I don't have a name for the thing that happened to me, but I don't feel safe any more.

Kindred by Octavia Butler
Originally published 1979

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary

Kindred is a story that takes place in two temporal worlds: 1976, in Altadena (near L.A.), over about a month, and 1811-1830, in Maryland (not far from Baltimore), over a complicated amount of time. The story follows Dana, an aspiring writer and twenty-six-year-old black woman, as she unexpectedly begins time traveling to the same location (and same person) over a hundred years in the past. Dana has recently married Kevin, a white man, who is also a writer, during their time in the 1970s. It takes her a while to understand the pattern, but what eventually becomes clear is that Dana is sent to save Rufus Weylin, a young white man, when he is in danger of dying. The connection is further complicated by the fact that Dana later realizes that he is an ancestor of hers. Once this connection is made, Dana is forced to save Rufus until her own line begins with Hagar, a child born from Rufus and Alice, one of his slaves.

Tons of incredible (and I mean that in the truest sense of that word - unbelievable on so many levels) things happen, and it's too much to capture all here, but I've given you a snapshot of the trips that Dana takes so you can get a sense of the general arc of her travels. As you'll notice, the time she covers during the trips to the past spans a much greater arc than the time in the present (19 years vs. a few weeks) and while she isn't actually in the past for more than a few months at a time [though Kevin gets stuck for five years without her] it obviously takes its toll.

1811 - The river (saves Rufus from drowning; ends at the butt of Tom Weylin(Rufus's father)'s gun)
1815 - The fire (stops Rufus from lighting the house on fire; ends with pateroller trying to rape her)
1819 - The fall (gets Rufus help and medical care after a fall from a tree; Kevin comes along this time; ends with being whipped for teaching Nigel to read, but Kevin gets stuck for five years)
1824 - The fight (saves Rufus from almost being killed in a fight with Isaac after Rufus tries to rape Alice, Isaac's wife; Rufus tries to shoot her to keep her from leaving, Kevin and Dana both go back)
1830 - The storm (saves Rufus from drowning in a puddle when he's drunk; she slits her wrists because Rufus has begun to treat her as a master and he hits her for the first time - It's on this visit that her ancester, Hagar, is finally born)
1830 - The rope (Alice hangs herself, Dana stops Rufus from committing suicide; He tries to rape her, she kills him, loses an arm in the journey back)

Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Well hello, dear blobbers! If you haven't read this book, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND it. I think it really ought to be required reading, but I can't make you read a book you don't want to, so I'll just strongly suggest it. ;) If you do want to read it, you should stop reading (in fact, I hope you didn't read the spoiler yet) and go read it now. You can always come back here later. 

If you aren't going to read it, or you've read it already, feel free to continue to hear my thoughts. I'd like to start with this quote from the author, Octavia Butler:

Why aren't there more S[cience] F[iction] Black writers? There aren't because there aren't. What we don't see, we assume can't be. What a destructive assumption.

Yes indeed. What we don't see, we assume can't be. I haven't read a ton of science fiction for this blob, but I did read The Broken Earth series by N.K. Jemisin for one of my book bingos, which I also highly recommend, and I've loved digging in to Ursula LeGuin's world (not black, but a female sci fi author, which is still something of a rarity). Yes to all the authors, yes especially to more black sci fi lady authors and all authors of color and authors who've been marginalized in other ways. I believe you are all there, even if I can't see all of you! Write and I'll read. I pinky promise. 

Here are some of my thoughts...

Impotence/total loss of control and power
This is a running theme in the book, and as Dana continues to get sent back (which she can't control - it happens when Rufus is in mortal danger) she loses more and more of her sense of self and her power and her personhood, and this is so lyrically and painfully captured. Each time I found myself thinking maybe she would still be better off, knowing more about the future than the black people of that time, or having Kevin with her, or being able to read and write, but ultimately she was as trapped and impotent as her fellow slaves, and this was so poignantly portrayed. 

