I've told you before that I'm not to be trusted with books, especially one that wraps itself around my hippocampus and won't let me go. I'm trying very hard to be disciplined with this one because it's very long and I have things to do. Last night I actually set the timer on me so that I would quit and go to bed at a decent hour. You think that's discipline; it's not, it's self-protection. I managed to swim this morning after a perfectly timed sleep, thanks to my timer. But I made the mistake of reading at breakfast and now it's time to go about the day, and no blog.

I'll tell you, the book is so good. I will never in a million years write as well as this author. And she knows so much. I have always known myself to be short of a working knowledge of say, a car engine, or of astronomy, or plants. I think of the American humorist, Robert Benchley (1889-1945), who said he knew two things in nature: a robin and a rose. That's me, abysmally ignorant. I know a bit about cooking, something about Grimm's Language Laws, and I can recite the first book of Madeline ("In an old house in Paris/All covered with vines...."), but not much else. This person whose book, one of the best hundred and also one of the best ten published last year in the U.S., this person is astonishing. I recommend Donna Tartt's THE GOLDFINCH. It's up for the Bailey's (formerly the Orange) Prize for Women's Literature, winner to be announced in April. I'll have time to re-read it before then.

I don't think so. You know that line from Gene Fowler (1890-196): "Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead." Stephen Leacock (1869-1944) had a similar attitude: “Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself--it is the occurring which is difficult.” A silent computer is just as harsh as a blank sheet of paper or a silent typewriter. Although we are given keys to push for Delete and Cut and Copy and Paste, there isn't one you can push that says "Write." Ay, there's the rub.

I'm still searching for the optimum time to shed my blood writing a blog. I like to fit it in before swimming but sometimes it makes me late. Not that it's bad to swim at 6:30 or 7 but by that time the pool is not mine alone. Later in the day doesn't always work out, depends what I'm doing that day. And then there's my diary, and curricular reading and note-taking, plus extra-curricular reading. I'm not complaining. I'm doing what I love best. I consider myself very lucky, blessed, in fact. It's just there aren't that many hours. I like what the woman said in praise of Daylight Saving: "The cows need the extra sunshine." We all do. If only there were extra hours.