seriously, this book is taking forever

I don’t know. I was roaming the library, and there was a copy of Foucalt’s (Foucult? Foucault. That looks right. I can’t even spell the title. yeesh.) okay, Foucault’s Pendulum that hadn’t been there before. Why did I check it out? Maybe kind of related to me re-reading the Golden Compass trilogy - I wanted to see again why it had failed to click with me. Is it me or the books, and was it a matter of timing; have I changed sufficiently so that now is the time to read this, not then. Anyways, so I checked it out. I seriously do not remember a blessed thing about the book, except that I had kind of skimmed big chunks of it and then felt like maybe i didn’t get it because I hadn’t been paying attention.

Right. So. I am paying attention. Man, this is taking for-fricking-ever. My level of interest has gone up and down. Right now I’d say it is fairly down - plot ain’t moving, just stuck on working out the intricacies of the Templar plot and how the Rosicrucians fit in etc etc... it’s like reading a thesis. A whacked out thesis. A whacked out thesis about something that is uninteresting to me. Anyways, it makes me feel like “Oh, I don’t have the classical education to appreciate this” but then, I don’t know if I care. I’m trying to think - there have definitely been books that made me wish I’d had the classical education to truly appreciate them, but this isn’t one of them.
Well, and I’m only 600 pages into it anyways (sigh). Can’t give up now. My impulse is to skip the exposition and pick out the very small bits of plot - I could finish the thing in an hour or less. But you know, that’s what I did last time. I am attempting to be stubborn on this one.

Um, I don’t know why I’m following up The Famished Road with this thing. The Famished Road, my people, The Famished Road is one of the best books I have ever read and will ever read. It is amazing. Since I moved to Kenya, some books have really knocked the wind out of me - made me sit down and catch my breath because I can’t believe how good they are. Not just that I see things somewhat differently because of the knowledge or point of view of the book - it’s that now the world exists with these books in them, and it is a deeper, richer, better world than I thought. I would say Snow, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Smilla’s Sense of Snow, The Compass Rose, Gaudy Night, The Famished Road, and maybe The Interpreters have done that to me this past year or so. Yeah, some of them were re-readings, but they still did it to me.

I hear Ben Okri’s other books aren’t up to The Famished Road. So maybe that’s why I’m slogging through Foucault’s Pendulum now. Because it’s safe - a re-reading of something that wasn’t terrible the first time but was fairly empty of meaning for me. Want to come down gently off of The Famished Road.

Or maybe it’s just that the Nairobi library really does not have a stupendous collection of books. Well, I shouldn’t complain. It’s not so bad. And anyways, even though I don’t actually usually take principled positions, let alone act upon those principled positions - Not really – with libraries...I am sticking to public libraries. I am not turning to the ones where you have to pay to belong. Oh No, peoples. That just goes against the egalitarian beauty, against the whole point of libraries.

I know Tom Waits isn’t an author and his music isn’t a book, but sometimes I feel like it is anyways
Yep. His sentimental and his creepy are totally my sentimental and my creepy, although sometimes the mix between the two isn’t quite right for me. The album Alice is too extreme - the creepy is actually kind of scares me, and the sentimental is way too maudlin. But Blood Money? Beautiful. Perfection. The problems and the horrors of life looked at squarely without hope of some outside redemption, but including in that gaze the individual wonders and joys of life.
Anyways, no worries, I don’t subscribe to Tom Waits’ personal philosophy of life. I just really appreciate the opportunity to look at the world from his perspective.

small update - since I wrote the above, but before posting this, I have to admit that I started skimming. I don't know...they are figuring out the intricacies of The Plan and I just don't care. So much for stubbornness. Still, I got pretty darn far. For me.