Reading

Remember a little while ago I listed Parable of the Sower as a current read? That was the wrong Octavia Butler book. It's been on a personal To Read list for ages, but for bookclub, I was supposed to be reading Kindred. We're doing a One-City-One Book kind of program, with titles on a time travel theme at "all" age levels. Kindred is suspenseful: a black woman keeps time-jumping to the early 1800s. She has no control over it (at least, not by page ninety-one), but sees that she's saving a particular white kid from harm each time.

Though I should focus on the assigned book, I snuck in a YA book with the irresistible title, Don't Pat the Wombat. It's about some middle-school aged kids in Australia, a good teacher or two, an evil teacher, their trip to a pioneer camp, and a wombat or two. It should be easy to sell to a kid who wants a funny book. I never know if it's important or not to tell kids that the clothes references will make no sense, because the book is more than 10 years old. At what point does, "those kids must be dorks if they dress like that" give way to "this happened a really long time ago, so their clothes sound funny, but that's cool 'cause it was way back in the day and all"?

And on my bedside table I have a New Yorker collection of profiles. One from c. 1978 on Johnny Carson rocks. I started really reading the magazine in high school, a year or two later, and this piece is in that high New Yorker style that I find so irresistible, yet obnoxious, all at once.

Capital City weather: 60s and clear most of the week
At the Byrd: On Sunday when we went to Mary Angela's for pizza: a special event with Tom Hanks for his new movie. I should have realized the people in line were dressed too well, looked too Republican, for it to be the French Film Festival.