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A lot of metaphors and similes about being under water
Harriet, the main character, has moods that feel like diving under water, and stirring up the green algae dust and mud on the bottom of a pond or lake.
Harriet practices holding her breath under water for as long as she can at the country club pool.
And…”the house was as silent as a submarine.” page 569

“The world will always be beautiful to those who look for beauty…

Apocalyptic stories always get the apocalypse wrong. The tragedy is not the failed world's barren ugliness. The tragedy is its clinging beauty even as it fails. Until the very last cricket falls silent, the beauty-besotted will find a reason to love the world.”

“The world is burning, and there is no time to put down the water buckets. For just an hour, put down the water buckets anyway. Take your cue from the bluebirds, who have no faith in the future but who build the future nevertheless, leaf by leaf and straw by straw, shaping them into the roundness of the world…
…this is what the world does best. New life. Rebirth. The greenness that rises out of ashes.”

Fiction, but infused with just as many facts.
A biopic.. of both scientists and their theories/laws but some of both are fictional.
Creative license.
To read this feels dangerous and unnerving, like the off-base versions of Marie Antoinette.. But I get why the author felt compelled to fuse fact and fiction.
It’s up to us, the reader, to learn the truth.

Other themes - how our memories are impermanent, unreliable. They fade over time, dissolve, and what we think we remember is often our own imagination filling in the blanks.
We have the ability to recreate ourselves, our own identity, simply by what we choose to remember about ourselves and about the other people in our life.

“ In Arizona, he stood before the pay phone in the noonday sun. He could almost see her there in front of him, a ghost, a mirage, dialing a number dredged up from some recess of childhood memory. He turned back toward the motel.”

The 4th novel I’ve read by St John Mandel.
Recurrent themes across the four - motels/hotels, windows, a sense of transience and an inability to feel rooted or tied to a place.

I started reading another book this morning, THE COMFORT OF CROWS.
A quiet, affirming nonfiction book about really noticing birds in the winter…
After a 2nd cup of coffee, I read “Something About Birds” by Tremblay.
And it’s also about really seeing birds…

But such a jarring contrast between two narratives that are both on the subject of birds and noticing birds.
On to my 3rd cup of coffee…

Just read “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”.
Borges uses a narrator, written in first person (limited), to describe a book that seems to defy reality.
Then the book becomes its own reality…

Borges twists “reality” and the concept of scientific method, in a way in which he ridicules others who twist reality and scientific methods for their own agendas.
Is this story a parody? It is certainly satirical.

Just read chapter 13.
Damn, this is HORRIFYING.

And told from the POV of an 8 yr old girl.

On Chapter 11.
I started reading this yesterday, not knowing anything about it other than it’s by Paul Tremblay, and I’ve enjoyed some of his other books.

Things are getting really weird with Marjorie, the older sister. I’m guessing schizophrenia, but it’s Tremblay, so… there is going to be something else at play, something other-worldly…

Again, fairy tale tropes abound, as in other Tremblay novels.

Did not finish. Translation is unreadable.

I’m on Chapter 37.
It’s taking me forever to read this, but I do plan on finishing this book.
The story drags a bit, and over halfway through, I still don’t understand the significance of the multiple points of view ; or significance of the hurricane).
But I’m interested in how this wraps up.

Overall themes are revenge and haunted places. And violence, both natural and man-made.

I’ve about to read Chapter 5, but honestly questioning whether I should continue reading.
Is this book a kinder, gentler version of De Sade?!

Revolting in parts (so far) but compelling. I am invested in the main character’s arc, so I’ll probably continue.

Did not finish due to consistently bad reviews, but the beginning is intriguing.