rereading

I read books like some people watch movies - which is to say, quickly and repetitively. And sometimes not with a lot of retention, but that's not here and it's not there either. An old teacher of mine said I read books like a cartoon cat eating a fish, sucking off the meat and leaving only the bones - but that's a bit graphic. Any way, fish and cat or mobie and film, I read when I can't do anything else, when my brain is too bent to multitask.



I recently re-read Philip K Dick's A Scanner Darkly, which I enjoyed, again. I mainly meant to read it before seeing the movie, but I haven't gotten around to the latter.

Then, I re-read The Penultimate Truth, which has always appealed to me in the way that tricking large numbers of people into anything always appeals to me. Then I read Jonathan Lethem's Girl in Landscape, which I liked, but which didn't thrill me the way I remembered it doing. Maybe I was closer to adolescence then - that would make sense.


It doesn't bother me to know how it ends. Travelling the path is enough. I chew through books and I go back for seconds. I hit rewind and watch a dozen more times before the thing falls apart.