I've deduced that if I read five and one quarter pages of Finnegans Wake every night I can get through it in four months. Who's with me?

Also, thinking ahead to next year: which should I pick, the Russians or Proust?

I read Dr. Zhivago a decade ago and didn't understand the ending, but there's a lot of good, and Anna K. could be especially interesting. Then again, Proust is so… Proustian, and maybe I could pick up a little more French along the way.

I want Finnegans Wake in hardcover — if you search the amazon.com wish lists for Motormouth, you'll find me. I figure I've kept my online journalings ad-free for thirteen years, the least you could do is buy me a book, dontcha think?

so it's 7:30 and I've just put the baby to bed and am watching “Scrubs” on Comedy Central when I hear this really faint honk-honk-honk-honk-honk. I press the mute button and it goes away, so I un-mute and then another minute later I hear it again: honk-honk-honk-honk-honk. This time, when I press the mute button, I still hear it, so I scratch my head for a moment and then go into the nursery, where I'd left my car keys on the changing table, and the baby'd gotten ahold of them and pressed the “lock” and “unlock” buttons at the same time, resulting in the activation of my anti-theft device. honk-honk-honk-honk-honk, indeed.

If she keeps this up, the only role she'll get again will be Madame Psychosis in a filmed version of Infinite Jest. But she'd NAIL it, baby.

Lindsay Lohan was just arrested on suspicion of drunken driving after blowing a .12 percent breathalyzer. The cops found a substance purported to be cocaine in her pants pocket. God bless 'ya, Lindsay, for your ever-lovin' tenacity.

I've read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows twice through in three days and am ready to write about it. You should not read this if you haven't read the book. Monstro this means you!

First off, JK Rowling is to be commended for becoming fabulously wealthy through a creative endeavor. And how lovely that all along, she had a plan, which is great and shall, we can hope, be emulated by the writers of “Lost” and “How I Met Your Mother.”

Secondly, (and perhaps this should be firstly) Snape being revealed as romantic hero is the best, because it cements him in the generation of Harry's folks and their friends, and because (for me) it was so surprising. I defy you to find a more romantic line in literature than Professor Severus Snape's dying “Look…at… me…” Can't wait to see Rickman do it on screen, he will kill it with a mighty, breathtaking blow.

Of course Harry wins, but the fake-out was solid, and Dumbledore even in death served his long-standing purpose to make Harry better: better than Dumbledore, and better than he himself would might have been otherwise. Voldemort mewling and puking under the chair in “King's Cross” served as haunting counterpoint to Potter and Dumbledore's tear-inducing (Patrick Hillman, this means you) gabfest.

Ahh, Ron and Hermione. The Comtesse thinks that Hermione's “you taste better than Goyle” is a bj joke, but I remind her it could be for kissing, too. Sheesh. I will, however, admit to having a Willow-and-Oz “panicking” flashback when the two disappeared before the Hogwarts fight.

Did anyone pick up on the importance of their children's names? Rose (similar to “Lily” maybe?), Hugo (Hagrid?). Just asking.

Poor Draco, to wash-out so young. I think 19 years later he should have taken over Filch's job at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I also appreciated Dudder's “you saved my life” and Petunia's long relationship with magic: she wanted it so bad, but hated it so much. Uncle Vernon lifting the bags with added heretounknown dumbbells made me laugh.

It was super last week to see the fifth movie on date night with Monstro, finish re-reading the sixth book on Friday (which is why I'd had to finish Gravity's Rainbow before that), and have the seventh book on my doorstep when Lex and I returned from our walk.

So I guess what I'm saying is the book is great. It's Rowling's “favorite” and maybe mine, too. A wonderful payoff (except for Tonks and Lupin, what a blow. a commentary on interspecies marriage? the circle of Godfathers? or perhaps Harry, part deux?).

Thanks bunches! And now that I've finished GR and read 2,170 pages on top of that in the past week, I'm going to start gearing up for the introductory material to “Finnegans Wake.”

Pray for me.

I have avoided the Internet all day so that I wouldn't find out what happens in the last Harry Potter book. It's pretty easy to avoid the Internet when you're trying to read 700+ pages in a day. Which, I have just done. And I'm so pleased (no spoilers here) that the seventh book has more stuff crammed into its first hundred pages than the last two books combined.

I just this moment finished reading Gravity's Rainbow, and it's a good freaking thing, because I've got Harry Potter vol. 7 arriving tomorrow, courtesy of amazon.com.

How do I feel about the book I just finished? Glad I can refer to it as “the book I just finished.”

I'll take a week off from hard reading and then come August first, it's into the Wake I go.

Tra la la!

(SPOILERS for sixth book in comments section…)

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We've had a flat-panel hdtv for a couple of years now, and mostly I love it, but when I was watching my dvr recording of Live Earth, I found the clarity distracting, because during the entire Foo Fighters set Dave Grohl had a booger in his nose.

Hey folks, guess what? I'm writing a book. AND, I'm being paid for it. AND, it's being published by a real (i.e., not vanity) publisher.

Look for Living in Northampton and Amherst 2008-2010 in early January.