Lisa Busch > Recent Status Updates

Well I stuck with it. Had nothing else to read in the plane and still curious to know how badly sideways this hiking trip is obviously going to go- what with all the less than subtle foreshadowing. In for a penny… pound now.
Things have improved a little - more action, less psychobabble.
Seems like a book you should read on a camping trip… just sayin.

This book is poorly written - almost juvenile. The attempt at showing the inner workings of the psychology of each character is heavy handed and clunky. At first listening to each person in first person seemed odd, but that has subsided. All that said, I’m curious about the storyline and enjoying the Newfoundland references so will stick it out for the time being.

Forgot to record for several days. It’s hard to put down. Such moment by moment detail.

Thoroughly readable. What a wonderful relief and change of pace after Grapes of Wrath. A reminder of why I love McCullough and still don’t enjoy Steinbeck. Simply flows - no pun intended.

Rushing to the climax.

Picking peaches for a meal. Bass-akwards - and I thought we made it up.

Rotten fruit and starving people. So much like Ireland. I had no idea this had happened here.

A harmonica, a guitar and a fiddle.

Chapter 21 - “and the companies and the banks worked to their own doom and did not know it.”
Chapter 22 -
Dignity and fellowship returns in the camp - exactly what the big machine does not want - and we watch it grow. Hope is reborn in a shower and porcelain toilets are introduced.
Easier to read because it’s not as depressing. But still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Slow

The progression from working the land to owning the land to owning a business that has a farm. From farming to eat to farming for profit to farming for corporate profit and world production. Never thought of it like that but it was palpable as described by Steinbeck.

Didn’t expect to get sucked in entirely. Thought it was going to be a slow drag but I’m in it now. The description of the night worlds reminded me of camping when we went out west but sad and desperate and uneasy. My God life was hard then.

Surprised at how little has changed in nearly 90 years. The women with make up and birth control “hating that time rarely makes them beautiful and always makes them old.” “Going to California really to go home again” - the gossip and envy. “They don’t see a chance till we get rid of the fellow in the White House.”

Instantly engaging. Been a while since a book grabbed me from the first page.

Chapter 14 a treatise on the plight of mankind - poignant. Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lennon a result not a cause.

Interesting writing style changes. The dilapidating house. Route 66 - and interesting road trip. The car
Limping along - the fear. It’s all palpable and that in just 8 pages.

And slowly we plod on 10 pages at a time. Only 43 left to go.

How could a decaying house make me so sad? At the same time I found myself annoyed at the improbability that they could have revived the house which had crumbing plaster and weeds growing through the tiles just by cleaning it and cutting the grass. For all the attention given to the melancholy decay surely the attention to detail it’s was due it.

And they’re off…

The ruined house and the ruined lives…

Every one a drum major leading a parade of hurts, marching w our own bitterness.

How can we live without our lives? How will we know its us without our past?

Just started. Needed to read something more narrative to break up To the Lighthouse and Grapes of Wrath. Back to reading 3 books at once. At least I’m reading more than I wouldn’t I just stopped w one when I got bored. So I justify…

Really? Did she just die? And in a parenthesis? The shock was breathtaking. I kept reading it over not believing that she who was so central to the story was just gone… in the dark. Completely changes the book which was just kind of floating along and now feels all disrupted. Wow! So like life. How does a person write like this?