What’s On Your Plate?
I’m considering adding books in Spanish (and maybe even French) to my lists. It’s not so much that I’m reading a lot more Spanish fiction but rather that my slow, fumbling march through fiction in a language other than English is absorbing more and more of my time. If it takes me ten times as long to read Bolaño or Cervantes might suggest that I will be reading far fewer books each month. Then again, is that a problem?
Way way back in the past history of this world (often referred to as The Sixties) I read Tarzan en la Selva. As a Senior in High School my family hosted a student from Peru and I spent much of the day immersed in Spanish. But when I matriculated on to the university I was coerced into thinking that a knowledge of Spanish was insufficient for advanced study in literature so I switched to French. This had three results: first, I learned enough French to pass my language exams for graduate school; second, my mind replaced engrammatic knowledge of Spanish words and phrases with the French equivalents, and finally, I twisted my little gray cells around the two languages such that I was never confident speaking either.
It Was an Exhausting Year
It’s the end of the year and I have gathered together a reading pool that addresses some of the titles I have recently not read with some of the titles that I have perpetually avoided reading. Again, my quest is to remove a few of those big fat ones that haunt me month after month, year after year, and also to have a smattering of shorter titles to create a little breathing space.
I also am quite involved in watching many excellent and often challenging films on the Criterion Channel as well as brushing up on my Spanish with the help of Anna on Butterfly Spanish (YouTube). I’m busy in my old age.
A God In Southern Florida
Here are two visuals representing Der Drumpt. The first is proof of the resurrection:
