I’ve returned from vacation. Took a Caribbean cruise – sounds warm and inviting, no? Well, surprise, it was not warm. Correction, the people were, the weather was not. The people everywhere were fantastic – on board, on land, passengers, crew, locals, all fantastic. On the positive side, the cool weather kept the mosquitoes down. Had the great pleasure of meeting James Lileks and his family. Cannot top his account. Discovered a lot of people I met read the Dow Theory Letters by my friend, Richard Russell. For more information on Richard along with one of his most popular articles, go here.

In unrelated news, the National Book Critics awards were announced:

• Fiction: Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
• Nonfiction: The Age of Wonder , Richard Holmes
• Autobiography: Somewhere Towards the End, Diana Athill
• Biography: Cheever, Blake Bailey
• Criticism: Notes from No Man’s Land: American Essays, Eula Biss
• Poetry: Versed, Rae Armantrout

Haven’t read any of them! My stack of ‘to-reads’ is already a mile high. As it turned out, there were far too many interesting people to talk to on the cruise, so I got almost no reading done. I’m about halfway through The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson and barely into War and Peace. I hope to get back to both this coming week.

The Pevear/Volokhonsky translation of War and Peace came highly recommended. The interesting thing about a good translation is that it also exposes the limitations of translation. I’m not sure I have the language to explain, but it does make me wish I was fluent in Russian to understand Tolstoy’s rhythms and word choices.

Did I brainstorm new ideas for the next novel? No, I did not. However, I do know roughly what I want to write about. But first, revisions await.