Guardians
Making Dana Rufus's guardian was a kind of perfect pain to witness. She needed him to survive so that she could come into being, but his very existence posed a threat to her life. Here's a line that captures this:

I was the worst possible guardian for him - a black to watch over him in a society that considered blacks subhuman, a woman to watch over him in a society that considered women perennial children. I would have all I could do to look after myself. But I would help him as best I could.

Race and its descriptors
The more I read (and the more I write), the more I become interested in how writers portray (or choose to portray by omission) the race of their characters. It was really interesting to piece together Dana being black and Rufus being white, but what I found really fascinating was that Butler doesn't explicitly mention that Kevin is white for some time, and knowing this flipped my perspective for a little while on how I'd imagined his character and their relationship. I thought this was really artfully done. 

Life saving trips to the library
After one of Dana's trips, Kevin suggests that they go to the library to learn as much as they can about that period in history, and maybe try to forge her some realistic-looking free papers to take back with her. She ends up getting called back before this trip can happen, but I love the idea of literally life-saving trips to the library. For a reminder of my own life-saving experience with reading, re-read my blog on finishing the first 100 books. Here are a few other library moments from this blob:

Virginia Woof, A Room of One's Own

Ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction.

Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

I wouldn't miss Mrs. Flowers, for she had given me her secret word which called forth a djinn who was to serve me all my life: books.

Jack Kerouac, On the Road

In the West he'd spent a third of his time in the poolhall, a third in jail, and a third in the public library. 

We don't want to come. 
Dana, in attempting to explain her travels with Kevin, says: 

We come from a future time and place. I don't know how we get here. We don't want to come. We don't belong here. 

For some reason, this reminded me of Ender's Game, and the way the Buggers explain themselves:

We did not mean to murder, and when we understood, we never came again.

Nostalgia
When I was reading another one of my book bingo reads, Enlightenment Now, it forced me to reflect on the way that we (or perhaps it's more accurate to say white people) romanticize the past. In his book, Stephen Pinker lists a ton of reasons why things were actually never better in the past, from mortality to retirement age to modern medicine, but it also reminded me that, while no one would argue that black people have it "good" in America today, there was no time in their history in America (or in most places outside of Africa) where things were better or easier for them. I thought Butler captured this beautifully in a conversation between Kevin and Dana when they first travel back together:

Kevin: There are so many really fascinating times we could have gone back to visit.
Dana: I can't think of any time I'd like to go back to.

Would you read to me?
While Rufus is a complicated character, and ultimately pretty awful, though also a very predictable product of his time, one of the redeeming parts of his friendship with Dana is that she reads to him. The first book she reads to him is Robinson Crusoe, which I've actually never read (I started it once, didn't get very far). Her reading to him reminded me of Faber offering to read to Montag:

Faber: Would you like me to read? I'll read so you can remember. I go to bed only five hours a night. Nothing to do. So if you like, I'll read you to sleep nights. They say you retain knowledge even when you're sleeping, if someone whispers it in your ear.
Montag: Yes.

Reading to someone, or being read to, feels so beautifully intimate to me. 

The ease
In addition to Dana's impotence, and her deeply complicated relationship with her own existence and coming into being in America, Butler intricately examines the ease with which slavery becomes 'normalized' both for Dana and for the people at the plantation around her. 

There's this line - I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery.

And this one, when she's returned a third time, and is returning to the plantation at night - I was startled to catch myself saying wearily, 'Home at last.' I stood still for a moment between the fields and the house and reminded myself that I was in a hostile place.

This comment, from a slave on the plantation, about freedom - It's like dying, though, and going to heaven. Nobody ever comes back to tell you about it.

And this moment, after Dana has tried to run away and been whipped for it - Would I really try again? Could I? I tried to get away from my thoughts, but they still came. See how easily slaves are made?

