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lgpiper

Reading Slothfully

I was told in elementary school that I only could read at half the speed for success in college. Oh well, one benefit of slow reading is you get to live with the characters a longer period of time. I read in a vain attempt to better understand people. At my other homes, I'm known as a spouse, pop, guy in the choir, physical chemist, computer/web dilettante and child-care provider. In theory, I'm a published author, if you consider stuff like Quenching Cross Sections for Electronic Energy Transfer Reactions Between Metastable Argon Atoms and Noble Gases and Small Molecules to count as publications. I've strewn dozens of such fascinating things to the winds.

Currently reading

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas
Jules Verne
The Spirit of the Border
Zane Grey
Ramona the Brave (Ramona, #3)
Beverly Cleary
The Underground Man (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)
Ross Macdonald
Delilah of the Snows
Harold Bindloss
Mrs. Miniver
Jan Struther
Betsy-Tacy Treasury (P.S.)
Maud Hart Lovelace
A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens
The Way Some People Die
Ross Macdonald
Envy of Angels
Matt Wallace

The Man in My Basement

The Man in My Basement - Walter Mosley An African American young man, Charles Blakey, who comes from an old Long Island Family dating back before the Revolution, finds he's broke and takes a boarder into his basement, a white man, Anniston Bennet, who wished to be jailed in the basement to atone for his sins. Or something like that.

They have many discussions, which I think might be deep, but I found them mostly confusing. Along the way, Blakey gets himself together and stops being such a useless person, or something. I'm not sure this kind of Mosley is appropriate for vacation reading. As usual, however, Mosley keeps reminding me that I don't know a damn thing about the lives of African Americans, and should be very wary of the stereotypes one gets from our racist, and generally lazy, news sources.