"That would be funny, I heard God say."

Wow, I am loving this book, Foreskin's Lament by Shalom Auslander. First of all, I hadn't heard a word about it anywhere, which seems surprising given my general surroundings, until a friend recommended it to me last month. I didn't notice it in any stores, I didn't know who the author was, I just sort of filed away the recommendation in the back of my mind, intending to check it out eventually, because the guy who mentioned it is a cool guy and, you know, read dance bliss.

So then I am reading my weekly email from Book Soup listing all the great author events they have coming up, which events I always want to go to and which events I have never yet made it to even one of, and there is a book signing of this book by the author, and I think that's cool and I forward the info to the recommender and jot the reading down on my own calendar, but with no intention to actually go since I've never even seen the book in the flesh. Um, in the paper?

And so but then last night, which is to say, the day before the reading, which is today, I'm at Costco with a friend and lo and behold, there's the very book, in paperback (which I MUCH prefer), at a lovely low Costco price, and it's smaller than I had imagined and looked like a quick read, like maybe a one-lazy-Saturday kind of read, and I am totally psyched and I buy the book and I finish the other book I was reading later that evening and read the first few pages of this one and it is already clear that I love this book and will love this reading.

Woo-hoo!!
So today is one of those kind of Perfect Days, the kind where I wake up earlier than my alarm goes off, where I lie in bed reading more of this bitingly funny book until it is time to get dressed for yoga, where I actually go to yoga for the first time in six months (THANK GOD, I NEEDED THAT SOOOOOOOO MUCH), and then I go eat outside in the sun, reading my book, at my favorite bagel place/cafe where they know me and my "usual", and then I take a walk around the neighborhood and look in some shops and buy (almost) nothing and then I come home and will probably, in the next couple of hours, finish or nearly finish the book and then go to my first reading at Book Soup and how fanTAStic is all of that?? Yay.

Meet me there, if you like, but hurry - it's in an hour and a half. I'll write more about the book itself later on. For now, I give you this (pg136):

I thought again about Moses, and I realized what had troubled me about that whole damn story; it wasn't simply that God had crushed his life dream because of one lousy sin, though granted that would be sick enough--it was that He knew, God knew He'd never let Moses into the Promised Land... but He still let him wander around the desert like a schmuck for forty years searching for it. --Warmer, warmer, you're getting warmer, you're dead. God loves that joke.