nonlinear organizing, high viscosity literatizing

http://www.literature-map.com/

http://www.visualthesaurus.com/

two similar cluster-organizing websites. visual thesaurus is particularly fun to play with... click on a word and watch everything reconfigure. literature-map is interesting but i have not yet figured out who inputs the data linking authors. my tastes are seemingly predictable... i have not, however, seen edith wharton and tom robbins in the same cluster - but i could rationalize linking them through douglas coupland.

speaking of literary connections: please go read pulitzer winners "age of innocence" by edith and "angle of repose" by wallace stegner. then we should talk.

Don't drop your library book into the water. See empty reservoir below (in progress).

I stopped buying books about 14 months ago, and started keeping track of all of the books I read (and when I finish them) around the same time. I have read 46 books since June 2006. About 1 every two weeks. About 37 of those books have been from Multnomah County Library. I love the library - I go to the bookstore and write down everything I am interested in reading, then get online and put holds on everything and wait for the books to arrive at my local branch for pick-up. This is genius. The only downside is that I cannot directly lend people the books I am recommending.

Everything is enumerated.

Nicole Krauss' book "The History of Love" is just lovely. Continued my new-found theme of books with WWII connections, but mostly takes place around now in NYC. It is the story of Leo Gursky, a Polish Jew who survived the war and made his way to cracking locks and daydreaming in NYC, and the simultaneous coming-of-age story of Alma Singer. Alma's brother Bird is a genius in a 5 year olds body, not unlike another favorite literary child-philosopher, Bill Bob ("The River Why"). Recommended reading before or after: Jonathan Safran Foer's books "Everything is Illuminated" and "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close". Jonathan is married to Nicole, and really, if you read "Illuminated", and then "History" and finally "Extremely", you would have a near perfect trio which elegantly and surreally builds on itself.

Other books read recently:

Samurai's Garden by Gale Tsukiyama

The Foreign Correspondent by Alan Furst

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (This is like the last season of Sopranos. I am pretty certain that David Chase and J.K. Rowling are in cahoots.)

Old becomes new.

Reading Richard Ford's "Lay of the Land" right now. 400+ pages describing 3+ days surrounding Thanksgiving 2000 in the life of sportswriter-turned-realtor Frank Bascombe. Hardly subject matter easily marketed to other readers, and yet, I would prefer reading it than doing nearly anything else lately.

Frank's story is careening towards a significant event, but an event only significant within Frank's Permanent Period, not necessarily notable to anyone else in Frank's world. However, because I have been immersed in Frank's head for 300+ pages, the impending event does feel doomful.

Not unlike this last season of The Soprano's. Tony and Frank (both middle-aged men of New Jersey), are stumbling through similar uncertainties. And their middle aged angst is familiar to my own heady thoughts of the future.