Then, I looked at the dishes piled beside the sink, managed a glance at the winking food dryer telling me it needs to be emptied, remembered the salad I bought that should be washed and prepared tonight to make tomorrow easier, and I turned right around and sat down in front of my computer.
Perhaps I should allow the dirty dishes to motivate me to blog more often.
Anyway, I'm taking this procrastination moment brought to you by my messy kitchen to tell you about my reading lately. I mean to do this every so often, because I'm almost always reading something good. This month I finally discovered the perfect irreverence and winding narrative of Salman Rushdie in Midnight's Children. I loved the way the story spiraled around itself and you knew you were on a staircase, but sometimes couldn't figure out whether you were going up or down. It's long, but worth every sentence.
This past Sunday, Kenny ran his first half-marathon, and like the supportive, wonderful wife I am, I went and sat in the car for most of it and read. I ended up finishing Dave Egger's The Wild Things later that evening after dinner. The Wild Things is a novel that sprung from the screenplay he wrote with Spike Jonze for Where the Wild Things Are. The screenplay, of course, was based on the brilliant children's book by Maurice Sendak. It's an imaginative, beautiful, heart-rending romp through childhood in the head of Max, an 8-year-old boy in his wolf suit. It's good. Read it.
And for the past few days, I'd been working my way through Titans. I love Kurt Vonnegut, without reservation. I love his black humor, satire, and wit. I enjoy sinking all the way into his outrageous worlds and the lives of his characters. My favorite Vonnegut of all I've read is Bluebeard followed closely by Breakfast of Champions. Everything is good, but those are particularly and perfectly weird.
And with The Sirens of Titan I've exhausted my collection of fiction at home, so I'll probably make a foray back into the depths of Young Adult literature we have at the library at school. Whenever I take my classes into the library each week to pick out their books, looking at the covers of all the books I read and folded into myself while I was in elementary and middle school makes me nostalgic, but in a beautiful opposite-of-sad way. Because I can reread them and relive and refold the stories back into myself in a different way, seeing new things, noticing new things. Sometimes I think good books are like good donuts. I've already tasted this kind, but that doesn't stop me from ordering them again and again.
Here, have a donut hole, courtesy of Vonnegut:
"It took us that long to realize that a purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved."~Malachi Constant / Unk / The Space Wanderer, Sirens of Titan
How do you avoid the mess in your kitchen? And what are you reading? Do tell.
