I finally finished “Bubblegum” and while I am glad I read it, my feelings about it are a little complex. It’s the subject of this Thursday’s entry. I ended up focusing on it exclusively to get it ‘out of the way’ which now means I am back on my normal ‘two or three books at a time schedule’. So I am on:
“The Other Name”— the first two books in Jon Fosse’s ‘Septology’. Thus far, I am enjoying it a great deal, even if I find the Norwegian names in the book a little— let’s just say I have some notes on who is who, and I refer to them from time to time.
“Virginia Woolf”— it’s nice to dive back into this one.
“Moby Dick”— this is literally the slowest read I have ever had of this book. It works well that way.
I’ve written a little bit about my reading/notettaking process in the past. I take some notes as I read, in some cases to help me keep things straight, especially if a novel has an unconventional structure or approaches to interactions between characters. They’re mostly personal reminders, and will occasionally contain jokes or doodles. Here’s a small snippet from “The Deep”:
In addition to being wildly illegible to most readers, there’s a mishmash of plot notes, things I find noteworthy, and me thinking about a Gin and Tonic. The more plot dense the book, the more notes— something like “The Other Name” has actually very few notes since, at least on the surface there isn’t a lot of plot, and, in general themes don’t lend themselves to ‘as you go’ note taking— that’s something that happens upon reflection.
I actually recommend taking ‘as you go’ notes to people; especially if you might have to return to something a bit later. Notes can jog your memory and keep you on track.
Enough about dread process for the day however. It’s time for dread work.
The Lithole 