Run

A Saturday morning, spent finishing a marvelous and wrenching novel Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje, whose name is very, very fun to say exuberantly (On-da-che!). He is, you may know, the author the the highly-esteemed The English Patient. It's been a while since I've picked up a novel without any expectation of it or the author's previous work (I haven't read The English Patient) deciding, in one of five fiction aisles at the Pike's Peak Rock-rimmon branch library, to add it to the pile after reading the first few pages. The chapters are short, and some of them are in italicized print, which means that while the POV remains in the third-person, the focus switches from Anil to Sarath to Gamini to Ananda and, when italicized, back to time of the murders and chaos that the three investigate. I generally don't like when novels juxtapose characters and events like this - I think I actually groaned when I found this - because it seems like such an easy way to reveal plot twists to the reader, like Tarantino and his incessant out-of-sequence editing. Ondaatje doesn't do that. Much of the exposition the novel gives, the ideas and elusive journeys that drive the characters, that idea of forensic studies and archaeology as ways to discover truth and life - studying the bones and be able to glean your hobbies, injuries and occupation; studying the soil in which the bones were buried to see where, and when, it took place - do just that. They shed moments of life from war-torn Sri Lanka, the stretched life of a forensic residency and etc. It's a beautiful novel, I encourage you to pick it up and I am not, in any way, benefiting from mentioning this novel. For the record.
OK. I had to get that out because I went for a brief run today in the cool, fresh mountain air and came back with a bloody nose and a wrenching headache. Stupid, stupid, stupid body not yet adjusted to the elevation and less oxygen available and storms off in the distance. So, this and a few cups of water slowly ingested helped. Thanks all. What have YOU been reading/watching this summer?