day, frustrated by being alone in the living room with the music while RDC cruelly worked in the kitchen. Also lots of the tracks were recorded live, the cheers and whistles and applause in which always churn Blake's blood. So he didn't stop yelling until I had finished scrubbing and showering and took him on my shoulder while I painted in the back of the den. Of course he wanted to help me paint, which really he can't do, so he had to yell some more. I emptied a bookshelf and put his box on it, which helped somewhat.
Last night I put away the year's correspondence. In the next few years all my rubber-banded bundles will expand into a third box, but not if I keep losing letters. One entire bundle is missing. I confess that once I threw out some people's stuff, years ago when I lived in small apartments and wanted to postpone expanding into two boxes and only people whose stuff I did not cherish and would never reread. But I would never throw out NBM's correspondence, so where is it? I figure I accidentally bundled her with someone else, which leads me to the daunting task of going through each bundle looking for incongruous handwriting.
I think the first piece I have from her is a construction paper heart, a Valentine from when she baked several huge (dinner plate-sized) chocolate chip cookies for her son and his friends junior year, followed by the occasional thank you and 15 years of Christmas cards. Damn.
One part of the project went well. I finally made a shelf (all hail Liquid Nails) so I can put the boxes across the depth of my closet instead of along the width, and I weeded out a lot of old job-search stuff and organized my writing and layout samples. That sounds like more than it is. My samples are the two magazines in which I have articles and a dozen or so books from Dot Org in which my name appears (in the acknowledgments, for designing graphics and doing layout). It's not much but it's all I have. And now it's tidier.