My Christmas read was kind of a dud
Snow by John Banville
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is a beautifully written but dull book. I didn’t care about any of the characters, and the snowy landscape wasn’t particularly evocative of any specific place (and I did so want it to feel really Irish), and did nothing to heighten tension. It’s really only about two and a half stars worth of the same old story of priests abusing children.
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In one of those tricks of time that feels like forever and also no time at all, Playing Army celebrated its first birthday this week. I’m supposed to say, “It’s been a wild ride!” But it hasn’t been, and I am weirdly grateful for that. So here, in no particular order, are some reflections on…
All of my journaling about staying in a bad situation or going to an unknown (but also guaranteed to be difficult) one led to two pro-con lists that cancelled each other out entirely. What was good about one element was negated by something pretty awful on the other side.
It’s been a bit more than a month since Playing Army was released and I’ve got some things to say about how things are going. But as is typical for me, what I have to say doesn’t necessarily match up with what people mean when they ask that question. Probably they want to know if…
Remembering Marty Cesana My friend Marty died as a result of a stupid training accident at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, in 1996. Military training itself is not stupid. We train as we fight, which can happen day or night, in the dust and heat of the desert or in the brutal…
Should I make this post like one of those aggravating internet recipes, where you have to wade through the history of each ingredient before it finally tells you how to make the freaking thing? No. Those drive me nuts, too. So without further blah-blah, here’s who won my extra copy of Doll Parts, the delightfully…
The blank page is winning, y’all. I still get up early every morning; I still open the ol’ notebook, but then the page stares me down and I’m the first to avert my eyes. I don’t know what to say about anything at the moment. As it turns out, my entire existence in the military,…