Moist Black

Certainly it is not my purpose to suggest that we should return to all this reading aloud, creating in every library a hubbub like that which one hears when walking through the corridors of a conservatory of music. But are we not foolish to give up that inward voice in which books can speak to us? And in the pursuit of speed, of all things! What has speed to do with literary appreciation? - Robertson Davies

I was reading Mr. Davies about this time last year. The searching aspect of my reading habits led me to consider such. This wasn't the intention on this day when the wind was unsettling all matters mortal to the key of -14 F outside. I was hoping to consider the books i have read in more gentle climes. Finishing Magic Mountain on a spring afternoon bleeds into Charterhouse of Parma - which I finished in the large airy tent above our hotel in Marrakech and this prompts the idea that I finished Pale Fire about ten years ago, sitting on the porch at the old house; I was skinny and tanned then.

Last night I finished Savage Night by Jim Thompson. The final third of the novel shook me despite my being aware of the author's rather bleak disposition.