David > Recent Status Updates

Found at the used bookstore completely at random, and picked up to wash out the taste of my last McEwan.

First, Latin American literature continues to have this specific kind of appeal to me, and this is no different. Second, I didn't realize how much I missed these characters, possibly to the point of re-reading 2666.

And third, Santa Teresa absolutely terrifies me and there is NO way I'm re-reading 2666.

"There had never been a death more foretold. After the sister revealed the name to them, the Vicario twins went to the bin in the pigsty where they kept their sacrificial tools and picked out the two best knives, one for quartering, ten inches long by two and a half inches, and the other for trimming, seven inches long by one and a half inches wide. They wrapped them in a rag and went to sharpen them at the market.."

"Pity is no stranger to hell. Hell brims over with self-pity... Sometimes they feel they have been entrapped:... The self-pity of Dante and his Mantuan guide is more interesting."

"His success would be solid, not brilliant---another well-done job, nothing more. How could he be expected to solve the puzzle of his own feelings about living with Veronique---marrying her, no less!---to reassure her, and to give her, from six thousand miles away, counsel on how to deal with her barbarian husband, when all his attention and feelings, yes, feelings, were concentrated on what he must do tomorrow?"

Welp, time to get this underway. A friend (and with friends like these) handed me the first five volumes and said, "Here, you like reading 4,000-page series....