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Brutal and beautiful. Brian Evenson meets Italo Calvino.

I might be going over to Germany again for work in October, which means Latin reading goes on hold while I try to improve my Deutsch. Someday I'll get all those Latin books on my shelf read, but probably not this year.

Review soon.

"We were younger here and youth is always the hardest home to go back to, because it hurts so much to see it again."

Oomph. This last section took it out of me. An emotional purging.

Going fishing on Saturday and trying to decide if it's a good idea to take this book with me on the boat . . .

Well, crap, Goodreads finally DID yoink the ability for any of us to message one another directly. Huh. And how exactly is this helping to build community?

This book hits a sweet spot in a number of areas: my academic training, my family history-ish, my obsession for written correspondence with select individuals, and my admiration for Martin as a writer.

Moby Dick makes an offscreen cameo and eats someone. I had forgotten about that. Nomnomnom.

Wow, has this book hit a chord within me. As a military brat, some of the places of my upbringing are either inaccessible or just don't plain exist anymore. Being able to revisit those places and reconcile my older self with my younger self is a transformative experience, and Locker has hit the emotion of it all right on the bloody head. This'll be an introspective review: fair warning.

My physical TBR shelf is only three books shy of my GR TBR list (and one of those is in the mail, coming from Andora). And it's chock full. Meaning I am going to have to read through some shorter works later this year to create more room! I guess that means more frequent reviews. Re-reading Moby Dick (which I am soooo happy I'm doing) slows down all the other reviews. Too much good stuff out there.

One wonders if Lovecraft didn't lift the trope of the evil Asian sailor directly from Ahab's "Tigers".

I love the premise of this book. I'm afraid the scope is not entirely in line with my understanding of relativity and quantum dynamics. There's a lot of information I already know, so I might not be the right audience. I keep waiting for Egginton to cut to the chase and get into the meat, but I may have already tasted much of the meat. The corollaries with Kant and Borges' work in particular are intriguing, though.

Most of the way through and I still couldn't tell you what this is "about". But I will say that it is one of the most beautiful prose pieces I've read in a long, long time.

Now I want to write the stories of Timor Tom, New Zealand Jack, Morquan, King of Japan, and Don Miguel. Hmm . . .

I've always loved Borges' fiction, but knowing what I know now about his biography, I think I've found a kindred soul in many ways. I won't go into details because I don't want to impugn anyone I might inadvertently "expose" (past or present). Let's just say that when you're in a foxhole "together," you become friends fast.

Not convinced that this is the OG of Cosmic Horror? Go read that passage at the end of chapter 42: "The Whiteness of the Whale". One of the best passages of Cosmic Horror I've ever read, full stop. My review of the second reading might just be a quote of that passage. Awe-full in the extreme. If you don't have an existential crisis while reading it, you're not paying attention.

Traded in some books at my favorite online place to buy books (Ziesings) and am now in the throes of analysis paralysis. Gotta sit with it for a minute until clarity comes to me. I'm done with the "how much do I have to spend and how much do all the books cost that I want" stage and am on to the "gotta narrow" stage. A couple of titles are standing out and I might just spring for them.

It's getting to be that time of year where reading in the warm night becomes a hallucinatory experience. I should probably turn the AC on.

been studying German so much that Latin has languished. I'll get back to it, for sure, but German is higher priority (I work for a German company, for the record).

Absolutely love this quote by Werner Heisenberg: "We have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning".

That was profound enough to write down in my commonplace book (yes, I do keep a commonplace book).

Now we dig into the blubbery meat of the story!

Just sent Martin payment for his non-fiction book Protection and Property, which I'm quite excited to read. And also just sent him a letter. Thinking of which, I owe a few more letters . . . if you're on my list (you know who you are), I haven't forgotten you.

It's difficult to put into words what this book is "about". It just IS. Reading it is a Zen experience, the words flow through you and you flow through the words. Not in a relaxing way. On the contrary, in a challenging way, but the kind of challenge that when you surmount it, you feel like an intellectual champion full of emotional endorphines. You don't read this book, you ARE this book. It absorbs you.

Poor, poor Borges. With his life of tragedy and triumph, the man should have been sainted. Saint Borges. I like the sound of that.