The Saul Bellow novel I started reading (More Die of Heartbreak) is leaving me lukewarm. It’s fairly entertaining but I’m not engaged in the same way I was during Auggie March. Maybe I’d just rather be reading something else. I have a certain craving for Patricia Highsmith, but I sort of want to defer that until right before my trip so I can enjoy it then. I’m also reading the Diaries of Dawn Powell … what a fantastic woman. And writer. It’s kind of funny … for a long time, for whatever reason, I wasn’t reading many female authors. But over the last ten years that’s really changed. Highsmith and Powell are my writing godesses. Almost everything that interests me about putting words together is somewhere in their work.

Work is sluggish but undemanding today.

After work I think I may stop off at Panera to use up some of my gift card, buy some scones and bread for the weekend. Then do some window shopping on the walk home. Andy and I talked about having dinner at Nancy’s tonight. Tetrazzini. Mmmm. We haven’t been for a long time.

Last night we started watching The Birth of a Nation. It’s challenging, to say the least. Just goes to show that racism has hardly changed in 90 years. However, Lillian Gish really is pretty.