Reading this book, it seemed fairly sedate and straightforward; two men debating the existence of God. Ultimately, however, it’s much more than a philosophical treatise – it’s a character study, written by the modern master of nuanced and layered dialog. It’s a story about Black and White, Light and Dark, and all the shades in between. The end, though, is where it really grabs you. It’s powerful, stunning, and heartbreaking. 5 Stars.
Jesus. I just realized that I haven’t posted here since February 3rd. Apparently it was f’ing cold, too. Thank goodness winter’s gone. I thought with Ali coming, keeping me busy, I’d not notice the long, cold days, but that turned out not to be the case at all. I noticed them more. Maybe there was a touch of postpartum depression in there, but I’ll just leave it at: it wasn’t pretty.
In any case, my new daughter is now nearly 11 weeks old, and I’m slowly starting to get some of my days back. Turns out she’s a night owl, as I suspected when I was pregnant and she kept me up at night kicking relentlessly in my belly. The up side is that she’s also a late morning sleeper, which has begun to leave me a couple of hours each morning for work. Or cleaning. Or reading. Or whatever. This is good. I need that quiet time, even when it’s spent on totally inane tasks. I need silence. Silence is home, and everyone needs to go home from time to time.
I started back working on the novel last week, and though I started out completely lost as to where I was and where the plot was going, I discovered that I’d made NOTES! so we’re not as bad off as I initially thought. Yesterday and today I’ve spent transferring everything into Spacejock’s free yWriter software, which seems like something that can be very useful for someone like me; a person with baskets of notes, outlines, failed attempts, snippets, research, etc.
I’m still reading The Land of Painted Caves, Jean Auel’s final book in the Earth’s Children series. I stopped for a while, because I’d found this, but I’ll be jumping back in this week. I’m not far into it, so I’ll reserve final judgement, but so far it’s been…well, underwhelming. Ever since Clan of the Cave Bear I’ve watched the series go slowly downhill, not because the level of detail has degraded, or because Auel has dropped the ball on historical accuracy, but because the story is just not there. The characters have all shown up, but so far nothing new or interesting has happened. Like I said, I’m only on page 91 (out of 750 or so-odd pages), so I’m sticking with it, but so far the author has made reading further seem like more of a chore than an act of greedy anticipation. Hopefully things will pick up soon.
I also started Moonwalking with Einstein, by Joshua Foer. This is my current nonfiction book and so far, it’s highly intriguing. I’ve always had something of a penchant for memorization, even though I paradoxically also often can’t remember what I said five minutes ago, so the premise of the book – that anyone can learn amazing feats of recall – is one that really interests me. Another appeal is that it’s written by a journalist, who, from the sound of things in the first chapter I’ve read so far, started out with as healthy a dose of skepticism in regards to these claims as I have. That, along with the fact that the book contains actual scientific research instead making its argument based only on anecdotes, piqued my curiosity. So far it’s entertaining and pretty funny, so it’s worth my time regardless of whether or not I’m still skipping down the path to Alzheimer’s by the end.
Below the cut, some pictures from our recent trips to Arcadia. The second bedroom’s within a stone’s throw of being done, and now we’re trying to decide whether to open up the enormous can of worms that is the old, leaky plumbing system, or play it cheap and just continue on working on bedrooms. In any case, it’s spring, so things are looking up, regardless.