I've spent a number of hours today reading Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. It's more or less shocking reading, massively researched, lucidly written. Ever try to use a poisoned handkerchief to kill anybody? Would you have the nerve to look the president of the United States in the eye and lie to him? Think you could order the murder of a foreign head of state? Gulf of Tonkin incident--Weiner documents that US ships shot first. I spent some time reading the first couple of pages of Claude Simon's The Trolley but I was too tired from reading the Weiner book, just skimmed along getting nothing, reading a few sentences over and over and just nothing sinking in. Skinny little paperback from which a price tag on the back cover had been removed, leaving a patch of sticky crap that I removed with WD-40 and a paper towel, then removing the smell of the WD-40 with soap and water and another towel, the cover standing up admirably to the treatment, I mean there was no going on with a book that had a maddening patch of stickiness that you would be trying unsuccessfully to scrape off with your fingernail time after time, oh no, that wasn't going to happen, this was one of those rare problems that I could actually solve.
THIS JUST IN: Vegetable curry dish over rice, a glass of water and, later at home, a slice of apple pie with a distinct taste of preservatives, euh.
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