books

A long and boring day

Today was almost indescribably boring. It had the drawback of also being almost indescribably loud, as construction, or demolition, or whatever it is continued outside our office windows all day. It was especially grating today, and I left around four o’clock. (I got in around eight, so it’s not like I was skipping out particularly early or anything.)

I did finish reading Irmgard Keun’s After Midnight on the train ride home, though. It’s part of the Neversink Library, a gift from Heather, and it’s the second of those books that I’ve read thus far. I liked it, although not quite as much as Georges Simeon’s The Train, which actually takes place only a few short years later, as World War II is getting underway. Keun’s book is set in Germany just as the Nazis are coming to power in the late 1930s, something she had first-hand experience with. It was published just a few years after she herself fled the country, and it’s a sometimes chilling and personal look at a nation descending into hysteria and violence. It does feel perhaps a little unfocused near the end, but overall I quite liked it.

Monday various

Monday various

Wednesday

They grouped in the road at the top of the rise and looked back. The storm front towered above them and the wind was cool on their sweating faces. They slumped bleary-eyed in their saddles and looked at one another. Shrouded in the black thunderheads the distant lightning glowed mutely like welding seen through foundry smoke. As if repairs were under way at some flawed place in the iron dark of the world.
– Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

Happy birthday, Mr. McCarthy, sir.

My own day was largely uneventful, at least until my evening commute when the train car I was in flooded. I didn’t notice it for the longest time — long enough that my bag, which I make a habit of placing under my seat, got wet, and then so did my pants leg when I lifted the bag off the floor. I hoped at first that somebody had just spilled a large drink, but when I stood up before my station I saw that it was down the entire length of the car, a long puddle of water. At a guess, the toilet in the bathroom (which, as it happens, was in that car) overflowed.

There’s nothing quite like overflow from a communal toilet underfoot to liven up your evening commute.

Have I mentioned lately how much I don’t like the LIRR?

Beyond that, it was just a typical day, although I did manage to get a fair amount of work done, which was nice. And I finished reading John le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I decided to read it after seeing the trailer for the upcoming new movie version. (It was already made into a miniseries starring the late Alec Guinness.) I liked it a lot…but also didn’t. It can be kind of boring and obtuse at times, although I think somewhat deliberately, since it suggests that’s an awful lot of what spycraft is, sifting through old files, making connections, ferreting out the truth. There’s a lot to really like about the novel, which is full of inventive jargon, often suspensful, and often quite dryly funny. But my opinion’s split.

I do think I’ll watch the miniseries and movie, though.

And that was Wednesday: mass transit toilet water and Cold War espionage.

Stay hungry

My parents came home from Ireland this afternoon, after two weeks of touring the country on vacation. They came home bearing photos and stories and gifts, although I think the dog was unimpressed with all three, disappointed they only returned with a single dog toy.

Me, I spent the day at work, as one does on a Thursday. My train this morning was delayed by about ten minutes, and then the connecting train they told us would be waiting…wasn’t. Nor were any of the other trains to the same destination they kept announcing (on track mumble mumble mumble) at Jamaica. So after going up and down the stairs, I finally decided to catch the next train to Penn Station, and either walk or take the subway from there. I’ve had bad luck with the subway from Penn Station before, spending my $2.25 to climb up to a platform where I couldn’t even stand, much less get onto a train. But today I managed to arrive at work only about fifteen minutes late. And since I’d been planning on arriving about fifteen minutes early, I guess it all worked out. Although there’s no love lost between me and the Long Island Railroad.

Other than that, it was a pretty average day. I finished reading Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, which I really liked. Very minor spoilers follow. It’s not brilliant, and maybe sometimes a little inelegant, but it’s a very readable and at times even thrilling book. It’s also a YA novel about teenagers being forced to fight each other to the death, in sometimes graphic(ish) detail, so it’s not hard to see why it’s given some people pause. But overall, I liked it, and I went ahead and bought the sequels. The first book comes to a reasonably satisfying conclusion, but it definitely feels unfinished.

And that was Thursday.