Back home

The house was clean. It was lovely to see my family again.

cmpriest, I wasn't aware of your message until I was on the plane on the way home. Shoot. I would have loved to have gotten together with you. Dammit.

Rob still isn't ready to do taxes. Dammit.

I hurt all over this morning from the rock climbing and am looking forward to biking to work with a little bit of dread.

I am over 150 for the first time since November. Dammit. [Edited to add: Well yes, I know that muscle mass weighs more than fat. I suspect it might have more to do with the fact that the cycling seems to be kicking up my appetite something fierce. I haven't managed to keep within my calorie count for quite awhile. Must work on that.]

I seem to be hatching a cold. Dammit.

I picked up my newspaper this morning and just about threw up. I won't be reading it.

Edited to add: I've switched my morning drink on my commute from coffee latte to tea, in an effort to lower my calorie count. In light of this morning's newspaper, this icon seems apropos.

Publishing Lite

Saw this in the news today:

To howls of indignation from literary purists, a leading publishing house is slimming down some of the world’s greatest novels.

Tolstoy, Dickens and Thackeray would not have agreed with the view that 40 per cent of Anna Karenina, David Copperfield and Vanity Fair are mere "padding," but Orion Books believes that modern readers will welcome the shorter versions.

The first six Compact Editions, billed as great reads "in half the time," will go on sale next month, with plans for 50 to 100 more to follow.

Malcolm Edwards, publisher of Orion Group, said that the idea had developed from a game of "humiliation," in which office staff confessed to the most embarrassing gaps in their reading. He admitted that he had never read Middlemarch and had tried but failed to get through Moby Dick several times, while a colleague owned up to skipping Vanity Fair.

What was more, he said: "We realised that life is too short to read all the books you want to and we never were going to read these ones."

Research confirmed that "many regular readers think of the classics as long, slow and, to be frank, boring. You’re not supposed to say this but I think that one of the reasons Jane Austen always does so well in reader polls is that her books aren’t that long." [emphasis added]. [Good god, if that's their attitude, then I hope this publishing concern fails miserably]

The first six titles in the Compact Editions series, all priced at £6.99, are Anna Karenina, Vanity Fair, David Copperfield, The Mill on the Floss, Moby Dick and Wives and Daughters.

Bleak House, Middlemarch, Jane Eyre, The Count of Monte Cristo, North and South and The Portrait of a Lady will follow in September.

Each has been whittled down to about 400 pages by cutting 30 to 40 per cent of the text. Words, sentences, paragraphs and, in a few cases, chapters have been removed.

Matthew Crockatt, of the London independent bookshop Crockatt & Powell, poured scorn on the enterprise. "It’s completely ridiculous — a daft idea," he said.

"How can you edit the classics? I’m afraid reading some of these books is hard work, which is why you have to develop as a reader. If people don’t have time to read Anna Karenina, then fine. But don’t read a shortened version and kid yourself it’s the real thing."

A rival classics publisher, quoted in The Bookseller magazine, accused Orion of dumbing down. "It’s patronising to consumers. One of the striking things about a huge number of the classics is how readable and approachable they are. Just making them shorter doesn’t make them more palatable."

Readers should be trusted to self-edit by skimming passages: "Aren’t readers intelligent enough to do that?" Read more

I won't be buying any, needless to say. I don't want to read a gutted version of a classic book. Yes, there are some books on this list I've struggled to get through--I did abandon Mill on the Floss, although I did finish and enjoy Middlemarch, but I like much better using the Daily Lit approach. The book seems too big and overwhelming? Then just read a little bit each day via e-mail. That is how I am now reading Moby Dick and Bleak House.

Bicycling adventures

This afternoon was one of those first occasions which was actually perfect for bicycling. Sunny and 61 degrees. I kitted up, stowed my bags and put my commuter cup, filled with water, in the water bottle clip. [I put homemade coffee latte in it during my morning ride (well, now tea) and water on the ride home.]

I've had bad luck with commuter cups. I had one that I'd used for probably over five years, and within one week of starting to bicycle, it bounced out of the clip and the outer casing cracked, so that coffee started oozing between the layers and I had to throw it away. I bought another one, and sure enough, three days later, it bounced out of the clip and broke the outer plastic casing, too.

I took it back to the coffee shop I'd gotten it at and convinced them to exchange it for one that was stainless steel. THIS one had no outer layer, so I figured I was set. It had a tapered middle, too, so I hoped it would sit better in the clip.

I pulled into traffic and got into the bike lane. After about ten blocks or so, I came up behind Mr. Casual Biker. Now, I've been passed by EVERYONE I've encountered on the road so far. It is rather humiliating. But Mr. Casual Biker was actually ACTUALLY going slower than me. Much slower. I waited a block or so to be sure and then decided to pass him. I gave him a cheerful and polite "On your right" (it was a one-way street, and so the bike lane was the farthest one over to the left) and pulled ahead. Yes, dear reader! I actually pulled anead!

I had about ten seconds to savor this minor but still very satisfying victory, when I hit a patch of combination potholes-and-gravel--and my brand new commuter cup bounced out of the clip yet again. This time, I actually managed to run over it with my back wheel. Fortunately, I avoided totally dumping the bike.

I immediately slowed to a stop, and Mr. Casual Biker whizzed on past. A man passing by on the sidewalk retrieved the cup from under a parked truck. It is scratched along the top and has a two inch dent in the side. (And I'd post a picture if I could find the digital camera, but the girls have absconded with it and now deny knowing its whereabouts.)

I've owned it all of four days. Well, it still closes securely, and the exterior is one layer, so I don't have to throw it out. Yet.

I was lucky. If I had fallen, gee, I could have gone under that truck.

It has given me pause for thought. I had been wearing gloves previously, because of the cold, but my hands were bare this afternoon for the first time. If I had fallen, they would have been pretty chewed up. I think I need to get some biker's gloves with netting on the fingers and leather on the palms, to protect me if I fall.

I still want to get that bike odometer, and this helmet mirror is driving me crazy. Definitely handlebar mirrors for both sides.

Would a small bungee cord hold the damn cup in place?

(Argh. Riding a bicycle was supposed to save me money.)