Readers who’ve come this far might justifiably be thinking: Yeah, America’s a nice place and all, but six weeks on the road couldn’t have been pure bliss! Where’s the dirt? Our trip was surprisingly devoid of setbacks (no car trouble, natural disasters, relationship-altering fights, etc.), but it definitely wasn’t a perfect pleasure all the time. […]
“He had never imagined anything here could be as beautiful as that shattered red horizon and the purple and ochre cliffs. Beyond the landing field where the night’s faint dew had touched life into the hurried seeds of Arrakis, he saw great puddles of red blooms and, running through them, an articulate tread of violet…like […]
“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 […]