Wednesday, November 3, 2010

The season of obsessions


For a whole summer I was obsessed with an Irish television program called Ballykissangel. We watched it at first for the plots, then the scenery, and most of all to listen to the wonderful accents. Thinking back, there have been so many summers when I've immersed myself in another place or time. Here's a partial list of summer obsessions:
1. P.G. Wodehouse-Bertie Wooster had aunts almost as funny as my own.
2. The wives of Henry VIII-my favorite wife was Anne of Cleves- she took one look at Henry and said, "Let's just be brother and sister, OK?"
3. Science fiction from the fifties-amazing things like instant-cooking ovens, phones that didn't need wires, computers that could talk-all appeared long before their time.
4. The lives of the geisha-which led to Japanese art-which led to Japanese food-which led to Kazuo Ishiguro.
5. Holocaust literature-which led to Isaac Bashevis Singer and then to Sholom Aleichem.
6. Bead-making is the current obsession. It started this summer. I hope it never ends!

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