Thank Ctrl+S

I wrote this post last night but my internet mysteriously shut off before I could publish it. But I saved it to a notepad file, and here it is. I thought of some good additions to it as I was waiting to fall asleep, but as usual, forgot them after a night of grinding my teeth (I got fitted for a nightguard today!).

The post:

I hope your teeth (or rather, the gaps where your teeth were) are feeling better, Bronwen. But why cold tea bags? That sounds like torture upon torture.

To report on my own health, I'm happy to say that all the reading I've been doing (and maybe a tiny bit the television) have made my eyesight just that much worse and I'm getting a new set of glasses/contacts. What have I been reading to contribute to this diminished state?

Since I last blogged, I read How to Breath Underwater by Julie Orringer, one of the three books for this year's froshies. It's a collection of short stories, most of them about young girls or children. I particularly liked "The Isabel Fish" and "Note to Sixth-Grade Self." I read the stories pretty much in one sitting (in between periods of nausea from the bus), so I think I will have to reread some of them. They started to fall flat for me after the first few stories, and I felt like the characters were not as fleshed out as they had been in other stories. Or maybe I just didn't like the characters. At any rate, I am a bit nervous about having to help lead a discussion group on the book, or any book, so if any of you have tips on how I should start, I will love you forever.

I also read this fun little nonfiction book, Don't Eat This Book by Morgan Spurlock, the director of the documentary Super Size Me. It's part behind-the-scenes of the book, part call to action against the fast food industry, part Fast Food Nation-lite. The writing is informal, some of his quotes are a bit dodgy, and it gets a little repetitive, but it's still pretty interesting info presented humorously. I've read Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, which is much more solid as a piece of journalism/nonfiction. Sort of like Nickel and Dimed versus The Working Poor.

Also, I finished Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, one of the Strangers with Candy bookclub picks. I'd never read anything by Foer before, nor anything at was quite so postmodern. At first I was really struck by the experimental feel of the book--he played a lot with the form of the text and incorporated images into his narrative--but toward the end I sort of wondered whether it really did anything. Or was I just too dim to get it? I don't know. What do you all think about the postmodern book? Innovative or too gimmicky?Good read though, if anyone has some time or wants to add to their pile.

I'm trying to read History of Love by Nicole Krauss but I think I ruined it for myself. Also will try to make my way through Kite Runner without wanting to kill myself too many times from the emotional weight on my brain.