“To praise despair is to condemn delight”

"The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can't lick 'em, join…

“Take the donuts” – regarding feeling cringey about accepting help or money

"Thoreau wrote in painstaking detail about how he chose to remove himself from society to live by his own means in a little ten-by-fifteen-foot hand-hewn cabin on the side of a pond. What he left out of Walden, though, was the fact that the land he built on was borrowed from his wealthy neighbor, that…

Law Homeschool

I've decided that I'm interested in law. I suppose at some level I have been for a long time. The best class I had in college was a study of the First Amendment, as told by US Supreme Court cases. That class was absolutely fascinating, and it was a wonder to me that the language…

Note to self: books to read

I should look into the replies to this tweet... https://twitter.com/blythemorrow/status/1053364378215448576

I’m working my way through Catch-22

I'll post more about this later. But in the meantime I wanted to solicit thoughts and opinions from people who have read it. Did you read it? What did you think?

Yeah, I’m friends with famous authors…

Yep, yep, I'm good solid friends with famous authors. Oh, everybody (more or less) knows I've got friends in the technical book community of authors, sure. But did you know I'm a bosom companion of a published fiction author, hmmm??? My friend Julie Cox has a story in Like a Coming Wave, the new Circlet…

A happy world full of books

The boys abandoned the dinner table quickly last night, so Sean and Lisette and I sat around and talked books. I had talked with the girl recently about why characters in books and movies appeal to us - in part, because they're designed that way (either deliberately, or unconsciously, by the author), and in part…

Words words words

I'm finally reading Fahrenheit 451 by way of an audiobook, and this snagged in my mind: ...that gibbering pack of tree apes that said nothing nothing nothing, and said it loud loud loud.

Craig, Carrie, Neil

When I'm stressed out, I eat.  When I'm WAY too stressed out, I start playing hooky from everything and I bury myself in books. This week I went out and bought three books, and finished two and a half of them. I was carrying another book around in the bookstore when I picked up Carrie…