W.W.G.V.D.?

[The best thing about summer vacation is I can read as much non-school-related stuff as I want and not feel guilty. After seeing the musical Wicked before going to Greece, I acquired a major Gregory Maguire fixation. Luckily, Terry, my roommate on the trip, brought the novel to Greece, so I alternated between Socrates and the Wicked Witch of the West while on Hydra. I highly recommend the juxtapostition (on a Greek island, if you can swing it), and I think Maguire's next project should be a skewing of the Age of Pericles.]

[The other day, John and I walked to the Union Square Borders. Yes, I know it's an evil, corporate monstrosity, and I should only be shopping at little independent bookstores in the neighborhoods. Get off my back; Borders is terribly convenient to The Downtown Apartment, and doesn't smell musty, although the filthy men's room is not to be believed. (Note on The Downtown Apartment: now you know the origin of my email address.)]

[We stocked up on all sorts of summer reading, including Maguire's third, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister (which I consumed in two days; while Cinderella doesn't hold the place in my heart that Oz does, the novel was delish); his second Lost (haven't cracked it yet); RuPaul's autobiography; Valley of the Dolls ("Sparkle, Neely, sparkle!"); and Burr by my idol, Gore Vidal, which I stayed up way too late last night finishing after getting back from a barbecue at my parents' in Sonoma.]

[It looks now as though I'm going to plow my way thru all of Vidal's American historical novels; it started when Violet took me to see him speak at College of Marin in 2000, and he signed the last novel in the series, The Golden Age, for me. As usual, I started with the last novel first, but since he wrote and published them out of historical order, I'll be all right. If anyone has shown a consistent understanding of how this country works and why, it's he. Hope springs eternal for Violet's and my so-far-unsuccessful campaign to replace the cloying and vacuous "What Would Jesus Do?" with "What Would Gore Vidal Do?"]

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