Paul > Recent Status Updates

'I'm looking for Patsy Dan, the King of Tory.'
'Oh yes.'
'I thought he might be here to welcome me.'
'Maybe he's suffering after last night's boozing.'

"...America, the land of promise and hope, had reached out across the sea and taken her husband, a man who had taken her heart and kept it, and America had taken her baby--two innocent beings in the vastness of a world with all kinds of things that could have been taken first. She held nothing against God. God was simply being God. But she could not forgive America..."

I hate this book. Will I finish? It is looking grim.

I have enough on my plate right now, but I had this on hold at the digital library, and it became available sooner than anticipated. It has a ridiculous conceit--it is narrated by a five year old--but I started reading and kept on reading. Damned if the ridiculous conceit doesn't work.

"A winded, defeated-looking fat woman in filthy coveralls trudged beside us, heading what Miss Pefko said. She turned to examine Dr. Breed, looking at him with helpless reproach. She hated people who thought too much. At that moment, she struck me as an appropriate representative for almost all mankind."

Digging this book a lot. It was totally off my radar until I recently read an article arguing for the re-evaluation of Shirley Jackson beyond The Lottery.

I decided to read one story a morning from this, and having little knowledge of them except that Flannery O'Connor was religious and southern, image my surprise to every day starting with a little tale of murder, suicide, freak shows, and the general horrors of humanity.

Finished the titular story, and holy hell is it dark.

"… There are people in the world for whom 'coming along' is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive."

"She'd never really known her father. Probably nobody had. With his shyness and his formality and his tyrannical rages he protected his interior so ferociously that if you loved him, as she did, you learned that you could do him no greater kindness than to respect his privacy."

"Doug, who was younger and shorter than Chip, so persistently claimed to be in awe of Chip's intellect and so consistently tested free of any irony or condescension that Chip had finally accepted that Doug really did admire him. This admiration was more grueling than belittlement."

Challenged to read it by the precocious daughter of a co-worker, and I hate to admit it but it's pretty good so far.

I assume, based on the weird crush that my fellow geeks have on her, that Hermione becomes more likeable as the story progresses, because right now she is just irritating.

The first Miss Marple, and only my third Christie. Perhaps not to the level of And Then There Were None, but very entertaining nonetheless.

Oops, I meant 498. Unless this book just completely falls apart in its last third, this is my second favorite book of the year so far.

Cracking good yarn, this.

I have read worse novels in my time, but never one so pompous and inflated with its own Importance. Tedious going, this thing.

"The journalists had gone, and a great peace reigned in the city."

Tremendous fun so far.