It’s been an exceptionally hot week, with temperatures in the 80s and 90s, and the humidity in the don’t-go-outside-if-you-can-help-it range. There’s hope that will break tonight, with some thunderstorms, but that remains to be seen or felt.
This morning, I took my car in for its yearly inspection. The mechanic estimated I drive only about 1000 miles a year. Which may be generous, actually, and only be so high thanks to the work trip I took to Maryland this past fall.
It was a fairly unexciting week otherwise. Lots of work, lots of sweaty commutes. On Friday, I finished reading The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell, which I thoroughly enjoyed. There are a lot of beautiful passages the book, but this, from fairly early on, might be my favorite:
Creation never ceased on the sixth evening, it occurs to the young man. Creation unfolds around us, despite us, and through us, at the speed of days and nights, and we like to call it “love.”
Reviewing an earlier post, I see it took me about three weeks to finish the novel, which is a little dispiriting. It’s long, but not ridiculously so, just shy of 500 pages in paperback. I’ve actually only read 20 books in total since the start of the year, 14 if you exclude comic book collections. By contrast, I’ve watched 43 movies. (And that doesn’t include things like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which I spent a good chunk of Friday afternoon re-watching.) I don’t regret the movies, but I do often wish I was a quicker reader, or that I gave more time to it. This evening, I started Barbara Cleverly’s The Last Kashmiri Rose, so we’ll see how that goes.
Of course, this evening I also watched another movie, the extremely odd, extremely violent Suspiria. It’s very strange, and often aggressively so, and while I can see a lot to admire about it, I’m not sure it’s my cup of tea. Scott Tobias of the AV Club wrote of the movie:
Atmosphere and style dominate his thinking to such a degree that Argento…can be forgiven for his inattention to niggling concerns like acting or storytelling.
And that’s the week it’s been. No writing group tomorrow, so maybe I’ll get some more reading done. Maybe I’ll get some writing done.