ROLT

Moira went to Kingston (She's going to spend a week in Cape Cod again this year.)

Saturday I went to John Snow's new book club, where we discussed Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther.  I had to admit I couldn't get far into the book:  sensitive young characters like Werther make me impatient, partly because they remind me of when I was young and sensitive. (Another example:  Winona Ryder in the Generation X movie Reality Bites.) I want to say to them, "Welcome to the world!")

Anyway, we had a full turnout of half a dozen people.  We met in the basement of the Lillian Smith library, in the same place where we do the memoir slam.  Next month we're discussing Maurice Stendhal's The Red and the Black.  I don't have time to read it, but I'll come anyhow.

Sunday was the latest ROLT, and the topic was humour, with the title "The titter, the howl, the belly laugh and the boffo."  I read the Stephen Leacock story "Gertrude the Governess, or Simple Seventeen" as well as "The Gettysburg Address in Eisenhower's" and Robert Benchley's versions of opera synopses.  I would have read the first chapter of Vanity Fair and Robert Frost's poem "The Code," but I wasn't up to it. 

I used to write my memoir pieces on looseleaf in the same binder as my choir music.  But starting at today's slam, I've turned to writing in a Pierre Belvedere notebook of the same sort I used to write my diary in before going online with it.

I'm finally getting serious about my schedule for finishing Vanity Fair within six weeks (which allows for one library renewal). The other day I read over thirty pages!