Brain Drool

I attribute my renewed enthusiasm for writing with my recent regular reading.  This reading kicked off two and half months back with me purposefully buying the complete collection of Hemingway’s short stories.  Three or four in I switched to Harry Potter.  With kids and a job and competition with TV I’m looking for distraction and entertainment—bread and circuses—not thought provoking literary heft.  I hold out that I could handle TPLH and might one day soon.  For now though I’m content with a little brain drool.

One through five were rereads.  I reread books because I have a poor memory for the details but a great one for the experience.  When I reread I’m never surprised or left wondering, but I am returned to the emotional territory of surprise and wonder.

Book six of the seven sits with the Braum’s receipt bookmark well past the halfway point on my side table.  With this sixth book—which I was convinced I’d never read—I’m finding unexpected familiarity about every third chapter.  I’d thought this might be due to me having seen the movie adaptation and not recalling I’d done that, but yesterday at the theatre I saw the preview for the unreleased sixth movies so its not that.  I don’t think it’s magic or clairvoyance or whatever they call it when you mix déjà vu with book reading, but it is uncanny.  Since I have no idea where I’m going with this I’ll just drop it.

I would like to get back to the preview for the movie.  Except for a single portion of the trailer I haven’t read anything int he book like what I saw on screen.  I guess the later half of the book will suddenly turn into a Michael Bay flick.  I can’t wait.  Does anyone know if the Hemingway shorts use the guns more and the brains less after the first four?

Day 354