Birthday! Books!

[pyat]

Today I am 34!

I share a birthday with Robert Oppenheimer, Lenin, Nabokov, and Chris Makepeace of Mazes and Monsters.

Generally speaking, my 30s have been much more interesting and engaging than my 20s. I am healthier, by and large happier, and seem to have settled into a career that did not actually exist when I entered university.

I have many of you to thank for that current happiness – new friends and old, and most especially velvetpage who continues to surprise and thrill me after nearly nine years of marriage and fourteen years of being a couple. I have two intelligent and adorable daughters, a reasonably sound house, and an interesting job. There are many blessings to count, and count them I do!

I have no specific plans for today, beyond sushi with commanderteddog and maybe watching a movie this evening with velvetpage. This suits me fine – I had cake on the weekend, and got presents from my older sister and my parents, as well as some gift cards, etc., from Erin’s grandparents and aunt and uncle.

***

Since last updating my reading list, I’ve finished:

• Post Captain, by Patrick O’Brian (1972)
• The Mauritius Command, by Patrick O’Brian (1977)
• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami (1997)

Post Captain was quite good, but the Mauritius Command was a trifle disappointing, though still solid. I’m not going to seek out any additional books by O’Brian unless I received specific recommendations, as I think I’ve read the best ones. I may have simply overdosed on Napoleonic-era sailing stories.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was my 17th book of the year thus far, and probably the most memorable. The story reminded me a bit of the anime film Paprika, at least in its quality of blurring lines between reality and internal fantasy. It also sparked me to do a lot of reading about Manchukuo and Mongolia. Wind-Up Bird had a sort of extraordinary cadence to it that drew me in and pulled me along for all 600+ pages, without ever losing my interest. I highly recommend it.

I also finished listening to my fifth audiobook, The Princess and the Goblin, written in 1872 by George Macdonald. Macdonald was a very influential fantasy writer, and served as fictional angelic guide for C.S. Lewis in The Great Divorce. This book was quite readable (listenable?) and the reader on Librivox has a clear voice with a cute accent. I am wondering if The Princess and the Goblin was the work which established the rule that all goblins in British fantasy novels should talk and act like boorish Cockneys.

Comments

[postrodent.livejournal.com]

I pegged you in your late 30s or early 40s (although, from the photos I'd seen, you looked pretty well preserved for that age). I think this is actually the result of a few factors: your icons, most of which allude to the past and to vanished symbols of adulthood , your style of writing, which seems a lot more and mature and well-considered than the LJ average, and your concerns and preoccupations, which are, at least in part, those of a guy engaged in discharging some serious responsibilities. (As opposed to, frankly, an arrested adolescent like myself, someone who doesn't have kids or a car or a house, and prefers it that way.)

[pyat.livejournal.com]

It's a fair cop!

Maybe I should claim to be a well-preserved 44...