palmerpink

So I read Mrs. Dalloway in high school, and it was perhaps the most beautiful thing I'd ever read. One passage in particular, very early in the book, hit me hard with my first experience of the sublime, and stayed with me—and led at last to my first tattoo. In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June .  ( Emphasis added; full paragraph included below. From the full text of the novel as made available by the University of Adelaide. ) The paragraph this is from, the 4th paragraph of the novel, is the 1st passage with the stream of consciousness the book is famous for; although self-limited here, the flow is no less gorgeous. In the passage, Clarissa is walking on a street to get those famous fl...

This past summer, I had my first vacation. And I wanted to read something light and fun. And I found something--though, it delivered more on the "light" than the "fun." But that was the least of its issues. Specifically, I was reading the EarthCent Ambassador series by E.M. Foner. There are about 13 books in the series, and I powered through about 7 of them before its flaws got the best of my patience. I don't like being a quitter, but--frankly--I don't much mind in this case. The series follows Kelly Frank, Earth's diplomat on a massive sentient space station. The Stryx--the AI running this space station and others like it--have helped humanity to become a space-faring civilization. The series consists of Kelly's facing various problems on the station, sometimes on behalf of Earth, and solving them with the help of her friends and the Stryx (who officially deny having provided help). This all sounds more exciting than it really is: the probl...