Musicking, Novels, and Trivia

When I woke up incredibly late at around 4 p.m., I had already been awake for fleeting minutes intermittently, and through involuntary eavesdropping had the cheerful feeling of being well-informed about everyone else's comings and goings. T. had returned from her work in a school cafeteria, and was talking with Papa and Mama in the corner room; J. had gone to the BVG building to see about his transit tickets, because he had lost the jacket which contained them, but he had also thrown away an old backpack which contained his student identification card, for which stroke of genius I laughed at him later; Gi. and Ge. were holed up in their respective rooms as usual.

So, after conversation and a shower, I read news articles on my laptop and then, when it was occupied by other persons, played the piano. As usual, I am conflicted about whether my playing is good or not, which I find absurd objectively because I am playing for my own amusement anyway. But my slipshod technique and practicing habits do make it less amusing. Anyway, on the programme there was Chopin (Military and Heroic Polonaises, the latter of which went extremely slowly, and a waltz and nocturne or two), Schubert (Sonata D958, Mvt. 2 and 3; Sonata D959, Mvt. 2 and 3; Sonata D960, Mvt. 1 and 2), movements from Beethoven's earlier sonatas (including the short Mvt. 1 and 2 of the Moonlight Sonata), Bach (Italian Concerto and a Goldberg variation). J. came in part-way through, so we played a duet and then he read out a page of a story by Gottfried Keller, where a cook discusses with an innkeeper what food will be prepared for a guest, making funny errors on account of the Gothic script. Lately I haven't minded assisting J. with homework and such things, though a month ago I usually had a startlingly ferocious reaction to his requests for help that was not unlike that of Bilbo Baggins when he wants to snatch Frodo's ring in a certain film.

As for my reading, I have finished the online fiction oeuvre of Rafael Sabatini -- who wrote comparatively good and intelligent, though violent, historical novels -- and now I have arrived at the oeuvre of Charles Alden Seltzer, who wrote westerns. The first book in the list is The Boss of the Lazy Y. I've realized this time that it is over-written to the point of seeming like a parody; the last times I read it I skipped the descriptive paragraphs at the beginning as usual (at university I made an art of reading only the essential passages of books, so that I could go through three or four novels in an evening, though now I tend to conscientiously read them in their entirety), but this time the purpleness of the prose sank in. The hero is described as the quintessence of morose, forbidding virility, and the parallels of his character to the harsh but grand desert environment around him are hammered into the reader's brain with a blacksmith's subtlety. A Mexican eagle, whom the hero promptly addresses with one of the racist epithets that unfortunately litter old westerns, flies overhead; a rattlesnake threatens to strike but is shot by the hero, who surveys the corpse and remarks that it is "man-size." Anyway, I find it funny.

And, last of all, I checked my answers for the King William's College quiz yesterday. It's given out at the end of every year in the Guardian (though I couldn't find it there this year, and had to go to the school website for a PDF copy of it), and it's "fiendishly difficult." The questions are phrased oddly but cleverly, and each set of questions has a theme, like duelling or pirates or places in London. One can usually answer at least two questions if one has a reliable knowledge of Sherlock Holmes, the works of John Buchan, and other English classics that the quizmaster happens to know; but the majority of the questions are, I think, about obscure historical events. This year I had thirteen questions right, which pleased me greatly.