Month: August 2020

Caught myself reading again, in the middle of a pandemic.

Decided to revisit some writers I had not experienced for a long time.   Re-read some stuff that left an impression way back when, to see if it still sticks or even reveals something new.

First, Ursula K. Le Guin.  Started off with re-reading The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), then The Dispossessed (1974).  Before I knew it, I was into Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995).  Those led me to The Wild Girls (2011) — containing along with the main short story, some poetry, essays and an interview — and No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters (2017).  The latter, a compilation mostly of pieces from the blog she started in her 80s, was published in the year before her death, and was perhaps my favorite for its humor and insightful reflection.  In any case, these titles exhausted all that was available for download to Kindle from the local library.  And I recommend any of the above (and Ivi also recommends other works, like the Earthsea series and collection she had read years ago herself).  I should mention that liking science-fiction and fantasy are not prerequisites for a Le Guin reader; her insights into social and political behavior and humanity go far beyond what you might expect from those genres (note that her father was an anthropologist).

Second, John le Carré.  The first title I had previously read was The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (1963) a year after it was published while I was languishing in a motel on weekends during an out-of-town assignment at Vandenberg Air Force Base.   There were also the film and TV adaptations: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Constant Gardener, The Little Drummer Girl,  A Most Wanted Man, The Tailor of Panama, and The Night Manager all come immediately to mind, most of which I had also read in book form.  I wanted to re-read The Spy … , but in a bit of luck, le Carré’s Agent Running in the Field (2019), his latest, was suddenly available on my Kindle queue, so I am deeply into that one at the moment.  And enjoying it immensely, as it reminds me of le Carré’s as-good-as-ever, maybe-even-better writing style and his rather droll humor.  And — let’s hear it for someone who is rapidly approaching ninety years of age.

Not easy, this reading business.  Especially when daily doom-scrolling through my online newsletters (NYT, New Yorker, Atlantic, Economist, Guardian, et. al.) and twitter blurbs sent my way consume so much time.  (I have nothing on Kim who seems to read at least two or three or four books a week, but wisely avoids much of the online noise.)   But now that I have new, cataract-free eyes, there is no better time to repel the mental effects of our plague.  Try it and see.