boxofdelights (
boxofdelights) wrote2020-01-22 10:44 pm
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you got a way with words/you got away with murder
• What are you reading?
Whose Story Is This? Old Conflicts, New Chapters, by Rebecca Solnit.
• What did you recently finish reading?
Trust Exercise, by Susan Choi. While I was in the middle of this book, I happened to listen to a podcast with Philip Pullman, who offered some of his criteria for not reading books: he doesn't like reading novels in the present tense, and he doesn't like novels that begin with a pronoun.
Trust Exercise's first sentence is, "Neither can drive."
Those are good rules, I decided.
But then I really liked the second part of the book, which is told from a different point of view. Was it worth slogging through those miserable high school years to get to the second part? I can't decide.
• What do you think you’ll read next?
Witchmark, by C.L. Polk, for SF book group.
• What are you watching?
Going slowly through season 4 of The Good Place with Neal. How does Jason suddenly get handsome just by combing his hair different? I failed at that trick so much!
And I saw Dessa! I missed her opening act to go to the first half of book group for Parable of the Sower. I like living in a city small enough that you can see Dessa in a room with 200 people, and musical enough that she'll come. While the string quartet was leaving the stage and being replaced by a drummer and guitarist, Dessa wanted to read a poem, but she didn't want to hold the mic. She tried filling the room with her voice, and the people in back said that worked, but she decided to stand on a chair in the middle of the room instead.
Whose Story Is This? Old Conflicts, New Chapters, by Rebecca Solnit.
• What did you recently finish reading?
Trust Exercise, by Susan Choi. While I was in the middle of this book, I happened to listen to a podcast with Philip Pullman, who offered some of his criteria for not reading books: he doesn't like reading novels in the present tense, and he doesn't like novels that begin with a pronoun.
Trust Exercise's first sentence is, "Neither can drive."
Those are good rules, I decided.
But then I really liked the second part of the book, which is told from a different point of view. Was it worth slogging through those miserable high school years to get to the second part? I can't decide.
• What do you think you’ll read next?
Witchmark, by C.L. Polk, for SF book group.
• What are you watching?
Going slowly through season 4 of The Good Place with Neal. How does Jason suddenly get handsome just by combing his hair different? I failed at that trick so much!
And I saw Dessa! I missed her opening act to go to the first half of book group for Parable of the Sower. I like living in a city small enough that you can see Dessa in a room with 200 people, and musical enough that she'll come. While the string quartet was leaving the stage and being replaced by a drummer and guitarist, Dessa wanted to read a poem, but she didn't want to hold the mic. She tried filling the room with her voice, and the people in back said that worked, but she decided to stand on a chair in the middle of the room instead.

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re: Trust Exercise
I'm kinda done with reading about other people's high school miseries. Are you allowed to skip that part and go directly to the adult section? But that's a different conversation.
I have more than one Rebecca Solnit book on my mental to-read list. I haven't seen that one, I think, but it still sounds interesting.
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Whose Story? is the newest Solnit. All the ones I've sampled are worth reading.
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Do you do audiobooks? I have her memoir-of-a-decade-long-heart break My Own Devices which she does an excellent job narrating.
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I use audiobooks to help me go to bed. I'll see if my library has Dessa's.
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