200 Books

Playback by Raymond Chandler Page: 971 Finished

The Divine Comedy by Dante Page: 81

I didn’t get my alloted pages done today since I stayed up until 1:30 waxing our new hardwood floor last night/this morning and then moved all the furniture back upstairs this afternoon. Jared stayed home from work again this morning making it our second morning together in a week. I’m happy.

I enjoyed starting the Inferno and am pleasantly surprised at the clarity and depth of Dante. Obviously finer minds than mine have approved this poem but I’m pleased that I’m able to enjoy it. I cracked up while reading the third Canto when Dante ranks himself the sixth greatest poet after Homer, Ovid, Horace, Lucan and Virgil. I’d say he was arrogant but history has borne his prediction out so I guess he was just far-sighted.

Finishing Chandler’s novels was fun, of course especially as Marlowe ends up happy and with a girl. Here are a few quotes to keep my hubby happy. “The moon’s four days off the full and there’s a square patch of moonlight on the wall and it’s looking at me like a big blind milky eye, a wall eye.” “A big black gorilla with a big black paw had his big black paw over my face and was trying to push it through the back of my neck. I pushed back. Taking the weak side of an argument is my specialty…I decided to open my eyes just the same. Others have done it, why not me? I gathered my strength and very slowly, keeping the back straight, flexing the thighs and knees, using the arms as ropes, I lifted the enormous weight of my eyelids.”

This entry was posted on Monday, February 18th, 2008 at 10:32 pm and is filed under Fiction, Home, Poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.