The End of August

I think I made up for only blogging once in July. It pays to work only 2 weeks out of a month. Well, that would be wrong. Nobody pays you not to work. My dear Linsay is back. And work will be coming in, I'm sure. She even found a half day job for me for Friday, but Adrian arrives on Thursday night and I am looking forward to spending time with him.

I have filled this time with reading while California burns. So sorry, dear friends, it sounds horrible from the right coast. I was half way through two books last night. Both were too good to listen to as I drifted to sleep. So I played a light weight mystery. I listened to the first half hour and drifted off. As usual, I awoke every couple of hours. I'd hear the story advance as though I was reading it while riffling the pages of the book. There was still an hour left when I woke up this morning so I got to hear the end. I'll probably do the same thing tonight, but start further in the book. By the time I'm done, I'll have heard it all.

One of the really good books is The Stalin Epigram. Robert Littell won The Times Book Prize a couple of years ago for his book Legends. I loved that book. He writes like Le Carre. This is a deep and slow moving book. It's about the Soviet Union in 1934. People are snatched up and tortured. They are shot or exiled. Somehow I kept getting Stalin's name mixed up with Cheney. Not really, but you can see where Cheney got some of his ideas.

The story is about a little poem that Osip Mandelstam wrote about Stalin. It was not complimentary, so he was jailed then sent to a gulag. I'd highly recommend this for those who need to be reminded what happens when people do not have our constitutional freedoms. One fascinating character was a weight lifter who was jailed for having a sticker of the Eiffel Tower on his suitcase. He can't read and is as dense as a post. His take on his trials is fascinating. It doesn't answer one of my questions about whether dumb people know that they are dumb. He is, but he is a lot happier than the very smart poets. Ignorance is bliss. And is a delight to read.