"At some point, all of this, everything and everyone, became memory."
All in Books
A Good Man? A Bad Man?
"Everything is a strategy. The wisdom of the spider. Everything is food. The wisdom of the shark.”
My Absolute Darling
She knows what happened, but why it happened and what it meant, she doesn’t know. There was so much of her life she doesn’t not understand.
The Underground Railroad
Here was the true great spirit, the divine thread connecting all human endeavor. If you can keep it, it is yours, your property. Slave or Continent. The American imperative.
The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead
George Saunders fills his halfway land of Lincoln in the Bardo with characters, oddities, love, war, laughter, passion, and horror. It sounds a lot like our crowded crazy living world.
Basking in the Moonglow
I never had much of a chance to get to know my grandfathers. One was long gone decades before I was born, the other before I was old enough to make my first Communion.
A Glass of Wine with a Gentleman in Moscow
It seems as if nearly everyone is connected to Russia these days. I am too. I was drawn into the warm splendor of the dining room at the Hotel Metropol and fell in love with Count Rostov.
This is a ghost story, a story of this world and another, of befores and afters. Before his mother leaves him. After she went to Chicago. After Bishop was raped. Before Samuel's story revealed Bishop's secret to Bethany. Before Faye knew Sebastian for a fake. Before the war.
"You only have one life, but if you live it well, that’s enough. The only reality is now, today. What are you waiting for to be happy? Isabel Allende
It's unclear to me who needs the Japanese lover more? Alma? Irina?
Happy 2017! Most of 2016 was spent listening to ... and thinking about #MobyDick. There are 24 posts plus a few interludes that correspond to each hour of listening. Yes, you heard that right - 24 hours. This great American novel can probably be described pretty simply. Glory. Self-Absorption. Madness. Revenge. Destruction. Nonetheless, I suggest that you read on, because an examination of our most human flaws still matter today. Probably that's why it's our most human of flaws.