🦋 Meandering
We spent today on vacation! and a fine day it was. I went somewhere I have never been before, which is Georgetown. We set out pretty early and drove to visit Joyce and Jim, and had a nice time -- we haven't seen them in a long time. Then drove south to D.C. We're staying in Arlington, at the Palomar Hotel; it is a good place to stay and significantly cheaper than hotels across the river from here; and the best thing about it is they are "pet-friendly" -- so we are traveling with Lola and Pixie, which makes the whole trip a lot more fun and comfortable. We walked across the Francis Scott Key bridge to Georgetown, then down the canal path to Washington Harbour, then gradually back up to M Street; stopped in at a bookstore and browsed some titles -- I took a look at The Elegance of the Hedgehog, which I'd seen recommended at 3% (IIRC), and found it not to my liking; Sylvia picked up The Year of the Rat -- and then over to Pizzeria Paradisio for a very tasty meal. The long wait for a table gave Ellen and Sylvia a chance to go across the street to Georgetown Cupcakes to buy our dessert, which I'm looking forward to tasting. Tomorrow we will go into Washington proper and visit museums and landmarks. Also looking forward to taking Pixie for a long walk along the river.
posted evening of Friday, April 10th, 2009
The Elegance of the Hedgehog made the rounds at work, and 3 (out of 3) of us liked it. It's an ugly-duckling story par excellence, with pop-culture and intellectual asides. I liked it, just shy of an A plus.
posted morning of April 11th, 2009 by paledave
Yeah? I just read the first couple of chapters -- it seemed kind of like something I would have liked in high school, sort of J.D. Salinger with a European twist. I couln't really make too much of what looked to be the central conceit, of these couple of dignified working-class women who were secretly intellectuals but pretended to be plebes as a way of pandering to the class they serve. That just seemed silly to me. But maybe as the book progresses there is a little more nuance written into it.
posted afternoon of April 11th, 2009 by Jeremy
(Also: it rubbed me the wrong way for a chapter that was told from a different point of view, to be in a different typeface. That's a pretty minor annoyance though.)
posted afternoon of April 11th, 2009 by Jeremy
Alas, it is not subtle. I'll still go to bat for it.
I like all the non-Catcher works of Salinger. And, you're right---the Barbery slots right in there with them.
posted evening of April 11th, 2009 by paledave
Yeah, I like Salinger too -- I read a lot of him in the years when my tastes were forming. But I sort of don't think I would like him now if I were reading his work for the first time; and that's what the first chapters of the Hedgehog book seemed like.
posted morning of April 12th, 2009 by Jeremy
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