(no subject)

Let's just pretend the whole of last week didn't happen, shall we? I think I spent the whole week struggling with pain, trying to control pain and trying to ignore pain. I admitted defeat and went to my doctor; now I am scheduled for tests. I hate tests almost as much as I hate the pain.

There hasn't been much room left over for doing anything. I read something today by Martha Beck that I could relate to:

,,, Eventually my ability to process all the demands on my attention disintegrates, and I spend entire days doing what cartoonist Scott Adams calls "multi-shirking", just sitting around feeling guilty about all the connections I'm not sustaining.

Do you ever feel like that?

The Club Dumas and the Ninth Gate...

I finished reading The Club Dumas by Arthuro Perez-Reverte, the novel that the Johnny Depp movie The Ninth Gate is based on.

Very interesting. While the movie was faithful to the book in mood and tone and (largely) in action, it had some odd departures and the last section - which in the movie involves a witches' coven and a car chase - seemed to belong to another story.

A few brief comments:
- From beginning to end, I really liked the hero, Corso in both movie and book. Depp depicted him beautifully.
- I also liked Flavio da Ponte and wish he'd been in the movie.
- I loved the writing style but don't know if credit should go to the author or the translator
- There were a few sections when I got bored by technical explanations of, for example, book-binding
- I liked the Girl in both versions, though I felt the book explained her in a much more satisfying manner - not necessarily making everything clear, but at least elucidating what manner of being she was
- I enjoyed the offbeat touches like Corso's fascination with Napoleon and the details of Dumas' life
- I love any novel that is really a book about books