8 Reasons to Read 11/22/63

"The past is obdurate.  It doesn't want to be changed."  (p. 232)

ob-dur-ate [OB-duu-rit] adj. Stubborn; unyielding.

Alright, I know, I'm pandering to the 50th Anniversary of Kennedy's assassination, but first, I just HAD to read Stephen King's 11/22/63, and second, why NOT think and talk and write about it this week?

True confessions: I read it more than a year ago.  But it's one of those books I've wanted to let ferment.

There's a heap of reasons I liked 11/22/63, but here are my top 8 reasons:

Don't Lick the Minivan

Things I Should Have Been Doing Yesterday:

1. Laundry

2. Cleaning

3. Going for a training run

Things I Did Instead

1 Drink coffee.

2. Read Leanne Shirtliffe's Don't Lick the Minivan

3. Howl with laughter

"Remember the show Survivor?  That's what parenting is like.  We need to outwit, outlast, and outnumber our kids." (p. 95)

"Parenting tip: Lazy parenting creates kids who are self-starters" (p. 117)

Amen, sister.

Wesley McNair, The Words I Chose

Confession: This isn't a review as much as a jumbled mess of thoughts and feelings.

Reading Wesley McNair is surreal in the extreme for me. I am still processing.

Wesley McNair

He writes about people and places I know with aching frankness.  He writes about the abuse and sadness inflicted on him, in particular by his stepfather.

Even the photos are familiar.

Wesley's stepfather, Paul Joly, is my great-uncle.

Happy Birthday, Carl Sagan...

I just love The Writer's Almanac.  It's like a daily dose of literary vitamins.

I need to read this
sooner than later.

It's Carl Sagan's birthday today.  I absolutely LOVED his novel Contact (I liked the film too, but not as much as the book).  I did not know that Dragons of Eden won the Pulitzer Prize.  I've had that tattered paperback at home for ages.  High time I read it.

But in addition to loving the stars and the planets, he loved books too.....

What an astonishing thing a book is. It is a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts, on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person. [...] Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. Books are proof that humans are capable of working magic. - Carl Sagan

I loved NOVA Carl Sagan specials on PBS when I was a kid. Speaking of which, does the WGBH Boston fanfare & logo animation drum up any childhood memories for you?




Billions and billions of birthday wishes, Carl, wherever you are.....

Special birthdays

No, not mine.

Tolkien Books
(courtesy "Jemimus," Flickr Creative Commons)

Today is the 75th anniversary of the publication of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit. 

It's the birthday of both Bilbo Baggins and Frodo Baggins (even in Middle Earth, this was kind of a fun coincidence for the uncle-nephew set).


And, today is Stephen King's birthday.

Is it a stretch to say that Tolkien & King have quite a bit in common?  I don't think so.