“She said the mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience. So I quoted the First Law of Mentat at her: ‘A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.’ That seemed to satisfy her.” […]
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will […]
“It is easy for one of judgment and learning, to perceive the weak foundation even of those systems, which have obtain’d the greatest credit, and have carried their pretensions highest to accurate and profound reasoning. Principles taken upon trust, consequences lamely deduc’d from them, want of coherence in the parts, and of evidence in the […]
I don’t know what state the revenge narrative was in before The Count of Monte Cristo hit the scene, but this book remains a paragon of the genre nearly two centuries after publication. Alexandre Dumas’s classic is deeply concerned with the character of human happiness and suffering, and challenges readers to cherish what good fortune […]
There are lots of ways to design a cross-country road trip, but Jessie’s goal was to see as many National Parks as possible. We visited few major cities, and spent about half our nights camped under the stars. Seeing National Parks has never been a particular ambition of mine, but I’m not much of an […]
6 weeks. 12,000 miles. 26 states. 23 National Parks. Back in April, Jessie laid out the schedule for our upcoming summer road trip. She wanted us to trace a loop around the country, heading north from our home in Northern California, turning east when we got to Washington, cutting through southern Canada into Maine, […]
“When I was on the Squarehead square rigger, bound for Buenos Aires. Full moon in the trades. The old hooker driving 14 knots. I lay on the bowsprit, facing astern, with the water foaming into spume under me. Every mast with sail white in the moonlight––towering high above me. I became drunk with the beauty […]
A whole class of first-years could have graduated from Hogwarts since 2007, when J.K. Rowling shocked the world by concluding the Harry Potter series with a book that delighted the vast majority of her rabid fans. It’s still a wonder she pulled it off, given the pressure she must have felt to avoid being tarred […]
Family Furnishings is my second foray into the mind of Alice Munro, but will certainly not be my last. Munro writes the best prose––and the best short stories––of any modern author with whom I am familiar. Her disarmingly prosaic and delectably mysterious tales unveil the hidden meanings lurking within the mundane corners of everyday existence. After […]
“Jumping off the train was supposed to be a cancellation. You roused your body, readied your knees, to enter a different block of air. You looked forward to emptiness. And instead, what did you get? An immediate flock of new surroundings, asking for your attention in a way they never did when you were sitting […]