My Birthday

In these times I don't, in a matter of speaking, know what I want; perhaps I don't want what I know and want what I don't know.
--- Marsilio Ficino, letter to G. Cavalcanti c. 1475

I keep thinking about Milton after the Ackroyd novel. Strange but I also imagine him in the form of Ian Holm. It is also an odd coincidence that samizdat is about to read the Broch, yet another novel approximating the guise of the poet in uncertain times.

I have read some Hugh Trevor-Roper as of late and this a.m. I began Black Dogs by Ian McEwan. I am steadily being dazzled by Ian, such a strong departure of the invective I hurled after his Amsterdam won the Booker. Oh, I hated that book. But now as an elder idiot, I am entertaining the thought of a return visit.

I am now 37. I look forward to reading The Death of Virgil with my friends. I will also be reading Our Man in Havana w/ N, a treat which we have postponed for too long. I am still thinking Middlemarch and the Rebecca West for the Morocco trip. I'd like to read more Dickens. Sigh.