Oh, there's been a lot of reading and re-reading and half-arsed reading and picking-up-but-not-finishing and falling-asleep-with-face-mashed-into-page over the last few months. Highlight far and away Hilary Mantel's Bring Up The Bodies, which continues the Wolf Hall saga of Henry VIII's spectacularly opulent and corrupt world as seen through the eyes of his advisor, Thomas Cromwell; I promised myself I would savour it slowly, and then two nights up until two a.m. unable to put it down and it was over. So sad! Might have to read it again... I also reread Old School, by Tobias Wolff (hmmm, there seems to be a lupine theme developing here) which is just as good as I remembered, although anti-Semitism seems sort of creakily old-fashioned nowadays - I don't doubt for a second that it still exists, but I can't think of a single incident of it that I have ever directly witnessed - and The Undressed Art: Why We Draw, (no wolves involved), which made me want to sign up as a model through the Bay Area Model's Guild until I remembered that I have almost no free time and it wouldn't pay me anywhere near enough money to cover the gigantic mortgage I will shortly have.
Anyway, in lieu of an exhaustive description of all the books that I have been falling asleep over, a sonnet by Edmund Spenser that I copied out a long time ago, that surfaced (slightly crumpled) during some furniture shifting/unpacking in the garage:
Thrice happy she, that is so well assured
Unto herself and settled so in heart:That neither will for better be allured,Ne feared with worse to any chance start:
But like a steady ship doth strongly part
The raging waves and keeps her course aright:Ne aught for tempest doth from it depart,Ne aught for fairer weather false delight.
Such self assurance need not fear the spite
Of grudging foes, ne favor seek of friends:But in the stay of her own steadfast might,Neither to one herself nor another bends.
Most happy she that most assured doth rest,
But he most happy who such one loves best.
