As if I was ever here to begin with

Hey! Hi! Blog! Wow, neat. Yeah. Ok, so I'm back, after a slightly extended leave of technical absence. User error plus forgetting to google the internets equals me feeling really dumb.

But you say your forgive me? That's sweet of you.

So what have I been up to? Uh, not much. I'll tell you that I'm working my way through Richard Ford's The Sportswriter right now, and just in time, too, since word on the street has it Ford will be putting out the third and final Frank Bascombe book this fall. Maybe I'll catch up by then, or maybe not, I don't know and ain't gonna fuss over it.

You can probably insert the standard response here: I'm enjoying this book more than I expected I'd enjoy a book about a guy who writes about sports. I'm intrigued enough to want to know where the story's going, and am plenty addicted to the brilliant one-liners Ford scatters every couple pages. Bascombe is an interesting character, if middle aged white guy characters are your thing--or really if writing is your thing, because Bascombe's got things to say about that. Neither of which, actually, come to think of it, are really necessarily my thing, I think: I'm too young and too self-conscious to feel like I can go too far reading books about suburban middle aged white guys, but there's certainly room on the shelf for such books when they're about more than that, which this one is; and as for fictional writers talking about writing, well, eh, metafiction tomfoolery or striving to make a point about life, you know? I guess I'm cynical, more than I realize I am, and Ford sort of cuts through that.

And well I really need to get through this book so I can go on and read the sequel, Independence Day, just so I can get out of my system that subconscious belief that a Wil Smith summer blockbuster was based on a high-profile literary novel, the belief that goes on buggin' me every time I see the book at Half Price Books.

A few other scattered items of note:

• Jeff at Syntax of Things reminds us that Douglas Coupland has a new book out. Jeff also, on an unrelated matter, does a little investigating, uncovering truth that, I promise, will hurt your brain, a little, but in the good way.


• Beth at the Powell's blog breaks it down for you: Reading is totally sweet.


• Good feature at Pitchfork about all that computo-musix-figurin' technology on the internets right now. Not that I'd know anything about any of that.


• Dave Lucas reviews the new Seamus Heaney book and finds that it rocks the soggy peat right off your face.

Otherwise: I'm still planning on devoting a month this summer to the beast known as poetry. Of course, I'm also planning on devoting my summer to reading Dostoevsky's last five novels. Two goals enter, one goal leaves, is all I'm sayin'.