I read sweet memoir by Bich Minh Nguyen, Stealing Buddah's Dinner. She wrote about when she was young and quiet, always reading. I love this quote because it can be read or said in either the past or present tense:
"I read to be alone. I read so as not to be alone".
So here's what I've been alone and not alone with lately.
The Dream of the Stone: by Christina Askounis. This is a book written for young readers; It's rich with characters and language and story. It's fanta
syand science fiction, and I couldn't put it down. There is also love vs. evil and another planet and time travel and it's woven together smoothly and seamlessly. Each character is very special and essential to the story. My favorite characters were Miladras, the tree, and the aunts. Christina Askounis writes in a very visual way, so throughout the book, I had pictures in my mind of what was happening. Aren't those the very best books? The ones that you can see like dreams?
Beautiful Losers: By Leonard Cohen. I've been listening to The Essentail Cohen pretty much exclusively since discovering it a few weeks ago. So I'd love the book, right? Inside the jacket cover of this well worn library book with the original date due slip with dates back to 1976
Anyway, on the inside flyleaf of the dust jacket, it says
"BEAUTIFUL LOSERS
is ....
a love story
a psalm
a black mass
a monument
a satire
a prayer
a shriek
a road map through the wilderness
a joke
a tasteless affront
an hallucination
a bore
an irrelevant display of diseased virtuosity
a Jesuitical tract
an Orange sneer
a scatological Lutheran extravagance
in
short
a
disagreeable
religious
epic
of
incomparable
"I read to be alone. I read so as not to be alone".
So here's what I've been alone and not alone with lately.
The Dream of the Stone: by Christina Askounis. This is a book written for young readers; It's rich with characters and language and story. It's fanta
syand science fiction, and I couldn't put it down. There is also love vs. evil and another planet and time travel and it's woven together smoothly and seamlessly. Each character is very special and essential to the story. My favorite characters were Miladras, the tree, and the aunts. Christina Askounis writes in a very visual way, so throughout the book, I had pictures in my mind of what was happening. Aren't those the very best books? The ones that you can see like dreams?Beautiful Losers: By Leonard Cohen. I've been listening to The Essentail Cohen pretty much exclusively since discovering it a few weeks ago. So I'd love the book, right? Inside the jacket cover of this well worn library book with the original date due slip with dates back to 1976
Remember? REMEMBER?
Anyway, on the inside flyleaf of the dust jacket, it says
"BEAUTIFUL LOSERS
is ....
a love story
a psalm
a black mass
a monument
a satire
a prayer
a shriek
a road map through the wilderness
a joke
a tasteless affront
an hallucination
a bore
an irrelevant display of diseased virtuosity
a Jesuitical tract
an Orange sneer
a scatological Lutheran extravagance
in
short
a
disagreeable
religious
epic
of
incomparable
beauty"
For me that was the best part of the book. I read in a few chapters then went through the whole book, but I couldn't do it. I still love his music.
The Middle-Class Millionaire: Since I generally don't enjoy non-fiction outside of a daily Chicago Tribune thing, I regard this type of book as sort of a trashy beach read, non-fiction version. Here's what I learned: that concierge medicine exists, the new rich love to have life coaches, fractional ownership is replacing time share ownership for people with a few more bucks than the rest of us, and some of them (the middle-class millinaires) like to become coaches themselves. Here's my favorite line from the book; it wasn't even written by the authors. I already knew it, too, just like Dorothy and the red slippers.
"You can have everything you love in life if you give up everything you hate."
This was a quote from strategic coach Dan Sullivan.
As I'm typing this morning, I'm listening to Leonard Cohen singing Tower of Song. I wish my Uncle Peter were alive; he would have loved this one. Hmmmm....I wonder if he ever heard it?
Let's find out. Open a new tab and do some research. Nope. It looks like Tower of Song was written in 1988, and Uncle Peter died in 1984. Maybe they play Leonard Cohen in heaven. He'll be singing in my heaven. (But unless it's his lyrics, I'll be reading a differentauthor!)
The Middle-Class Millionaire: Since I generally don't enjoy non-fiction outside of a daily Chicago Tribune thing, I regard this type of book as sort of a trashy beach read, non-fiction version. Here's what I learned: that concierge medicine exists, the new rich love to have life coaches, fractional ownership is replacing time share ownership for people with a few more bucks than the rest of us, and some of them (the middle-class millinaires) like to become coaches themselves. Here's my favorite line from the book; it wasn't even written by the authors. I already knew it, too, just like Dorothy and the red slippers.
"You can have everything you love in life if you give up everything you hate."
This was a quote from strategic coach Dan Sullivan.
As I'm typing this morning, I'm listening to Leonard Cohen singing Tower of Song. I wish my Uncle Peter were alive; he would have loved this one. Hmmmm....I wonder if he ever heard it?
Let's find out. Open a new tab and do some research. Nope. It looks like Tower of Song was written in 1988, and Uncle Peter died in 1984. Maybe they play Leonard Cohen in heaven. He'll be singing in my heaven. (But unless it's his lyrics, I'll be reading a differentauthor!)
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