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Most books I read which strive to be about the Black experience living in America are ultimately about trauma, for obvious reasons. If Beale Street Could Talk also has its fair share of trauma and no happy ending - but the focus is instead powerful love, the love of a young couple and the love of the main character's family. It is a beautiful and moving piece.

The term shadow cousins refers to family members that are excommunicated, not spoken of and ignored. At least in the parlance of the book; I suppose in real life as well, although I have not heard of it elsewhere. The context is one in which family is otherwise the bindings and basis of one's entire society - clans of the Hardings or Houses or Daniels, bound together and facing the difficulties of life on the frontier. There is a bit of a moral imprecation here: shadow cousins, bad eggs thrown out of the nest, lacking society, must confront a bleaker reality and in all likelihood become that which they are labeled as. On the other hand, there is for lack of a better phrase deep badness here as well, a reason why shadow cousins are labeled as such. Edgar Bloody Watson, the central character and central shadow cousin whose life the book examines is not vindicated by his traumatic and troubled upbringing or the bad luck he encounters - he is a tough man who makes tough decisions, and at times takes the unflinchingly evil path.

One of my favorite book's growing up was My Father's Dragon, which I remember little about now - but did bias me pretty strongly against His Majesty's Dragon. I am an adult now! This looked like the lowest form of pablum. But really it's just pretty good pablum! An easy, comforting read, with sailboats and war and dragons, with problems presenting themselves and melting away, it is a book rightfully confident in its identity and a fun experience. It took me about 18 hours to get through, while The Guermante's Way has been sitting by my bedside for the last 5 months.

A cute and lovely collection of prose on butterflies. The poetry - I've read some of Hesse's poetry before, and I can't really tell if he is a bad poet or it doesn't come across in translation? For a writer I love so much I am a bit inclined to believe the latter, but I mostly find his poetry lacking. But the prose is cute and lovely - if you are a fan of Hesse's work, it is definitely worth a quick peruse. And I learned that apparently Schmetterling is not the only German word for butterfly, which is heartening.

Rick Ridgeway's writing has a bit of a rough-hewn, simple style that I don't think will win many awards - and at first, that I didn't think I liked that much. But there is also a deep, earnest sincerity to it that makes his stories just a bit larger-than-life. That, and the fact that they are just completely wild, crazy things he's done, been all around the world and up on all the mountains and through all the forests. He writes and is a bit full of himself, as I suppose one must be to confront the extremities of the world at the risk of death, but his transparency there becomes a bit charming; his transparency makes the tragedies he faces all the more heartbreaking. There is also - I think maybe accidentally, but he presents his life in a bit of a fascinating fragmentation of time, reminiscent of Vonnegut? Recollections mostly in order, with insertions of the future and the past and sudden and unexpected jumps...product I guess of the growth of the book out of a series of instagram posts, but creating a pattern that I do appreciate. An excellent and engaging series of stories that weave together into a very good book.

A classic that stands the test of time! Tiny Tim did not die and Scrooge was a doofus but he bought a goose so it is all good.

I think my threshold for good fantasy varies wildly from book to book, season to season. At times it is a comfort food, and seeking comfort and ease I find it and look no further - while at times I approach it more like I approach the rest of literature, seeking comfort and ease and beauty and grace and a compelling truth about the human condition.

A double-negative in a sentence performs in my mind a kind of fascinating transformation of meaning; ostensibly the sentence works just the same without it, but practically there is something else, a différance that drives the meaning around and into a corner.

Murderbot continues to be a delight, maybe a bit more on the Real side with this one but still at the core the classic Murderbot running around, saving lives, struggling with Emotions, getting shot a few times. While quite enjoyable, I can't help but feel that the concept has about run it's course - and I hope Wells is onto something new soon. Can't really blame her for capitalizing on this to the extent that she has though.

It is a bit suspicious that this was published after Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel came out, but as much of a Anderson fanboy as I am, I think this may have done it better. Declining customs of an aristocratic hotel of the Old World, charm and poise pitted against the bureaucratic gray new age, a man out of place whose chief attribute is knowing how never to be out of place. Sweet, a bit twee, all in all quite solid, an excellent book to recommend to a grandmother or at least my grandmother.