Books
We don't spend too much time with Kevin and Dana in the present, but we do get a sense of what drew them together, and while there were practical reasons (they worked together) they were also drawn together by words. I loved this exchange, when they're trying to move in together:

Kevin did suggest once that I get rid of some of my books so that I'd fit into his place. 'You know,' he said, 'Just some of the book-club stuff you don't read.' To which I replied, Let's go to your place and I'll help you decide which of your books you don't read. I'll even help you throw them out. heheheheheehehhe #youcanthavemybooks #ineedthemall

Lines I Liked

• They made their own limbo and held me in it.

• What we had was something new, something that didn't even have a name.

• I wouldn't dare act as though I didn't believe.

• Don't matter what ought to be. Matters what is.

• She didn't kill him, but she seemed to die a little. 

• You can't come back all at once any more than you can leave all at once. It takes time.

I'm off to read some Joan Didion, The Decade of Mystical Ponderance, or something like that. I'll leave you with this line that I liked about Kevin, because it reminded me to keep writing: 

He'd gone on writing - unreasonably, against the advice of saner people. He was like me - a kindred spirit crazy enough to keep on trying.

Hold your dear ones close, blobbists, and remember that while it never really feels like it, we are actually living in the best time right now. Keep faith, keep safe, and have a good night.

Are these creatures everywhere? Has the earth been given over to them?

The War of the Worlds  by H.G. Wells
Originally published in 1898

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
The War of the Worlds is about men from Mars. Literally. Well, okay, they're not actually human, they're more like snakes, and they're not really gendered (at least from what we can tell) but you get the drift. It's turn of the century (20th century) England, and our nameless protagonist, Mr. Man (for lack of a better name) is bopping about his daily business, being a philosophy professor and all, and then poof! The Martians invade. Chaos ensues (unsurprisingly, though this comes as a surprise to some early, and soon dead, characters) and mostly by sheer accident, the narrator manages to live through the messy and mostly fatal ordeal. The Martians don't seem to want anything, other than to take over the Earth (I mean, is that so much to ask?) and they don't need much food, just the occasional human (or ten). Things go from bad to worse as the Martians make their way from smaller English towns to merry old London, and it seems like maybe we'll just have to throw up our arms and become Martian meat, but then SOOPRIZE, the Martians all die. They are apparently not able to process bacteria, and the humans they've been snacking on this whole time were plum FULL of the stuff. So Mr. Man makes his way through the detritus to his home, thinks for sure his wifey got kilt, and then ends up finding her back at their house, too, to live happily (well more like cautiously) ever after.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

This book was lots of fun. I mean, it was fairly dark and all, since the Martians are kind of 'in the lead' in the whole battle for Planet Earth thing for most of it, but still fun. I can see how incredible it would be to read it as a first in its genre, since it still stands up quite well even now that we're fairly inundated with alien invasion stories. 

I did a little digging on the whole radio broadcast thing, since I had heard that some people heard this story on the radio and thought it was true. Turns out there were a few peeps who heard this on the radio and thought Martians really were invading, but probably not that many. (Amusingly, the article I read said that the particular radio show in question was simply not that popular. Lolz.) Still, can you imagine hearing a story like this on breaking news, only to find out halfway through that it was fiction? Definitely a bit tricksy. Apparently Orson Welles wasn't trying to fool anybody, but the commercials didn't play for the first 30 minutes or something so people thought it was a news bulletin broadcast of the latest news. 

Hokay. Onwards to the rest of my thoughts, in no particular order. (As usual.)

Mr. No-Name Protagonist
Well, we haven't had one of these in a WHILE, have we blobbists? I believe that Prousty's YBN (Young Boy Narrator) was the last one we had, although that seems awfully long, so maybe I'm forgetting someone. In case you didn't know, I am NOT a fan of the whole "I'm not naming my protagonist" shtick. I feel like if we're going to spend 178 pages together, I would love to have a name to call you by. Any name. A last name is fine! A first name only is fine! I'll take a letter! (I'd like to buy a vowel!)

