All My Gettings

A couple days ago, I finished the book The White Tiger. It's been long-listed for the Booker this year and is a nice mixture of really funny moments and terribly sad ones. Well, the whole novel is run through with a sense of despair, so maybe there's just some really funny ways of looking at all that degradation. Should some enterprising grad student need a topic for a contemporary fiction class, take this one: Compare the attitudes and modes of service found in the servant character-narrators of Remains of the Day and The White Tiger. (Can we just pause for a minute to smile at the fact that, in England, literary prizes are part of the provenance of bookies? And that there are odds for presumed winners?)

I realized, after listing this book in my journal of books read, that I somehow managed to go the entire month of July without completing a single novel. How did this happen? I blame Gilmore Girls, mostly. Because, see, my family and I are working our way through all seven seasons. Now, if I were watching them by myself, this would be a three week project. As it is, we've spent a solid two months chipping away at them, one or two episodes a night. So, that saps my evenings. Then, we've got the new morning church, so that cuts into my Sunday am reading. Also, being in class two nights a week doesn't help.

Really, though, I think I'm getting sort of intellectually lazy. I don't think as much, or as thoroughly, about anything any more. I've been ruined and I'm not sure what's the culprit. Maybe it's my working life, where I've just this week been informed, will now include doing financial aid appointments with students. Apparently, running a library, riding shotgun for student affairs, pinch-hitting in the bookstore, ordering textbooks, chairing a scholarship committee and being the errand boy for the academic team adds up to "having a lot of free time" and "being able to help out during this crisis". I have all sorts of bad things to say about this, but I'll probably just get too worked up if I start. On the plus side, being trained in yet another area will make me that much more employable, if suddenly all those predictions come true and libraries cease to exist in five years.

At any rate, I should get back into the habit of reading. Especially if I'm hoping to get all the Booker longlist read before they announce the winner. And then, I can scoff when Rushdie has another accolade. Because, c'mon, doesn't anyone else deserve a little something-something, Man Group?