Sarah's Books - Used & Rare

When I flipped through All of Us: The Collected Poems by Raymond Carver (Vintage 2000) after picking it up at the library sale last weekend, a little note fell out.  I read it, and it says three things, presumably about the book in question, but I suppose that is open to debate:

"Great images but really incomprehensible
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Why mornings a disappointment
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Great things going on & we do not notice."

Whew.  Heartbreaking.  These words are written on the cut-out corner of some stationery, so it also has the name and address of the previous owner of the book, printed neatly in small caps.  His address also appears on a small label affixed inside the front cover of the book.  Perhaps I should write to him to discuss these three points.  I disagree with all three - gently but firmly - whether they are merely statements, or conclusions reached, or even just reactions to particular poems.  No, of course I will not write to him.  But don't think it didn't cross my mind  (Mornings are glorious, or should be... we do notice great things, much of the time... Carver's images are not incomprehensible...).  How differently we all react to the very same books!  What we bring of ourselves to a given page, where we meet the author, and what we engage in while we read, all so different!

Speaking of really incomprehensible, I also bought a lovely old Selected Works of Laurence Sterne at the sale, and last night before bed I read the first fifty pages of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy.  Thinking that, since I already read Byron as my big winter reading project, before winter even started, I need something substantial to keep my mind engaged now that winter is truly here.  Well, this book is not it.  I tried, valiantly.  It is so rare that I begin a book and then decide not to finish it.  SO RARE.  I can't remember the last time I did that, that's how rare.  I wanted to care, I wanted to read, I wanted to understand, but my mind kept breaking in on me and saying WHAT is this jumble, WHY are we still reading, WHEN can we go to sleep, WHY WHY WHY does this book make no sense whatsoever, WHERE is the plot, WHAT is with all these bizarre tangents, and so forth.  Very hard to concentrate enough to follow sentence after sentence when one's mind is this busy.  I couldn't do it, and after fifty pages, I'm sad to say I no longer wanted to.  Does Tristram Shandy require a summer day, I wonder?  When my Vitamin D levels are much higher and subsequently my brain function is too?  Or will I find it equally frustrating no matter what the temperature?

Yes, "Great images but really incomprehensible."  Perhaps my friend of the note loves this book.  While I love the poems of Raymond Carver.  As emotionally difficult as many of them are, most are redemptive in all the best ways.  Well, in the end, both of these books were at the library sale, neither one kept as a beloved thing to revisit during winter evenings.  Until now.  You see, I also read a little bit of Sterne's Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy and was smitten.  So for the time being I'll keep them both, and wait for that summer day.