Leigh > Recent Status Updates

Just had a lovely scene with Lampo and Lyra on the shore — a portrait of two characters doing their best to overcome a lot of personal and systemic obstacles. Maybe a little too enlightened, but it offers an intriguing new dimension to our selfish and immature narrator.

Surprisingly similar in structure to Christopher Moore's "Lamb" (2002) with the selfish streetwise bully narrator accompanying his haunted Christlike best friend! But the tone and overall project of this one is more appealing.

“The Greek alphabet is concerned to symbolize not objects in the real world but the very process in which sounds act to construct speech… The consonant functions by means of an act of imagination in the mind of the user. I am writing this book because that act astounds me. It is an act in which the mind reaches out from what present and actual to something else.”

Getting pretty dark!!

I didn’t really have any idea what to expect, but what I’m getting is a fascinating, very accessible SF novel that feels influential on a lot of the stuff I grew up on: ElfQuest, X-Men, Orson Scott Card’s pseudo-biblical Homecoming saga, etc. All while bluntly engaging with the history of slavery and eugenics, and at the same time staying grounded in character psychology. Nice trick!

There’s a monologue from Jacques in chapter 3 that I’m amazed I haven’t come across before — it has the ring of an iconic passage.

One hell of a Chapter One. Maybe one of the best Chapter Ones I’ve ever read?

What an interesting detour that (Part V: Radioman) was. Sort of a step sideways into a different genre. God only knows what comes next!

Well that seems like a pretty load-bearing plot development! Not sure I’m on board, but we’ll see how it goes…

What a pleasure. It’s moving quickly (sometimes perhaps too quickly) because like Bradley Cooper’s movie MAESTRO, it’s more interested in the people than the work and what the work meant to its audience. Although it’s clear that Chabon himself cares a lot about comics and their readers, perhaps he doesn’t feel that the novel is allowed to.

I have no way of knowing whether everybody sees themselves in Stan Lee (as he had a special gift for relatability) or if I have been especially inclined to model myself after that great hype man. But what fun to spend the past several chapters watching young Sammy put a crew together and take the world by storm with the power of chutzpah and being too young to know what’s impossible.

Maybe I should have read it sooner? Or maybe this is exactly the right time to be reading it. But now is when I'm reading it. And good lord, it's an incredible experience. I haven't felt like this since Moby-Dick

Took me a while to catch the rhythm and tone, but I’m on board now! So far this is turning out to be extremely silly

No idea where this is going but I’m having a delightful journey

This is my first Ann Patchett, and I’m struck by the elegance of her prose and the outstanding performance by audiobook narrator Anna Fields.

Audiobook narrator Tim Campbell is really earning his paycheck with this Ahab speech in chapter 36 “The Quarter-Deck.” Good God.

A great pleasure so far. Structurally interesting — the really short chapters make it tempting to do “just one more, just one more,” like a breezy modern airport novel. Each chapter tends to offer a tiny bit of plot progress, flowing into an abstract philosophical reverie inspired by some element of the story. Then the chapter ends and a new one starts with another tiny step forward in the plot. Almost Homeric.

This Mark Twain guy is pretty talented. Phrasing, plotting, themes are all great. And his ear for language is incredible (I have to admit it feels extra impressive in contrast to Percival Everett’s less convincing dialects in JAMES).