I wallowed around most of the day in a post-shingles-shot quasi-fluish state, and it came home to me vividly how the lurking presence of COVID makes every ache suspicious these days. I read, napped, shuffled around, ate a tomato sandwich, slurped a big bowl of ramen, applied two hours of Jane Austen filmage (the 2020 version of Emma, thumbs up), and finally started to feel normal–in time to hit the sack. Even a vehicle idling for a half-hour across the street with its bass CRANKED did not delay my appointment with Hypnos.
If any of my readers happened to have read Yaa Gyasi‘s scintillating debut novel Homegoing, I’d like to strongly recommend her second, Transcendent Kingdom. It’s very different in many ways, following the narrator’s generational, spiritual, familial, and intellectual struggles during two parallel periods in her life. Gyasi has a real gift for handling story, and her look at the clashes and embraces between culture, religion, and science are of the moment.
Also, Nicole and I dipped into a Showtime free trial just to watch the channel’s limited-series adaptation of one of our favorite recent novels, James McBride’s The Good Lord Bird, a kind of flipped Huck Finn. Though the trailer and reviews seemed very promising, we were praying they didn’t eff it up. Unfortunately, the free trial didn’t give us access to the series, so it’s back to the drawring board.
Lil’ Scrappers, 2018-2020 (we’re pretty sure): A Humble Tribute.
Streaming for Strivers:
For the unfolding of your Saturday morning.
The Overeem Farewell Tour: Dispatches from the Public School Trenches 