Travel Blog

I never thought myself prone to the summer cliche of the great book read.

But in the summer of 2003 I read The Odyssey in preparation for a trip to Greece. A few years later I read Crime and Punishment before a teaching gig in St. Petersburg.

And what have I been lugging down to the pool this summer? Shimazaki Toson's 760-page epic Before the Dawn.

Of course, unless people actually see me hoisting the novel onto my lap they have no idea of its daunting bulk. Not that anyone these days asks, but if someone did wonder what I've been reading, and I said Before the Dawn, it wouldn't get the admiring looks that War and Peace or Infinite Jest would. No, for those I'm going to have to go to Japan.