Hot reads

Now that we are back in town, I am once again ready to skip down memory lane in the form of analyzing the books I read oh-so-many years ago, or in this case: In 1999.

Let's put these books in context, shall we. 1999 was my last year of college; it was the first year I had a real, grown-up, full-time job; and it was the year that Josh and I started dating. Kind of an eventful year. Does all this excitement play out in the reading list? Let's examine it a little more closely:

1. Obviously I was in a Shakespeare class. I don't think I've re-read any of these plays since 1999, although I still have my book of Shakespeares complete works and I'd like to dig into them again. This was a strange class because it was taught by a professor whose wife was a teacher at my high school. I took a Shakespeare class from her my junior or senior year of high school that was oodles better than the class I took from her husband four years later. He was kind of a jerk. I still like Shakespeare, though.

2. I was also in a class on the British Novel that rocked. I think I ended up auditing the class because I already had enough credits and I didn't want to have to write the papers, but I really wanted to read the books. I'm glad I did because they were all pretty great. Especially Virginia Woolf's The Waves (which I don't think I would have read or understood outside of a class), Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, and Hollingsworth's The Swimming Pool Library.

3. After graduation I made some strange reading choices (Seven Arrows? The Book of Green Tea?), but I also read some books I still love (all the Kosinski stuff -- he is strange, kind of a faker, and sometimes irritating, but I still love him). And The Beautiful Room is Empty is so good -- I'd really like to go back and re-read the Edmund White I've read and seek out his books I haven't seen yet.

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And, a reminder: If you have any bills or letters to send out, do it today before the stamp prices go up two cents tomorrow and you have to go to the post office to get those little two cent stamps before you can send any letters out. A postage hike really helps me to catch up on my correspondence.