I finished The Closed Circle by Jonathan Coe. I have that horrible let down after finishing a great novel. It was so funny and sad. Many more characters developed more and intrigued me. I wish I could write like him. The book is very conversational and very complex with many different storylines. It’s personal, political, current, sad, hilarious, gothic and intellectual with a little murder mystery thrown in. I can’t wait for his next book.

Ok, I'm going to say it again. I'M SOOO COLD!

Cut and paste the url below to see a short film I made, Stuffy Nose

http://homepage.mac.com/mvpr/iMovieTheater3.html

When are we going to have another heat wave? I'm cold already.

This is a close up of Diane's salt house. More soon or walk by Vertical Clearance on Valencia near 19th.

God, I feel like I’m writing ninth grade book reports here. I’m soooo loving this book. I can’t stop reading it and don’t want it to end. I can’t actually remember writing book reports, expect maybe in grammar school. I had a great English class in 10th grade with Mr. Rodriquez. I remember he had us write stories in a certain writer’s style and I wrote one like Hemingway. It was really a very exciting project. I also liked a Saul Bellow book that we had to read for the class so he gave me a handful of Bellow. Mr. Rodriguez was sooo cool. Kind of a hippy, he drove an old Alfa Romeo and brewed his own beer. I had him for Creative Writing in 11th grade. That was a great class. My best friend Lisa Packwood was in it and my boyfriend Paul Donahoe. Mr. Rodriguez had us over to his house -- it was a small class. He also gave me a reading list for the summer between 10th and 11th. It included The Electric Kool - Aid Acid Test, Pride and Prejudice and some Dostoevsky. He was sooo fucking cool!

Maybe I was a little hard on the characters of The Closed Circle. I really like Claire. Of course, she is with whom I identify the most – being traveled and independent and seeing thru the other characters. The entire group reminds me of Vivian’s family, the intelligence and talkativeness and the way that everyone’s friends and family are so interweaved.

I'm halfway thru with The Closed Circle by Jonathan Coe. It's fun and some of the characters really come to life but I think I could relate to them more when they were younger (in the first book). Some of them are a little boring. I like the Benjamin character a lot, he's very dramatic. Not that I have to relate to the characters in a book. Nevertheless, I can't stop reading it.

Gwen Stefani was in my dream last night. She was FABULOUS!

I just finished reading Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. She is pretty well known as a screenwriter for Merchant/Ivory films and this book won the Booker Prize in 1975. Heat and Dust is about a young British woman who goes to India to follow the path of her Grandfather’s first wife who left him for an Indian ‘Prince.’ The book shuffles back and forth between present day and the 1920s. I found it to be very well written and well crafted but none of the characters were particularly arresting, nor where the environs.

Before this I read Anita and Me by Meera Syal, about a young 10 year-old Indian girl in Midlands England. Although this was a rough, first novel by a young woman I was much more involved with the characters. They really grabbed me and when the little girl felt pain, I felt pain. This book was much more daring than Heat and Dust, writing from the 10 year olds' point of view and using regional dialect.

Next I am going to move away from India but stay with England. Vivian just lent me The Closed Circle by Jonathan Coe. I loved his book, The Rotters’ Club