It's official. I'm going to San Francisco in late August! I'm not sure I can convey to you how much I am looking forward to this. It's been well over seven (maybe even more--it's been so long I've lost track) years now since I've gone on a proper--pack your bags, get on a plane and see something new--sort of vacation and I am in serious need of one (I had a rocky last few years so this is especially welcome now). It seems that before I couldn't quite concentrate and felt in an awful rut because I hadn't had a vacation in so long, and now I fear I'm not going to be able to concentrate with the anticipation of one just around the corner!
I actually just had an extended weekend that I expected to fill with long stretches of uninterrupted reading and letter-writing time, but as the plans for going away finally started to materialize my time was filled instead with the serious investigation of airfares and suitable accommodation. So please forgive me if I owe you an email, promised to read a post, or haven't had a chance to answer a letter or send out a postcard. I am doing my best now to catch up. My intentions are as always good, but the time seems to slip away far too quickly. It's also not wise to choose a really popular tourist destination so close to when I planned to go and during peak traveling time. However, the basics are sorted out, and now the real fun begins--deciding how to fill my week's worth of free time in lovely San Francisco! I'll be traveling with my sister and luckily we have similar ideas of what we want to do when we arrive.
To that end I like to extend the excitement of traveling somewhere new as much as I can. If you drop in here occasionally you'll know how I like to read according to mood, and my mood now is decidedly California/San Francisco oriented. I like immersing myself in the culture of a place as much as possible. So once again my reading piles are going to shift a bit, now that I have a firm goal in mind. I'm going to have to postpone a few reading projects--summering in Italy is going to be wintering in Italy, though I'll finish The Terra-Cotta Dog by Andrea Camilleri very soon, I hope. I might still be persuaded to pick up a beach/seaside book, but the setting might have to be San Francisco now (yay--get to see the ocean again), and I'll continue reading my Mythology, but I'll have to do some serious culling of the library piles and (groan) get back in line or just add titles to my virtual TBR list).
I've already started reading a few books with a California/San Francisco setting, and have a list of several more. As always, I'm not sure how many I'll get to, but I'm going to try and read as many as I can. John Steinbeck's East of Eden is wonderful. Why did no one tell me? (Okay, I suspect a few of you did, but I needed this little shove to get going). It's a chunky book, but so far utterly compelling reading. I like his writing style and how he can imbue such plain prose (not the right word really--elegant but plain?) with so much meaning. It's set in the Salinas Valley which is south of San Francisco.
I've also started rereading Dianne Day's cozy mystery, The Strange Files of Fremont Jones. I read most of the books in this series when they were first published in the late 1990s. Fremont is a unconventional woman from Boston who decides to find adventure and independence out west (she ends up in the Russian Hill section of San Francisco) where she becomes a typist for pay and gets involved in a murder case. I recall enjoying these books very much and am glad I held on to them. Since I've been reading about the various neighborhoods of the city it's fun reading about them in this story. It makes me feel like I am almost already there. I had to dig around on my bookshelves, but I finally found my copy of Bone by Fae Myenne Ng. This is set in San Francisco's Chinatown about two generations of the Leong family.
I've also got or am requesting from the library; Sister Noon by Karen Joy Fowler, The Continental Op and The Maltese Falcon (another book I read years ago) by Dashiell Hammett, Tales from the City by Armistead Maupin (read several of his books and then gave them away--now am ordering the first book to reread--that's what happens when you weed your books...you end up having to buy them again later), A Grave Talent by Laurie King, and 1906 by James Dalessandro.
And then there are movies, too. I'll be watching Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (one of my favorite movies), The Joy Luck Club (have read this and The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan), What's Up, Doc (love this movie) and The Maltese Falcon.
I suspect I have more than enough to keep me busy for the next two months, and I did get a few good suggestions not long ago, but if there is something really spectacular I should read or watch, do please let me know.
There is lots to do over the course of the summer, so I'm going to try and stay focused, but I have to say it's really nice to have something pleasant to look forward to.