Oh, the dog days of summer, which for me translates into a whiny sort of sluggishness precluding any activity more strenous than hoisting fruity beverages to my mouth and bending over to turn the fan onto maximum velocity. My heat-induced indolence is compounded by the fact that I am moving at the end of the month, so my posts have become sparse as I attempt to pack away decades worth of bibliophyllic overconsumption. Sure, they look pretty on the shelves, but they are a bitch to pack, and you might as well take out shares in Boxes-R-Us for all the stacks of neatly-packed product lining my hallways. Nevertheless, I do seem to find the time to check in with my favourite Twitter-folk and fellow bloggerists, and here are a few gems from the last couple of weeks~      

The Story of Charlotte’s Web by Michael Sims – review via @guardian. This sounds like a very interesting book, about an interesting man, and some pig. Can’t wait to read it! And speaking of Wilbur, I might have mentioned in a previous post one of my favourite passages about this beloved porker. It’s early in the book and Wilbur is explaining to Templeton his typical day, but it seems to me that Wilbur is practicing a kind of philosophy of life that sounds less porcine and more Zen. The procurement of food (middlings, warm water, apple parings, meat gravy, etc.,) and naps plays a significant role in Wilbur’s daily routine, but so does stillness, and allocating time to watch “flies on the boards, watch bees in the clover, and watch swallows in the air…and to think about “what it was like to be alive…” I aspire to live my life according to the Tao of Wilbur, minus the ‘middlings’, whatever they are.

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