I've been spending most of my waking hours reading Calamity Physics. Unless something goes unexpectedly wrong this is going to be a five star book.
But I did take time yesterday to go Christmas shopping with Wilhelm. I bought a few books.
A lot of books, actually.
A few presents, and for me, Richard Ford's The Sportswriter, Orhan Pamuk's Snow, Salman Rushdie's Shalimar the Clown; Michael Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White, and Kafka's Metamorphosis. Bill bought H W Brands' Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times, and a Sunshine noir title by Bob Morris, Bahamarama.
Then I asked Robert, a helpful bookseller, for "the book that won the Booker. It's by Anita Desai." He looked up every title Anita Desai ever wrote and I didn't recognize anything. "Wait! I think it has 'Loss' in the title." Mine is a good little memory, but it takes a while to kick in. Robert went to Books in Print. Still nothing.
"Wait! I remember. The title is The Inheritance of Loss." Now we were cookin' -- and it turns out the author is Kiran Desai. "Oops." And after all that I didn't buy it. They had only cloth cover and I was going for quantity yesterday.
Robert and I talked writers for a while: Monica Ali, Salman Rushdie, Iris Murdoch, Michael Cox. "Do you ever read American writers," asked Robert. "Sometimes." "Then let me show you the finest book in the store."
It turned out to be Ivan Doig's first book, This House of Sky. I've heard about how wonderful he is, but haven't ever read him. "Didn't he write Across the River and Through the Trees?" I asked.
"Um, I don't think so." "Then who did write it?" "Um, . . ." Robert is the soul of tact.
Then it dawned on me. "Hemingway?" "Yes." "Sorry, mush for brains." "But you do come up with the information eventually."
I call it memory d'escalier.