Anyway, all we got was Mr. Man, and then later, Mr. Man's wife and Mr. Man's brother. I suppose it was supposed to give an 'every man' quality to the narrative, but I feel like I still could have identified with Mr. Man if his name was, say, Bob. Or Bill. Or Archie. Or INSERT ANY NAME HERE.

Men
Well, speaking of Mr. Man, it occurred to me that this book was on the older side (1898 was over a century ago now) and it showed itself most in its gender stereotypes. Sure, there were references to older technology and stuff, but it being about aliens gave it a newer feel. It was more jarring to read comments about "silly women", and "weak women", and then realize after 174 pages that women really weren't going to be in this novel. I counted, and in the first two times, Wells mentions men 9 times. Women? Zero. Sure, he means 'man' as in 'mankind' in many of these places, but still. I'm pretty sure if there was an alien invasion, even a hundred years ago (hell, especially a hundred years ago) women would have something to say or do about it. 

Who's waking in Woking?
The name of the town in the beginning of the book in sleepy England is Woking, which I loved. It gave me this fantastic image of the Land of Nod, a quiet, tucked away hamlet where nothing major happens until BOOM. Aliens arrive.

The Martians
The Martians are delightfully creepy. Here's a snippet I liked:

All night long the Martians were hammering and stirring, sleepless, indefatigable, at work upon the machines they were making ready, and ever and again a puff of greenish-white smoke whirled up to the starlit sky.

London as a character
There are tons of books where cities become a character of their own, and London has made it into thousands, if not millions, of books by now. That said, it was fun to read about London here as if she was an entity of her own, outside of and beyond the simple contents she contains. We'll forgive H.G. Wells for calling it the 'greatest city in the world'. He probably never visited Philadelphia ;)

Words new to me

carmine - a vivid crimson color

erethism - a state of abnormal mental excitement or irritation

heliograph - a signaling device by which sunlight is reflected in flashes from a movable mirror; a telescopic apparatus for photographing the sun (pictured right)

kopje - a small hill in a generally flat area (Afrikaans, from Dutch)

theodolite - a surveying instrument with a rotating telescope for measuring horizontal and vertical angles (pictured left)

tocsin - an alarm bell or signal (from Old French)

Lines I liked

• Life is real again, and the useless and cumbersome and mischievous have to die.

• Few people realize the immensity of vacancy in which the dust of the material universe swims.

• I was a battleground of fear and curiosity.

• What good is religion if it collapses under calamity?

This was a short novel, so it seems fitting that this is a fairly short post. I'm off to read Family, or Dear Ones, or something of that ilk. 

Sending love, soothing quiet evenings, and no surprise Martian visits to my dear blobbers. Keep safe, keep faith, good night.

Of the things they possessed in common, greatest of all was their almost uncanny pull at each other's hearts.

The Beautiful and Damned  by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Originally published in 1922

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
The Beautiful and Damned, or TBAD, as I've nicknamed it, is about lots of things, according to the back of my copy, and the interwebs, and basically everyone who's anyone. I can only tell you what I think it's about, which doesn't necessarily align with all of those other people.

It chronicles a bachelor, Anthony Patch, as he dabbles in doing absolutely nothing, and eventually stumbles into his partner-in-nothing-doing, Gloria Gilbert, who happens to be the cousin of his good friend Richard (Dick) Caramel. Anthony and Dick have one more friend in their little coterie, Maury Noble. I think they all went to Harvard together? Some Ivy League school that apparently prepared Maury and Dick to be relatively useful members of society but not Anthony.

The middle of the book is basically a bacchanal. Anthony and Gloria and friends go out dancing, drinking, eating, in the low-low budget city of New York (lolz) and fritter away every dime they have. Anthony is operating under the assumption that his grandfather, a big society reformer, will be leaving him his gazillions of dollars. However, one night, Anthony's grandfather surprises him when he and Gloria and co. are having a party, and guess who's a BIG TIME PROHIBITIONIST? That's right, good old grandpappy.

