What's French for "Review!"? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?

M'friend Patrick reviews Desdaemona here, and likes it. But he does it all in French. (Also it's Facebook, so I don't know if those of you without accounts can get there.)

One book at a time

Heh. I may be making it harder than it ought to be, but this is not going to be easy.

So far today, I have put three books into the discard box. Three! It's taken ... rather longer than it ought. As my mother observed to my affianced, I do find decisions difficult.

The first was a selected edition of Kipling's verse, edited by T S Eliot. I've probably owned it for thirty years, and never opened it. I have a complete Kipling, which was a gift from my mother and I shall certainly be holding on to that; so I don't need this. But! Essay by T S Eliot! I had to stop and check that it was available online, before the book could go in the box.

Then there was a collection of essays by G K Chesterton. Which again, owned for ever, never read. If I haven't read it in the last thirty years, what are the odds that I shall read it in the next thirty? Diminishing. That one's actually harder to let go of, just because; one of the reasons to own books is because one has not read them. Like you keep your larder stocked with dry food, in case of need. If I ever need essays by Chesterton, though, I'm sure that I can find them t'other side of the pond.

And then there's a novel, "And No Birds Sing", by SMC. I know nothing about this; I have no idea how it came into my possession. It's a historical, set in Crusader times (aha! That'll be why I picked it up, then. But I still don't know where, and I certainly never read it). It, um, doesn't look very good. But who is this SMC? Wikipedia knows nothing about her... Aha! Deeper in the internet, I learn that she is Sister Mary Catherine of the Dominican Convent of Saint Catherine of Siena, Torquay; and that she is responsible for sixty-odd books, mostly of a religious nature. Further peeking suggests that this novel is also of a religious nature. And still not very good, but I do still have that peckish curiosity; I would quite like to have read this. I just don't think I want to read it. Other, better books are waiting. Into the box with it, then...

But, yup. That took a while. And a while longer, to post about. And I have five thousand books, or thereabouts.

And - in other but related news - when I'm stressed, I fall back on comfort reading. Last night I scoured my disordered shelves; apparently I am settling down for a thorough wallow in Modesty Blaise. Stressed much? I wonder why?

When I consider how my time is spent

Of all the ways I find to waste my time, crying "Oh, for God's sake! Will you stop doing that, you bloody annoying insects?" at already-dead fruit flies? Comes pretty high on the list of time thoroughly wasted. Obviously, by definition, they have already stopped doing that. One time pays for all, when it comes to drowning yourself in Chaz'z wineglass. Really, I should be crying my despair at the hidden queues elsewhere, the conspiracy, the next round of plotters. But oh, it drives me to distraction; I trot downstairs to stir a pot or whatever, and come back up to find my claret ... textured. Grr!