Books dimly remembered and thankless tasks that are more fun than fun.

My younger self did a lot more reading in this stretch of the year than I have this year, although I seem to have been a little fuzzy about exactly what! I had a library-filtered view of books then, and assumed that everything ever printed was always available. I would have been scandalized at how easily books slip out of print and away.

It's also just as well that I didn't know how long this process would be, until I was well and thoroughly involved in the perverse pleasure of prose--which is not what you expect when you start, but worth the journey. As Noel Coward put it, "Work is more fun than fun." Although in all honesty, it doesn't start out that way!

January 24 to January 29, 1976 I read:

Three on the Tower
I have no idea what this book was or who wrote it.

A Professional Storywriter's Handbook, Edwin A. Peeples
My note reads that the author of this book was, in my opinion an MCP ("male chauvinist pig"), which didn't really give us a whole lot more information.

Every Crime in the Book: An Anthology of Mystery Stories (anthology, Mystery Writers of America) Ed. R.L. Fish
Shoot, I know more than amazon.com about this one! They didn't have the editor or the MWA connection.

One Fearful Yellow Eye, John D. MacDonald

Breakdown (Crackdown, Breakthrough? Something like that, Dick Francis' latest)
What can I say? He does have some interchangeable titles, and I usually write them down carefully so I can read them all rather than reading the same one over by accident! Research shows this was probably Francis' Knockdown, March 1, 1975!

You're never too old to die, Arthur D Goldstein
Another book that I don't remember, though it sounds like a mystery.

January 24 to 29, 2006 no books read.

This past week or so I've been submerged in editing a manuscript, which is its own kind of obsession. Marge Piercy put it well in her poem,

For the young who want to

Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.
***
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.For the young who want to, by Marge Piercy from THE MOON IS ALWAYS FEMALE
Alfred A. Knopf, New York