So my friend Erin came over yesterday, and we read aloud the second half of Romeo and Juliet on my back porch where we could watch my two girls making a mud puddle in the backyard. Yes, "making" a mud puddle. It was a dry day, and they had the hose, a patch of dirt, and some sticks for stirring. Everyone was happy. It's such fun to get rolling on a length of Shakespeare's dialogue. At one point, we got a little punchy and would translate a few lines into modern street language right after reading it the proper way. We very easily could have lost it and made the whole thing silly and not been able to get it together, but, I'm pleased to say, we got our giggles under control. Thanks, Erin, it was fun!
I started a book that has been on my shelf for a year, Toast by Nigel Slater. I'm pretty sure I got it for Mother's Day last year. Slater is a British food writer and journalist. I'm about half way through. It reminds me of Ruth Reichl's Tender at the Bone. His love of food thrived in spite of having a mother who could barely boil water. Slater takes a food (marshmallows, radishes, toast) and writes a memory from a few paragraphs to a few pages long for each. It's going really quickly. Don, you should grab your copy and try it.
Looks like we got ahead of Melanie on Atonement without realizing it. Sorry, Mel! Feel free to go back to the other day's entry and add your thoughts. I'll keep checking. Right now, it's at 8 comments.
With apologies to my friend Debbie who so kindly surprised my with the Tolle book, I am setting it aside for now. It wasn't something I was getting back to regularly. I hope to dip into it in the future and read it in parts. Look at Toast, it took me a year to get it off my shelf! Reading just can't be rushed.
And, finally, I am closing in on the end of Plath's Collected Poems. She was so angry at Hughes and so lost. Her late poems feel so private. I can't read them without thinking of her two grown children who were very small when she wrote them.
Does this burst of reading mean that I will move more quickly through books this summer than I have this winter? I sure hope so! I might even be able to get in a quick trip to the library today for another book by Slater, Salt by Kurlansky, and something Don talked up to me the other day, A Box of Matches by N. Baker. It's a beautiful day to read under a tree.
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2 comments:
Thank *you* for suggesting we read in the first place and inviting me for sessions. I enjoyed it. My favorite part was the end where the Prince rolled up in his gold-plated limo with the big, spinning rims and kept it real, yo.
Speaking of which, I looked up the Hiphopopotomus and Rhymenoceros video. I about ruptured something. I was also drinking water at the time and ended up spraying it from my nose. You owe me a new keyboard.
Flight of the Conchords. YouTube. Very funny.
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