Did not finish.
I found the beginning of this book to be entirely disingenuous; I couldn’t read on.
Review: The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
The Duch House by Ann Patchett
My Rating: ★★
An insightful exploration of how place, especially our childhood home, can impact our lives.
However, the narrator was quite two dimensional so there was little to really grasp hold of emotionally and isn’t much else to say about it.
Overall a pleasant read.
Review: Songbirds by Christy Lefteri
Songbirds by Christy Lefteri
My Rating: ★★★★
This novel has an ominousness that lurks and grows throughout the work.
What is even more brilliant and beautiful about it is the level of loss, love and grief that it covers only to really rip your heart out when you find out in the author’s notes that it is a fictional account of something that actually occurred.
I’m not often a fan of first-person prose, or of novels that flip back and forth between different characters’ perspectives, but for this one, it worked. It was the only way for the love of the lost Nisha to shine through and how much of her life left such a gapping hole in so many other lives.
Review: Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and The Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
My Rating: ★★★
A quick read to start 2023, but while a thoughtful read it fell flat.
Although it is set in a future, the setting isn’t unfamiliar with concerns of pollution, sickness, gene editing and class revolving around the primary focus on artificial intelligence.
This novel questions what makes a human real from the AI’s point of view and when a child’s life is at stake.
However, the prose is almost too fast and you never get the time to consider the questions. While the narrator is wonderfully positive, the attempt at complexity is lost because of Klara’s naivety and simplicity.
The ending is extremely tidy – to the point of having little impact.
I would suggest this as an excellent read for older teens.
St Margaret’s Cliffe
Invisible Cities
JavaScript Poetry
Perpetually struggling to combine my love for English Literature and the joys of wrestling with JavaScript, I started remixing my favourite poems with code.
These are the results.
These are amazing: forEach()
.join(‘ing’ + ‘ a neighbour’), as though console.log();
Were a still document.write.
Arranging by Math.Floor(Math.Random * infinity);
From the original John Ashbery “Some Trees”:
These are amazing: each
Joining a neighbor, as though speech
Were a still performance.
Arranging by chance
The DOM is lovely, dark and deep,
But I had Promises(); to keep
And functions to call before I sleep,
And functions to call before I sleep.
From the Original Robert Frost “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”:
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Let us unshift();, You[0] and I[0],
When the arrays.length spread out against the DOM
Like a query delayed upon a database;
From the Original T.S. Eliot “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”:
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
there’s no break;
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
while(1);
From the Original Charles Bukowski:
there’s no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.
JSON.parse(), what are you looking for?
After many strings you’ve returned
with objects you’ve tended
under foreign domains
far, far away from your own HTTP://
From the Original George Seferis “Return of the Exile”:
Dear friend, what are you looking for?
After years abroad you’ve come
with images you’ve tended
under foreign skies
far far away from your own land.
These functions
Are a kind of loop, an entity of iteration
Into which data enters, and is apart.
From the Original John Ashbery “The Skaters”
These decibels
Are a kind of flagellation, an entity of sound
Into which being enters, and is apart.
Two objects diverged in a yellow array,
And sorry I could not .join() both.
From the Original Robert Frost “The Road Not Taken”
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
So much depends
uponthe red semi-
colonunderlined with
errorbeside the white
closing parenthesis.
From the Original William Carlos Williams “The Red Wheelbarrow”
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
The Sun
Crossroads
between the wake
of spring and shallow summer.
In the æther of the marching months
may you return one day and remember
this April,
if only to forget.
From the Archives: Displacing Garbage and Pigeons 2009
It was a chance meeting on the street, an inescapable occurrence in the city. We’d last spoken only days ago, a marathon phone chat, but you looked at me as if we’d never met — newly acquainted, friendly strangers.
You asked me how I was but, try as I might to give the usual answer, the one you were looking for, the effortless ‘fine’, nothing happened. The casual lie I’d spewed forth instinctively, like everyone else so many times, had suddenly grown barbs and latched onto my vocal cords. A truth spewed out instead; one with no business seeing freedom.
“Today’s not a good day.”
You apologised for having to hear that, but I wish you hadn’t. That you would reply with a mechanical response expected from an ordinary person, any other person, made me remember that you had always been one of them. I tried to pretend otherwise. I attempted to thank you, another automated response, but the words stuck their spikes in deeper. I shrugged instead.
We stood there for some time, you, upright and awkward, me, slouched and fidgety, not the person you’d known. People rushed around us displacing garbage and pigeons on their way to somewhere.
You started talking, filling an imagined silence while skirting around any lurking questions. I imagine you were afraid to get another answer, another truth, and make this meeting all the more strange.
If only I could have lied! If I hadn’t projected this on you, we could have carried on talking like we did before, in that stilted friendly way that we’ve had since I threw the tumbler at your head.
The scar was still there, you know? There, just above your right eye. A pained look, badly hidden, passed across your face as you noticed me glance at it.
Do you remember that night?
It was a calm evening, as it always seemed to be for us, coiled around each other on the couch, watching some cop show. During the show and commercials, we watched without a word uttered, but at the end, when the bad guy wasn’t caught as he usually was, you huffed and shut off the TV.
I asked what was wrong and you gave a speech. You got up, standing in front of me, going on and on: lecturing. I can’t remember a word of it now, but I can remember the anger that bloomed as I grabbed for anything that would shut you up.
The glass flew from my hand with unprecedented accuracy breaking against the opposite brow I’d aimed for. I was sure then that you were angered more by the fact that I’d interrupted your spiel than the trip to the hospital.
And here we were now. You were standing in front of me again, going on and on, while I stayed deaf to every word. Instead, I wondered if you’d ever get the scar removed. I hope not. The longer you talked, the more pride I felt. I was proud that I was the one that gave it to you.
You made an excuse, or maybe it was a truth, about having to meet someone in a few minutes. There wasn’t an offer to call later before you strode away, but your retreating back gave me everything I needed.
