I've been taking my time and meandering through "Random Commentary" by Dorothy Whipple. It's just slices and bits from her journals and it's a funny sense of life you get from it. I just read this and had a good laugh:

"I was introduced to H.W. Nevinson and E.M. Forster.  J.B. Priestely arrived and swept me to a drink. I found myself next to him at dinner, with E.M. Forster on the other side. E.M. Forster spoke.  He looked rather crumpled in a tweed jacket in contrast to the immaculate dress clothes of everyone else. Is this undress on his behalf a protest against something?"

After reading "A Room with a View" at least one thousand times, I couldn't help but find this pretty funny. Mr. Emerson, it seems, came to dinner.

Things fall apart, the center cannot hold...so we are told.

And this held true to me and my two book reading list. Instead, I went on a huge Elizabeth Taylor splurge. Not That one but a literary one. Here's the one I'm talking about:

If you have an interest in self-deception (in others and yourself) and I must admit, I'm fascinated by it, then Taylor is for you. All her novels are "domestic" but the dramas...are the day-to-day dramas we all know and then some that are not. I just got done with "Angel" which may have had the ugliest heroine (heroine?) I have ever read in my life. And yet I couldn't stop. Her life played out true and hard and certain decisions she made as a child, she kept on doing for her whole life. And isn't that just like all of us? Some say Taylor is like Austen but I'm not for that. I love Austen but what Taylor is doing is something else entire. I think I find her closer to Barbara Pym (but then that's another Austen comparison) but anyway...Taylor's books are par excellence and she holds an unflinching stare where most of everyone cannot bear to look into. Especially many writers.

Besides that, things here are pretty fair and I'm gearing up for Christmas knitting extravaganza. I figure if I start now, I may get some gifts done in time. May...

But it must be noted that I completed my summer challenge of roasting a chicken. For some reason, roasting a chicken really intimidated me. Not sure. I just want to say though, for everyone, it's super easy. All the guts are gone by the time you get it. No worries there. So I roasted that chicken, made stock from it and then an amazing and homey soup by Tasha Tudor, artist and writer and chef using that stock. Surely now I can conquer the world.

NOTE: Twilight doesn't really have a plot. Unless plucking a daisy saying, "He loves me, he loves me not" is a plot. yeeeah. I'm not sure why I thought it did. I feel a little bit sorry for my past self. Silly past self!

Tess of the D'Urbervilles...so Tess' illegitimate baby has died and I haven't the heart to go on. I mean, it's summer and not a really horrid hot summer...soooo...

I guess I have to talk about Twilight as I keep pestering and jabbering to poor Jocey about it. There's a couple things about Twilight you should know. One, it's about a high school girl. So if you don't like high school kids, ignore this entry. Two, it's about a high school girl falling in love with a high school vampire boy. So if you like high school stories but not vampires, again retire. Steph was really the one that got me turned onto this book, otherwise I'd never have read it because I don't like high school stories. BUT I've always been curious about vampires, and I did my research when I was a teenager, because c'mon, Immortal. I have never wanted to be immortal (I think it would be excrutiatingly boring after a few lifetimes or so) but I've always been intrigued. Why the Yetti has never interested me as much, seeing as they're probably immortal, I'm not sure.

Anyways, I ate up Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. It's a plot driven book oh yes and plot driven books Cannot be resisted. At all. I read it one night for about seven hours (with Jeff seated on the opposite sofa reading His vampire and zombie book. Now that's true love) and nearly passed out from my blood sugar levels dropping really low at about the eighth hour chiming (I'm not diabetic or anything but I have a massively sensitive system). Ahhhhh, but sugar level dropping while reading a vampire book is ironic.

I have huge arguments with the character development (as there being none) but you have to give it to Meyer. She's in the right genre. It's young adult- where character development for the intended audience is a bit in the wings. So I'm chewing through this book, wanting to know more about the protagonist, Bella and the boy, Edward and all I'm gettig is that Bella finds him so hot, she's willing to die to be near him. Oh yeah and he's beautiful and fights his monster I-suck-your-blood side. Over and over and over. And yet, and Yet, I'm all agog to read to the next book. I mean, I have to. Because Hello! The plot! Which no, I haven't elaborated but need I? Two teenagers in love, one is vampire, you guess.

All I'm saying if you're one for plot and vampires seem rather quirky, give this series go. I doubt Reading Rainbow would endorse it but I believe I would. It's a great summer read. But you don't have to take my word for it.

When I was a kid, I would bike the blocks over to the library (making sure the creepy old man of the neighborhood wasn't following) and take my pick. I was a cautious reader, relying heavily on old favorites. I read a lot of outdated books- those books written before WWII, that the library was stocked with. Everyone always seemed happy in those, ready for adventure and ready for escapades. I still have a few of these old books in my own collection, picked up from library sales.

