apparently i'm not completely slow-witted

...because I finished Don Lee's latest novel, Wrack and Ruin, in a day. That says more about his ability to hold a reader's interest than anything else, but I'll pretend it proves something about me, too. Oh, how nice this little month-long break from school is! I'm still reading Baudelaire and Robert Walser for this July's lyric prose/poetry workshop but I also get to catch up on some of the stuff I've been itching to read for ages. Lee's latest is laugh-out-loud funny and the prose just comes alive. And his Rosarita Bay (a fictionalized Half Moon Bay) is so dead-on Northern Californian, I still can't understand how he didn't grow up here.

Next up, I want to read Lee's Country of Origin to complete the triumvirate of his published book-length works in anticipation of his appearance at VCFA this summer, and then hopefully I can get through Sue William Silverman's Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You... and Under the Volcano... and David Jauss's new craft book Alone With All That Could Happen. It's looking at least possible. I haven't been Facebooking, watching bad TV or obsessively checking Perez Hilton nearly as much now that there are no looming packet deadlines. I've become Susie Homemaker in the kitchen. And I have learned that I am obviously someone who reads a bit more productively when I'm calm and happy. Let's hope some of this productivity can carry me through my third semester critical thesis....