No more reruns

I’ve finally got around to reading Hemingway. “The Sun Also Rises”, of course (what would you expect of someone with a closet preference for compilation CDs?). I would have done this earlier, except that I haven’t lately been able to rouse myself to more than the merest pulp fiction and re-reading of the books I already know too well. New authors have been a difficult leap to make - as the great man said, people are strange when you’re a stranger.

Now that I’ve self-diagnosed softening of the brain, I’ve taken on the books that I have continued to buy even if not read, as if the mere act of browsing in a bookshop were enough.

To get back to Hemingway... well, I can’t review yet because I haven’t finished the book. But for me, Hemingway is one of the few authors whose name alone conjures an entire, romantic world. Kipling is another. Hats and g-and-ts on a patio, bougainvillea on white walls looking out to sea. It also reminds me of how redolent life in the Middle East can be of the old-fashioned expatriate luxuries. And the megrims.... not even a quarter of the book through, and I’m already using that word.