Saturday, May 12, 2012

Big Book For Big Boy

Going around checking my bookmarks like a guy checking lobster traps (does that simile really hold up? Oh, who cares?) I see that I have so far made it a scant 283 pages into SABBATAI SEVI: THE MYSTICAL MESSIAH by Gershom Scholem (total 929 pages) and who are we kidding? I'm never going back to CHRISTIANITY: THE FIRST THREE THOUSAND YEARS by Diarmaid MacCulloch. That bookmark is stuck forever at page 635 of 1,016. See, what happens is I always start a big giant enormous important book and suddenly I have to start "teaching classes" again and I put it aside for when I have more time to "concentrate" on "my own reading." Ha ha, what a jerk. So now I have a little time and I guess I'm going to pick up this awful hurting brick called THE YEARS OF LYNDON JOHNSON: THE PASSAGE OF POWER. I think that's what it's called. I'm too tired to get up and look. So how am I going to read it? Great question! I remember when there was a documentary about some guy walking across the United States of America and my friend from Hubcap City liked to jest that somebody should make a documentary about HIM trying to read MOBY-DICK. That struck me as a magnificent idea and I kept saying things like "Let's do it!" and "Come on, let's do it!" and "Come on, let's really do it!" and "I borrowed a camera and I'm coming over on Saturday" until my friend patiently explained, "Sometimes it's more fun to talk about things than to do them." Now I get it.