Except for about ten or fifteen minutes this morning, when my subway train was stuck on the platform while someone in another car, apparently, received medical assistance, today was pretty much just an ordinary Monday. And to think, if I’d risked squeezing on to the over-crowded train that had pulled in five minutes earlier, I probably even had this much to report.
I spent the day mostly collating reviewer reports, contacting potential reviewers for other book projects, and combing the internet for syllabi and course listings and enrollments that might match the kind of instructors I have in mind.
And I did most of it while enjoying the audiobook of Stephen King’s It. It’s been years since I read the novel — which clocks in, across several audio files, at about 45 hours — but I had credits from Audible and wanted to revisit the book. So far, I’m really enjoying it, particularly actor Steven Weber’s reading. It’s not King’s most tightly plotted book by any means, but it’s maybe one of his best, and scariest, and it’s one that has some genuinely interesting things to say about childhood and fear. King reportedly wrote of the book later in a letter, “Never write anything bigger than your own head.” Which I’ve always liked to take both literally and figuratively, though perhaps also as advice not worth heeding.