Summertime!

It's become seemingly customary to open my postings with an apology about how I haven't been on recently; I do apologize about not being able to keep up, but now school's over. Despite a couple of nail-biting weeks and several exams, I'm still here, and on the road to recovery!

I've finished my post-apocalyptic and Flannery O'Connor classes. Both went well enough, and the last book we read for Comparative Lit was Life and Times of Michael K. I can't say I found it particularly post-apocalyptic, but it stuck to the themes of humanity in the face of overwhelming obstacles, which was more or less the point of the class.

But enough about school. Summer's here and with it comes plenty of time for new reading and writing! I picked up a few great books for my summer reading list, and grabbed a couple others as a spur-of-the-moment decision. That said, the following books are on my list thus far:

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Collected Fiction by Jorge Luis Borges
Memories of the Future by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

If you can pronounce that last author's name, it's about as difficult as his reading gets, which isn't a bad thing at all. I started Infinite Jest a couple weeks ago, but I need something a bit lighter to wind down from all my school reading. So I'm trying Memories of the Future, which is a collection of surrealist short stories written in 1920s Russia. I've only read one of the handful of short stories and novellas thus far, but Krzhizhanovsky's writing style is absolutely engrossing, even in translation. He reflects a lot of what I enjoy of the little Borges and Kafka I've read, though Krzhizhanovsky wrote well before Borges and only read Kafka at the end of his own literary career. Give it a look if you come across it; it's worth it.

As far as writing, I'm still wandering around with that pile of ideas in my head. Now that school's out I hope to dedicate a lot more time to getting some writing done. I'm toying with a sci-fi piece that is a bit difficult to describe as it isn't quite put together yet.

I'm heading to a wedding in California next week, but if all goes as I hope it does I'll be around a lot more often between now and September. Then I start a fifteen credit semester. Hoo boy.

Anyway, hope your summer goes well, and keep an ear to the ground!