Currently reading:

1. “The Big Sleep” by Raymond Chandler.  Hard to believe I haven’t read this before, I know.

2. “Ulysses” by James Joyce.  Same as #1.  I hate this book.  So much of it is like a half-funny joke that keeps on going for an entire chapter.  Which is funny, I guess, but only for the person telling it.  But part of me feels like a fake for not having read it all these years.  Virginia Woolf hated this book, too.  From Katie Riophe’s wonderful “Why Criticism Matters” article in The New York Times:

“Mr. Joyce’s indecency in ‘Ulysses’ seems to me the conscious and calculated indecency of a desperate man who feels that in order to breathe he must break the windows. At moments, when the window is broken, he is magnificent. But what a waste of energy!”

Zing!

3. “Freedom” by Jonathan Franzen.  Ironically, due to the title, this is yet another book I feel obligated to read.  Also, I hear there’s a Bright Eyes concert and I can’t wait to read Franzen’s description of Conor Oberst’s hypothermic folk-rock caterwauling.

Although I do like Bright Eyes.  I own his techno album.  Also, “Fevers & Mirrors.”  And “I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning.”  Terrance Stamp was in the video for “At The Bottom of Everything.”

Drink: Vodka Tonic

Classic Album: Pink Floyd, “A Momentary Lapse of Reason”

Current Album: Mumford & Sons, “Sigh No More”

Recent purchase: Six bags of POM Wonderful pistachio nuts

Weapon of Choice: Snowball

Related: “With Clarity and Beauty, the Weight of Authority” by Katie Roiphe. From The New York Times, 12/31/10.