Hey folks - check this out. It is the The Greatest Nature Essay Ever

by Brian Doyle, at the University of Portland.

And if you like it (I love it!), you may like Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveller... (I love it!)

(Debby)

Things One Shouldn’t Do

I had a hard day at work, so when I came home I decided to do some things I usually don’t do:

- eat a great deal of sausage (I usually don’t have meat in the house)
- take a bath (which involves turning on the hot water heater & using lots of water)
- making some damn fine hot chocolate with cayenne paper (which involves milk, and I was fighting a cold and drinking milk just makes colds worse for me)
- speed-flipping through The Corrections. Generally I would agree that it is just rude to sit down with a perfectly fine book and read a bit, start to get upset or bored so skip 100 pages and read a bit, flip through another 150 pages and read, etc. But sometimes that’s just what I feel like doing.

Anyways, the whole thing did me a lot of good. I never thought I would like The Corrections, and if I had read the entire book I don’t think I would have, but I liked the parts that I read, and it felt good to skip over parts that I pretty much knew I wasn’t going to like. So, sorry Jonathan Franzen, but you shouldn’t have been so rude to Oprah. Not because she is Oprah (I, too, have a desire deep down to be rude to her), but you know it’s never good to look like you aren’t interested in the popularization of literature. Plus, it’s just something on shouldn’t do.

(Debby)

If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino – This is the third time I’ve started this book, but I think this is the first time I’ve finished it. Well, I don’t know why I didn’t finish it before. It’s a lovely book. Really fun – a Reader who keeps starting books and then being thwarted from finishing them. Written by a genius Italian the year I was born, 1979.

The River Midnight – Lilian Nattel – Thanks Sasha and Amber for giving this one to me! A very sweet book about people living in a village in 1894 Poland. (I have to admit, I was a bit worried because Amber said she really loves historical fiction, but it’s okay folks – these are not ‘real-life’ characters, and thank goodness, because they really are great characters instead of being trapped by the confines of their life stories). And written by a Canadian! Well done, Canadian fiction. Well done, again.

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul – Douglas Adams – Also passed on by Sasha and Amber – yeah! This is an oldy but goody. Okay, it’s not The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe, but it’s still Douglas Adams and that’s a good thing.

Question: Is The English Patient historical fiction? I borrowed a copy from a friend’s library and was all excited to read it, having really enjoyed the one book by Michael Ondajti that I’d read (Anjil’s Ghost), but then it starts with a quote from some report or newspaper or something about the guy and what happened to him and his wife.

I ain’t reading no historical fiction, even if it is written by Michael Ondajti. But it would I guess be rather silly if it turned out that, in fact, the quote that is throwing me off is actually fiction