In May 2020, I began a project to review classic spy novels. I selected eleven books to review, and I went to Powell’s City of Books in Portland to buy them. I was so proud of myself! I expected the project would take a year or eighteen months or even two years to complete,...
I read The Girl of the Sea of Cortez as a comprise. I have always been fascinated with Peter Benchley’s novel The Deep; at least, I think I will like reading it. I haven’t read it, but I saw the Nick Nolte and Jacqueline Bisset movie, about a couple vacation in Bermuda. Being scuba...
Around 1986 or 1987, I went to a bookstore to find my next read. Now you know that I can’t go to scout out reading projects and leave without an hour, or at least not in those days when I took my time looking, analyzing, and deciding. I was bad at deciding and often...
During a recent trip to Spokane, I went to Auntie’s Bookstore to buy a novel to read on the train. I searched for a half-hour, or maybe a whole hour, but I ended up buying the first novel that caught my eye when I was in the store only for a minute. It was...
I am losing words, although I am not losing concepts. I hope that I am not losing concepts. If I am losing concepts, I am not aware of it. If I am losing concepts, how would I know? The Man Who Forgot Ray BradburyNeil Gaiman As my faithful reader knows, on November 29, 2021,...
There are novels to understand, but there are novels to experience. After reading G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who was Thursday twice—the second time to remind me of the plot—I concluded that it is securely in the second category. The first time I read it was before my stroke. I not saying that there...
I visited the Lost Young cafe in Paris in 1976. A bunch of us wanted to see a real Parisian nightclub, and our guide agreed to take us. I fear something was lost in translation, because the dank club where he took us was a far cry from our imagination. No one was that...
The Shining by Stephen King is one of the author’s best works, if not his best. It tells the story of Jack Torrrance and his winter acting as the caretaker of the Overlook Hotel. He is joined by his wife, Wendy, and five-year-old son, Danny. Jack wants the job because he is working on...
On November 29, I suffered a stroke. I spent the month in a hospital and a rehabilitation facility. I was released on Christmas Eve, but I had a lot of recovery to do. To my frustration, I had to learn how to read again. And write. Much of my cognitive of my ability left...
Though I know there are several wonderful stories with animal protagonists, I tend not to read them. I guess I suffer from a homo sapiens prejudice when it comes to literature. I want the stories I read to be about people. I confess this is a narrow, distorted view of the world, one that...
