It’s Monday! What Are You Reading

Musing Mondays has been discontinued. Read this post. The host decides to move on but may decide (in a month or two) to come and pull it back out of hiding. In lieu of Musing Mondays, and in order to fill in my Monday slot, I now participate in It’s Monday! What Are You Reading, [...]

Steph & Tony Investigate San Francisco

I just sent Steph and Tony of Steph & Tony Investigate back to their hotel after spending the day with them in the city. We started off with a dim sum brunch in Chinatown, followed by a pilgrimage to the book mecca—Green Apple Books in the Richmond, where they picked up two bags of goodies. [...]

Kindle vs. iPad

I have always been resistant to e-books, but like piling Pelion on Ossa, I have become the owner of both Kindle and iPad within two months. Despite the convenience and coolness of the devices, they don’t necessarily upgrade my lifestyle like vendors have advocated. Now that I have used both to read for an equal [...]

Gratitude

It’s Thanksgiving here in the United States so … What authors and books are you most thankful for? Happy Thanksgiving! This question makes me ponder if there is a difference between favorite authors and authors for whom I’m grateful. There are authors whose works ratify my existence as a human being (sexual orientation and self [...]

Reading Notes: The Meaning of Night

How far would you go for revenge? Play a joke to get even? Or murder? The protagonist in The Meaning of Night (Michael Cox) had been wronged during his youth and thus lost the chance to attend Cambridge. He is coming back to get even with the person, now a celebrity, who conspired to rid [...]

[324] Soul Mountain – Xingjian Gao

” I am on a journey—life. Life, good or bad, is a journey and wallowing in my imagination I travel into my inner mind with you who are my reflection. The perennial and perplexing question of what is most important can be changed to a discussion of what is more authentic and at times can [...]

The Truth That Fiction Offers

This week’s musing ponders whether fiction affords the truth about human condition. People who discount fiction don’t really understand it—or haven’t read much of it. They don’t grasp the power of story to carry truth. What truths do you remember learning in fiction? When history becomes sour fruit and news lies and nonsense (political hoo-ha), [...]

Passages from Soul Mountain

Despite the simple and plain language, Soul Mountain is a challenging book to read. The provocative passages force me to put down the book and reflect. When I am observing others I always treat the other person as a mirror for looking inwardly at myself. [151] (No wonder China considered Gao a reactionary. He literally [...]

Black(eye) Friday

It’s that Friday morning. You wake up at the alarm’s piercing of silence, still full from the turkey, stuffing, and pies from the meal. Kids are still fast asleep. Husband snoring. Biscuit the dog winks inquiringly: Why getting up so early for? It’s the holiday. No work, but you have to be in line for [...]

On Borrowing Books

Who would you rather borrow from? Your library? Or a Friend? (Or don’t your friends trust you to return their books?) And, DO you return books you borrow? I don’t want to ruin friendships over books so I take good care of books loaned to me by friends. I make sure books are not handled [...]