The L Word

Just finished another four episode marathon of S2 The L Word courtesy of netflix. This season is so much better than the first one, although I sort of preferred the opening credits to the first season but that's a minor thing.

Really enjoying this show, much more actually than anything else on TV at the moment. Had a similar experience with Dead Like Me. Not sure why that is. What is it about network television lately that is losing my interest? Is it the constant commercial interruptions or the violence? Outside of maybe three shows, most of the shows on TV seem incredibly violent to me at the moment, and gritty, and dark. I need a little lightness, you know? BSG even felt more violent than necessary this past season, and there was a couple of episodes I felt myself just want to flip to something else. Why? I used to have no problems with violence in TV and movies, but lately, unless it's shown in a way that furthers the characters journeys substantially and isn't just a plot point or gratutious, I find my mind wandering, bored and distracted. Have I burned out on it? Would make sense, considering that right now there are so many procedurals dealing with gruesome murders on tv, or horror X-files clones dealing with gruesome deaths that you have to kick them out of the way. Plus the sci-fi shows are all heavily "action" oriented - action relating to how many people get killed, gunfire, warfare. I think that it's beginning to grate. I like BSG for the characters, which are some of the best written and acted I've seen in years, but do cringe away from the violence of it.

Anywho, just a little tangent.

( Thought and feelings on Labyrnthe through Loyal of the L Word, spoilers for The L Word )

Ahhh books...

Such a lovely day today, took my little walk - not much time, since still have to finish chapter 13 of novel and watch the netflix flick. But feeling quite accomplished.

I found, after hunting through 10 different book stores, including Amazon.com, a book about eating "gluten-free", no it's not the one I originally wanted - that is unfortunately either out of print or woefully unavailable, but I did find one that fits the same criteria. Granted it is for the "ceiliac or coeliac" depending on which side of the Atlantic you hail from, not for the merely gluten "sensitive" but I figure looking at the extreme case will give me some idea of how much elbow room I have to maneuvre in. It's called The Gluten-free Bible by Jax Peters Lowell - I found it at the small indie book store in my neighborhood, which has managed to stay alive even with the monsterous B&N hovering a few blocks away. B&N by the way does not have any books on gluten-free eating. Cost $17, much less than the Complete Gluten-Free Resource Guide I attempted to get from Amazon, which took them three months to tell me, oh so sorry but we can't find one.

Also grabbed the new edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves by the Boston Women's Health Collective. This book actually defines the difference between a food allergy and food hypersensitivity, which aren't the same thing. Many people get them confused. My friend CW is allergic to peanuts - every time she eats them her glands, lips, face swells or she gets a rash. I on the other hand am hypersenitive to glutens - every time I eat anything with gluten in it, I will over a 40 min, hour, two day or more period begin to show the following symptoms: physical depression, gastrointestinal disorder, irritiable bowel, headaches, tremor, fatigue, muscel or joint pain, congestion, and eczema. The reaction can show up more than 70 hours after digesting food, while an allergy shows up immediately. Also while you can grow out of an allergy or get a shot for one, there's nothing you can do about hypsensitivity. Just avoid those foods. So even not ceilac, still can't digest it and get bad symptoms.
Need to navigate around.

Then purchased Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes - the new translation by Edith Grossman, which read very well in the book store and made me laugh privately to myself. Quixote is one of those books I've always wanted to read but never got around to it for some reason. I think I may attempt it soon, somewhere between Patter Recognition and Storm of Swords, methinks.

Speaking of books that I always wanted to read but haven't gotten around to - bought Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. The paragraph Philip Seymore Hoffman read in the movie haunted me to such a degree that I ended up buying it today. Been flirting with the book for quite some time actually. Poetic prose. Also flirted with a new edition of Marcel Proust's Sodom and Gomorrah - which looks even more interesting than Swann in Love, which I've also been flirting with. Ahhh... it has been far too long since I allowed myself to go on a book buying spree. To let myself go this way, is almost a release.

I don't know what it is about me and books. I don't do this with anything else. I don't compulsively buy CD's or VHS or DVDs or knicknacks. Just books. Doesn't matter the kind - if there are words, I will most likely buy them. Comics, magazines, novels, etc. My only frustration is I cannot read fast enough to get through all the books I wish to devour. I envy people who can read quickly, who devour four to five books a week, who can make it through a book in a day and still have time to eat, sleep, walk, go out with friends, and write on the net - most of or rather 85% of my correspondence list appears to be able to do this. I don't understand how they do it. When I read a book, I'm often rereading each paragraph, it's as if I've read it twice in one sitting, trying to absorb the words into my body, make them a part of my mental landscape. To comprehend, to sink, completely irrevocably into another's head. There's nothing more magical than falling into a book, and I mean really falling, so you are no longer even aware that you are reading it, the words becoming pictures in your head and you are in the world. Absolutely.

William Gibson's Pattern Recognition is like that for me. Not so much a book one reads as falls into. So much so, that I have almost missed my subway stop a couple of times, jolted by the realization and annoyed that it is time to leave the safe confines of the pages.

My love affair with books began when I was very young, before I could read and it took so long for me to figure out how. I yearned to be able to decipher the words my parents uttered so effortlessly when they read to me, weaving worlds in my imagination with their voice. I wanted to be able to do that myself. And envied those who could. I remember when I finally did figure it - how my world changed. I started with Nancy Drew Mysteries - read every single one I could find. Then Little House on The Prarie Books, most of which had been read to me. Then Lisa Bright and Dark and the Zelphia Keatly Snyder novels...and then my aunt, my mother's older sister, who at that time had been a librarian in a school in Vegas that was made up solely of six graders - introduced me to the Chronicles of Narnia, The Circle of Light series, and Dark is Rising series. I remember sleeping with books as a child. I remember looking forward to the books my parents would give me on Xmas morning. And the school book fairs - where we'd order books from a catalogue and then have them delivered in class the next week. Gifts from the Gods. My favorite hour of the day in grade school wasn't recess but when the teacher read to us - books such as Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, the Great Glass Elevator, Little House on The Prarie, etc. And in Junior high I worked as a student aide in the library during study hall - in order to read all the books that were checked in. The backs of them, the excerpts.

Libraries grew out of favor as an adult - possibly because the one's I have access to have horrid selections. The one near my home in Brooklyn is abysmal and Kansas City's wasn't much better. Also I don't like having a time limit on how long I can keep the book or how quickly it must be read. Nor am I a fan of ordering something and waiting to pick it up. It takes me longer to read now than back than, because I have less time to read. During school - I could read between classes or at least as an assignment, now... But I am reading more and more now or rather again. My head has gotten quieter and I can concentrate. Spending less and less time in front of the tv. And more and more reading or writing or doing something else. Which is of the good, I expect.

At any rate, I appear to have once again added to my ever expanding bookshelf of books - more than I have time to read, yet I love that. The idea of having more books than I can ever possibly read - always something to pick up and sink into. Sometimes I think as long as there are books in my life, nothing is bad, nothing can really hurt, and I'm never entirely alone.