Jan 25, 2023The Art Of FlightPart autobiography, part literary criticism. I was a bit skeptical at first, and maybe to a certain extent throughout the entirety - while most of it is beautifully wrought, there is a tendency for Pitol just to simply start listing off names and places and books and works of art. Worse than that, they are lists of names of which I recognized only a small amount, and read even less! So basically both pretentious and an insult to my intelligent wordliness. (Reading the translator's note at the back, I discovered that the description of a man he saw in a bar in Barcelona as "the little black princess of the heaths" was in fact a reference to the nineteenth century novel Das Haideprinzeßchen? Which has a German wikipedia page, but no English one.) Unlike, say, Terry Pratchett, this is not an easy read.
Jan 26, 2023DucksKate Beaton is great, this book is great, this book is heavy and traumatic and human and occasionally a bit sweet. Should be read.
May 27, 2023Pilgrim At Tinker CreekAn entirely self-indulgent conversation with a passionate believer in the wonder and the beauty of the natural world, full of excellent tidbits and charming vignettes, of life by the creek and Life by the Creek. I like the review that says "Just when you thought something interesting was going to happen she watches birds or something for hours." If you are looking for plot (and I do have a bit of a personal predilection/weakness in that direction) this is not where that will be found. It is instead a good book for telling you to go to the woods and front only the essential facts of life, for painting a golden aura around that which has the tendency to become mundane dirt, trees, sky. I find that some of the best books I read are those that inculcate a yearning for faith and belief in something greater, and this scratches that itch.