Mar. 27th, 2007

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Despite a 30°(17℃) plunge in the mercury today, spring is not going away. Around this time last week, all I saw blooming were the aforementioned winter aconite, snowdrops, and occasional adventurous narcissus. But the rain and mild temps have got everything budding now. At lunchtime I saw my first magnolia blossom and the forsythia is a day behind it at most. The daffodils are blooming in the secret garden, the maples are dropping their reddish blossoms, and the spiraea already is sprouting leaves.

Sunday was too glorious to spend inside doing laundry or housecleaning, so I called up the Scoutmaster and we went to the Botanic Gardens. I would've preferred someplace a little more tranquil, but he didn't have his boots with him and worried that anyplace else in the county would be too muddy. As you might expect, not much was out--crocus, aconite, dwarf iris, a few lilies. We walked through the entire 15-acre prairie garden and saw only two patches of green. This coming weekend, however, will be an entirely different story and the following one should be spectacular.

I confessed to [livejournal.com profile] monshu last weekend that I've been feeling listless lately. I might even consider myself mildly depressed if not for the fact that I don't seem to have lost any of my ability to enjoy pleasurable activities. But the unpleasurable ones, I've been avoiding those with the tenacity of a sullen teenager. I've been trying to counteract this by being more active--going out with friends, taking walks, exercising--but my success has been limited. When I get back home, I simply ignore everything that needs doing and pick up another book.

Last night I finished Adrian Goldsworthy's The Punic Wars, which I enjoyed immensely. I'm not enough of a historian to nitpick his conclusions, but his presentation is magnificent in its lucidity and readability. He seems to rely heavily on Polybius, often dismissing specific criticisms of it with a breezy "and there is no good reason to doubt him". But Polybius knows what makes a good narrative and so does Goldsworthy.

Now it's on to Limpieza de sangre, since I probably shouldn't be holding onto the books [livejournal.com profile] bunj has so kindly lent me indefinitely. I ran into trouble almost immediately in the first chapter and was relieved to discover that it's chiefly due to the fact that Pérez-Reverte is describing an old-fashioned bullfight (and I mean really old-fashioned, like before the matador started standing on the ground and waving a cape about) using vocabulary specific to tauromachy. Whew! Not quite as stupid as I thought!

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