The Lay of My Land

Quick Book Report: I am a third of the way through The Lay of the Land, Richard Ford's Frank Bascombe trilogy. It's a fine series of books and it deserves a place on the same shelf as John Updike's Rabbit novels. The sentences are longer in this installment ans yet the voice is friendly and so calm. Frank's second wife has left him for her first husband whom all thought was dead; he has two adult children; an ex-wife who is checking in with him and his health is at odds with his optimism. Or it might be the source of it. He has prostate cancer and he realizes that in his mid-fifties, he is in what he calls his premanent period.

I should continue on this book but I also bought A Conspiracy of Paper, a historical novel about intrigue at the London Stock Exchange in the 1800s. I read most of the author;'s other stock exchange and funy clothes novel, The Coffee Trader. It was good but it was due back at the library. I'll be returning to it.

Quick Gadget Report: I am typing this on my new Apple MacBook. I am in love but I think Nora may love it more. She wants to make movies, burn DVDs and load music on a pink iPod. She has asked Santa for it and I know for a fact that he will deliver. I have yet to plug in my Dell Jukebox, but my new Mac might die of laughter. I think there might be an iPod Nano in my future too.

Quick Blog Report: Kevin Drum had a good line about James Baker's Iraq Situation Group report. Has any document disappeared into irrelevancy so quickly? The retired SecDef Donald Rumsfeld says he hasn't read it but for the summary and the President clearly won't read it. Frankly, I doubt if even his father, a man who he adores, could talk him out of his position on Iraq.

Andrew Sullivan had a smart and frightening throwaway line, an aside on his blog. Perhaps we should leave and let the Middle East have the war that it so desperately wants. Could it comes to that? Clearly, oil plays a factor in our presence there though one must admit that we could have occupied the country without building a dictatorship and call it Shell Oil-stan. Who could stop us? Would we care about this irrational region if there were no oil is the question. The West would throw up its hands and allow the players to kill themselves much like what happens in Africa.