It's Longer Than Moby Dick

Moby Dick is often referred to as the book most readers have not read or not finished. For me and many others I would guess Remembrance of Things Past is that unfinished epic. I have actually finished the first of three volumes. Though that took me at least four attempts. I have not yet opened the second book. And probably never will.

Today, May 30th, The Bibliophile's Devotional speaks of Proust's magnum opus, thusly:

"This very challenging book - a 3,000 pages novel that was once dismissed as the work of a self-indulgent neurotic dilettante - left one critic complaining that Proust had devoted fifty pages to 'how he turns over and over in his bed before going to sleep.'"

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Books Near & Far

I've been away. I know how is that even possible from quarantine. Let's just say it was more metaphysical than actual. Combination of some good reads and a healthy dose of bingeable cable. In fact, when asked: "How you guys doin'?" I have taken to responding with: "My brother and I take easily to sloth."

But I have been neglecting The Bibliophile's Devotional, which has delivered some memorable offerings both old and new. First, from May 10th, the new. I have heard of Don DeLillo but not his 1985 book White Noise. It now awaits me on my kindle.

"A brilliant satire of mass culture and the numbing effects of technology, 

White Noise tells the story of Jack Gladney,

 a teacher of Hitler studies at a liberal arts college in Middle America."

Need I say more? Seriously, Hitler Studies.

Also published in 1985 comes Larry McMurtry's classic Lonesome Dove. A great read and one of the few novels that was adapted near perfectly to television. This was the May 19th selection from The Bibliophile's Devotional and the first of four straight days of wonderful reads.

May 20th brought Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner published in 2003 just two years after the United States got involved in Afghanistan the setting for the early part of the novel.

May 21st brings us Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? which we all know was the basis for the film Blade Runner. Dick was a pioneer of science fiction and still one of my favorite writers in a genre filled with luminaries.

May 22nd finds us delving back to Animal Farm, George Orwell's allegorical tale from 1946, which rounds out the current book shelf suggestions from the Devotional.

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Like Water for Chocolate

The book by Laura Esquivel is the Cinco Di Mayo offering of The Bibliophile's Devotional. Yes, the photo above is a promo for the movie, but it so captures the essence of the book and the food.

The Devotional sums up the novel this way -

"Words seem to literally smolder on the page of this Mexican author's exuberant first novel. A tribute to the senses, it combines magical realism, seething eroticism, and food to concoct a sensual feast."

Each chapter opens with an extravagant recipe: For turkey mole she writes: "Fifteen days before the turkey is to be killed, begin feeding it small walnuts."

A lush novel that reaches for all your senses and it has two of my favorites in the title.