blahg

well, that about sums it up!

i mean...hmmmm...

i've been listening to the first book of the hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy series, read by mr. douglas adams himself. it's been pretty fun, especially since i now have a project where i can listen and work at the same time. ok, so i read most of the hitch-hiker books when i was in, like, middle school. i now lump these books along with several others into a group called "books i've read but didn't get because i was young and dumb" (it should have a more clever name. sorry). also in this group are wuthering heights, out of the silent planet (6th grade), and the beginning of numerous other books way over my head, such as cat's cradle and some book by andy goldsworthy...i mean, william golding (ha- big difference) - after some research on wikipedia i remembered it was darkness visible. so all that to say that i don't remember much of h-hgttg from my first read-through of it. it's fun and interesting so far, and casually interspersed throughout with atheist dogma. wikipedia again informs me that he was a self-described "radical atheist".

anyway, i just enjoy looking back on my intrepid 11-13 year-old self and my attempts to read novels that i doubt i'd understand even now. i thought at the time that if i just sat down and read these things diligently i'd be able to figure out what was going on. and i generally could, as far as basic plot was concerned. but often when presented with more challenging philosophical themes, they either went whooshing unnoticed, far over my head or i found them too unpleasant to allow myself to contemplate.

i tried recently to re-read for the first time wuthering heights, but oy, i didn't make it very far. i rememebered liking it a lot- the heath sounded mysterious and wonderful, and i wanted so very, very desperately much for everything to work out ok in the end. but the narrator's rendition of a hysterical catherine was intolerable. eegh. talk about over-wroght. wrought. wraught. rot. utter-rot. ahem. but seriously, the whole family, and possibly that other family as well (certainly the little sister) were completely bonkers. at some point, close to when i gave up, catherine says something like if she marries this person she'll be "ruined", even though she loves him. that struck me as so utterly ridiculous because she lives in the boonies where the nearest hamlet was probably populated by all of 75 people. literally no one would actually care. but apparently the weather prevents them from really ever getting to that town, anyway, so basically the ....hold on. oh, wikipedia!... the ernshaw family, along with crazy adopted heathcliff and their crazy old manservant who constantly spews brimstone and hell-fire warnings - they're all squashed together driving each other even more crazy. so at first i was totally disgusted by cathy, but now i can see how she and everyone else would just make each other totally miserable. and they do manage to make each other quite miserable. ugh. but anyway...

speaking of books i read in middle school- of course the redwall series was a must, but this kid in my class always- always- had salamandastron checked out of the school library. sheesh. also, i remember two other people and i had three ways of pronouncing that title/place between us, and we argued about which one was right: sala-MAN-dastron, sa-LAM-andastron, or salaman-DAS-tron. but brian jacques, being british, probably had his own superiour pronunciation and we were all wrong.

hmmmm...

it's over!