5/3/2007

At Dog Eared Books on Valencia, reading The Unicorn, by Iris Murdoch. She had just read the climax of the story when I interrupted her so, when she started reading again for the photo, she was thoroughly absorbed with...never mind. Telling would ruin the book.

She discovered it when she was shelving and thought the cover was great. And, she likes Iris Murdoch. Murdoch's husband, John Bayley, wrote a memoir about her, called Elegy for Iris, which was published after her death and chronicled their forty years of marriage.

Her favorite book--A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole, which she read at her last bookstore job and she said she would let out these "huge horse laughs" and people would look up and wonder--there was a character you cringe for because it's so awful. She's read it twice.

Another favorite--Swiss author, Robert Walser. Good books by him are The Robber and Jakob von Gunten, which she saw animated by the Brothers Quay and became interested in reading his work.

What she generally reads--the classics. They're good. That's why they're classics.