There's no actual content here or Fish in Exile

I read one more chapter of Fletch. In it he has a call to the finance expert at his paper where we get a chapter long info dump of the rich guy's backstory and finances. Excuse me while I try to drum up some enthusiasm. Wait...wait...nope, no, not happening. I'm just not feeling it. I'm too tired for this nonsense. My mother got out of the hospital barely a month ago after her heart transplant and I just don't have the energy for this long-winded exposition.

Which is why it's weird that I read in entirety Vi Khi Nao's Fish in Exile. Because that was pretty ridiculous as well. Mythological callbacks and metaphors abound in this tale of a couple who lost their twins to the sea. So many metaphors, so many allusions. It's a serious story with serious grief and some of it is quite well portrayed and yet. Part of the way Ethos and Catholic Romulus (yes, those are their names) handle their grief is by buying pair after pair of fish (as a pair of proxy children, named Dogfish and Pistachio) and putting them in dresses and "walking" them until they die and then starting the process all over again. I understand what it's supposed to mean in regards to their grief and guilt but it's just too silly. And the metaphors. The entire book is metaphors and similes. "I watched the pluvial curtain let down her translucent laces."  She's saying it's raining. But she just said that in the previous sentence. "Snow was predicted, but rain comes heavily in sheets." It's repetitious for no real reason other than to use fancy words. It doesn't truly add anything. Tons of this. "And soon, like a child that blooms into a hand, I fall asleep."  "I sipped from the well of the Corona." (He's drinking a beer.) "I don't understand women or cameras. My thoughts are outnumbered by white diminutive dots." The entire first part of the book from the point of view of Ethos is so dream-like and metaphor heavy that it's almost impossible to figure out what is going on. He can't make love to his wife. She's turned cold. He puts daisies down his underwear. She's not thrilled by this. He eats the daisies. They taste like tobacco. He has a haversack he keeps putting bread and butter into. There's also the neighbor couple who were present at the tragedy and Ethos' mother.
At the core of the story is the loss of two children and everyone's guilt about what they could have done to prevent it's happening but you get the full story so late and before that no one's guilt makes sense.

One more thing to share. I have a Library of Health 1935 edition of the 1916 book, edited by B. Frank Scholl. Twenty books in one volume, it was a health library for housewives to use to care for their families. (No internet!)

From the section on Self-Care for Women, on exercise and nutrition and how you can't change your natural body type but you can take care of yourself.
"This individual perfection will be each person's own type of beauty, and if this is brought out as nature intended, will be most attractive and delightful." p. 1635.
You are an individual not made to be fit to someone else's mold of beauty; take care of yourself and let your God-given loveliness shine.

It's damp out

Work, work. Walls are coming down, carpet being laid, walls painted. That chemical mix of paint, drywall, and adhesives that doesn't actually smell good but does because it is associated with newness. The admin offices across the street are done but no one can move in because the internet hasn't been hooked up yet. Staff are floating, sharing space. Everybody is busy, harried, and tired. I try to stay out of the way and work on my cataloging list. There are a lot of donated books for the start of the library. Hopefully that means more money for more specialized books and for other subjects. A well-rounded (and accredited) library has more than just one subject.

The only thing I'm a little concerned about now is hours. They want the library to be open at all times they have classes. They have classes seven days a week, from about 8am - 9pm. Yeah, I can't work that often. A student could get a break on finances if they help out in the library but if that doesn't happen right away the hours are going to have to be shorter. Besides, school libraries aren't open that often. No library is open like that. Most close on Sunday, open a few hours Saturday, and close early Friday. I don't get paid to work lawyer hours.

I can't wait to actually move into the library. I'll have a space to put the resources I have already to organize them. I would like to get the students access to AJN and Nursing2011 if possible. I still have no idea how much money they are willing to spend on this. Database subscriptions are expensive but I don't know which ones they can afford. Cochrane Library? Something from Gale or EBSCO? Uptodate? That last one comes recommended but the cost can be about $25 per student. I don't know if the students really need something so sophisticated for their reports.

I feel like I'll be able to concentrate better when I have a permanent space with my own computer. Somewhere I can order books into piles to keep track rather than storing them in someone else's office. Maybe it won't feel so much like people are watching me. I know they don't quite understand what I'm doing. One of the women referred to my cataloging efforts as "your little project." You can't just slap a random number on the spine and stick them on the shelf.

I finished The Widow Killer by Pavel Kohout. The first part of the book was pretty good but the second half lost focus and became something else entirely. The killer lost focus as well, switching from murdering "whores" (his definition of "whores" was basically the same as "women") to murdering Germans. The uprising of the Czechs at the end of the war provides a backdrop of chaos that the German, Buback and the Czech, Morava have to contend with. Only they spend a lot of time dealing separately with the revolution and almost none looking for the killer. Buback turns out to be an entirely worthless character, good only for repenting of what Germany did to Europe. His character is almost purposeless to the plot. He questions his nationality (he's half-Czech) and eventually goes on and on about how horrible the Germans have been. You could have cut him out and assigned the few investigative parts he played to Morava and still have a solid story. That is if the author hadn't interrupted his own plot. If Kohuot had wanted to write about the chaos at the end of the war then that's what he should have done. A tense, dramatic story could have come out of that. The search for the eponymous Widow Killer would have led to a good story by itself if it wasn't derailed by the main characters losing focus halfway through. There were two good story ideas but instead they got mashed together into an uncomfortable mix.

Tropic of Cancer is still interesting. The writing style is meandering and loopy but I like that. The main character is disagreeable and very immature but he's stopped going on and on about "cunts" and started talking about more interesting things. Losing his job, mooching off the friends he cultivates for the express purpose of a free ride, exploring the city, going out to eat. It's weird. I don't often come across a book I can appreciate even when I think the main character is utterly obnoxious. He reminds me of something the Nostalgia Critic said about Bella Swan in his Bum review of Twilight. "I think I'm tortured but I'm just pretentious." That's Henry. Oh, and for those who are curious because this book is known for it's explicit sex scenes? (I certainly was.) There really aren't any. There is talk about sex in an almost self-conscious 'I'm breaking the rules kind of way' but no real "scenes". When he does talk about it his descriptions are mechanical, focused on just hammering it home and it gives the impression that he must have been a crap lover. When he talks about what a woman wants there is only mention of her desire for 'that package of love shuttling between her thighs.' I'm paraphrasing a bit but that euphemism is his. At least he hasn't used the word wand, I suppose.