Not even someday

You know how there are couple of books in your to-read stack that turn you off every time you look for a new read, despite their long-standing membership there?

As in, every time you see them you think not now, as if it were a mood issue or a simple case of subject, or you wanted a woman writer this time, or something shorter, or something not set in New York or about WWII, so you snub the book again and after a few years of its languishing on the stack you realize it’s more deep-seated than that. 

All the worse when you’ve sampled 5-10 pages of it and then put it back on the pile, pretty much guaranteeing you’re never going to commit. 

These days it seems like my whole to-read stack consists of such books.

The Itch

Two more of my Misery poems are up at The Collapsar, "The Itch" and "Past Life." 

"The Itch" reads:

If you turned the thing over 

to take a look at the works, 

you saw the itch let herself in 

dragging something heavy, 

a cross of soft skin.

"Past Life"

O maddening serene thing

in a previous life

such a rain began to fall

A couple more from this series are due out shortly, and at some point I'll make a linked index of them and post it here.

France

Back from a vacation in France today, and glad to have tomorrow free before returning to Spain for work on Wednesday.

Like last year in Bourges, we saw a number of WWI sites in the Champagne region. One day we went out to visit the ruins of an abbey and found ourselves just a few kilometers from the site where Guillaume Apollinaire was wounded in 1916. Someone erected a stone marker there with an excerpt from the poem “The Seasons.” I picked up these leaves and such as a souvenir.

We are not big champagne drinkers, alas, but we went to a tasting and bought a bottle for the fall birthday of a friend.

I regretted not taking enough books — usually I lug too many. But early on the day before we left I finished Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. It was a good read and I was especially sorry to see it end with no other fiction or non-fiction at hand. I was stuck with a poetry book I was not enjoying and another I’ve read many times. Plus two copies of Misery that I didn’t even look at. Our Airbnb host had two English-language novels on her shelf but one I’d read and the other didn’t interest me, plus I would have felt guilty absconding with one anyway.

So I’m glad to be home with a few unread books to choose from. I’d really like to read the fat book I have about the French revolution but recall I’ve left Kershaw’s big biography of Hitler in my desk at work in Barcelona, which dissuades me from cracking open anything too heavy.