On the Pile

My brain is mush. Reading anything more complicated than the mini-reviews in Entertainment Weekly has become impossible. With the crash diet (which seriously crashed yesterday---peanut M&Ms and an iced chai latte and a cupcake [but it was free!] and pizza [because I’ve packed all my kitchen stuff]---but I burned off at least the M&Ms and possibly the chai [it was nonfat] by moving the first carload of stuff to the new apartment), the anxiety attacks, and the sheer exhaustion of moving, I can barely concentrate long enough to finish this sentence. Forget trying to read something.

Yet try I do.

Finished: Fax from Sarajevo. Disappointing. The author comes from the old-school superhero comics, and he tells this story very much in that manner---sound effects, choppy narrative, a chiseled hero. Except that this is a true story with real people and events and is plenty dramatic enough (a graphic artist is trapped in Sarajevo during the Serbian invasion and spends more than a year trying to get himself and his family out, often risking his life to do it) without the added whiz-bang effects. The “comic” approach detracts from the story and, in a way, cheapens it.

Currently Reading: Voodoo Heart. Yes, still. See above re: ability to concentrate. Also reading Food Politics by Marion Nestle. Or trying to.

On Deck: It makes me sad even to think about this category.

Added to the Pile: I’m moving. I already have entirely too many boxes of books. So what do I do? I get more books, of course. Some library books, a review book. And after six months of not buying any books---one of two resolutions I’ve actually kept!---I bought some books for school.

From the Library
30-Minute Get Real Meals by Rachael Ray
Dr. Atkins’ Quick and Easy New Diet Cookbook by Robert C. Atkins
The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud

For Review
The Body Hunters by Sonia Shah

For School
Coming of Age in Somoa by Margaret Mead
Purity and Danger by Mary Douglas
Myth and Meaning by Claude Levi-Strauss
Steps to an Ecology of Mind by Gregory Bateson