Mundane

Nothing much doing here, yet I still have no free time. We've been so busy that our Netflix, delivered to our last address, are collecting dust and we still haven't seen Sin City or Hitchikers, despite our best efforts. We've penciled in a movie the past few Fridays, but always seem to get a last minute Shabbat dinner invitation. It's difficult to pass up a yummy dinner with friends for a movie that we can catch another time, even if we never do. Our birth class, of which we've attended two of seven, is Sunday late afternoon, and my jazz lessons are Sunday morning, which further slices our weekend. Also, we just had friends in town and helped our friends out at a garage sale Saturday. I should go check how much money we made.

My reading has really slowed down. We're still unpacking (or going to dance class or meeting a doula or...) at night and I'm up late, so I tend to nap on the el instead of reading. I did finish The Time Traveler's Wife and yet another Murakami novel, A Wild Sheep Chase, and am working on Bellow's The Victim, one of his few novels I haven't read. So far so good. The Murakami was a bit inscrutable and, well, Murakami-esque. Enjoyable, but far from his best. His worldview has definitely changed since his earlier novels, he's considerably more optimistic, less isolated.

The Time Traveler's Wife was essentially enjoyable. A good read, nice Chicago tidbits, and the author handled the whole time travel concept amazingly well. Was it the best book I've read this year, as some friends have claimed? Far from it. I like a good love story but it did lack depth. Perhaps it's because I'm unfamiliar with reading novels where two people actually love each other and have a healthy relationship -- Tolstoy's happy families and all that -- even if there is a wrench thrown in it. (Happy marriages are the stuff of comedy. Although the novel was comedic in moments, I think it was going for something a bit more powerful.) It wasn't even one of the best love stories of the past few years. For that, see David Grossman's Someone to Run With; even if the protagonists are teenagers, the poignancy of their yearnings and relationship are much more moving and honest than in The Time Traveler's Wife. Even Byatt's layered Possession, from which Niffenegger quotes, was a better love story and a much richer novel. Yes, I would recommend it, but not as enthusiastically as it was recommended to me.

I still haven't been able to track down copies of the most recent novels by the guests of honor at Wiscon and it's getting a bit late to put them in an Amazon order. I'm going to start calling around.