Here’s what I have finished in the past week:
Ignorance by: Milan Kundera. 
Werewolves in their Youth by: Michael Chabon. 
Here is New York by: E.B. White. 
Slowness by: Milan Kundera. 
No One Belongs Here More Than You by: Miranda July. 
The Last Window-Giraffe by: Peter Zilahy. 
Today I am starting:
Riding Toward Everywhere by: William T. Vollmann. 
The Invention of Everything Else by: Samantha Hunt. 
Notes from Underground by: Fyodor Dostoevsky. 
I have to say that I hope Libraries in New York are different. I’m trying to chalk all this up as a life lesson in how to deal with extremely difficult and unpleasant people… because that’s something that one cannot escape in life. Only 30 more days of this. That moment that we leave the Athens county line in that U-Haul will be one of the most best and exciting moments of all time. Can you imagine me staying in this library in this town? I might as well go outside, dig a hole, and sit down in it. That would be the equivalent to what I’m doing right now all day every day. Repeat after me: Learning experience, learning experience, learning experience, learning experience… one more month, one more month, one more month. I’m going to try not to deconstruct. I’m going here
… to my happy place.
Now on to the actual bookiness of this blog. The Last-Window Giraffe has me now obsessed with Belgrade…pictured above. Eastern European…and pretty, no?
Anyway, Here is a passage! from this a-z picture book…
“In the beginning was chaos, but we decoded it and understood everything, because we could read between the lines. Now we have to decode what we meant by ‘everything’ that not so long ago seemed so clear-cut. In the Sixties Kadar emerged from the quelled revolutionary bubbling, and in the early Seventies our parents began to breed at an unprecedented rate. How can I explain to a teenager now that the better future we once sang about is here today, because the better future always comes. How can I explain that he will never understand? It’s as though I were looking at my own parents, who believed that it would last for ever. Dear Mum and Dad, this is the country you wanted to emigrate to! You don’t even need to learn another language! How can I explain that the change of regime in 1989-90 was the school-leaving exam, and that the old order passed away at the party afterwards. Our teenage rebellion swept Communism away, the new soft democracy crowded out the old soft dictatorship. The era that had treated us like children and held us back from growing up suddenly collapsed and vanished into thin air. And I stopped growing. My generation had supposed things would carry on as before, which they didn’t, but we carried on pretending to be the way they had always wanted us to be. A conspiratorial consensus of our parents over our heads, a mute orgasm with revolutionary momentum. Because of what happened in ‘56, Hungary didn’t have a ‘56 in ‘89. Our parents had children instead, and brought them up to stay alive. And now we are going to live.”
I also love this really long thing about freedom:
“Freedom is everyone’s concern. It is not an empty word. It comes and goes freely, is free as a bird, its head reels from the taste of freedom. Freedom is a state of being. Freedom is a feeling, a greeting, a hill in Buda, a newspaper. Freedom is freedom of thought, universal freedom, freedom of the press, freedom of the seas, a car -oh no, sorry. Pobeda’s a victory. Freedom is a radio station. Free days, running free in the open air, let you thoughts run free! Free association, free thinking, free verse, free-living, freewheeling, freeloading, free entry. Freedom in Russian, freedom in sign language, physical freedom, freelancing, freestyle wrestling of swimming. Freedom is a free kick, a free ticket, a free transfer, free love, kisses are free. Freedom is a free lunch, free time, a free house, let’s go to Freeport. Freedom is a free phone, free spaces, free fall. The harbinger of freedom, the taste of freedom, the sweet bird of freedom. Freedom becomes her, his freedom is cramped, the limits of freedom, he hasn’t got a free moment. Is this table free? Is this Freedom Square yet? One can be given a free hand, savour a whiff of freedom, not know what to do with one’s freedom, devote one’s free time to something, want to be free of someone. Freedom can be discarded, sold, exchanged, devolved, violated, curtailed, blighted, trampled underfoot, and a little bit of freedom wouldn’t hurt. Freedom is the Freedom Stature on Budapest’s Gellert Hill, the land of the free, loss of freedom. Freedom is inalienable and belongs to us all, one freedom, two freedoms, people’s freedoms. It is free agents, free trade, free enterprise, breaking free, feeling free, being free to roam. Freedom is freeing a city, freeing one’s slaves, freeing oneself of one’s calories. How free is freedom? Are we free to touch it? To smother it? To stroke it? To eat it? To have a small glassful? Freedom is there on the label: tax-free, fat-free, duty-free, sugar-free, alcohol-free, carefree. Free your mind! Freedom is a freebie for short, when the road is free and you’re free to do it, time for a free-for-all, leave your body free, defend yourself freely, free yourself of your clothes, of your emotions, give them free rein, my soul soars free of its prison walls, come, freedom, bear me away on your wings! Freedom is a free bed, a free university, freemasonry. The bloody banners of freedom. Hang free, grow freely, be freestanding, have a free choice, feel free to walk around. What is freedom? Am I free to ask? Free sex, free range, thrust freedom upon or deny it someone, free oneself from an embrace, be freed of a sweet burden, be free to decide. Are you free for a dance, for a moment, for a bit of free enterprise? Personal freedom, free will. Freedom is freebooting, freedom fights. One can make free, be freespoken, lose one’s freedom. Give me liberty, and deliver me from the devil…”
So there it is, I love the freedom statue on Gellert Hill.
