instead of working on my own stories or cleaning a closet, i opted for reading. i plowed through the last 200 pages of Dan Chaon’s You Remind Me of Me. it was disappointing. a story of two half-brothers and their crazy mother. the book jumps back and forth through time, never allowing you to really get your legs under you. it’s even more disappointing for me, because i so much loved Chaon’s collection of short stories, Among the Missing.

but all is not sad in bookland.

earlier this week i read Ethan Canin’s Emperor of the Air. it was a fabulous book. i had to read his short story “We are Nighttime Travelers” for the last night of writing class. that story was so beautiful that i cried. it’s been quite some time since a story moved me so, probably Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried.” Canin’s whole book is just as stunning, and it didn’t hurt that he wrote about a character named Jodi, yes a girl named Jodi spelled correctly. that pretty much sealed my love for him.

i’m having a hard time making the transition back to the real world, after having spent all day in a dreamworld of someone else’s making.