Thoughts on Books and Things

With the weather warming, and the backyard a mess of half-finished projects, I'm reading less. Even tired, curled with J for quiet reading at night, I look at my phone far longer than I should. And pick up a book only for the last 10 minutes or so. Maybe it's because Less hasn't fully grabbed me. It's a good palate-cleanser after Little Fires and Stephen Florida, but sometimes I want to dive into something deeper and older.

This write-up of Bowles and Sheltering Sky by Theroux caught my eye this morning and I've been chewing on it. A sense of restlessness. Heading south. The desert. I'd love to re-read it. Or the great white whale itself. Or Anna K.

And then there's Bolano (who I'm craving, particularly Savage Detectives, after hearing Rachel K talk about it at her reading on Monday). And Flamethrowers. Maybe after the new one I'll dive back into Reno's world. Ideally on a bus to NYC to see art.

Now playing: The National. On repeat.

PS - More from LitHub. The Fear / Responsibility / Boredom of Motherhood. (Or single-fatherhood, I suppose). The little one here is littler, but some of the feelings are the same.

Today I tried to explain to my daughter what “dead time” is: “There are moments when we do absolutely nothing, and life is full of those, my love.” She replied, “Who killed it?” I was going to say that what matters is not who killed it but how it was killed—but by then she’d already switched on the TV.

The Mars Room

Took a trip to P&P on Monday to see Rachel K read from her new book. She was splendid. Funny, present. And rolled with some ridiculous audience questions.

The Times review is out. I can't wait to dive in:

Rachel Kushner’s second novel, “The Flamethrowers,” instantly established her as one of the most gifted writers of her generation — on the same tier as Jennifer Egan and the two Jonathans, Franzen and Lethem. As the title suggests, it was a flamboyant book, brilliant to a point just short of showoffiness, and it somehow managed to fuse together sex, motorcycle racing, Italian labor strife and the New York art world of the 1970s. It made everyone’s Top 10 list, was a finalist for a 2013 National Book Award (I was one of the judges) and quickly got snapped up by the movies.

God, I loved the Flamethrowers. As the woman who introduced Rachel explained, it's like you remember scenes from the book as though they actually happened. To you. It gets that far under your skin.