In funny ways I believe that Suelo is just as imprisoned by his “no money” stance as those who are imprisoned by having/needing money. BUT reading this, knowing something of his story and his journey led me to important questions. This is one you NEED to read.

or maybe overly fleshed out. Maybe this wasn’t really a book but a paper. There’s no market for papers tho. There should be. Mini-books maybe.

Having just finished Gilead I want to ruminate on it a bit. It was a well written, enjoyable, slow read but I feel as though I’m missing something and I want to think on it.

The book is itself one long rumination written by a 77 year old preacher (John Ames) ostensibly to his 7 year old son about himself and his relationships: to God, to his grandfather, his father, his friend, his friend’s son who is his namesake, his dead daughter, his wife, his son, and himself. All the old guys are preachers. His grandfather was a firebrand; his father a pacifist. He seems just a well considered man; a man doing his best to walk out the morality of which his intellect informs him. His friend, Broughten, seems a cypher, an alternative universe version of John Ames, the same preacher but with a family, without the loss and loneliness. Young Broughten, young John Ames Broughten, who is not young but early middle aged, seems also an alternative universe version of John Ames — who he is without the foundation of his believing, who the old John Ames is with the love he didn’t have but always felt anyway. The young John Ames is where the old John Ames can see his worse self reflected, and where he misses seeing his better self reflected.

Then there are the two wives of the two John Ames — both of them scandalous, the old one oblivious to the scandal that was surely there; the young one all too aware and thwarted by the scandal. There are the two young sons who will both in very real ways grow up with and without their fathers.

I suppose I’m always drawn whenever I see a character attempting honesty with himself. His reflections on love are particularly profound, and hopeful. His reflections on why it is so often the prodigal who is most loved almost make that phenomenon understandable. I do think he sees the grace in life, and that it isn’t his religion that reveals it but his willingness to experience it. I hope he got to see his son grow many more years, and bury his friend in peace. And I hope he learns more of his wife’s real story which I think he knows as little of as he knew of the young John Ames before their final talk.

I’ve actually already read this but want it to appear on my blog for awhile. I found it in the library sale books, it spoke to me, and I read it in less than 24 hours. It was a good book, clear and well written and interesting, but an AMAZING idea that I want to share!

and basic LOA, while certainly helpful, has some limitations

I finally finished reading Good Omens, the nice and accurate prophecies of Agnes Nutter.

It isn’t that it is not a good book. It is. It is even an excellent book. But it is a bit like watching Meryl Streep act – it works really really hard at being an excellent book, full of humor and fun and meaning and portent.

Of course, it may be all in me in that I have trouble of late really getting in to much fiction. And I am pretty demanding of narrative even in non-fiction. Call me picky. Or persnickety. I really don’t give a hoot. Like in wine and beer, I know what I like and I don’t care if it doesn’t make sense to other people although I will sometimes try to make sense of it myself.

So, the story is good. Complex and intertwined. But a story really rests on characters and while these characters are well-drawn, well, they aren’t very real or compelling: They don’t come alive. The story can overcome any unreality but the characters can’t. Aziraphale and Crowley, an angel and a demon, are the most real. And Death. I think their best points are made with Death. I LOVE Death. Anyway, that an angel and a demon and Death are the most lively characters is telling. While I agree on their points about good and evil (and human-ness), those points are constructed and sort of like a house even made of timber doesn’t actually look like a tree, a point constructed from characters that don’t breathe doesn’t actually become a tale. Not alive.

I’ve never read any Terry Pratchett although I’m pretty sure I remember that my friend MC loves him. I’ve read all the Gaiman novels I can get in the library and I liked Anansi Boys best (although I probably remember the plot of American Gods more clearly). I pretty much don’t do graphic novels although there have been a few exceptions (the color of water and stitches in particular). Although it has crossed my mind that if I’d read Gaiman when I was 18, like I did Tom Robbins, well, I don’t know. I love TR. His novels (most of them anyway) have many layers of meaning for me. Perhaps if I’d read Gaiman at that time, he would have been able to join TR on that mount. Having first read him at 48, not so much. Although I wait to meet up with him sometime. I hear he hangs in this area some. Maybe he’ll come take horseback riding lessons from me. And we could talk.

And, truly, I do love the book. “And there never was an apple, in Adam’s opinion, that wasn’t worth the trouble that you got into for eating it.”

the best idea in this is the dried summer squash, which we’ll try. I also like the premise (that these are the foods you can rely on and produce for real), but the book itself mostly sucks.

that is all. You owe it to yourself. I personally would like to own it.

He’s a pretty interesting storyteller and works information in that a lesser storyteller would have made stilted — instead it is interesting. The idea of autonomy extended to dogs, great (if limited sometimes). I also hugely appreciated that the main dogs in this story were not euthanized but allowed to die a real death, a choice that is not often honored. I’ll be looking for other Karasote books . . .

I liked it but it was limited, and Ron has his own ax to grind, which again is fine but a little much. Still, I’m probably not at all interested in reading anything heavier about the man so this book fit that.