Herman Melville

Remember when I was readying Tom Jones?  It was in January, which seems like a lifetime ago, but it was when I was trying to be proactive towards completing goals set back before time seems to existed.
Anyways, we have a shelf of books we didn't send to Half Price Books and they're things I intend to finish or re-read. I took a slight reading hiatus after Dale Carnegie, but I did read some Block books from the library in March. I read all the time, but it's clutternet stuff that means nothing, but thankfully the shelf is in a location that begs exploring.
I started to read Thomas Malory, but my Middle English is rusty, so I've gotten to The Confidence Man.
Never read Moby Dick, but after reading the editor's preface to The Confidence Man, I might.
Confidence Man is rather short in the sense that I had it for a class that included these three: Tom Jones, Vanity Fair, and The Life and Times of Tristan Shandy. I know I finished it back in the day and that I wrote a paper on it, but much of it is vague to me in that I know I liked it, but I don't recall why.
Anyways, I'm reading the editor's comments and finding myself feeling like writing my own novel. It's been years since I had the bug to write, but I find myself in a position of having a mindless "job" that clears the mind of clutter (perfect recipe).

Re-reading books that you never finished in the first place

I changed majors and wanted to graduate in four years, so I chose English literature. I crammed the major so I was reading a lot of pages from a lot of books during short periods of time. I didn't finished a few books that weren't quick/fun reads. I felt annoyed about never finishing them, so I held onto them with the intention to finish them.
I am a third through Tom Jones, and I swear that I do not recall most of what I've re-read. I have a fairly good memory, so I'm puzzled by a handful of items. I totally recall lectures from the class, so I have a vague memory of some of the plot twists, but I really don't see "foreshadowing" to suggest as much.

Inbox purge galore

I have had a couple dozen or so e-mail accounts over the years. I use quite a few regularly. 1) I have my original school address from '96 that I was allowed to keep upon graduation as a gift, but can't use as my primary address. 2) I have my original yahoo account which I set up in '97. 3) I have a iwon.com account that I set up in hopes of winning something back when that domain existed as a search hub that I now use as a spam account. 4) I have my graduate school address, that I use when I want to seem less anonymous. 5) I have my ISP address. 6) I have a gmail account. 7) I have a "work" email as well.

I could have soooo many twitter accounts, but why would I do that? Back when I was young and full of ideas, I thought it would cool to create interactive extrapolations of characters to a book I was writing to give a ready made audience upon its publication. I developed the idea before social media boomed when things like collegeclub.com existed. The idea fizzled when I had other things that were prioritized thus left to be never followed though since it was tedious and ill fated given that I was basically spamming acquaintances with assumed names in hopes of getting a conversation going through those infamous forwards that you tell something about yourself and pass along like a chain letter. Not sure if trolls existed then, but it was of that same nature of antagonizing banter to generate a persona based on semi-fictional reactions. I needed dialogue and lacked a sense of character depth to think originally. Blogs didn't exist then, since Livejournal.com and Diaryland.com were years away to be able to appropriate others' thoughts. Very tedious endeavor it was.

Do chain letters still exist?

Anyways, I have a lot of email accounts that I use daily for things, when I could get by with just one since I forward most of my mail to one account. I have my accounts set up to forward copies, so that I have full inboxes when I only rely upon one account for any extended period of time. I cleaned out several thousand email from a few account yesterday. I wonder how long it will be before they are cluttered again.

Never read Bradbury

So it goes that I read everything Kurt Vonnegut published but not a sentence by Ray Bradbury. I feel no mourning at his passing, but I felt little when KV died. Old age is nothing of which to be ashamed, but Vonnegut got nuttier day by day and was consumed by a poor information diet. He loathed war due to his being captured and held at Dresden during its firebombing, so he sought anti-war movements.

Kurt Vonnegut mocked Ray Bradbury by stating that Ray Bradbury was afraid of driving thus the irony of his sci-fi career.

Cooking, cleaning, and child rearing

Recently, there's a lot of talk about whether or not motherhood is a job or not.
I learned while as an undergrad in my modern American literature survey class that such a conversation is not well advised to pursue.
Keep in mind I wasn't much of a critical thinker at 19 and not a fan of American literature because I'm a male Medievalist that liked sagas and legends over fluffy prose.
Anyways, we read and covered Willa Cather's My Antonia.
With it being a survey class, we only spent one day discussing said novel. In hindsight, I'm not sure many in the class actually read the story, since the discussion was painfully quiet. Nonetheless, I had read the whole novel, so when the prof asked me of my opinion of the work, I replied that I was disappointed the title character ended up "just being a house wife" when she had so much potential to be something more dynamic.
Let's just say the professor wasn't receptive to my response, and I still cringe when I think of her.