Some days I really wonder whether I will ever be able to straighten up. Fortunately, I have largely moved into the digital realm, buying far, far fewer books and CDs than I used to and almost no DVDs (as it is so rare that I sit down and watch one), but the habit of acquisitiveness is hard to break. I did buy a couple of CDs (jazz and blues) when I simply couldn't listen to them any other way. I also have a strong preference for reading books in a physical copy even though I am becoming more and more ok with the idea that the "storage copies" can be digital. But some books just are not available at the library.
Most recently I ordered a copy of The Heptaméron by Marguerite de Navarre. I would have thought I owned this already, but after a bit of digging around and checking my Amazon account for past orders, I guess I didn't. Why am I reading The Heptaméron, you ask? Obviously because I want to pair it with The Decameron... It turns out that Boccaccio was writing about the plague, but de Navarre simply had her storytellers escaping from flood waters, so perhaps not quite as apocalyptic. (In fact, The Heptaméron was directly inspired by Boccaccio...) After a bit of digging, I did turn up my copy of The Decameron, though not before learning that there was a new edition by the same translator.* What was a bit droll was that he was revising his previous translation and only found a few lines that really needed to change, but he added close to 100 pages of notes! While the egotism on display here is a bit off-putting, it does mean that I didn't have to get the new edition, since I am mostly interested in the stories themselves, not the scholarly apparatus.
Anyway, my compulsive side has taken over, and I decided I really ought to get at least partway into The Decameron before I start in on Shteyngart's Our Country Friends and Rosenblum's These Days are Numbered, both of which are set during a modern plague. In fact, depending on how far I get by April, I might take The Decameron along on my flights out west, to fill in any flying time not taken up by Dupont's The American Fiancée or Oliver Twist. If it turns out I start having to fly out to California on a semi-regular basis, I'll probably tackle a few of the longer novels left on my list, namely Fontane's Before the Storm and Tolstoy's War and Peace. There are a few other really long novels I have yet to start, but those are the highest priority.
While I was down digging around in boxes of books in the basement, I found McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City of course, which I had wanted to locate a few months back. However, I also found (and brought up) Ellington's Invisible Man, which I might read in the late summer, as well as a few non-fiction books including Beyond the Neon Lights, Nights in the Big City and a box set of Stephen Jay Gould books on evolution. No idea when I will find the time to read them, but at least I know where they are.
Every so often I go to play a CD or DVD, and it is not in its case. I have a very vague idea where these may be, buried in stacks and stacks of DVDs with back-up data on them. Not too helpful obviously. I really need to clean out my office, particularly as this will help with tax season!, and then take a week or two to go through these stacks and stacks of DVDs to put them in some kind of order. In most cases, these were things I was watching or listening to either in Vancouver right before the move to Toronto or the move to this house, which means they have been misplaced for many, many years. Sigh.
I actually decided to buckle down and start watching some of the DVDs I own, starting with documentaries, specifically Planet Earth. Wouldn't you know that was something I must have started watching with the kids in Vancouver and never got back around to it, so the first disc isn't in the case? Super frustrating. I should have better luck with Cosmos, where I know where the new series is, but I might have to find a binder with the original series, which I want to watch first. I'm hoping that is also the same binder with Connections, which was a very interesting popular science series from my childhood!
So anyway, I have quite a bit of work ahead of me, but I think getting through taxes will take highest priority. Double sigh.
* I also have easy access to Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais. I'd like to find the time to read this, after The Decameron and The Heptaméron. I read this back in university, so it really has been a while. I got a kick out of it back then, and hopefully I would feel pretty much the same now. I don't know if I really can get to this in 2024, but certainly by early 2025. To sort of round out this return to things I read (or should have read) in university (also see this post), I think maybe in 2025 or 2026, I'll reread Chaucer and Malory.
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