Monday, July 27, 2009

MID-SUMMER MADNESS

oh you don't know the effects of the hot mid-summer sun on a late July day where I was sitting out on a lounge reading THE ANGEL'S GAME by Zafon while the brightness of that afternoon rendered me thirsty and realizing I had two bottles of Astica sauvignon blanc iced in the fridge and where I found my prized silver wine goblet and poured from the cold bottle of life sustaining refreshments preceded to finish this mysterious and oddly enjoyable novel with great comfort not keeping an eye on how much wine was being consumed but occasionally turning up the iPod connected to the boombox and fixating on one particular favourite song that being THE TALKING HEADS Life During Wartime which I was playing for I was told at regular higher volume intensities and repeated playing for many many times for which I do apologize to my neighbours but also must confess that this song was followed by Premature by Toots and the Maytals with Bonnie Raitt in likewise fashion while I gyrated in exaggerated dance steps only to be mildly confronted by my wife who suggested I ease up for fear of becoming a spectacle to all the neighbourhood to whom I must say that I am sorry if I scared your pets or caused you stress and then my wife who is the voice of reason after all suggested I start the BBQ of which I attacked with a vengeance only to find the knobs misbehaving in a deplorable fashion jumping up at me in order to foul my very efforts to light the damn thing to which I released a stream of profanities which elicited an intervention from my smiling wife who tamed the little buggers with a delicate dexterity not uncommon from her and this resulted in a satisfying meal of steaks and salad chased by some chardonnay wherein I became extremely sleepy and crashed in the chair to fall into a deep sleep troubled by a disturbing dream of angry seas near dark foreboding ragged shores and sharp-toothed fish and serpents and someone far off saying Bernie Bernie only to find out that it was my wife waking me saying to me that I was snoring to beat the band and I realized that I love this woman but came out of this deep sleep with a profound sadness for which I was not prepared and a depth of emotion which was intense and building for I realized too that I missed my son who is heading for NY City to start a new life and also realized I missed my daughter and her warm smile and started to feel a loneliness that at times is all too familiar and my keen wife I think read this in my eyes and swept into motion getting me to clean up the yard and cover the BBQ for it was time to go inside where she brewed my organic coffee and poured it into my favourite blue cup and we sat in front of the TV the great nullifyer where we entered into small talk involving facts and rumors where after awhile we broke out in giggles and huge laughs and I found the clouds in my mind lifting and the sweet birds chirping and we finished off the leftover dip and the day ended.

But Natalie? Natalie? Are you there? Tell me. What's in this Argentina wine? Has it ever been analysed? Or was it just a midsummer day's dream? Or just mid-summer madness?

I've just only read what my wife wrote here and I'm not sure if I said I would think about blogging or will resume it in October or whatever. But I do have a change coming, and that will be around the end of the summer. I'm giving away books...sorta. More about that later.

THE ANGEL'S GAME was a good summer read albeit disturbing and graphic at times. I'll discuss it at a later date.

Here's to summer.

Monday, July 6, 2009

LIFE OF Pi, Bye, Bye

Hi. This is Bernie's wife, he's involved in a few things this summer which takes him away from his blogging duty. He promised me he would finish the BBQ pit and patio extension before the end of the summer---he's been at it since May. He's also involved in some environmental things....he's busy. He also wonders whether the task of blogging is worth the outcome; to what point does one blog?(he said that). He also said that in late September he will consider whether to proceed or not.

He gave me a few notes on the LIFE OF Pi that he wants me to relate. Here the are. First, Yann Martel is a very good writer who has the capacity to grab his readers attention and sustain their interest in the novel. (I can't read Bernie's writing) I can't make out some of this, so I'll shorten it. Much of the first of the novel is rambling, useless information that has nothing to do with the themes presented. The story of the boy and the tiger in the boat was excellent although it rarely gets goes beyond the drive to survive---which is a pity. The Island scene near the end of the novel became ridiculous and halted any potential in this novel from being truly great. The hospital scene at the end was a bore and the whole novel became questionable.

Bernie says here that he believes that this novel truly had the potential of being absolutely great, but failed on many levels. Bernie believes that a really good ending would have been for the boy to offer himself up to the tiger as food in order to reestablish nature's dominant position. He also says to get rid of the rest(not sure what that means). He says that the symbolic meanings to such an act would keep college professors busy for years---I think he means the tiger eating the boy.

He also wants me to list the two books he bought and will read over the summer. They are: THE ANGEL'S GAME by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, and THE STRAIN by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan---this is a vampire book, suppose to be very good.

ciao