Syllabus #155

 

This is a blog post.  I got nothin.  Last week sucked.  I read some books, though.

Analog Reading:

Finished Man's Search for Meaning.  I am glad to have read it, but, and I don't think Frankl would be offended to hear this, I didn't enjoy the process of reading it.  

Engulfed all of Sarah Manguso's Very Cold People on one very hot day.  It was short and excellent.  The narrative structure reminded me of Jenny Offill's Weather, in the way that it offered short snippets and vignettes that pieced together into a larger story but didn't flow together as a continuous thread.

Fountains of Silence by Ruta Sepetys. It was excellent if you're into historical fiction that straddles the line between the YA and adult genres.  It was romance and coming of age and political intrigue against the backdrop of Franco's Madrid in 1957.  Just the sort of stimulating but not overwhelming escape I needed this week.  I enjoyed reading something set in a place I have visited, and could recognize a lot of the landmarks, including an allusion to an un-named sherry bar that I recognized from the street name and the description of the interior (it was La Venencia, legendary spot for Spanish Republicans and Ernest Hemingway).

Just started Chuck Klosterman's The Nineties:  A book and I can tell I'm going to dig it.  But not too much and not too effusively, because that would be counter to the ethos of the time period.