What I've just sent back to the library

We don't have a TV at the moment. Well, ok: I lie. We have four. One is a multisystem that I never realized until six weeks ago is only "multi-"system between Europe and Asia (PAL/SECAM)...ah, the shopping assumptions of the American-centric. One is an echt multisystem that has nevertheless always been more than a little picky about when it chooses to work. Two teeny little TVs came out of the lot of boxes that have been in storage since grad school. Of those, one was rapidly accidentally broken in the antenna region (one of those rare instances of my, rather than K's, clumsiness), leaving one that works...and, well, it's like about a 12" screen. And, since we don't have cable, all it does is pull in rather fuzzy versions of QVC and TeleMundo.

This is not at all a bad thing for me. If I never watch another hour of TV in my life, I will probably end up with a lifetime average of moderate viewing. I'm a total addict; I cannot indulge "just a little." TV viewing seems to satisfy too neatly my need for social interaction without requiring me to do things I don't like to do, such as dealing with actual people.

In the absence of TV, I've been devouring books. Messy 500-page novels are disappearing at the rate of two or three per week. It's probably not any healthier of a habit than my slack-jawed couch potato-dom, but it doesn't carry the same social opprobrium, and I don't have that same nauseated and self-reviling feeling at the end of a binge.

So what have I been reading? Why, funny you should ask.

Blue Latitudes, by Tony Horwitz
I didn't think I'd like a long tome that retraces Cook's voyages, because I'm not, strangely enough, really a travel book sort of person. Part of it is that I'm still mad at Paul Theroux for selling me on a Foreign Service that doesn't exist (and probably never did). I like Bryson, of course -- who doesn't? -- but, really, when you've read one...
So, this charming and thoroughly amiable summer read was a pleasant surprise, though your mileage may vary if you don't track developments in the South Pacific for a living.

Through the Children's Gate, by Adam Gopnik
Gopnik has, of late, replaced Ira Glass as my favorite infatuation, so I knew I'd be in for much fabulosity with this collection of essays. I still underestimated how much. This was one of those library books that was sitting around the apartment for ages, because I didn't want to finish the last ten pages and have to confront that fact that it was over. I know I'm going to end up buying this book just to loan it out to people. To be sure, to get the most out of it, you have to be someone who appreciates style as much as -- or possibly more than -- substance (but, then, would you be reading this blog if you weren't?).

Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessl
Meh. It's a 400-page chick-lit novel with a 100-page overly-didactic mystery tacked on the end of it like an afterthought. I'm incensed, utterly incensed, that the author is being compared to Johnathan Safran Foer merely because they're in the same cohort. He's a tremendously gifted writer whose age is irrelevant by page 20; she's a paint-by-numbers hack whose furtive borrowings still don't save her from preciousness, and the novelty of whose age (and looks) is the only thing driving the engine of publicity. I did, actually, feel a little nauseated and self-reviling at the end of this one.

The Book of Dave, by Will Self
Intriguing premise: Alienated taxi driver writes and buries a screed, which is used 500 years later as the basis of the religion for what remains of England. Engaging sci-fi-ish details, and piercing, if uneven, wit. Also a fiercely angry and bitter crescendo of an ending, so don't say I didn't warn you. I didn't regret reading it, but I can't enthusiastically recommend it, especially to Americans who might have a hard time with the phonetic Cockney (I've heard plenty, and still found it a tough slog in places): it simply felt like a premature birth of a novel, with many sections that hadn't quite matured, and themes and arcs which could have been great, but were really just bits of primordial goo stuck encouragingly into places that made you think they were striving to evolve in the right direction.

The Time-Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
Y'know, I'm the most squeamish and tentative about this opinion, because the book kind of walked the Harlequin line, and I know, just absolutely know, that the movie version that's in production (about 100 pages in, and before knowing it was already being done, I told K, "this would make an incredible movie!") is going to play like Ghost...but, the fact remains: I absolutely loved this book. It just sucked me in. Past a certain point, I had to stop reading it in public, because I was just unabashedly blubbering as I went through it. I don't know...I think that, as a person (still) struggling with geographical displacement, I was wildly sympathetic to the idea of chronological displacement. Partially, I just thought that (with a few exceedingly glaring exceptions), it was tremendously well-written. But: it does require indulgence. It would be very easy to pick the book apart, and there is much to ridicule here. I found that I didn't want to, though, and for a number of reasons that I'm sure I'm going to be puzzling over for the next several months, I just emotionally connected with the story: directly, raptly, and with joy.