Sometimes selecting a book to read and actually starting to read it seems to require a lot more than I have in me. The pros and cons must to be carefully weighed out in advance, prior to taking action. Ramifications need to be considered, and often reconsidered as well. Is the effort worth pursuing? There are no waterproof guarantees of quality. A reading experience may start pleasantly enough and then suddenly go sour. What if it’s just not a very good book and I find out too late? Maybe I mistake it for a slow starter and just fight my way through the first 100 pages, hoping it will pick up speed as it goes along, and then it doesn’t? Rarely have I had the nerve to abandon a book if I’m already some 100 pages in, no matter how boring it turns out to be. Then I’ll just have to finish it because it’s too late to quit, and this tribulation might drag on for weeks at worst. It might be one of those ”every serious book needs to have at least 750 pages”-kind of special tribulations, with every even vaguely interesting detail of the plot already given up and spilled out on the back cover blurb.

To avoid these tragedies I usually like to do some research before purchasing a book. Usually but not always. I’ve had some books by Umberto Eco and Roberto Calasso lurking in the bookshelf for several months now, unread and peering at me accusingly every time I’ve approached the shelf. ”The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony” by Calasso felt insanely interesting because of the review, and turned out to be so horribly long-winded a non-starter that I was forced to drop it before its’ tediousness had crushed me beyond redemption, after having read only 15 pages. We clearly didn’t meet up under favourable stars, me and the book, and I plead guilty. Maybe some other time, but most definitely not during high summer and a therefore radically shortened attention span.

Warm climate calls for easy reading, so mostly it’s been wine magazines and autobiographies lately, of Tori Amos, Rene Magritte and H.R. Giger, respectively, with only the Tori book digging a bit deeper into the artists’ background. Giger’s images brought welcome shivers to a hot summer day in their feverish yet chilling depiction of unpleasant things but failed to impress me deeper. Actually I found some of his concepts, like a sexually insatiable biomechanoid with only one leg, one arm and not much else, a bit silly rather than chilling and that’s probably not what the artist intended in the first place. Magritte’s paintings, on the other hand, tend to captivate me for long, long moments and I enjoy their drier coldness and dispassionate objectiveness immensely.

”How to Travel with a Salmon” by Umberto Eco I was able to wade through, a complete book, taking a lot of time and skipping only a few chapters here and there, but then again it’s a collection of light and satirical columns he used to write for a newspaper so there was not much effort or concentration needed (on my part). Unfortunately I found the essays to be of highly variable quality, with sharp insight and astoundingly aptly crafted and entertaining sentences and witty observations giving way, as the book progresses, to what feels like empty banter and tiresome prattling too closely associated with local (Italian)culture and bygone (late 70’s-early 80’s) times (when the texts were originally written) to be universally interesting anymore. The outrageously exaggerated remarks and over-the-top satire at times felt brilliantly timeless and the next moment horribly dated but the marvellous moments still outweighed the yawn-moments. Somewhat.

Since it’s technically still summer and novels with actual storyline are still out of the question I now juggle with Michael Palin’s diary ”The Python Years” and Stephen Fry’s collection of radio broadcasts and whatnot called ”Paperweight” and remain undecided on which one to let fall open in my hands.

Oh well. Here’s an Emergency Yodel Button (in Case of Emergency I suppose), and below is a picture of my wee nephew and namesake, mr. E.Virta of two and a half years of age, in an extremely focused state of concentration, determined to explore the contents of his nostril as thoroughly and as exhaustively as he deems necessary. With numerous blissful years of not having to worry about reading matters still ahead of him.