17 Sept 2020> Digitally released our next book project—iiiiiiiiiii. As w/ the other 2, we only made 1 copy + we're keeping it haha... maybe when we finish these we'll compile sum of them into a book (in BW) that is reproducible.

That's on the output side, on the input side we're still trying to keep our to-read piles from toppling over + burying us alive (mostly books we've accumulated in our book box pilferings), so here's sum that we skimmed that we're transferring to the pile to go out into our liebury boox (which is being depleted faster than we can keep it stocked)...

• West of the Night by Beryl Markham—we meant to just give this a cursory glance but found ourselves engrossed + ended up reading most of it + we're also keeping it for our personal collection cuz it was 1 of our late mother's books + we might return to it later to read more thorougly. Every 1 knows who Amelia Earhart is but most don't know who Beryl Markham is (at least we dint)... not long after Earhart she flew solo across the Atlantic in a westerly direction, the 1st to do it that way (going from England to North America)... although she crashed in a swamp in Newfoundland before reaching NY. Quite the character, she cut her teeth as a bush pilot in Kenya + ran w/ the Happy Valley set + a helluva writer to boot.
• Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012 + 2013—we just skimmed thru these to see what was deemed hip since we certainly weren't part of a hip lit scene in these years + no 1 in Sleepingfish was selected (tho maybe we needed to nominate people?)
• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier—we held on to this cuz we just recently rewatched The Birds (she also wrote that) but then figured we may as well just rewatch the movie (also made by Hitchcock)
• Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck—seems when we pick up a Steinbeck book now they often come off as "young adult", maybe cuz we read (+ dug) most all his books as a young adult
• This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff—we also read this in our youth + just wanted to remind ourself what it was like, good but not worthy of a re-read when there's so many other books to read.
• Lewis Carroll biography—this was also one of our mom's books, but don't know if we dig Lewis Carroll that much to read this
• Les Liasons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos—not sure what we were thinking even holding on to this, not sure we even made it through the movie
• Petals of Blood by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o— we've read other stuff by Thiong'o + this is sposed to be his seminal work, but we just weren't into it... we also thought it was the 1 he famously wrote on toilet paper in prison, but that was Devil on the Cross
• Macho by Victor Villaseñor—another 1 of our mom's books... started to read it but seemed amateurish, also YA
• The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford—started to read this only to discover it was all marked up, including a marginal note that said "arrogant prick" which from what we did read seemed accurate
• Swann's Way by Proust—our 2nd attempt at reading Proust (we live on Swann street after all), but the typeface in this version is teeny tiny like they tried to condense 500 pages into 100 (it's in the public domain so there's all sorts of shitty knock-offs)

19 Sept> In our macrocosmic wanderings we ticked off C + D streets SE, past the mall (stopped to check out the new sculpture garden at the Hirschorn) + our old stomping grounds past Eastern Market, tho saved the bits west of the freeway for another day. It was a beautiful day, wanted to stop at some place to get a bite + some sun but couldn't find a place worth it (still have yet to eat out since March + have only gotten takeout once) so just made some tuna sandwiches + ate them up on our roof.

Hirschorn sculpture garden

As we were telling our bedder-½ the other day, the most traumatic thing so far in 2020 was not covid, Trump's antics, the racial injustice, natural disasters, or even our mom dying (or now RBG), but discovering that we can no longer get Goya black beans, which until recently was probly the single item we've consumed most in our lifetimes. Sad. Other brands just don't cut it.