The halfway point

I looked at my reading list today and realized I'm a little less than halfway through my Book a Day Project! It's been alternately exhilarating and dreary (depending, of course, on the book). I'm behind (no surprise there). I've managed to update this thing semi-regularly, but hardly as often as I was supposed to (they say creative types can't stick to a schedule, and I'm sticking with that).

A friend asked me if I wake up, pick up a book, start reading, and don't finish until 11pm the same day, or, alternatively, if I "knock out that one Russian mofo's War and Peace in an hour." Ha. The truth, as someone once said, lies in between. Depending on how Zen I feel and how interesting the book is, hundreds of pages can pass by in the span of a couple of hours; on other days, everything becomes a distraction and a single chapter is the literary equivalent of Mount Everest.

Last week, my lovely sister, who as of late has been enslaved to the medical profession (even disembarking from the plane in a particularly smelly pair of scrubs--JUST KIDDING, Jan, they didn't smell AT ALL), came into town, meaning that the whole family was together again for the first time since Christmas! So obviously much time usually devoted to the greats of fiction and non-fiction was, instead, spent eating and gossiping and eating again (we are Indian, after all) and figuring out how to use the auto-timer on the new camera for a family portrait ("HURRY DAD! You've only got ten seconds, and Mom, if you blink this time...!") Despite the 24/8 family time (and I do mean 24/8) I did manage to squeeze in a couple of good reads you should absolutely add to your lists if you haven't already devoured them.

The first was Salinger's Nine Stories. I have a love-hate thing with short stories. On one hand, done well, they are great works of art in miniature. On the other, they are almost always deliberately unfinished--leaving you, the reader, unsatisfied, wanting more (especially true regarding Salinger's entire opus, since the famously reclusive author published so little of what he wrote). Salinger's short stories are funny and wise, dark and mordant; my favorite was Teddy, the final story in the collection, which is Vedantic philosophy as seen through the eyes of a six-year-old boy genius. All are crisply written, economical, provocative: there's no doubt that the recently-deceased author was a master of the form.

I also squeezed in the ubiquitous Life of Pi, whose book jacket simply says "This book will make you believe in God." (A tall order.) The book traces the journey of Pi, moored at sea on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger (I'd explain, but you really should read it.) It is a classic survivor story with deliciously fantastical elements--in some ways reminiscent of Homer's Odyssey. I enjoyed it quite a bit, and leave you with this observation of Pi's:

"I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life."

A good thing to remember at the halfway point of anything.