Books to Read on this Holiday

• A Death in the Family, James Agee
• Coraline, Neil Gaiman (Next--Finished 7 Sept)
  
• In Praise of Falling, Cheryl Dumesnil (Started! And now available fresh off the press!)
  
• Balzac and the Little Chinese Mistress, Dai Sijie and Ina Rilke (Finished)
  
• Oranges Aren't the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson

Update:

• Cradle to Cradle,William McDonough
  
• Holes, Louis Sachar (Again)
  
• The Cellist of Sarajevo, Steven Galloway
• Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt
  

Observation

Nothing beats a good cup of tea, but I think the scenery changes the flavor.

Designer Prints

Fabric makes me giggle. Have I already told you that? It makes me giggle, and wiggle and want to clap my hands. Over fabric. Just bolts of fabric. Have I already written that?

Not in the children's morning programming kind of way though. Or the Made for TV movie motif. Just really excited.

I spent an hour and a half in a fabric store this afternoon. I'm still giggling.

Birds in the Trees

The start of a poem...

You asked me once
what it was like in my head.

Do you remember the grove of trees
along the highway at dusk?
The birds we saw first in the air?

Donuts

"OK, what do you want?" my dad would ask at the donut shop.

"A chocolate old fashion. And a apple juice."

I liked to eat the old fashioned donut in pieces, breaking off the side parts and eating them in a series of bites. Methodical, but not obsessive. I liked how to see how the frosting would crack, fissure, break from its center.