Underworld -- Don DeLillo

So, I remember that Ian's best friend, Julian, had given him this book for his birthday back in 99 or 00.  He was really mad because he doesn't read, and thought it was inconsiderate, considering that Julian should have known better. Ian was the king of well thought out gifts.  Julian insisted that if he were to read one book, it should be this. So I read it. Or at least, i started to.  I was also doing my Master's at the time, so i didn't have so much time to devote to it, and it really is a brick of a book.  Anyways, i remember really enjoying it and bring annoyed that Ian wouldn't let me take it back to Greece with me because it had been a birthday present, even if he wasn't going to read it.  Finding it at The Odyssey, I remembered my desire to finish it, but to my dismay, in finding it a real struggle.  It starts off with baseball in Golden Age America, and that's where I'm stuck.  I don't think I will haul it back to California with me next week, it really is a brick of a book.  I'll try again next year.  Def. didn't affect my dreams. 

The Riddle and The Knight -- Giles Milton

I found this book at a restaurant on a beach in Koh Samui where I had a Greek Salad.  It's a really interesting true story about a guy searching for the true story of a knight who claimed to have travelled the world, discovering bizarre creatures and unheard of lands.  Several towns claimed themselves as where he was born or where he died and left his bones. It turns out he may have just been a drunken liar. I remember the drawings in this book as particularly cool linocuts from the original book that he published about his travels, of fat, hairy one eyed creatures and exotically loose women.  I remember the place I found this book every time I think of the story, it was a huge bungalow under the stars and I wanted to stay there all night; it was so warm and lovely, but a huge family came and took up so much space with their yelling kids that I was forced to go back to my hotel that had a thin pool that ran in between the two-storied rooms.  I swam down to the very end and discovered that all of the rooms were empty, save one nearest to mine, and the very end of the pool was in complete darkness and bats were swooping over it to drink.  The other end of the pool stopped right at the street, just a foot or two above eye level, where I could watch locals and tourists wandering by the neon signs for spas where the fish eat your dead skin.

The Divine

The Fourth Way -- P. D. Ouspenski

The Fourth Way was suggested to me by someone I met at Olga's tavern who's name was Brian, but whom we (Jann and I) insisted on calling Briam, because Olga makes it so good.  We'd also had quite a bit if "medicine" (tsipouro, masticha and rosé) and had been crying on and off.  For no reason whatsoever I brought up The Ultimate Frontier and he and Jann got very excited and insisted that this be my next book on this 'journey'.  So far it's quite interesting, although it is just in the format of an interview, or rather, random people asking Ouspenski about his understanding of life, humanity, spirit, etc.  There one thing that stands out to me is that he stands against imagination.  T.U.F. also stood against the Arts as a waste of time.  Ouspenski states (and I'm paraphrasing) that there is no point in imagining things that are not so, and that daydreaming is a waste of our life and it distracts is from our psychic abilities.  To access the other floors of our brain (he says we confine ourselves to the basement and kitchen of a beautiful mansion) we should be aware of ourselves and our functions, breathing, digesting, seeing, etc., and analyzing if they are voluntary, involuntary or two other choices I'm not going to rack my brain to remember (I think I left that knowledge in the basement, I'm currently making a snack in the only other room I can get into).  He says that it is impossible for your average Joe to have complete self awareness without running away with frivolous thoughts for more than a couple of minutes.  I've tried it, he's right. It does become rather tedious.  So is the book, to be honest, but I'm reading it without expecting to understand what is being said exactly and just allowing it to pepper my subconscious with the hopes that someday, if I'm ready to read it again, it will have started to take root.  A pepper root. Although I have a pepper intolerance.  That's OK, I might never even finish it, let alone read it twice.

Corelli's Mandolin -- De Bernières

I've tried very many times to read Corelli's Mandolin (which I always thought had a"Captain " at the head, but apparently (Hollywood be damned) does not), but I could never get past the second chapter. This summer I have solved this hitherto insurmountable problem by skipping the second chapter altogether. I suppose I will go back to it when I've finished the book entirely and am missing something of de B.. Although chapter 2, or THE DUCE (Mussolini), is a character we don't  really meet or care about until later in the book, unless you are reading this book solely for it's historical and political rants, which I find interesting at first, but too tiresome to sit though chapter upon chapter of...I am, of course, talking solely for myself. I'm sure that the political insanity of the time is of much interest to almost any other person reading it.  I would be happy to have enough background to know what's going on, but not so much that I feel that it is two different books, shuffled like a deck of cards in with one another.  I have my suspicions that de B just liked the thought of chapter 2 being named The Duce, because Americans will read "deuce" rather than "duche".  Probably mislaid suspicions.  Glad I skipped it and insisted on reading ahead, (I even got through most of chapter 35, also about el Ducerino).  I'm very much enjoying all of the rest, except for Pelagia calling her father 'moped' (Papakis) and other small annoying Greek translations you'd think would have been caught and set right by now.  It's only been 21 years.  To be fair, though, maybe the editors never got past chapter 2 either. I am not ending on that sentence because it is accidentally too Bryson/Barry endingesque.  Even if this is just for me to read and remember what I have and haven't read, I could never forgive a Brysonberry closing remark.  In conclusion,.