Today marked the end of my summer hours at work and the start of my week-long vacation. My parents are headed off to England tomorrow evening for a week of their own, and I don’t go back to work until Monday, September 13. It promises to be a quiet and relaxing week, just me and the dog.
Today was the last of my half days, though even the people who didn’t take advantage of summer hours got to leave at 3 o’clock, thanks to the Labor Day weekend. Judging by how crowded my train was before two o’clock, I’m glad I didn’t have to stay in the city a lot longer. I also wanted to go pick up my new eyeglasses, which you can see in the photo up above. (Or here, if that’s too extreme a close-up for you.) They’re a lot different (and a little heavier) than either of my other pairs, or any of the glasses I’ve worn in decades. But they’re comfortable, and I actually quite like them.
This evening, I watched (and pretty much enjoyed) 3 Days of the Condor. It’s maybe a little dated and occasionally a little implausible, but it’s a taut and well-crafted ’70s thriller. And how can you not like a movie with the line “You can always count on the old spy-fucker”? I can certainly see how it was an influence on AMC’s new conspiracy show Rubicon — which I’ve also been quite enjoying.
And I also finished reading Paul Auster’s Invisible. I hope to write more about that later, but it’s quite good, if occasionally disturbing and difficult to puzzle out. And I’m not sure how well it hangs together, or is meant to, in the end. I also don’t know that it actually “is the finest novel Paul Auster has ever written” (as the New York Times claimed), but it’s definitely a return to form for him after a string of disappointing novels. (Of which, admittedly, I’ve only read Man in the Dark, but that was pretty weak stuff.) Again, hopefully more later.