At Least There Won't Be a Quiz

I'm 200 pages into From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present by the late Jacques Barzun (he was born in 1907, so I assume he is no longer with us, but who knows? Perhaps he is sitting in a recliner somewhere with a wool blanket over his legs writing a thousand more pages that I will feel compelled to purchase), but I may as well be two pages in because as soon as I finish a page I immediately forget everything I've just read. Or almost everything I've just read. I recall the odd details, the tiny things that are not of much consequence. The fact (and one that I've mentioned here before) that Montaigne's father kept a musician on the payroll so that his son might awake each morning to the gentle strains of a flute, for example. Or that the use of all caps was stopped during Medieval times which proves, I guess, that Medieval times weren't all that Medieval. Also, it wasn't easy to make chainmail armor, you know.

And that's basically all I have to show for 200 pages. I am so awesome.

***

There are other things I must read. My fellow writing group member has completely overhauled his novel, and I must read it. Soon.

I, too, have completely overhauled something, and I must read it. Also soon.

John Crowley's Aegypt Cycle has just been reissued by Overlook Press, and I must purchase all four volumes and read them. Sooner rather than later.

I periodically re-visit Entering the Stream, and that period has arrived, so I must read it. Which I am, right now.

To reassure myself that I am not inadvertently engineering the destruction of my beloved daughters, I have just purchased So Sexy, So Soon, so I must read it. Yesterday.

I should probably get going now.