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The first three stories are very early efforts and it is interesting to see how quickly she finds her best subject and begins to develop her singular style.

Appropriate timing? There is a hurricane headed our way today.

A Small Good Thing by Raymond Carver. This is not the first short story by Carver that I have read. I like his clear and precise storytelling. He makes the events seem completely real by all the commonplace details he is able to use without distracting from the storyline.

Erik Larson is so good at giving you a lot of minute detail but making it part of the excitement of the history and the personal story. When I finish this I will undoubtedly know more about what makes a hurricane than I had ever thought to know.

The hubris of man. I have just completed the first section on the building of the storm and Isaac Cline's mistaken confidence that Galveston could never be susceptible to a truly destructive hurricane (this despite the complete destruction of Indianola, a neighboring port town.)

I can see so many parallels to ourselves...always thinking we know everything.

Chapter 18 on the propitiation is among the best, clearest explanations I have ever read.

Enjoyed Camus' "The Guest" and found the essay on Algeria very interesting and heartfelt. The biographical information gave me a deeper understanding of why Camus wrote in the style that he did and what motivated him to be an absurdist.

Gissing has already made me interested in these women and what their futures can be. I imagine this book was fairly ahead of its time in imagining that a woman might actually thrive as an unmarried working woman, and that there were alternatives to being a teacher or governess.

The study guide raises some great questions and supports the book well. Worth taking the time to do this at a slow pace.

I am beginning Part III. I read the book through, then went back to the beginning and started the read with the study guide. I am amazed at how much there is to get from this book. I could start it all over again when I finish and feel I could benefit from the third reading!

This is rather cute so far. Fun figuring out who all the "characters" are and I rather like that it is written from the viewpoint of the dog.

Makes me insane when they do this! He was not Alfred Tennyson...he was Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

He contemplates the kind of man who might want to kill him. Hopes it will be someone with Rome at heart. Examines how love and hate are two sides of the same coin; people are grateful to have someone take the responsibility from them but resent the loss of freedom.
"the central movement of the mind is the desire for unrestricted liberty..invariably accompanied by its opposite, a dread of the consequences of liberty."

"Is there a Mind in or above the universe which is watching us?"

This is a very interesting view of Caesar, a man who knows he will be assassinated and yet is able to look in an almost removed way.

"I am often called 'Destiny's Favorite'. If the Gods exist they placed me where I am. They placed every man where he is, but the man who fills my seat is among the more conspicuous of Their appointments. The man who plays me would perhaps offer us some light upon their nature."

Wilder does a good job of allowing us to see the man behind the title of dictator. It occurs to me that Julius Caesar had no precedent to build his position upon. Perhaps he thought of Alexander as that.

I enjoy epistolary novels when well done. This one is quite good, but I do not think it rivals Williams' Augustus.

This is a marvelous companion to the book.

This is the most astounding read. I am taking it very slow, with the study guide as well. I am so glad for reading this and grateful to Megan for suggesting it.

Sometimes the library decides what I am reading next.

Oh, Goodness, nobody writes books like this anymore. I am so on Bennett's Island when I am reading and not even present in my own world. I already love Phillipa, and I am beginning to remember some of the other characters from the previous series.

I keep thinking "poor little rich girl". I find all the adults in her life a bit despicable, including her stepfather, but mostly I want to smack her mother.

Loving this. Sometimes James is overwhelming, but this is an easy, flowing read and I am very involved with the fate of Miss Maisie.

Loosely autobiographical memoir, interspersed with other stories that inform his situation. He survived Auschwitz. He has an engaging writing style. I would like to read his memoir of his experiences in the camp, If This is a Man.

Because for everyone you meet there is a last moment, there will be a last moment when your hand slips from theirs, and everything ripples outwards from that, the last firmness of a hand in yours that every moment after becomes a little less firm until you look down at your own hand and try to imagine just what it felt like before their hand slipped away. And you cannot. You cannot feel them.

He'd look at Mary and his heart would float. That was the kind of love it was, the kind that radiates, that begins in the eyes of another but soon has got into everything, the kind that makes the world seem better, everything become just that bit more marvelous. Maybe it was because he'd been at sea so long; maybe it was because he was realizing how lost he had been ...; maybe it was because he was feeling rescued.

I love the way, for Ruth, this is a story of herself that started three generations back; and the stories of her father and grandfather are just another piece of the story of her.

Faith is the most peculiar thing. It's Number One in human mysteries. Because how do you do it? Where do you learn it? For the Believers it doesn't matter how outlandish or unlikely the thing you believe in, if you believe it, there's no arguing.

We tell stories. We tell stories to pass the time, to leave the world for a while, or go more deeply into it. We tell stories to heal the pain of living.

We're a race of elsewhere people. That's what makes us the best saints and the best poets and the best musicians and the world's worst bankers...It's in the eyes. The idea of the better home. Some of us have it worse than others. My father had it running in the rivers of him.