OK, I am officially quitting "Shiloh." I just don't see it getting any different than the 2/3 I have already read. It's one of those books that, if you dug it, you could read it forever, but if you're not invested from the first page, you're not going to become invested by an interesting change in tone or plot 10 pages in because there won't be any changes. I would not go so far as to say it made the Civil War boring, but it wasn't an interesting book to me. I would pick it up and find where I had left off, and every page looked the same. Still, I'm crabby I can't add it to my year's list. I did complete my reading of "We Have Always Lived in the Castle," by Shirley Jackson, which was pretty creepy.

Also, yesterday I watched the film "Dig!" It was wonderful. It's about the Brian Jonestown Massacre; I saw them at the Peacock Lounge in the Lower Haight, maybe in 1992 or 1993? And I just remember a wave of sound coming off the stage, and about 50 people onstage, smoke, and the people I was with were all talking about how notorious they were. Anyway, the movie is completely fascinating. Right up there personality-wise with "The Last Waltz."

And then we went to see "Tristram Shandy," which was a total slam-dunk. Just loved it, the Paris Bennett of 2006 movies so far. I guess this means I have to see all the movies Michael Winterbottom has made since "24 Hour Party People," including the science-fiction one and the porno. I actually remembered enough of Tristram Shandy the book from 20 years ago to catch a few jokes. Other people in the audience were also conspicuously laughing at these places. Yay! It was a big-time bridge-and-tunnel crowd, older ladies in wool ponchos.

The one thing we are missing here, besides everything, is a good used bookstore to browse in after the movies.

In San Francisco I bought a whole bunch of books. At City Lights, I walked around with a stack of four books I needed. Because we had a long walk ahead of us, practical N said, "Now let's try to get that down to one book," which enraged me so that I bought all four or maybe five. Then I bought another five or so at the SFPL bookstore at Main. And I am reading them all. Completed:

Solo Faces, by James Salter
Rituals, by Cees Nooteboom, which is GREAT

I had started Days Between Stations, by Steve Erickson, on the plane and finished it in SF, so I bought another book by him. People I like like Steve Erickson. I started reading Arc d'X a long time ago and put it down, but then kept thinking about it. DBS was his first novel and a little bit goth for me. A lot of, like, the man crawling inside the woman and feeling her insides. That's love man.

Reading:
Shiloh, by Shelby Foote

I know this book is greater than it seems on its face. On its face it looks like one of the Jeff Shaar potboilers of history, with the actual thoughts of General Washington as well as the lowly infantryman.