Enough for today. More on another day. Much love.
This is a painting by Piet Mondrian. I am trying to learn more about art and what I like and dislike. This, I like. I don’t really have a reason for what I like, it is more of a visceral reaction to what I see. It’s like with literature… I don’t really need to know the historical details, the biographical details…but it makes it more interesting. Right now it is just difficult to put names to images and to keep straight time periods and things that came out of different time periods. Mondrian is Dutch. Which is good because the only other Dutch artist I know about it Durer… and Durer is kind of boring (in a really fantastic, important kind of way mind you). Mondrain developed into the art category called Neo-Plasticism. This is like lines and grids and primary colors. The kind of art where a normal person would ask why it is considered art. I respond positively to lines, grids and simplicity in art. I don’t really want to see depictions of suffering, realism, religious icons. For instance, in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest there was a painting of a saint post-flaying. Anyway, I will one day have a better understanding of why I like what I like… and I’ll include Mondrian as an example of this…
Cool.
This is the author Milan Kundera, whom I love. I’m thinking about doing a Author Spotlight on him, but first I have to read everything… This would prove easier if I could remember what I have read of his 
I am happy to report that I finished two books yesterday in a fury of uninterrupted reading. One was Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys. I, of course, am a die hard fan of one Michael Chabon. I think that he has Dave Egger’s wit without Dave Egger’s brutal pessimism. I think he creates characters that are real, that you can see, that you feel you know and sometimes I think that as a reader you can forget how important that is. Chabon creates worlds where people are forgiven and most importantly–you can tell he writes for the joy of the reader and not for the critics, the intellectuals, or even for his own characters. I remember loving the idea that one can be someone’s perfect reader. I think that I, along with thousands of others most definitely, have found myself being Chabon’s perfect reader. It helps that he is contemporary and alive (I love writers that are alive!!) and current and that they make movies out of his books (look for another one soon, I forget which) and it helps that there are things that are left to read. I think that my Murakami obsession wanes a lot when there is nothing left to read… Anyway, I really loved this book simply because it was so honest. I also love this shot from The Simpsons, and if you’ve read Wonder Boys and know about the Wordfest and the debacle surrounding the gathering of academians, this episode of The Simpsons would be something to watch and enjoy.
and I would agree, but remember when they are flying off to Satan’s themepark at the end of the novel and they are all morphing into their true forms. The cat turns out to be a professional and talented jester. So, the clown was trapped in the form of a cat. A black cat. It’s justified that he caused the most problems throughout the novel.
The tone of the novel somehow makes sense now right. He’s so… Russian… sigh.
I haven’t updated in a while because of various things going on and the lack of reading (however, some would say that there hasn’t been a lack of reading). If I’m not reading 8 books at one time, I consider that a lack of reading. However, I am reading Master and Margarita….which is pretty funny and very Russian (thanks: Becky!) I am reading The Captive and the Fugitive… the fifth in the Proust series In Search of Lost Time. I love it very much and don’t know what I’m going to do when I’m done with Proust besides pick up back at number 1 and read it over again. I am also still reading Auto da Fe, but promise to finish it soon.