Better Than Friday - 39 (Patreon)

Good afternoon everyone. 

How is your mental health today? 

I find myself somewhere between Gene Wilder in 'The Producers' and Peter O'Toole in 'The Ruling Class', depending on how much coffee I've had. 

But most days I just feel like the guy in No. 4. 

1. Coming Soon - Vladimir Nabokov's "Transparent Things" 

A recommendation from a patron and one of the more challenging books I've read.

Nabokov was a composer of chess problems and it shows in this odd story of a man who can see the history of objects. 

It's an exploration of memory and the past, illuminating a future that, it turns out, has already occurred. I think. I'm not sure. 

It's very confusing, but good if you're into the Nabokov narrative.

From Goodreads:

"Transparent Things revolves around the four visits of the hero - sullen, gawky Hugh Person - to Switzerland... As a young publisher, Hugh is sent to interview R., falls in love with Armande on the way, wrests her, after multiple humiliations, from a grinning Scandinavian and returns to NY with his bride... Eight years later - following a murder, a period of madness and a brief imprisonment - Hugh makes a lone sentimental journey to wheedle out his past... The several strands of dream, memory, and time [are] set off against the literary theorizing of R. and, more centrally, against the world of observable objects." Martin Amis

From the book:

"When we concentrate on a material object, whatever its situation, the very act of attention may lead to our involuntarily sinking into the history of that object. Novices must learn to skim over matter if they want matter to stay at the exact level of the moment. Transparent things, through which the past shines!"

2. Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century 

Tons of great stuff on here, looking forward to reading many of these titles. 

3. I live between concrete walls. 

A track I hadn't heard in a long time from Fever Ray. 

'Haven't slept since Summer'... 

4. Ticked off Vic. 

My mother sent me this. 

5. A Book Recommended by a Translator for Studying Spanish 

Lately, during the pandemic, I've tried to make a habit of studying Spanish for 25 minutes a day. 

This was recommended to me by a trusted source. I'm slowly working my way through it. 

Found some free Rousseau on the street.