ketchup, part one

I need to do some catch-up (ketchup?). That's why it becomes hard to start the blogging thing again after falling behind. It's sort of like when you stop going to the gym for a while, how hard it is to get motivated again.

This might take several installments.

It's just that my brain has gotten all jumbled. I think it will be better once we move out of this little apartment and into our little-bit-bigger condo. When that will be, I don't know. There is demolition to be done first. And maybe that's the problem with this year: too much anticipation of demolition of things as I knew them. I need to get back to the re-construction mindset.

I'm starting to at least be able to settle my mind enough to start reading again. But -- another problem: there isn't a real good cozy, comfortable place in this apartment to read. That has to change in the new place.

I started reading the new John Irving book, Last Night in Twisted River, more than a month ago. Remember, John Irving is my favorite author and I've been looking forward to this book, and I took it with me to Paris last month and Tucson this month and it's a good book, and still I'm only a couple hundred pages into it.

Part of the problem with this book, I think, is that I went to see and hear John Irving last month when he was here in Minneapolis. I had low expectations, anticipating that even though I love his writing I wouldn't like him, but even so was disappointed that I really didn't. As I am reading the book, I can still hear the smugness in his voice and remember how he made no effort to actually interact with the audience (which was made up of adoring fans). We have seen plenty of famous authors -- Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Richard Russo, Wally Lamb, and others -- all of whom have been personable and going out their way, one on one, to shake hands, sign our books, chat a little. John Irving was just too far above us for that sort of thing.

I guess that writing great books has nothing to do with being good at being a celebrity. I'll try to forget the celebrity part and get back to just reading and somehow enjoying.