Unassigned reading

[muckefuck]

I keep meaning to post about what I've been reading lately, but the list seems alternately too pathetic (someone who spends as little time on TV and hobbies as I do really has no excuse) or too show-offy (what with the foreign languages and all). Is my goal to impress you all or goad myself into hitting the books a little harder? Are those even mutually exclusive?

Then there's the reading that's really perusing. How does one account for that? I've never read my Classical Tibetan grammar in the same way that I've read, for instance, Guns, germs, and steel but I've spent hours with it since a friend asked for my help with Tibetan script last week. Do I have a better understanding of the language this time than I did before? Well, I've long forgotten what that was like, so it's impossible to say, really.

Thanks to niemandsrose, monshu and I hit Europa Books in the midst of a French lit sale last weekend. In a bizarre burst of optimism, I walked out with three works (none of them younger than the City of Chicago) for $10. They can go up on the shelf with that Balzac novel I never finished. What I want to do is put together a large order from that low-cost Austrian bookseller Nuphy likes to talk about. Might be a good project for the January doldroms.