Ramblings

I thought I had read at least one Dorothy Sayers book and just couldn't remember what it was, but after looking at The Guardian's "guide", I see that I haven't. Hmm. Gotta give it a go sometime. I feel like I have not been progressing much through the books I'm reading this week in spite of chapters and page numbers telling me differently. I am on chapter 8 in Don Quixote, well ahead of the three chapters a week I had pledged to read (I began reading it on Sunday). I set aside volume two of Virginia Woolf's diary a couple weeks ago to delve into Ancestral Voices, one of many diaries by James Lees-Milne. It is sadly out of print here, but still seems to be in print in the UK, at least according to Amazon. Thank goodness for public libraries! It is a wonderful book and I am enjoying it very much. Lees-Milne worked for the National Trust and he knew lots of famous people. But in spite of my pleasure in reading it, it is not a book that can be read for any more than a half-hour at a time (hour tops). So it feels as though it is going slowly eventhough I am about midpoint. I am also reading Italo Calvino's The Castle of Crossed Destinies. I was really excited about it because he uses Tarot cards to tell the story and I have a Tarot card collection. But it is not what I had expected or hoped and I am struggling to get past that. I began the book several weeks ago but have been picking it up and putting it down and haven't been able to spend any sustained time. I think I finally had a break through with it last night but I'm just over half-way through it. As a consequence I have no idea what the first part was about. They are short stories so there is no sustained narrative to help me figure it all out. Very frustrating. I am itching to start a new book but I feel like I have to finish this one first. I hate when that happens.