Random Thoughts: Sitting at the Outer Banks

• Two full days into our visit and I still haven't reached the point of being content to just...sit.  I'm still bedeviled with a sense that I should be Doing Something.  Mind you, I'm not quite sure what  that is...  Last year I seemed to reach that sitting phase earlier in the trip.
• Mornings: awake after 9, coffee and Bloody Mary, watch the waves. Afternoons: beach, reading,  gin & tonic.  Evenings: dinner, wine, beach stroll, mojitos.  I could get used to this routine.
• This is so much nicer a beach home than last year's shack.  Hands down.  And Duck Donuts is a five minute walk from here.
• Some part of me really likes the idea of having a place on the beach like this; the larger part fears the mortgage payments on a $600K beachfront home.  And the idea of having to drive four-five hours (on a good day) to get here...that's evil too.
• Who took away my precious little babies and replaced them with this buff dude and two-piece-wearing girl?
• I told myself I was going to work on some of my creative writing and other projects this week, and that I would get up and take a run, perhaps with Sarah.  So far I haven't even been able to finish my first book yet, and as for getting up, it's been after 9am each morning, hungry, with no Sarah and no interest in a run.  Certainly not after the aforementioned Duck Donuts.
• If someplace like this could be our retirement home, Mary would be happy; I'd want to think about exploring some other places too, like Charleston.  And I always argue for Houston, within walking distance of Minute Maid, to no avail.

Definitely NOT A Beach Read

I am not in the habit of making unsubstantiated assumptions, but indulge me for a moment and see if this makes sense.  It does seem that many a middle-aged man catches a glimpse of a younger woman and part of his brain sighs and thinks, If only I were 25 again; see: Affair, Profumo; or LA Story.  I imagine it possible that some segment of those men may also catch a glimpse of some coeds, and think, If only I were 18 again; see: Buttafuoco, Joey.  And yes, some segment of those middle-aged men may well be fathers themselves.  But it takes a large leap into the queasy depths to imagine living the story in Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, which I finally read this summer.

I have been working my way through pieces of literature that, by neglecting English Lit courses in college since freshman year, I had not actually read.  Much of what I've read of Plato is in that category of self-paced learning.  This year, Nabokov's most famous work finally became "next up" in my list.

In case it's not made your reading list either, the book traces the history of the narrator's paedophilia, focusing mainly on his pursuit of his landlady's 12-year-old daughter.  What a completely creepy book to read at this stage in my life, simply because the eponymous girl in the novel is the same age as my own daughter (I did not know this fact when I picked it up): I had always imagined the two characters were closer in age, such as 25 and 16, vice mid-40s and 12.

As a study of manipulative evil, as a study of how predators work on their prey, and as a study of how selfishness blinds one to the effect it has on others, the book is remarkable.  I imagine it would be required reading for anyone about to work in our Innocent Images program, for instance, or to work with the various Behavioral Analysis Units at Quantico.  It's simply impossible to overlook the "Eww!" factor, though.  While Nabokov is hardly graphic in his descriptions, the mere pursuit he chronicles induces skin-crawl.  There are novels and examples of literature whose purpose is to shock, to provoke, to test boundaries, and this is certainly one prime example of it.  And in the reactions themselves, we often learn a lot.

In the midst of reading it, Mary asked if I liked the book.  "No," I truthfully answered, for reasons of the above.  I can cross it off my list and move on.  It will take, however, copious amounts of brain bleach to scrub off the sticky "Eww!"-ness of it, though.

Reading List for 2013

Each Christmas I get books--and real, physical, dead-tree-editions of them, too.  When clearing out things from under the tree I make a stack of the books next to the Reading Chair, which is the comfy armchair in our bedroom, and start working my way through them.  This year's stack by the Reading Chair was quite high, as I knew I needed to have several things for the Disney Cruise.  I just finished the last of them:

• Janan Ganesh, George Osbourne: Austerity Chancellor.  Was expecting a hack job on the unpopular Chancellor of the Exchequer who is leading the effort to rationalize Britain's debt.  Was pleasantly surprised to see a pretty balanced biography of this young figure.  Enjoyable, but regrettably didn't plow much new ground in the behind-the-scenes aspects of the book.
• Richard Aldous, The Lion and the Unicorn.  Very readable account of the biographies of Gladstone and Disraeli and their bitter struggles for power in 19th-century British politics.  Seemed to be a bit of a fan of Disraeli, yet not overmuch. Was hoping for more examples of their famous biting wit across the despatch boxes, but enjoyed very much all the same.
• Jon Meacham, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power.  Less about political power--its acquisition and exercise--than I had hoped.  An accessible and easy-reading biography of Jefferson, but seemed broader than the subtitle had implied.
• The Portable MBA. I actually had a much earlier edition of this book, but upgraded it and finally read it cover to cover.  Three folks in our Section are taking an MBA course, and I find myself wondering if it makes sense to follow suit, to bolster my credentials for whatever may come after my time in Budget Section.  The book helped by pointing out places I feel comfortable (strategy, marketing) and places I'm not (corporate finance, accounting) and thus places I probably need more exposure to before (if!) investing in another degree.
• Stephen Kendrick, et al., The Resolution For Men. Not all my reading is politics and finance: this was the text that accompanied our men's Bible study group this spring, and which followed from the movie, Courageous, that we all watched at the start of the sessions.  Most men die with regrets about the kind of man they were to their wives and children.  This study calls us to be the kind of men of courage that God expects, and to lead our families appropriately.  Thought-provoking and stirring.
• Frederick Beuchner, The Clown in the Belfry. A gift from my step-brother, who had previously given me another of Beuchner's works of sermons.  His simple, no-nonsense style reminds me of C. S. Lewis, but his connections to New England and Vermont make it all the more like coming home.
• Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies. Yes, my first work of fiction on the list--and actually, I think, the first one on the pile I read.  I had just finished Wolf Hall at the end of 2012, on the recommendation of a senior executive at OMB (long story), and enjoyed it so much I had to jump right into the second in the trilogy.  It did not disappoint: I cannot wait for the third to come out!

Some definite themes in my reading: British history, politics, biography, and Christian growth.  I do seem to be in a zone of reading on those topics between last year and this year; it will be instructive to see what 2014's pile looks like in January.

There is one other work of fiction I read this summer, but (a) it wasn't part of the Christmas pile of books to start the year, and (b) it deserves its own discussion separately.  That would be Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, a subject for another day.