In other news, David MItchell's Number9Dream is probably as good a follow-up to Swann's Way as any. At least based on the first 75 pages or so. Dreams, daydreams, and memory. I think my cat just barked in his sleep. What?

It's my first dip back into Mitchell's stuff after reading Cloud Atlas a while back (which remains, I believe, according to a non-statistical rifling-through of my mental inventory of memories, the book I've convinced more people to read than any other, fascinatingly, though I do believe Never Let Me Go runs a close second these days, natch). If nothing else, dang, it feel nice to read somewhat less than slowly. (But please don't pop-quiz me on the last fifty pages or so of Swann's. They needed to happen before my birthday, and the hours were running short and quick.)

Okay. Two things.

1. Proust. I'm still reading Proust. I'm about two-thirds of the way through Swann's Way. Any thoughts I might have had going into this that I might just plow my way all the way through Proust in one go have once and forever gone right out every nearest available window at once. I mean, ain't denyin', Proust is the man, no doubt. Also ain't denying the fact that I'm pushing myself in about fourteen directions at once right now, some to greater effect and/or accomplishment than others. Proust takes time, and I'm not affording him the time he deserves. Plus there's still that new string of Gaitskill and Ishiguro and Pynchon coming out this year and if I only read four books this year--which at this rate is entirely likely--those three have got to be the remainder. Hopefully more than that though, of course. Obvs. Maybe.


2. I think the Kindle was absolute trash and I think the Kindle 2 is absolute trash and I think Amazon is actually sort of a huge asshole for selling the Kindle right now, of all times. I mean, shit's getting stone-cold out there, people are losing their jobs, their jobs are losing their jobs, it's nasty like a roller derby in a Sinclarian meat-packing plant. And you're going to tell me that Amazon's coked-up marketing team has decided that what you really need to do is pay up $400 for the privilege of reading text off a machine that offers zero discernible advantages over paper? For shame, Amazon, for shame. It's enough to make me want to take $400 in cash out from a credit card and to turn it over to a bookstore in exchange for a large pile of completely random books. If there's anything my current design classes have taught me, it's that the physical world isn't going away, so you might as well make something out of it. Give me paper.