Another day

So it's been nearly a month, and I apologize. I've been reading too fiercely, living too much to pause long enough to write things down. I've finished three books, all of which I'd gladly recommend to anyone who feels like reading something that makes the mind spin round on itself. The first, I've already mentioned, was Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco, an Italian writer whose literary essays I've sampled recently as well. It was an immense book in so many ways, and there were only about a hundred pages in the middle that got terribly cumbersome. I'm sure they would fascinate a grail legend afficionado, but I am certainly not one. It was a story about intellect striving to find happiness, about the tendency of human beings to complicate rather than simplify their existences. It has led me toward a more profound contempt for my more complicating notions of self and toward a more nebulous view of self. I am not yet sure whether this is a good or a bad thing, but it is interesting nonetheless.
The second was, without a doubt, the most incredible book I have read in years. Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated taught me a new reason to laugh and to cry each time I opened it. It taught me to read myself as a stranger, taught me to escape my language. I don't really know how else to describe it. It was profound, counfounding, and illuminating all at once. The words were like delicious crumbs on a meandering forest trail toward truth. It left me both hungry and satisfied.
I then turned to Vonnegut, whom, I must admit, I have not read thoroughly enough. Cat's Cradle was quick, smart, and relatively light. I read it so as not to lose the pace I'd accidentally discovered, to propel me through my current venture: Nausea. It's dense. It traps me as only a void can trap, but it is so perfect in so many ways. At times I can barely pick it up for its weight. At others, I open it to find myself unable to stop reading, as though it is dragging me toward heaviness itself. I will let you know when I've come out on the other side of it.
Teaching is wonderful. I don't know how else to describe it. I have to go do it now, and then I will write more to tell you why.
Regards,
Joe