One of the best-crafted books I have ever read. The extended metaphors Warren creates become vignettes of theme and character and Americana; his pacing is exquisite; overall finely honed prose.
It's one of those books whose craft I admire and enjoy but that don't resonate with me on a character or story level. From what I have not been able to forget about Bonfire of the Vanities, I can see its influence on Tom Wolfe, and the foreword claims that Primary Colors borrowed heavily from its style and pacing and voice as well as from its plot.
Another two-mile swim! It took me 75 minutes, which is a good time for me. Twenty-five minutes is a good time for 1000 meters to begin with, so 25 minutes for 3 kilometers (and another 200 meters) is a pace I'm pleased with. I should look up what is an athletic pace for an enthusiastic 36-year-old should be.
We spent about four hours at the club. I swam straightaway so I wouldn't make excuses for myself or have time to do only 2K or 1. Then I changed from my swim suit (high-neck, low-hipped, one-piece in which I pretend I am Natalie Coughlin) into my bathing suit (high but not as high, two-piece "tankini") and lay out. I listened to The Odyssey (I'm at my 13-year-old self's favorite spot: Odysseus's calling himself Noman and secreting himself in the fleecy underside of a sheep in the Cyclops's lair) and lay there pulling the neck of my suit down from mid-breastbone to sun a vee of cleavage while wearing a wide-brimmed hat and tucking a towel around my hips.
The world will have to deal with an imperfectly skin-cancered moi, though. Soon enough I moved under a tree. But I kept the hat on. And I finished All the King's Men.