By this point, Anthony and Gloria are married (their courtship and relationship is a veritable volcanic rollercoaster that just never stops plummeting from nadir to apex, but I guess we're "happy for them" about getting hitched?) and SOOPRIZE, Mr. Grandfather Patch says "No more money for you!" Anthony and Gloria try to sweettalk their way back into his good graces, but then he kicks the bucket, and they're left holding the bag. (Am I mixing metaphors? Probably. Do I care? Not a whit.)

So the good old penniless pair (and by penniless I mean they can't afford that fur coat Gloria really wants) proceeds to launch a long lawsuit to try to get the grandfather's money anyway. During the course of the lawsuit, Anthony gets drafted into WWI, Gloria breathes easier with Anthony gone, Anthony has an affair with some local lady near his camp named Dot, Anthony drinks way too much, Gloria drinks way too much, and then the war ends and Poof! Anthony and Gloria are reunited and everything is FINE FINE FINE for a minute and then it is NOT. Anthony is totally losing it drinking way too much and being generally a useless waste of space, Gloria tries to get into the movies but she's too old (GASP! WHERE HAS HER BEAUTY GONE?) and then because they totally deserve it, just when Anthony has completely cracked mentally and started working on his boyhood stamp collection again, Anthony and Gloria win the lawsuit and become gazillionaires and sail off into the horizon happily/unhappily/who-even-knows-at-this-point? ever after.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Blell Blello, errybody! How's everyone's new year going? Anyone else love the Tiny Chef as much as I do? 

Moving right along, then. I really didn't like this book. In grandma's memory, I won't say I hated it, but I did Strongly dislike it. I suppose it was supposed to be satirical and all, and the interwebs were all oh didn't he do such a great job of calling attention to the 'devil-may-care' nature of the jazz age and their materialism, and YET. I couldn't help feeling the somewhat autobiographical nature of this book. Whether that's true or not, I felt F. Scott in Anthony, and I HATED Anthony. There. I didn't say I hated the book, but I did hate him. 

As usual with books I disliked but read for this blob, there were still many things that I did enjoy, and quite a few exquisite turns of phrase. I will be a die-hard Gatsby fan for ever, which you likely know if you read my blob entry about it, so I don't think the specter of F. Scott will haunt me if I admit that this one simply was. not. for. me.

Here are some of the bits I found remarkable, dear blobbists. 

January, the Monday of the months
At one point, they refer to January as the Monday of the months, and while this is true in a literal sense (it comes first of the months, as Monday comes first in the days of the week) it is also delightfully true in a deeper sense. January, like Monday, can be exTremely blah. Obviously we can't extend this analogy all the way through the year or we'd run out of days of the week, but I agree with this particular pairing.

As I like to do sometimes, I shall now give you a few quick snapshots of some of the characters. We'll start with the worst, shall we? 

Anthony (cat-kicker, layabout, money-grubber, sometime soldier, adulterer)
All of these things are true. Just in case you thought I was making any of them up. I already despised him when he admitted that not only did he think about kicking cats, but he had actually kicked one, and then he told Gloria about it like it was something to brag about. At which point I wanted to burn his name off of every page. (But I did not. For the sake of this blob.) Here are some Anthony-isms:

• I do nothing. I do nothing, for there's nothing I can do that's worth doing. I would be more into the whole existential nihilistic argument if he ever really TRIED to do something. He works at a job for a hot minute and then he gets so depressed he has to quit. I understand mental health is real and let's all get the help we need but you can't work for a week because you just have to drink and go to parties and "think about writing a history of the medieval era"? OKAY, Anthony.

• This is life! Who cares for the morrow? I do! I like the morrow! It brings the non-Monday months!

Geraldine (a girl Anthony dates before Gloria), to Anthony: "You have something to drink every day and you're only twenty-five. Haven't you any ambition? Think what you'll be at forty?"
 Anthony: I sincerely trust that I won't live that long."

I love that Geraldine is like, um, sweetie, are you at all concerned about your behavior? And he's like, Oh Oh it's FINE because I will most likely die young. Is it fine tho? Is it?

