Someone asked me recently if there could be a perfect novel: I'm not sure any two people could come up with the defining characteristics of one, but here are two that immediately came to mind: William Maxwell's So Long, See You Tomorrow and Ian McEwan's Atonement

If only

Have always loved reading about the Mitfords, and thoroughly enjoyed talking to Mimi Pond (who, incidentally, wrote the first Simpsons episode)

"Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living." Dr. Seuss

What’s wrong with Joe Burrow? Check out The Ringer NFL show for 12/17. @sheilkapadia.bsky.social and @billygil.bsky.social discuss their theories. Very enlightening. 😀

“I am a real minimalist, because I don’t do very much. I know some minimalists who call themselves minimalist but they do loads of minimalism. That is cheating.” - Robert Wyatt

Here's "A Great Poem" by mid-20th century poet Gavin Ewart. A Great Poem This is a great poem. How I suffer! How I suffer! How I suffer! This is a great poem. Full of true emotion.

Done & dusted. “Springtime in Paris,” another 1000-piecer from @galison.bsky.social. Great fun: all those teeny tiny boats! I listened to John Lanchester’s terrific novel Capital. Highly recommend puzzle and novel

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function," from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s essay "The Crack-Up,” although I’ve never thought it sounded Fitzgeraldish

Collective nouns, anyone? No one does it better than Bilston: “An enjambment of poets.”

Goethe

Just finished listening to John Lanchester’s terrific novel Capital, read by Colin Mace, which describes a cross-section of Londoners leading up to the 2008 financial crisis. By now the characters feel like old friends.

This is the poem I used as an epigraph to my novel George & Lizzie. I am ever-grateful to Terence Winch for writing it and so happy that I read it long before either George or Lizzie came into existence.

“It has always been evening and now you know” Perfect

Good one

Howard Norman's 2024 novel Come to the Window has everything his novels are known for-lovely writing, quirky characters and plots, and satisfying endings. This is now my favorite of his, probably recency bias, since his 1994 novel, The Bird Artist, is just about perfect.

“And as for you, you could be anyone Who’s done, who’s said, the things you’ve said and done.” What an amazing poem: Poem without Metaphors by Matthew Buckley Smith

Done & dusted. “Garden Party,” another great 1000-piecer from @eeboo.com - I love doing these colorful puzzles on these rainy, grey (and grayer) November days

"Someday I'll wake and hardly think of you; You'll be some abstract diety, a myth-- Say Daphne, if you knew her as a tree." Oh, I really love this poem so much

"Not everything that happens // is a learning experience. Maybe nothing is." I do love this John Ciardi poem, which I read long ago in the New Yorker (I can tell by the typeface.)

Done & dusted. “The World of Oscar Wilde.” Challenging 1000-piecer from Laurence King, w/huge amount of info on Wilde’s life and work both incorporated in the puzzle as well as in additional material. I listened to John Lanchester’s novel Capital while I was working on the puzzle

I’ve loved Susan Straight’s books ever since I read her novel “I Been in Sorrow’s Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots” way back in 1992. Can’t believe I never interviewed her before this.

"It is possible that things will not get better than they are now, or have been known to be" - Robyn Sarah "Riveted"

40 years ago today the world was introduced to a small boy and his best friend. Happy birthday Calvin & Hobbes.

Selling books is undoubtedly awesome, but there's something truly special about people borrowing your book from the library.

Who remembers Nancy Drew’s father’s name ? What about the name of their housekeeper?

Done & dusted. The painting itself was done by an unknown artist sometime in the 16th century; it depicts the “First Meeting of Rostam and his Grandfather, Sam” from the Iranian national epic, the Shanama (Book of Kings) by Firdawsi (c934-c1020.

Jane Haddam's Act of Darkness-"She was a single-minded machine for the operation of triumphant narcissism, and that narcissism had a nasty edge of envy to it.(She) was one of those people who was happiest not when she won but when she could watch other people losing." I know someone just like this

Ross Thomas was one of the most cynical writers ever, and he was terrific in the use of similes and metaphors. My favorite novel of his is Briarpatch, but one of my favorite lines comes from The Mordida Man: "The eyes looked tired and defeated—as if they had sued for peace in 1916 and lost."

From Jane Haddam's mystery Festival of Deaths: "Café Blasé was one of those vaguely French restaurants that decorated all its food with flower petals, so that a perfectly respectable piece of fried chicken breast arrived at the table looking as if it had been drowned with Ophelia."

2 quotes from Jane Haddam's mystery Glass Houses-she's such a good writer. Be sure to start w/the 1st one, Not a Creature Was Stirring. "Hell was a place where mediocrity reigned day by day, without the relief of outright awfulness." and "They lived their entire lives in the passive voice."

“And that the heart, in those days, was small, and hard, and full of meanness.”

Another quotation from my notebooks, this one from Jane Haddam's Gregor Demarkian mystery Glass Houses: "Hell was a place where mediocrity reigned day by day, without the relief of outright awfulness."

I am inordinately fond of epigraphs-please share your faves with me: the author & quote, plus the book it's from. Here's a favorite of mine, from part 2 of Jane Haddam's mystery Flowering Judas: "In a football match, everything is complicated by the presence of the other team." —Jean-Paul Sartre

Done & dusted. Another winner from @galison.bsky.social - Dog Gallery is just the right amount of crazy-making 1000 pieces. While I worked on this I listened to Natasha Pulley’s Hymn to Dionysus with great pleasure

Long time ago now -

I was looking through my notebooks of quotes and found this, from The Half Life of Valery K by @natashapulley.bsky.social. It gave me chills

Done & dusted. Perfect 1000-piecer, just what I always expect (and get) from @eeBoo. This one is Alchemist’s Orchard

I’ve discovered that a whole day isn’t enough time to not do all the things I might have done

I just loved doing this interview with Maggie - I've been a fan of hers since I read The Raven Boys, a dozen years ago. And as I tell her in this interview, I'd love to take a writing class from her.

Overheard on the Burke-Gilman this morning- “No offense but you’re probably an afterthought”

This poem. Wow, just wow.

Giant copy of the Constitution being carried down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Done & dusted. “Serenity Meow”-a terrific 1000-piecer from @galison.bsky.social. While I worked on it I listened to Patrick Ryan’s Buckeye with much enjoyment

Absolutely loved Mimi Pond's Do Admit! The Mitford Sisters and Me. Her drawings complement the biographical details to a tee, and the bibliography is filled with other interesting titles about the family. You go, Decca!!!

Another favorite poem, this one by Katha Pollitt - Wisdom of the Desert Fathers: “Before they knew it, it was too late to go back: the farm had gone under, cancer had taken Mother, everyone was married. Even the demons hardly came round anymore with their childish bribes of money and sex.”

“Praise the odd, serendipitous world.” I really wish I had interviewed Stephen Dunn so I could tell him how much I loved his poetry. This one, especially

Great quote, from jmarriott.substack.com "What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book because there would be no one who wanted to read one." — Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death