Part Explanation, Part Rant

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Part Explanation, Part Rant

31 Dec

Nicolas Poussin's oil "Dance to the Music of Time" inspired Powell's title

One thing that has really burned me up about this recent bad job is that I’m working ’round the clock and have so little time to read. On top of that since I’m surrounded by construction noise and just a weird environment that’s got and gives off ADHD, it’s oddly sort of psychically impossible to concentrate and finish a book.

Thus I haven’t been able to read much at all and I do resent this sacrifice.

Happily I’m back home and able to read. There are so many books I’d like to cram in to this month. I’ve got to choose wisely. From the Writers’ Almanac I learned of Anthony Powell‘s A Dance to the Music of Time, a series of 12 novels that Evelyn Waugh says is better than Proust‘s In Search of Lost Time (a.k.a À la recherche du temps perdu). So far it’s splendid. I expect it’ll take a year to read it all since I want to intersperse this read with other books I need to finish.

One of those books is Gifted, which called to me at the library. It’s a very well written young adult novel about an Indian-English girl who’s mathematically gifted and somewhat cursed by a father obsessed with frugality and achievement.