As a bibliomaniac, you love paper-related activities but shouldn’t you get out more? Then you read a long review in The New York Review of Books of a biography of Madonna and realize that everything can change if The New York Review of Books devotes that much space to a celebrity biography.
And so you sit down to scribble in your journal. But it seems vaguely moronic because you actually wrote the sentence: Be more like Madonna! Does Madonna keep a journal? If so, good for her. You remember her book, Sex, which the librarian kept behind the counter. And on Kelly and Regis in 2003, Regis asked Madonna if he could have her hat, and what could she do but give it to him?
So how can you change your life? You are not going to join the Catholic Workers, because their work is too arduous. You could take up bowling. You could go birding, but what kind of word is “birding”? Still, you would keep a bird list, and if paper is involved, I’ll do it.
And you realize that you want to explore pop culture, with the help of paper.
So I’m going pop, but I will not go paper-free.
ACTIVITIES FOR MY POP CULTURE SUMMER
Pop Activity 1. Investigate the lives of Myrna Loy and William Powell, famous for their roles as Nick and Nora in the film version of The Thin Man and its sequels. Surely somebody has written about them, but if not you must write an article for The New York Review of Books. You pray that you won’t have to research in L.A. because you hear their transit system is deficient.
Pop Activity 2. Take long hikes because you’re 10 or 20 percent sure you will hike the Appalachian Trail in the future. Reread two hiking memoirs, Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods and Cheryl Strayd’s Wild. Bryson’s approach – hike, then give up, then walk a little more– suits my life-style, but Strayd is a heroine who walked the whole Pacific Crest trail.
Pop Activity 3. Read the Imperial War Museum Wartime Classics series. These reissued novels. written and set during World War II, vary in literary quality but are fascinating. Fans of middlebrow novels and history will curl up and lose themselves in this series.
Pop Activity 4. Did I say birding? Yes. With my new birding notebook.
Pop Activity 5. Do you read a mystery a day? Please recommend! I love Golden Age Detective novels but would like to read contemporary mysteries. The only names that come to mind are Elly Griffiths, Janet Evanovich, and Mick Herron.