Nice article and pics. However, personally I'd rather pocket the $15K and watch the aquatic species of those which like to hang out in the warmth of the Florida Keys. I'm just not a cold weather person:)

There's a line from Tolstoy's diaries that always breaks my heart. "I was cleaning a room," he wrote, "and, meandering about, approached the divan and could not remember whether or not I had dusted it. . . . I could not remember and felt that it was impossible to remember—so that if I had dusted it and forgot—that is, had acted unconsciously, then it was the same as if I had not. . . . If the whole complex lives of many people go on unconsciously, then such lives are as if they had never been."

How often do we forget if we dusted something, or what we ate the night before, or the name of someone we met ten minutes ago? What percentage of our lives slips past unconsciously? Don't we owe it to ourselves to pay as much attention to the world as we can while we still have time?

"For years, my father-in-law has kept a Japanese novel on his desk as a way of reminding himself that reading from left to right is an arbitrary convention, that things don't always have to be as they are. Life is full of such reminders, if only we remember to notice them. Steering columns don't need to be on the left side of cars, for instance, and maps don't need to be printed with north at the top. Alphabets don't have to be Roman. Days don't always begin with a sunrise."

Anthony Doerr is a magical writer. His depth of thought and ability to express them is a brilliance that, like he so eloquently writes about, should not be read unconsciously, and cannot be forgotten. A rare talent.

Beth wrote: "There's a line from Tolstoy's diaries that always breaks my heart. "I was cleaning a room," he wrote, "and, meandering about, approached the divan and could not remember whether or not I had dusted..."

Is that paragraph about the Japanese novel etc written by Doerr? Wonderful passage!

Just started reading All the Light We Cannot See.