When Anthony realizes that while he has been carrying on a YEAR LONG AFFAIR his wife might actually have been doing something not so dissimilar: The thought terrified him with its possibility - it was chiefly because he had been so sure of her personal integrity that he had considered her so sparingly during the year.  Ah, yes. I believe my margin notes say "HELLO HYPOCRITE"

Gloria (siren, debutante, egomaniac)
Anthony, to Gloria: "Aren't you interested in anything except yourself?"
Gloria: "Not much."

That about sums her up. 

Geraldine (sometime lover of Anthony, often dim but never dull)

• Cra-a-azy!' she murmured pleasantly, using the clumsy rope-ladder with which she bridged all gaps and climbed after her mental superiors. Subconsciously she felt that it eliminated distances and brought the person whose imagination had eluded her back within range. Okay, I don't like that this is used to sort of slut-shame Geraldine and her relative intelligence, but I do think this is a beautifully constructed image. I also liked imagining her saying, "Cra-a-azy!" over and over. 

Anthony and Gloria's relationship (tumultuous roller coaster/train wreck you can't stop watching)

Ah yes. Apparently informed by F. Scott's relationship with Zelda (for which I have MANY FOLLOW UP QUESTIONS), characterized by such lines as: 

• He was not so much in love with her as he was mad for her. And do we feel like that's a good thing, then?

• He felt often like a scarcely tolerated guest at a party she was giving. Perfect. So Anthony thought - KEEPER! LOCK THIS GIRL DOWN!

• Love lingered - by way of long conversations at night into those stark hours when the mind thins and sharpens and the borrowings from dreams become the stuff of all life, by way of deep and intimate kindnesses they developed toward each other, by way of their laughing at the same absurdities and thinking the same things noble and the same things sad. Okay, I can't hate on every part of their relationship. There were some good moments in there once in a while.

• When the discomfort under which they were living was remarked upon by a third party, it gave them the impetus to face this hostile world together. So great - they can mostly barely tolerate each other, but when someone else enters the scene, it's Us vs. the World. Super classy. Great look, guys.

• As always, they were sorry for each other for the wrong things at the wrong times.

• Just as he still cared more for her than for any other creature, so did he more intensely and frequently hate her. Good, good, good. Super healthy. Sounds very healthy.

I was not displeased. I was not unconscious of the insult. I do not Not like double negatives.
F. Scott seemed to be a big fan of the qualifying negative, or however you classify this, but I started using it jokingly with my friend Mar while I was reading. "I would not find it uncomfortable to pass some time on the sofa." "What's the temperature? I believe it is not uncool!" Here's an example, used to describe Mr. Grandfather Patch (whose real first name I have now forgotten):

In private life he's seldom unnecessarily disagreeable. See! If he's disagreeable, it's with cause, and then, only sporadically! Do you not feel unconfused about what he actually was like in private life? I know I do.

Referents and Reverberations
This is a section where I like to draw connections between this book and other books, whether they have come before (referent) or after (reverberation). 

• The Demon Lover - In a hilarious plot twist, Richard (Dick) Caramel, Anthony's buddy, is a blossoming writer in the beginning of the book. This in and of itself is not hilarious (I am a budding writer meself) but what is hilarious is the title of his book, especially considering the other book I was carrying in my purse on this trip. Mr. Caramel was working on (and later in the book publishes) The Demon Lover. I was also carrying the third in a series of supernatural romance/erotica called The Angel Stone. The first book in this series was called...... The Demon Lover. And is all about a woman who is sleeping with a succubus that's sort of tied to her house/non-corporeal/it's very complicated. But given the hoity-toity nature of Anthony's crowd, I found the incongruity of the shared titling to be absolutely delightful.

