Meg Pilcher > Recent Status Updates

"Once, when I fell down and cut my knee, she gave me an apple for nothing. I've always remembered her for it. You know you always remember people who are kind to you."

Update: it took over 200 pages for something good to happen to David Copperfield—and she is the finest most hilarious aunt character I’ve read in Brit lit, rivaling even a Wodehouse Aunt!

Oh poor little David! I am loving reading this book and also listening to Gildart Jackson’s narration of it. It’s the perfect long narrative to hear read-aloud but has enough characters that some of the names can jumble without reading the text

Did you know the author of Curious George wrote probably the best book on amateur astronomy? Neither did I until now! IT’S SO GOOD.

Great detective fiction and I’m forever grateful to this book for introducing me to the narration of Gildart Jackson!

This book is equal parts history of feminism and Christian critique of the culture but I’m finding that I enjoy it most for Favale’s descriptions of philosophical “isms” like nominalism and dualistic instrumentalism.

Self-helpy, but it’s making for a great inspirational audiobook as we travel for the holidays and cook a million dishes

Book 7! Sarah Ruden is a genius! Reading this poem in iambic pentameter is 1. Crazy, I could barely have told you what that was before starting this and 2. Beautiful, the pace is unbeatable and her footnotes make some of the more esoteric names and places totally accessible

I think I can I think I can I think I can

A March morning is only as drab as he who walks in it without a glance skyward, ear cocked for geese. I once knew an educated lady, banded Phi Beta Kappa, who told me that she had never heard or seen the geese that twice a year proclaim the revolving seasons to her well-insulated roof. Is education possibly a process of trading awareness for things of lesser worth? The goose who trades his is soon a pile of feathers.

Halfway there…losing steam, so many characters with so much exaggerated drama. And yet we await the ultimate revenge plot…one cog at a time.

“Trees grow more branches on their southern side, as this is the brightest. As they get taller they inevitably shed lots of branches on their southern side too. This leaves a series of “eyes” looking at us from the south side of the tree”

These “eyes” are the whorls and circles you see on a tree trunk! Gooley even draws an illustration in the book, Sand County style

Serialized fiction is such a ride - I feel like I’m reading a soap opera and that’s kinda the point

Buckle up gang we’re in for a long ride - but with a protagonist named Dantes I don’t know what else I would have expected

While Cather would describe this book as a narrative, I’ve found myself struggling to describe it to other people. It is simultaneously historical fiction, hagiography, and western lore. Her painterly prose is as illuminating as ever, but the hero she’s describing Father Latour, is astonishing.

Stupidly long summer reading challenge here we go:

We begin reading on June 1st, and conclude on August 17th. That is a total of 1,276 pages (editions may vary) over 11 weeks, or 116 pages per week, or 17 pages per day. We can read 17 pages per day!

‘Is it Good Art?’
‘Well I don’t quite know what you mean,’ I said warily. ‘Probably in eighty years it will be greatly admired.’
‘But surely it can’t be good twenty years ago and good in eighty years and not good now?’
‘Well it may be good now. all I mean is that I don’t like it much.’
‘But is there a difference between liking a thing and thinking it good?’

This is such a short book and man am I struggling to finish it, he’s discursive and vague. I just wanted to learn about music!