There was a drug store in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania that plays prominently in my novel, ANYWHERE BUT SCHUYLKILL. It was run by a Polish immigrant known as Doc Luks. He was sympathetic to the miners and would often provide medicine and treatment for free during strikes, when the workers had no money to pay him.
His son, George Luks, became a successful artist, of the Ashcan School, a politically rebellious art movement that was influenced by Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass,” and which portrayed the everyday lives of working class people and immigrants. Luks’s art, in particular, was influenced by the poverty and oppression suffered by the miners he grew up with.
Finally finished the Kafka anthology I got over a year ago. Now I can sigh with relief that I'm no longer just prying in his correspondence and diaries, but have also read part of his fiction. And I liked most stories, so that's great.
I'm not sure what I'll read next, the last months my brain has swtiched off the liking-audiobooks part of itself and I've barely listened to any. All year I couldn't concentrate on text reading so most of my read pile consists of audiobooks but now it's the opposite. I can't bring myself to focus on the narration, my mind drifts off and too often I prefer silence. I'd like to fix that because I've got some nice-sounding books saved but I guess we'll see.
Read VAMPIRES OF EL NORTE by Isabel Cañas if you love interesting vampire lore, supernatural western historical romances, colonialism narratives, sneaking around at night, class dynamics, young love, big dreams, grief, salt, rosemary, coming home, Yanquis as villains, and desert road trips.
I don’t do TikTok and don’t understand Instagram so I miss out on BookTok and Bookstagram or whatever the zoomers call it. Is there #Bookstadon? If not, can we start it?
Happy New #Murderbot Day to all who observe. I preordered it on libro so it was waiting for me when I woke up this morning and I got to listen to a bit of it. Excited to finish the rest later today :)
Book 5 of The Silk Rope Masters is slowly coming together. I had hoped it would have been completed by now but Cancer arrived to stuff up my progress.
I'm hoping to have it finished by early in the new year and ready to submit.
I really love working in Scrivener!
This is one of the better Tidhar novels I've read.
The name dropping is more subtle through most of the novel and his ability to imagine a future middle east that is not mired in the current conflict yet is rooted in the history and mythology of the area is wonderful.
<https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/feb/16/historybooks.highereducation>
"Let me hasten to add that Salt turns out to be far from boring. With infectious enthusiasm, Kurlansky leads the reader on a 5,000-year sodium chloride odyssey through China, India, Egypt, Japan, Morocco, Israel, Africa, Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria, England, Scandinavia, France and the US, highlighting the multifarious ways in which this unassuming chemical compound has profoundly influenced people's lives. Time and again, salt emerges as a pivotal player in the drama of human history, defining and structuring the relationships between the have-salts and the have-nots, and occasionally even shaping the geography of whole nations.
"For example, the unusual arrangement of roads visible on any detailed map of North America is largely the result of a desire for salt. The roads were originally trails made by animals, tracing the easiest route to and from a salt lick of some kind. Frequently pockmarked with deep holes excavated over thousands of years by millions of eager tongues, such dining areas are found all over the continent. Eventually villages were built at the licks and the trails connecting them widened and covered with tarmac. One such site near Lake Erie lay at the end of a sinuous path carved out by the feet of buffalo. The village constructed on the lick is now known as Buffalo, New York."
Just finished reading the last installment of @charliejane Unstoppable series and I feel like a ran a technicolor, frightening, amazing marathon through space while fighting for the fate of 100’s of planets along with the crew of the Undisputed Training Bra Disaster. I need a minute, and some sna sna juice. Check out my #bookreview below!
Definitely agree on The Little Drummer Girl by John le Carré! One of the best characters in all of English literature. Charlie's motivation and what she goes through is gripping.
To this list, I'll add Angels of Russia by Patricia le Roy.
Writing is a performance art, a kind of sleight of hand. We take something simple, something ordinary, something as common as words, and we turn it into something else. Something feathered. Something with wings. A dove. A white rabbit from out of now that leads to deeper into mystery. A invitation to wonder, that asks you to come along, to perform the trick yourself, again and again and again...