literature

Everything is intrinsically entwined, y'know? I don't really want to go into the minute details of it all, but case in point:

- A local weblogger posted a gettogether celebrating the anniversary of bookcrossing.com, scarcely a day after I'd heard about it from someone else I know. I've been meaning to get involved with this project -- dropping books in random places hoping someone will pick them up is right up my alley, and very much in keeping with other social experiments I've conducted in the past.

- Claudia and I went to Quack's to see what this bookcrossing thing was about. I'd labeled a book of mine for release, so I traded it out for another book, one chosen almost entirely based on the appearance of its cover. (Aphorisms be damned -- I can often tell a lot about a book by its cover.)

- The book I picked out is called, Angle of Repose, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about reconstructing a family's history through letters sent by its matriarch.

- My dad and stepmom were in town this weekend, and I spent most of the weekend hanging out with them. They'd gone to see my grandfather in Johnson City before they came to Austin, and he'd given them a couple of cigar boxes full of old letters and postcards, sent by friends and family of my Aunt Bill. Aunt Bill was the sister of my paternal great-grandmother -- she died in 1993, when I was about sixteen.

- Some of these letters are fascinating. There are a lot of Christmas cards from over the years, but there are also some fairly personal letters in there. I'd like to transcribe and/or scan them and post them here. I haven't completely figured out the logistics of this yet. Realistically, there isn't enough information here to patch together a real history, but there are some letters that would be interesting to other people, too.