I just knew they didn't work!

Ha!

The best novels you've never read

The Best Novels You’ve Never Read – 61 critics reveal their favorite underrated book of the past decade.

So far I've tried two of their picks - Seminary Boy and The Last Novel. Both excellent.

And because of the wonderful library system in Pennsylvania, all I have to do is log on to my local library's website and request the book I want. I get an email when it has been delivered to the library. This is like a dream come true - better than amazon.com, because the books are all free!

I will be slowly working my way through the list at that website in months to come.

Hap Birth E

Because my birthday is so close to Christmas, birthday celebrations often take place later, at a more convenient time. This is nice, because I never know when the party will be. Now, birthday celebrations at work are not exactly huge parties, but they do make a nice break in the routine. My colleagues brought cake, bagels, doughnuts, etc. to work today for my birthday, and I do appreciate it. There was even cake left over to bring home - and it arrived in pretty good shape, only a little bit shifted from its commute via Septa regional rail.

Another sockdolager

A couple years ago I discovered a great new way to read books - I get a little passage every day, in my email. I just read that little bit and wait till the next day for the next passage. Or, if I can't wait, I can also request the next installment immediately, and in this way read as much as I want. It sounds a bit awkward, but it turned out to be an ideal way for me to read lots of things. This system seems excellent for an author such as Dickens, whose works were originally published in installments. I've read several books this way, and most recently completed Huckleberry Finn.

Perhaps it is the effect of reading little bits and paying more attention to them because they are isolated, or perhaps it is just because I am so much older than the last time I read the book, but what really struck me this time is the nature description. Huck has a fine sense of natural beauty.

Example one

It would get so dark that it looked all blue-black outside, and lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spider-webby; and here would come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale underside of the leaves; and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set the branches to tossing their arms as if they was just wild; and next, when it was just about the bluest and blackest--FST! it was as bright as glory, and you'd have a little glimpse of tree-tops a-plunging about away off yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see before; dark as sin again in a second, and now you'd hear the thunder let go with an awful crash, and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling, down the sky towards the under side of the world, like rolling empty barrels down stairs--where it's long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you know.

"Jim, this is nice," I says. "I wouldn't want to be nowhere else but here. Pass me along another hunk of fish and some hot corn-bread."

Example two - description of daybreak on the Mississippi

The first thing to see, looking away over the water, was a kind of dull line--that was the woods on t'other side; you couldn't make nothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more paleness spreading around; then the river softened up away off, and warn't black any more, but gray; you could see little dark spots drifting along ever so far away--trading scows, and such things; and long black streaks --rafts; sometimes you could hear a sweep screaking; or jumbled up voices, it was so still, and sounds come so far; and by and by you could see a streak on the water which you know by the look of the streak that there's a snag there in a swift current which breaks on it and makes that streak look that way; and you see the mist curl up off of the water, and the east reddens up, and the river, and you make out a log-cabin in the edge of the woods, away on the bank on t'other side of the river, being a woodyard, likely, and piled by them cheats so you can throw a dog through it anywheres; then the nice breeze springs up, and comes fanning you from over there, so cool and fresh and sweet to smell on account of the woods and the flowers; but sometimes not that way, because they've left dead fish laying around, gars and such, and they do get pretty rank; and next you've got the full day, and everything smiling in the sun, and the song-birds just going it!

A little smoke couldn't be noticed now, so we would take some fish off of the lines and cook up a hot breakfast. And afterwards we would watch the lonesomeness of the river, and kind of lazy along, and by and by lazy off to sleep. Wake up by and by, and look to see what done it, and maybe see a steamboat coughing along up-stream, so far off towards the other side you couldn't tell nothing about her only whether she was a stern-wheel or side-wheel; then for about an hour there wouldn't be nothing to hear nor nothing to see--just solid lonesomeness. Next you'd see a raft sliding by, away off yonder, and maybe a galoot on it chopping, because they're most always doing it on a raft; you'd see the axe flash and come down --you don't hear nothing; you see that axe go up again, and by the time it's above the man's head then you hear the K'CHUNK!--it had took all that time to come over the water. So we would put in the day, lazying around, listening to the stillness.

Example three - storm on the Mississippi
My souls, how the wind did scream along! And every second or two there'd come a glare that lit up the white-caps for a half a mile around, and you'd see the islands looking dusty through the rain, and the trees thrashing around in the wind; then comes a H-WHACK!--bum! bum! bumble-umble-um-bum-bum-bum-bum--and the thunder would go rumbling and grumbling away, and quit--and then RIP comes another flash and another sockdolager. The waves most washed me off the raft sometimes, but I hadn't any clothes on, and didn't mind. We didn't have no trouble about snags; the lightning was glaring and flittering around so constant that we could see them plenty soon enough to throw her head this way or that and miss them.

If you would like to read books in installments via email (many are free), go to the Daily Lit website. http://www.dailylit.com/

Currently I'm reading Swann's Way via Daily Lit, and enjoying it immensely. I've actually read all the books that comprise Remembrance of Time Past, but that was about thirty years ago, and I'm not sure I would have the ambition to tackle them again in hard copy. My Trollope reading project is enough paper for me right now. But somehow the Daily Lit system transforms the reading of long works into something strange and new and very, very enjoyable.

I'm wearing Frozen Pond today.

From Demeter Fragrance, who describe the scent this way: "Dazzling and transparent, Frozen Pond is a lovely year round scent evoking the quiet chill of a Winter morning just before dawn."

I've tried several of their fragrances, including their signature scent, Dirt, which is also excellent.

Smitty's

This photo of a winning local women's bowling team sponsored by Smitty's Tavern was taken for a local newspaper. Neil's grandmother, Gertrude Strang, is on the far left in the back row. It's quite possible that some of the other lovely ladies in the photo are grandmothers of my high school classmates - but there are no names on the back, so I don't know who they are. At any rate, they look happy!

I'm the most recent in a long line of not very good impersonators of myself.

For the new year, thoughts from a neurobiologist:

I read about neural stem cells and think about how different I am from even a few years ago, and I get the weird feeling that I was right when I was little, that I'm the most recent in a long line of not very good impersonators of myself. Science (science!) confirms that parts of me are here now that weren't there even a little while ago (and that parts of me that were there before are gone forever). In other words: one night someone else went to sleep and woke up as me. I do a lot of the same things as him but I know that I'm not the one who came up with them. I like a lot of the same things as him but I know I didn't discover them. Otherwise I act in ways that he wouldn't have thought of and found new stuff to like that he wouldn't have recognized. I've taken that poor bastard's place and he barely even realized it was happening. It's awesome.

The new year is a good time to look back on one's past and reflect on all the different kinds of persons one has been - and I suspect I'm not alone in thinking that I have been very, very different kinds of me at different times in my life.

So, looking ahead to 2011 - who will I be this year? I've made four resolutions for the new year, which I am not going to reveal unless I actually keep them. But if I do keep them, I will be a different person on January 1, 2012. And if I don't keep them, I will still be a different person then.