Sunday Sundries, 259

1. AOTW: Last night, driving down to Akron to meet our son and his sons for supper at Dontino's (and with three cameras at the table: no pics!), I twice had to brake hard on the Rt. 8 freeway because people coming onto the road decided that they, not I, had the right-of-way. I could not move over into the left lane (lots of traffic), so ... AOTW 2, Dyer 0.

2. This week I finished one book, Sweet Tooth, a 2012 novel by Ian McEwan, whose complete novels I'm trying to read. It purports to be the memoir of a young woman named Serena Frome, who, upon graduation from university, finds herself working (low-level) for MI5 in London.

She gets involved in a late Cold-War scheme to recruit writers (through a cooperative foundation), supporting them (without their knowledge or consent) with MI5 funds because they will write (so the agents believe) works that will make the UK look good, the Bad Guys bad.

Well, she finds herself in a romantic relationship with a writer she recruits, and at the end we get a "twist" that I don't want to say anymore about ... except this: I didn't like it. It was something you might try in Creative Writing I, but in a novel by a major writer in 2012? Don't think so.

I did like a lot of the novel. McEwan, of course, can write. It was just that flip at the ending that annoyed me ...

3. Had a lot of fun this week streaming bits of the Brit series Upstart Crow (and thanks again to friend Chris for alerting us to it). The episode we watched dealt with The Taming of the Shrew, a play I taught to my 8th graders at Harmon School back in the mid-80s and early 90s (before I flipped to Much Ado About Nothing).

And now they're on to Romeo & Juliet ...

4. Oh, forgot to mention in my discussion of the McEwan novel I finished a week ago--Saturday. There's a moment when a character sort of saves everyone because she has memorized Matthew Arnold's poem "Dover Beach"--a poem I have also memorized. So ... I guess I'm ready to save someone?  (Link to poem.)

5. I mentioned last week, I think, that Joyce and I had seen Little Women, and I realized, watching it, that I'd never read the book. (Tch, tch, tch.) So ... guess what I started doing last night? The March house in the film, by the way, looks just like the Alcotts' home in Concord, Mass.

Joyce and I have seen it several times (Orchard House in Concord).

6. I've realized that it's no longer safe for me to exercise at the health club. My balance has become so bad that I'm always in danger of falling--which I have done a couple of times. So ... until I get some help, I'm going to eschew the club (the biking, the walking, the rowing machine) and try to get some medical help. I hope it's something as simple as a med I'm on. They did a brain MRI a couple of years ago and found my brain to be "unremarkable"--a term I kind of love.

And I'll be spending a long day Tuesday up at Seidman Cancer Center--blood tests, a CT scan, a bone scan, an injection of Xgeva (for bone strength). Can't wait!

7. Final Word--a word I liked this week from one of my online word-of-the-day providers ...

     - from wordsmith.org

splanchnic: (SPLANGK-nik)

adjective: Of or relating to the internal organs or viscera.

ETYMOLOGY: From splanchnicus, from Greek splankhnikos, from splankhna (entrails). Earliest documented use: 1694.

USAGE: “I discovered that the splanchnic nerve is actually three nerves and all control the visceral functions in various manners.”

    - Isaac Asimov; Robot Visions; Roc; 1990.