Besides the obituaries I like to read, I also seem to gravitate to book reviews. As much as the WSJ can still be about business, I always latch onto the book reviews as well. There are even times I buy the book I read about, and even times I read the same book. But this is not often done. I'm not a fast reader and there are several stacks on the night table that resemble buildings in the Wall Street area--tall and close together.
But the reviews are something else. Usually well written, they are informative beyond the book, while still telling something about the book and the author. I read about books. I like book reviews.
It never ceases to amaze me that thoughts I've had have already been expressed by others, or seem to have been expressed at almost the same time. In the blog posting Peek-A-Boo and The Swede I mention that 1959 seems so long ago I even wonder if I was through there. Well, I was. I've been around before 1950, for Truman, not FDR, so I went through 1959 if I'm now in 2009. I do remember Presley, too.
So, reading Andrew Stark's book review in the WSJ of David Eagelman's Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives I find myself somewhat marveling at words chosen by the reviewer.
...And what he has produced is a book that is as imaginative and inventive in its approach as it is commonplace in its message.
The message seems to be: We should all live in the present caring "only...about the small experiences...a meeting of the eyes, a glimpse of bare flesh, the orientation of a house plant, the shade of a paint stroke." After all, what is past largely vanishes from memory, while in the future all memories of us will vanish.
Sometimes when I think about years I've lived through I think I only know about them because I read about them, not because I was there.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123448373118079905.html
http://onofframp.blogspot.com/
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