on reading 2

I have been devouring the world of ebooks.
It is amazing the volume of material out there: I have been rereading hemingway again, after over a decade. And Ernesto sabato. And enjoying Tzvetan Todorov for entirely personal and non-academic reasons! This is all pure escapism. Monday and Tuesday I found myself in a conference on the financial crisis. The banking sector is falling apart, and no one has any idea when the bottom will become visible. One of the major presenters at the conference (head of a large division at RBS) introduced himself saying “at RBS we do now sell postage stamps in addition to our other services.” I have heard the same comments over and over again the past few months. My brain is exhausted from the gloom and doom, mainly because I simply have no clue what to do about it all, other than to desperately try to remain employed, at least somewhere. I am at a loss for other solutions. So I sit back and enjoy fiction. And some of Bob Woodward’s books on the last Bush administration, which read like fiction, even if they are unfortunately more reality than not. My mind drifts over to japananese manga. Then on to Hungarian fiction. I giggle through a travelogue on Buenos aires. It is not that I am trying to ignore reality, I just don’t know what else to do with it, and I figure I might as well enjoy my time as best I can, until I come up with a more productive use of it.