So It Goes

Unbelievable. I'll be out of debt for the first time in 2.5 years in about 16 days. I can actually start accumulating significant savings. Imagine that! I want to pull a Willaim Wallace and scream "FREEDOM!" at the top of my lungs once I write the last check that will put me back in the black.

Anyways, I get to have a restful weekend at home for the first time in a while. It'll be nice. I'll kick back and try to finish both The Interpretation of Dreams and Cloud Atlas. The latter would be easy if not for the first. (It's my habit to read one nonfiction and one fiction book at a time. I have to read a fifth of the nonfiction before I can read the next fifth of the fiction. It's a motivation thing.) It's odd. Freud's not that hard to read, I just find him so uninteresting that motivation is a serious problem. It's not often I say that about a book. When I do, you know it's serious. I mean, even Walden wasn't this boring. I flew through Discipline and Punish, Brave New World: Revisited, and The Communist Manifesto (other nonfiction books of the past month) by comparison.

However, despite Freud's inane babbling, I'll power through it if for no other reason than I am finding Cloud Atlas to be utterly fascinating. I'm definately going to have something to say about this book when I'm done. But then, I expect nothing different from Mitchell.

I was fascinated by Mitchell's playing with reality in Number9Dream, and Cloud Atlas expands on that theme (though it doesn't rely on it as heavily as Number9Dream does). I've got an idea for a semi-essay kicking around in my head that would actually span all three of Mitchell's novels (Ghostwritten to a lesser extent than the other two). I'm thinking the essay might also touch on Stephen King, Kurt Vonnegut, and David Markson (authors who know how to toy with reality) at different points also. It should be interesting. It might take some time to whip up, though.

For those of you who haven't read anything by David Mitchell, what are you waiting for?

No, seriously. Go to the book store.

Now!