• The Sun Also Rises (Hemingway) - While TBAD reminded me quite a bit of TSAR, I liked TSAR so much, which is perhaps odd in retrospect. Maybe I didn't hate them as much because they were gallivanting in Europe, and it seemed like at some point they were all going to go do something real with their lives? Who knows. At any rate, this passage from TBAD about Anthony's friend Maury: 

The telephone girl had received the most positive instructions that no one should even have his ear without first giving a name to be passed upon. She had a list of half a dozen people to whom he was never at home, and of the same number to whom he was always at home.

Reminded me of this passage from TSAR, about Jake's concierge at his Paris apartment: 

She kept an eye on the people of the pesage, and she took great pride in telling me which of my guests were well brought up, which were of good family, who were sportsmen...The only trouble was that people who did not fall into any of those three categories were very liable to be told there was no one home, chez Barnes.  One of my friends, an extremely underfed-looking painter, who was obviously to Madame Duzinell neither well brought up, of good family, nor a sportsman, wrote me a letter asking if I could get him a pass to get by the concierge so he could come up and see me occasionally in the evenings. LOLOLOLOLZ. I love the idea of having a person to screen your visitors/callers, especially when you're not a VIP, you're just a random everyday person.

• Swann's Way, from À la recherche du temps perdu (Proust) - This description of Anthony's days: 

His day, usually a jelly-like creature, a shapeless, spineless thing, had attained Mesozoic structure. It was marching along surely, even jauntily, toward a climax, as a play should, as a day should.

Reminded me of this line from Proust:   

And besides, even from the point of view of mere quantity, in our lives the days are not all equal.  To get through each day, natures that are at all highly strung, as was mine, are equipped, like motor-cars, with different gears. There are mountainous, arduous days, up which one takes an infinite time to climb, and downward-sloping days which one can descend at full tilt, singing as one goes.

Problematic Notes
A new section, which I'm adding. I like to think of it as notes like in a wine tasting. Bitter or sharp memories or moments, which might not ruin the entire overall flavor, or which might ruin the whole damn thing. 

This book came with notes of...
- Racism - so much. 
- Misogyny - so so SO much.
- Classism - even in a world where this was self-mocking, SO much.
- Ableism - tons of haughty intelligentsia comments and in-groups and slut-shaming or dumb-shaming of women who they just 'passed the time with'. Again, even in a satirical sense, too much for my taste. 

Lines I Liked

• The span of his seventy-five years had acted as a magic bellows - the first quarter-century had blown him full with life, and the last had sucked it all back. Such a great line. Possibly my favorite. 

• Maury was unruffled; his fur seemed to run all ways. This made me think of Maury as a fluffy bear, which I quite enjoyed.

• Let myself go a thousand times and I'm always me.

• You and I are clean like streams and winds.

Words I Did Not Know (But do know Now)
Alice-blue - a pale tint of azure favored by Alice Roosevelt Longworth, daughter of Theodore Roosevelt, which sparked a fashion sensation in the United States

bilphist - coined by F. Scott Fitzgerald, referring to a religious believer concerned with the reincarnation of the human soul (it makes sense that I did not know this since he made it up, though I'm not sure how I was supposed to garner this meaning.)

isinglass - a kind of gelatin obtained from fish, especially sturgeon, and used in making jellies, glue, etc., and for clarifying ale

maxixe - a Brazilian dance for couples, resembling the polka and the local tango

parturition - the action of giving birth to young; childbirth

recondite - (of a subject or knowledge) little known; abstruse

Well blob readers, I'll leave you with two final thoughts before I head off to The Peace of the Cosmos, or something like that. 

First, here is a new tag line I'm going to use the next time someone tries to interrupt me: 

Silence! I am about to unburden myself of many memorable remarks reserved for the darkness of such earths and the brilliance of such skies. Bet you'll listen to me now!

And second, a simply spectacular clapback from one of the women Anthony used to date. He is trying to get her to commiserate with how terrible his life is, and she is simply having none of it: 

You can't park your pessimism in my little sun parlor. I think you ought to forget all those morbid speculations and go to work.

With that, I shall bid you adieu. Off we go to work and to finish the Monday of the months. In the mean time, keep safe, keep faith, and good night!