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Reading Slothfully
I was told in elementary school that I only could read at half the speed for success in college. Oh well, one benefit of slow reading is you get to live with the characters a longer period of time. I read in a vain attempt to better understand people. At my other homes, I'm known as a spouse, pop, guy in the choir, physical chemist, computer/web dilettante and child-care provider. In theory, I'm a published author, if you consider stuff like Quenching Cross Sections for Electronic Energy Transfer Reactions Between Metastable Argon Atoms and Noble Gases and Small Molecules to count as publications. I've strewn dozens of such fascinating things to the winds.
Currently reading
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas
The Spirit of the Border
Ramona the Brave (Ramona, #3)
The Underground Man (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)
Delilah of the Snows
Mrs. Miniver
Betsy-Tacy Treasury (P.S.)
A Christmas Carol
The Way Some People Die
Envy of Angels
Farewell, My Lovely
A classic pulp-fiction detective novel. The stuff of Guy Noire...or Bogie. I'm sure other reviewers can give you a better sense than I as to story line. This is the second of Raymond Chandler's novels about the private eye named Philip Marlowe. It seems that Marlowe is a wise-ass who is always sticking his nose where it doesn't belong and getting bonked for his troubles. Half the time, you can't figure out why he's putting himself in such obvious danger. In the end, it makes sense, sort of. I was amazed at how racist we all were in 1940. Perhaps I shouldn't be, given that I grew up in Baltimore before the civil rights movement caught fire, but I was. Racist stereotypes and characterizations just seemed natural in those times, I guess. Several of the epithets for black people were new to me.
I'm looking forward to getting The Big Sleep, the first of the Marlowe novels, and one of my favorite Humphrey Bogart movies.
