Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs > Recent Status Updates

He changed. I changed.He gathered some kind of stubborn, hidden strength while I became more easily touched by everything small and vulnerable - changes that each of us caused in the other, but they were exactly the ones that have now separated us and that will keep us separate. If he calls me back he will be admitting a weakness.... If I weren’t crying I would laugh.

Moses and Rosa Parks each softened the will of an entire people by their quiet actions. What necessary quality, besides honesty and basic goodness, did they share? Simple. They were both introverts!

It seemed to me we were caught in an endless cycle in which we were witnessing the disintegration of decency, sensitivity and... spiritual values.... Now, as a senior citizen, I found myself not only experiencing anger, loneliness and anxiety...but fear that we were now out of touch with what we were intended to be....

This amazing little book is a Real Deal on Kindle, at $4. It will guide you effortlessly through Augustine’s massive masterpiece, City of God (for which see my review), in easy-to-follow point form that’ll lead you to a clear understanding of its background, history, structure and argument BEFORE you start. And if at the end you’d LIKE to try the book, may I suggest the great 1-volume Modern Library Edition?

Another Tyler wonder of a book. She KNOWS us!

If you’re like me, and you have the same quirkily skewed type of sense of humour Anne Tyler has, you’ll love this. I think it was Dryden or Pope who characterized great writing as - at its best - a mirror held up to nature... well, that’s Anne’s work!

Yet, spending time with him, I found him to be smaller, older, more vulnerable, more ordinary than in my mind’s eye. I was meeting the person, not the personality.

Rip-roaringly funny and quirky, in a quiet, offbeat sorta way! Glad I have this newly-arrived Anne Tyler novel: her type of humour chases off the February blahs in a flash...

This book is purty durned priceless!

And so here we go - back to the sparsely populated Manitoba of the twenties and thirties - experiencing first hand, with the multi-Governor General’s Award winner Gabrielle Roy, the life of a small-town schoolteacher among immigrant families in our unforgiving Northland, amid myriad forests, lakes and prairies.

Wow. SO Good.

A little unpretentious novel that has put my whole life into sharp focus - and taught me how to LIVE.

WoW. I am Entranced - utterly caught up in the little lives of the Bedloes. What a literary genius she is, this remarkable chronicler of the quotidian, Anne Tyler!