reading 2014
Fiction: 49 including three collections of short stories and seven audio; plus ten other. Twenty-four by women, 25 by men. Twenty-one on paper and 18 on screen. One not originally in English (French)....
View Articleboring; also books
I haven’t been writing here because exercise is dull. But just now I took one of those terrible quizzes, this one about whether you’re more like your mother or your father. The third question was, “Who...
View Articleow
It is stupid warm here so I rode Thidwick to yoga. I should have swum, too, and I maybe even would have if I’d remembered my water bottle. I didn’t bring Vibrams so didn’t do any weights or cardio and...
View Articletwo new audiobooks
I have one for the car with its vintage audio system and another for the phone. On the phone, so with one headphone while biking, is The City & The City, my first China Miéville. It’s okay. There...
View Articleabout a boy
I read About a Boy today. Really, is the only Nick Hornby I’ve read High Fidelity, 15 years ago? I like this passage a lot: Will had never properly given Marcus credit for being a good kid — up until...
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crested butte
We hiked, we mountain biked, we (or I) met dogs, I browsed in a bookstore while RDC sampled beer, it was Crested Butte in wildflower season: it was wonderful. I managed to pick up a bug. In the morning...
View Articlegod in ruins
I am about 50 pages into this. I knew nothing of it when I started so was pleased to discover it would be about Teddy from Life After Life. I mentioned starting it on Facebook but shouldn’t have....
View Articleotherwise in reading
I declared myself finished with Little Dorrit. I liked Arthur and Amy well enough but they didn’t have any of the quirks that make a Dickens character lovable. Pancks did but he seemed a repeat of —...
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winter, finally, if at a distance
We went to the mountains just for a night and day. Okay, I don’t consider Vail the mountains, because the interstate is perceptible from nearly everywhere in Vail-the-town, and Vail-the-ski-mountain is...
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amani tumbo
In which I explain the name for the new bird, who is a red-bellied parrot: When we climbed Kilimanjaro, our guides taught us a greeting, with a bumping of fists and then a salute, and the words “Amani...
View Articleamani’s second day
When I finally pried myself out of the house, away from Amani, I went to the gym for hot vinyasa, dropped donations at Goodwill, drove alllll the way to Kal’s to return the Thanksgiving dishes I should...
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in which I am deemed tuck-worthy
Amani trusts me enough to tuck on me! I skipped yoga for an earlier nap. Now I’m postponing my walk until he rouses. Only when he tucks does the so much of the turquoise on his back show. Otherwise,...
View Articlereading 2015
Until I looked, I hadn’t noticed that 22 of the 23 audiobooks from 2015 were by men. That might not be ideal but it’s not surprising. I often use the medium for books I wouldn’t otherwise read, such as...
View Articleoverstory
I loved this book. By Richard Powers I had previously read only Gold Bug Variations, which I found challenging, and Galatea 2.2 has been on my shelf for a long time. But this was about trees and could...
View Articleread harder 2018 challenge, as solved
This challenge had a lot of comics and genres and not-challenges (e.g., a one-sitting book). This is how I fulfilled them. A book of true crime: David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage...
View ArticlePBS Great American Read, 2018
PBS compiled one hundred books for its Great American Read. I don’t know its intent: for every Usan to read at least the top vote-getter? It did, at least, inspire me to read Where the Red Fern Grows,...
View Articleall books are one book
It’s not really All Books Are One Book when I’m reading both Code Girls, about the female cryptanalysts who broke codes during Word War II, and A Burnable Book, set within the court of England’s...
View ArticleABA1B: too much
Remember how in “Hope and Glory” the curmudgeonly grandfather sends the children out to fish and tells them not to come back empty-handed, and they sit gloomily in the little boat hating him until a...
View Articlewithin measurable distance of its end
That’s a phrase from 1984 I like a lot, that Oceania uses continually to describe its forever war. For me, at this moment, it is true in one way: my immediate TBR titles are contained within the usual...
View Articleall books are one book: again
I was looking for something to fall asleep to, or not-sleep to if I couldn’t sleep, and I happened across Stephen Fry gossiping about Victorian secrets. It’s not as soothing as I hoped because Fry is...
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