Hello, hello. What’s this? It’s been five days since my last blog post?

Well, you know. January. I think that says it all. Winter. Snow. It’s very cold and walking the dog takes three times the effort to trudge through the accumulation. And since it’s dark by the time I leave the office, that signals my brain to just take it easy, conserve energy. My body compels me (I am powerless) to crawl under a blanket on the sofa and keep warm and read. Anything else requires too much effort.

But as I resolved I would, I’m chugging through my New Yorker article backlog (including David Sedaris’s dental adventures in Europe, Jennifer Egan’s short-lived venture into archeology, and a short story by Rivka Galchen, “Appreciation,” that had the same mental acrobatics of Atmospheric Disturbances).

I’ve started the journey into Drood (ah, period dialogue), and I’m also reading a Christmas gift from my sister: Syndrome E by Franck Thilliez – blindness caused by viewing a film? Portions of or an homage to Un Chien Andalou, no less? (don’t watch the video unless you know what this film is known for.) And there’s another set of twins in this one, just on the heels of my finishing The Night Strangers, Chris Bohjalian, which was twin-centric, though I’m too early in this one to know if their twinness is significant.

I’m working on a post-holiday sale copy I picked up of Bill Clegg’s Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man (why do I love to read about other people’s chemical dependency struggles?). I’m finishing up Caitlin Moran’s How to Be a Woman (a post is a brewing on this itself) and also just started Colin Meloy’s Wildwood (children’s brain workings and talking animals!).

I’ve been keeping myself busy in these cozy alternate realities, if not my own.

 

But enough about me. Have you taken Vulture’s Quiz: Jay-Z Lyric or Line From The Great Gatsby?

Now, I’m not so familiar with Jay-Z lyrics, but I have written quite a few papers on The Great Gatsby in my day. I’m both shamed by how poorly I did on the quiz and charmed by the way the two worlds meld.

Now you take the quiz–do better than me!