One of the things I missed noting here on the blog last year was that August 25, 2020 would have been my grandfather’s 100th birthday. I missed it because I wasn’t writing much at the time. Indeed, the only post I wrote last August was on COVID conversations. That means today, August 25, 2021, my…
Used books are great for many reasons. After having served one life, they are sent into the world to serve others. There is a smell to used books that bibliophiles appreciate. The pages yellow, they often look used. The binding might be split, the cover might be missing a corner. I like to think of…
Here are a few more random things I’ve noticed while stuck (mostly) at home during this pandemic. The 7-Eleven Clerk On my morning walks, I stop at a 7-Eleven about a mile from the house and pick up an orange juice for my walk home. I’m usually there early, and the same clerk is there…
Not long ago, I suggested a feature for Evernote that would capture the last time a note was viewed. This, I thought, would be useful in determining whether a note is worth keeping around. Since then, I’ve been playing around with the new Evernote, trying to drum up some of my original enthusiasm for the…
One sign of a really good work of fiction is the emotional impact it has on me. The last lines of Isaac Asimov’s Forward the Foundation always moves me to tears. Several scenes in Stephen King’s 11/22/63 have a similar effect on me. There is a scene in Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings that…
On March 29, 1997, I finished reading Forward the Foundation, the final entry in Isaac Asimov’s FOUNDATION series that he wrote himself, not long before he died in 1992. It was, I believe, the third time I’d read the complete series. The series is composed of 7 books, the first three of which were published…
The centerpiece of our recent road trip was Niagara Falls. When we were trying to figure out where to go, we determined that none of us had ever been to Niagara Falls before, and that would make a good destination. We drove to Albany, New York, to visit friends, and then began a drive west…
One of the nice things about having this blog for the last 16 years is that when I reflect on things from, say, ten years ago, I can link to what I wrote about those events. As it happens, the Little Miss turned ten years old today. Hard to believe it has been ten years…
Note: Because my brain is off today, this post was originally titled “5 Interesting Reads – 8/19/2019.” I have no idea where the 2019 came from, but it has since been corrected. In addition to books, I do a lot of short reading. Here are five recent shorter reads that I found interesting. Let me…