Monday monday

Hey man, you sound really chipper. That's awesome. I am feeling somewhat less than chipper, although I'm not doing too bad. I went for a run this morning, so I am feeling that nice post-exercise relaxed feeling.

Yes, bombastic is the rule on blogs! I am currently reading Dave Egger's short stories, How We are Hungry. He's all right. I sometimes like him, sometimes not. A few of the stories are really excellent, but a couple of them just leave me a little cold for the fact that they are cold--there's no real sense of depth to the characters, and you come away feeling like the character was created just to get across an idea. The rest are decent, and he does have a good, memorable sentence or image fairly regularly, so it is worth reading overall, but don't expect magic on every page.

I just finished that Michael Chabon novel I was talking about, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. I strongly recommend it. Chabon is an excellent writer. Unlike Eggers (not that it's too fair to compare authors so closely, I know), Chabon's sentences unfurl delicately and with great precision. There's stuff on every page that is wonderful read simply because of the way it was written, nevermind the plot or story. Of course, the story is excellent. It's very funny as well as deeply moving.

I'm a slow reader, so I don't read a whole lot of books. In the last four months, I also ready Moby Dick and Confidence Man by Herman Melville. I recommend the former. However, Confidence Man is a very unconventional narrative, with no main character (or possibly one main character impersonating many people--it's not clear) and hardly any characters are ever identified by name, so it's a hard read. It has rewarding moments, especially in the later part of the book, but overall it takes a bit of work to get through. The narrative technique is pretty ahead of it's time, seeing as it was written in the mid-1800s.

That's cool that El cooks such awesome food. I would like to meet her when I am in town. Maybe we can all go out for drinks?

I need to get to work. I get to do some traveling next week--only 80 miles away, but I get to spend the night, have business dinners and breakfasts, and all that. I like charging stuff to other companies while I work for them--the hotel food tastes better when you're not paying for it.