QOTD

"The heart is clearly not on a happy picnic in this novel." -review of The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter

It made *me* laugh...  The review is interesting, though.  As the one of In Cold Blood.  Kind of old fashioned, but insightful.  I was researching Norman Mailer, because my reading lately keeps mentioning him and his books (like his battles with Gore Vidal) and then a documentary about Provincetown had him in it.  (Apparently he lined his yard with lime to keep Roy Cohn cooties away from his sons.). Not sure I can go there, though.

I plowed through the bio of Edmonia Lewis last night.  The authors are odd and do a lot of grandstanding, but there is a solid recounting of the horrible events that happened at Oberlin College and how whitewashed the history of that has been (like much of the college's handwaving about its evangelistic and racially divided past).  The plates of her sculptures are also worth moving through all the words.

Doctor Sleep was awesome, except that it made me want to read The Shining again.  (Too scary.)

Now I'm starting a book about travels in Siberia and the history of the Cossacks as shock troops of the tsars, River of No Reprieve by Jeffrey Tayler.  So far it explains the origins of many place names and words in Sibir and gives a good recounting of Ivan the Terrible's reign.  Not far off from Game of Thrones...

Today I'm looking forward to more yard work and gutter cleaning to get ready for Snowmaggedon 2014.  (Ten inches!  Only in early November does this freak us out here in Nordilande, more change is hard than fear of snow.  The city thinks it will be street cleaning for fall leaves the next three weeks, ha.)  Hopefully I will get to running with Ms. Betty, the husky/border collie who barely has to move to pull at the leash at my pace.  Yesterday I made soup and enchiladas verde with the bounty from the final farmers market two weekends ago and my first CSA box.  That should get us through the adjustment to Winter Has Come...

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