I just finished Cat’s Cradle, my third Vonnegut this summer and a close favorite just ahead of Slaughterhouse-5. The images in Cat’s Cradle are just so preposterous and funny, but so unerringly true. The San Lorenzan puppet monarchy, the whole ice-nine apocalypse, and the dead on takes on sex and relationships all are true and […]
Books
So it goes…
RIP Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) Yet another life philosophy heard from, or silenced, as it were. It’s kind of funny, really. This idea seems to be front and center in my life right now, and damn it it sucks. The crushing inevitability of it all, the grinding hurt and ultimate sadness of it all…it really hurts. […]
Black Swan Green
So here I am, home sick all day. After a much needed nap right after breakfast (I helped the kids get off to school, kissed the wife goodbye, and settled in for a midwinter siesta), I woke with a passion to finish David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green. I was nearly done with only a scant […]
Richard Ford and Me
The Reading I had the wonderful opportunity to hear Richard Ford speak on Friday night (1/19/07, New York State Writers Institute, SUNY Albany), and was able to chat briefly with him and get a copy of The Lay of the Land, his latest novel, signed. Quite an experience. I ventured out alone (my wife is […]
Student Generated List of Summer Reading Books, excerpt
As promised, here is the compiled list of summer reads my students tackled this summer. This is not an exhaustive list, only a brief, truncated one. These tend to be the most interesting titles, although there were many other books that could have been placed here. It is, in a sense, refreshing to see the […]
…And the Inevitable Sorrow of Summer Reading
And so it ends. Summer is over and the beach reading has to disappear. Which really is the sorrow of the whole process, the ending. Summer is such a freeing time for us all, a time to read and write without the constraints, and, for me, the requisite guilt that comes with them, of class […]