Sunday Night Reading

This evening, I read a number of things.

For one (or two) I read the Sunday papers. I read the Washington Post, of course; if I’m going to get any Sunday paper at all, I’ll get the Post, because I like the light reading in the Style Section (and trying to see if this week the Style Invitational will be good; it is, about a third of the time) and in the section that I think of as ‘Style 2’ because I can’t remember what its called; I also like the comics, and then going slowly through the paper itself. I usually leave Section One until I’ve read the others, as it requires more of an intellectual commitment than I am always willing to make.

I just tried three times to spell Willing as Whilling; for some reason, that just looked right.

My style in leaving the first section till the end will bag me, though, if I’ve picked up the Sunday New York Times, because they split the first section into two physical sections; more than once, I've gone back to Section One only to find that the article is continued in the second physical section, thats now somewhere on the pile of stuff that I've read. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me to get both the Post and the Times -- they’re not likely to have different news, though they have substantially different secondary articles, and their spins on the major articles are usually different. What I do is, I pick it up at the store and look at the article that’s on the cover of the Sunday Times Magazine. If it is something I want to read, I’ll get the paper; otherwise, not. You can pretty much count on me getting the paper if it has something about politics, society, or technology, and pretty much not if it has something about someone bemoaning the state of affairs. I have no use for that.

The Times magazine was about food, this time. I got it. Most of the articles were okay, nothing great, but I did read an article about two restaurants in Martinsville, West Virginia. That was pretty interesting, especially since it didn’t occur to me till the end of the article that what he was really talking about was the political landscape -- people who like/want change versus people who don’t.

The Post Style2 section had a recipe for brownies that I’d like to try. It was part of a couple of articles on political get-togethers. I’m not much of a joiner but there are times I wish I could talk with people about politics. Seems like that’s fraught with peril, though. Its got to be people who are willing to listen as well as talk. Not even sure I can say I fit that definition. Sometimes I think my intellectualism doesn't go very far down. I did find myself mulling over the definition I'd heard about the difference between conservatives and liberals is that the latter like to include everyone -- well, most everyone -- and feel that it isn't legitimate political discourse unless they do, whereas the former like to include just those who think their way, and no further; whats the point? I'm a liberal but there are times I wonder if liberals are too inclusive for their own good.

So those are two things I read. Then I also read a couple of articles that I had saved from papers that I’d bought before we left for our trip, and I leafed through an issue of The Economist that had also come. (I was surprised not to see The Economist on display anywhere in London. Guess I just was not in the right place.) Then I started to read one of two small pocket guides that I had bought at Foyles Book Store -- one is an introductory guide to Saint Augustine, and one is an introductory guide to the concept of terrorism. I am reading the second one. It is not fun reading, and I’m not sure I’ll read the whole thing, short as it is, but it is oddly satisfying.

And that’s it.