Summer Reading!

School's out and I'm done with teaching for the semester. It' been a seriously overwhelming semester of teaching, I def. had one group this time where the collective energy of the class was off. Every time I taught the class, I felt extremely burnt out. I really didn't realize how much it was draining me until this week, now that I have a break. It's nice because I can finally concentrate really hardcore on making Raspberry Magic and working on a new spec. I was 80 pages into the spec and didn't have a chance to pick it back up with Raspberry Magic re-writes. The craziness of my feature is going to start soon because we're starting to talk to a number of investors. It's exciting and daunting and exhilarating all at once. I find myself actually enjoying the business side, it feels very much like what I should be doing! On another front, it's so great to be able to read! I haven't picked up a book for leisure in a while, and I have to say it's nice. I read a tiny little book by David Mamet called, On Directing Film, and I have to say it's one of the best books about directing that I've read. He really breaks down the process of visualization very creatively and succinctly. I'm also reading the book Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. It's going to be a movie starring Johnny Depp with Mira Nair directing. Some friends of mine were reading it while we were in India, and they were really impressed with it. It's really an excellent read, he personifies Mumbia in such a beautiful way. I tend not to be a fan of writing that's emotionally sappy or descriptively flowery, but Robert's style finds a solid balance between these elements. I can identify with a lot of his feelings about Mumbai, too, having gone there every two years or so when I was growing up and always being an outsider in some ways. It is, though, one of my favorite cities in the world. I love the dichotomy of it's splendor and poverty, of its antiquity and modernity.