Oops, We're Getting a Little Ahead of Ourself

You know those days where you're like, wow, I am being so productive! I've done everything that I planned to do, and I still have time to spare before I have to be at that thing this evening.

But then you realize, oh shoot, I completely forget that I had to run to the bank and grocery store, that thing starts half an hour earlier than I thought it did, and I forgot that we sprang forward for daylight saving time, so I am actually running really, really behind!

That sort of happened to me with the list project. I was feeling really great. I've read quite a few books now, and I've been tackling some of the more difficult authors, genres, and texts. I've even been doing pretty well with tackling authors with many books on the list. I'm done with Austen (everything she wrote is on the list!) and Morrison. I only have three more Dickens to go, and he has ten on this list! And then, then I remembered that the other most common author on the list is J.M. Coetzee, who also has ten books on the list. Of which I have only read one, and I didn't like it.

So, working through his works (no pun intended) is my next major task. Le sigh.

I read Elizabeth Costello over the weekend (she actually appears, and annoys if you ask me, in the other book of his that I read). It's a very odd little book. It is essentially about various lectures/talks that she gives since she is a writer/lecturer, and the context surrounding those talks (and then her chat with St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, I kid you not). It's disjointed, intentionally, and very, very philosophical. One talk is all about vegetarianism and the question of what separates humans from animals (and if the answer is nothing significant or super meaningful, then is eating meat essentially murder), and one talk is all about the problem of evil and its relationship to literature. Or something like that. Truly, it's as fun as it sounds.

I also read To Have and Have Not, because Hemingway also appears on the list several times. Being a Bogart/Bacall fan, I have of course seen the movie many, many, many times. I also knew, also of course, that the book and movie have virtually nothing in common (for example, the movie is very good, the book, not so much; even Hemingway thought so). The best thing about the book is the title, which the movie took (along with the names of two characters and one seen, and really nothing else).

I've really got nothing to say about this book. I do wonder why it made it on the list, but mostly it made me want to watch the movie. That and Dark Passage. Not such a good movie, but I haven't seen it in a really long time. Or Key Largo. That's a good movie. I think I need to have a Bogart/Bacall fest sometime soon.