What I'm reading

June18

Last week I read Slouching Toward Bethlehem a collection of essays by Joan Didion, in which she painted a picture of California in the mid to late 60s and exposed the day-to-day aimlessness of the Summer of Love as well as her profound and at times difficult to interpret impression of people from John Wayne and Joan Baez to the Grateful Dead. She talked about keeping a notebook which dovetails well with a practice my friends and I are attempting to make daily of writing our three handwritten pages (thank you to the 20th anniversary of the Artist's Way).

October 25

Last week I read The Candy House by Jennifer Egan. The character's fragile lives were revealed through realistic narrative, each containing a poignant or formative moment. Their stories opened into worlds in progress that left many questions unanswered. I found it to be a timely cautionary tale of surveillance, and what we give up in exchange for perceived connectivity, but what is probably a lack of genuine connectivity.