JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

If you love books, then on at least ten occasions you have said: “I wish I had time to just lie in bed for a week, reading books.”

I love books, I have lots of books to read, and I have time.

Today I picked up Topics of Conversation by Miranda Popkey. It’s a good-looking volume that fits perfectly in your hand, same size as Weather by Jenny Offill. There’s even a blurb by Jenny Offill. The difference is that the dust jacket of Topics is smooth and slippery, while Weather’s has a pleasantly rough texture that is easier to hang on to. Which is also how I found their contents.
(more…)

Even in a dark, airconditioned room you can feel the heat outside sucking out your energy so all you want to do is shut down and sleep. I’d been noshing on books, reading several halfway then beginning new ones—what’s the rush, I have time—but since staying vertical is a challenge when you’re being parboiled, I decided to attack my tsundoku and read faster.
(more…)

A procession of publicans and a beggar following the coffin of Madam Geneva; attacking the Act preventing distillers from retailing or selling gin to unlicensed premises. Engraving, 1751 from the Wellcome Collection.

The temperature in the early afternoon was 36 degrees Celsius; the heat index was 45 degrees. As Ige would say, if the weather were a person it would be a corpse. Some of us are already spending lockdown doing passable impressions of corpses.
(more…)

I don’t like phone calls because I prefer to talk face to face, in the same way I refuse to use “friend” as a verb online because before we get to the noun we have to have a shared history. I like video calls even less because they feel like an invasion. But the age of social distancing has arrived, and one must adapt or disappear, so two weeks ago I downloaded Zoom on my phone. It’s been an education.
(more…)

If I lived at the Metropolitan Museum in NY, my cats would have their birthday parties in the Temple of Dendur.

I’ve kept it together for 6 weeks by following a schedule. I’ve never been so disciplined in my life. If I’d been like this in high school and college, who knows what I might have achieved? I might have satisfied my parents’ ambitions, become rich and powerful, have people at my beck and call…

I wouldn’t be writing today.
(more…)

Photo from amazon.com.

Yesterday the airconditioner in the living room was whirring and blowing air, but not getting cold. The average temperature round noon is 36 degrees, but feels like 42. May has just begun, and meteorologists expect this to be the hottest year in history. Where would I find an aircon repairman in lockdown? I couldn’t complain: I have food, books, and cats. Shut up and write.
(more…)