I do not have time to write this post, and I am certain that you don’t have time to read it. Nine essays by nineteen-year-olds interpreting “Othello” remain to be marked, then comments must be typed. From this very blog, you understand how tiresome such reading can be.

The public library had a book sale today, with fifty-five cent novels. There were also several happy babies, and I left the morning wanting to have at least seven of my own. As the type of parent who would tend, no doubt, to be entirely too fascinated by her own offspring, I think procreating as much as possible—such that I forgot names and ages—would work towards mitigating adverse smothering. Eventually, the children would start looking after themselves, no? Just as unwashed hair finally becomes self-cleaning…There might be a Greasy Stage.

I list for you my purchases: again, you’ll note the admirable restraint in the face of immense temptation.
In Custody by Anita Desai. Vikram Seth is part of the Writer’s Festival here. I like books about India. They teem.
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. So that I can understand Coetzee better. I looked and I looked for Kafka, but he was hiding under a bed in the fetal position.
Paris 1919 by Margaret MacMillan. The author (who has no idea who I am) has a delightfully quirky fashion sense. We once talked about the origins of boas in Edwardian England.
A Guest of Honour by Nadine Gordimer. It is time that I read some South African literature, given my habit of telling people I study it.
The Joke by Milan Kundera. I will own more books by Kundera than by any other author. Oh, perverse life!
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert. I can’t remember how this one dies. Surely she dies?
Intimacy by Hanif Kureishi. I haven’t forgotten, NM.

Mais vive la joie!…En attendant—Vive l’amour! et vive la bagatelle!

I’m catching up on another classic (or will so soon as papers are marked): A Sentimental Journey by M. Sterne. From this perverse life, I want only to be a Don Quixote, a traveller. But I know deep down that I’m a Sancho, a Le Fleure. Says Virginia Woolf of the novel: “we are as close to life as we can be.”