I find their allure is rather gone and their happy worlds a trifle tiring. I finally read "The Witch of Blackbird Pond" last year and loved it. I couldn't read it as a kid- I was too shaken by the deep depression that hung over the family in the book. Not surprising I couldn't read it then, after all, I was an undiagnosed child with deep depression myself. Sometimes things hit too close to home. And though I was an avid book reader and pedaled to the library more times than I could count, I never considered a Summer Reading List. No, summer was the time when you could read whatever you wanted and not be hampered by things like Ten Boom's "The Hiding Place" or Richardson's nauseating "The Peace Child." No more dull christian biographies or equally dull fiction. I read books by George MacDonald, allured by the idea of fish leading someone to a fairy woman and hardly understanding what Unitarian (as MacDonald was) could be. They were happy days when I poured over Beatrix Potter (even at twelve, I would sneak into the kid section and read them one by one), MacDonald, Agatha Christie and biographies on Mary, Queen of Scots, Katharine Hepburn (who knows) and Rose Wilder of Laura Ingalls Wilder fame. All this to say: this is the first summer I have created a list for myself of summer reads. There are only two entries but I think that's enough.

1. Jane Eyre: for month's now, St. John Rivers has been an illuminating figure in my life. He deeply believed that God would have him go be a missionary and yet, this belief only made him rigid and unhappy and in essence, a dangerous person. Stepping away from the branch of christianity I was born into, I can't help but seeing this in every person I encountered in that religion, including myself. Rivers allowed himself to be a person only in a very particular way (using God as the justification) and because of that decision, he refused to realize his self. So anyway, it's time to reread Jane Eyre and read over Rivers again and since I have a Norton Critical Edition of Jane Eyre, I'm ready to go!

2. Tess of the d'Ubervilles: I've held out on Hardy for a long time. Reading archaic dialect is not my idea of a pleasure reading but hells. I recently read a short story about a girl reading Tess and Wuthering Heights for Her summer reading and lets just say I've been inspired. Besides, if I read Tess, I know I'll understand the aforementioned short story in a much deeper way. And that's like swinging candy in front of a candy addict. So does anyone out there have a Summer Reading List too? Show and tell!

It occured to me as I sat staring to space here, at my writing desk, how imaginative shopping can be. All I envisioned was myself at Trader Joe's selecting a chunk of Gruyere cheese out of their basket of cheeses. I read somewhere that Gruyere cheese is delightful in a grilled sandwich so of course, I have to try it out. Better yet, I'll go to the local Pennsylvania-Dutch restaurant that has a tiny local organic market on the side and buy some Gruyere from the cheese seller tomorrow. Perfect! The pleasure of imagining myself picking out cheese and purchasing it, is even greater then what I imagine the finished sandwich will taste like. Though I'm not knocking that! I wonder if the cheese'll be from Wisconsin or Vermont because that's where the seller's main suppliers are. There might be a cheese wheel or two out, imprinted with vines, flowers and the maker's name. Cheese wheels are the medieval monks' invention and whenever I see a golden wheel, I get an itch ot try and make cheese myself in some dark and cool springhouse.

No cows. Oh well. So I'll buy the cheese made by someone else's hands and why not pick up some fresh butter as well? Add local eggs too and some heavy cream- for an orgy of soup making. Two soups from this fine farmgirl.

The cheeseand now, the bread. Will I make the bread to toast or will I just use store bought? Store bought today. Still haven't picked up a baking stone. I wonder what it'll be like tomorrow when Jeff and I shop for a few of these local items? Will I just be stressed, hot from the humid heat and intent on moving onto the next errand? Or will I carefully pick up my small square of Gruyere and think how someday I may make a monkish cheese in a big hoop?

There's a 70% chance of rushing so I'm on the tinier 30% side, rooting for it. Shop imagninatively! Be interactive! Not a jerking puppet- a rushing maniac! It's very hard to imagine a life where I am creatively involved in everything I do. I come form a suriving people, where much to everything is done without pleasure but simply done because one must. Well, I must shop but the pleasure of it sprang to mind. To me! Who hates to shop! I was only trying to imagine myself into a story I'm working on, not finding a way to spontaneously enjoy obligations. And yet! I got a peek!

There is a pleasure in choosing. Sometimes it seems to me as I labor over a budget and pay off debts and try to create interesting and yummy food within the budget, that I have no choices and when I do, only hard and stressful ones. Real choices come only when you can have the freedom to fling money around at things. But this is not so.

Some of the greatest pleasure is in imagining out bits of my life and then in turn, those imaginings become a defense. A defense that is so calm that it isn't at all defensive. The habits of my lifetime and my ancestors float down the stream and then out of sight. In the meanwhile, I'll eat my bread...toasted with cheese.