Wednesday afternoon

Spending most of the day indoors. Pretty cold out there--can I stop monotony from stepping in?

What's new? Made my Medicare choice, yesterday---that was on my mind a lot---switching to a new policy under the same group. Finished the novel, Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine, by Ann Hood. A nice piece of writing-kept me interested all the way through. Not that  individual, stylistically, but not "pulpy" either. Looking back on it, I can see flaws and the character changes that the three women, who are the main characters in the novel,  go through, from their freshman college days (1967) to early middle age (1985) seem a little limited. Yet I was with them and their "journeys" (I know that word sounds kind of trite) all the way through the novel. Some part of me is still very interested in the world of "the sixties" and its aftermath. I think the writer could have explored that a little more thoroughly, nevertheless, I could feel her strength. 

What next? I have a bundle of short stories by my bed side, Louis Auchincloss and Kathleen Collins (the black writer whose movie, Losing Ground, I admire so much), but I have not felt terribly motivated to start any of them. Also, Summer of 49, David Halberstam's retelling of an amazing American League pennant race between the Boston Red Sox and the Yankees---somehow I feel more comfortable reading that outside the apartment (why? can't say), but once I do start reading, I can get very drawn in. The baseba;; season of 1949 was only two years away from the first Baseball season that I followed every day. Many of the players on both teams are familiar to me---their names and identities are part of the first line ups that I looked at.  Finally sitting on my bed is Marjorie Morningstar, the novel by Herman Wouk about a young Jewish girl from the Bronx, who falls in love with a great director-poseur and folows him around the world. I read most of the novel during my first stay in the hospital, somehow I simply have stopped about fifty pages from the end. Pick it up again and finish it? Possibly. 

Yesterday, for some reason, I felt a strong desire to read a play by George Bernard Shaw. Unfortunately I have no plays by him in my "library" and with the real libraries not really available to me,  I suppose it just has to wait. Do not want to buy a copy of say, Major Barbara, either at the second hand store near me or at one of the normal bookstores that I can walk to. An actor friend of mine texted me yesterday, offering me support during this period; I asked him to mail me a copy of a Shaw play that he might have (does not matter which)  and he promised to do so, if he could find one. So perhaps I will be reading one of his plays soon. Something about getting involved in his style and ideas is intriguing to me at this moment. 

So the day contiunes. Will make some phone calls tonight to friends, and I am meeting another friend for coffee tomorrow. Will report soon.