Chris > Recent Status Updates

I don’t know what edition it is. It was published in 1971. It’s a hardcover…

I only read four of the 20 stories here. They are stories of people who don’t know themselves in places unknown to them. Which makes it awkward for them and easy for Gallant to lord their unease and clumsy behavior over them. I grew to like the title story in the end, but after the first three stories, reading Gallant grew oppressive.

DNF. The characters, while idiosyncratic, grow boring in their predictable behaviors.

I don’t know…The dismissive introduction that downplays the emotional power of music? I wonder if it’ll be just a catalog of unusual human responses to music, or if it will explain these responses?

“Hereby perhaps Stubb indirectly hinted, that though man loved his fellow, yet man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.”

Excerpt From
Moby Dick
Herman Melville
https://books.apple.com/us/book/moby-...
This material may be protected by copyright.

Not reading this edition, but a combination of the New American Library Signet Classic and an edition found in my ibooks.

I’m reading it again!

I’m reading it again. 7/10/22

So valuable. Im reading it again.

“What cataclysm, I often wonder, or better, what act of imagination will it finally require, for us to be able to speak meaningfully with one another about our cultural fate and about our shared biological fate.”

“As time grows short, the necessity to listen attentively to foundational stories other than our own becomes imperative.”

I’m reading the English, “You Can’t Do That To Svoboda” copy of this book. “John Pen” was János Székely’s pen name, (was the pun intented?)

“How short life would be if certain unpleasant moments didn’t make it feel endless!” -from “Visions”

Second essay about grandparents hiding their beloved grandson from his estranged mother. Written in a general style to obscure the details of the case, it was a challenge at times.

Lots of Thors-: Thorkel, Thorir, Thorvald, Thorstein. The last is Ingimund’s son, a wise, prophetic, lucky leader. He and his brothers settle Vatnsdal and deal with unruly settler after unruly settler, (and a couple berserks) who challenge their authority. There is note of settlements made at the regular assembly, and in the end, comes a bishop who baptises everybody bringing Christianity to Iceland.

Ben Lerner makes high school debating rousing, sharing stategy and individual emotions, ending with a sudden personal challenge to the reader.

Well, I guess I read Egil's Saga a year ago. I don't remember doing so. I'm rereading it in January 2019, as our first real snowstorm of the season blows outside. I'm reading slower this time, going back to look at the maps to learn the locations of events, and double checking names and lineages of the characters.

I read "Consider The Oyster" and enjoyed the stories, the history, the biological descriptions of oysters. I want to make every recipe MFK Fischer offers in this piece. Looking forward to reading more from this compendium.

Very disappointing. I was hoping for some inspiring, sticking-it-to-the-man type tales. Instead, what I have read so far is very sexist. How can a story be edifying or instructive if it can't present an honest reality to start with?

"Soon you'll be so full of June light
You won't know what to do with yourself."

Ross is a farmer who lives down the road. He writes well of these lands and working them. There is poetry there.

January 2018, I reread Egil's Saga. Egil, a hot-headed superman, defies kings, is loyal to friends, and murderous to enemies. There's quite a bit of bloody battle, occasional magic and, then, suddenly rule of law, appearing unexpectedly. Other names, like King Harald Fair-Hair, Thorgeir Thorn-Foot, or Erling the Wealthy, are engagingly descriptive.

It's actually called, "State of Mind".

I'm reading a Heritage Press edition, published in 1964. I didn't see it in the Goodreads Archives of editions so, I chose another edition.

I'm reading the English Translation of this Slovak book: Samko Talé's Cemetery Book.