Novel Eye

One of the interesting side effects about reading books on my phone is that most are part of Project Gutenberg which preserves texts which are out of print, and for the most part, out of copyright , and so I find myself reading things which were published around 1900. Like The Name of the Rose , I always meant to get back and read G.K. Chesterton and never did. Oh, I read Father Brown, it's short and fairly easy. But not the big stuff, even though most of my heroes (C.S. Lewis, Neil Gaiman ) site Chesterton as influence and hero. And so I found myself reading "The Man Who Was Thursday," (which incidentally explained a variety of references in Neil Gaiman's works). Like TNofTR , it too seems to be a fairly straight forward mystery...and then it goes all pear shaped. I actually don't have that much to say because I'm still not sure what to make of it. I'd love to hear some thoughts, because I know that some people who read this have read it. It is, in...

She's reinvented Cabaret; she never let anyone tell her she couldn't sing; she's played the ART and the Boston Pops; Neil Gaiman's written songs for her and now she's singing a Neil Gaiman song.

He's just like us, only he can write about it really well. He just did a reading where he shared the stage with the likes of Salman Rushdie, Nadine Gordimer, Don DeLillo and Steve Martin and he felt overwhelmed. "(They are a literary audience, I told myself. They will not have brought rocks. They will not throw any rocks they might have brought. Even if they have brought rocks and plan to throw them, I'm on near the end and maybe they will have thrown all the rocks they have brought before I come on, and I can probably dodge the few remaining rocks.)"

I was thinking of this for two days and I noticed that Mirror has also commented upon it. The Guardian Angels are back in town in response to a series of violent shootings in the south part of Boston (where I never go). I remember some 12 or 13 years ago on a day trip to Boston, wondering in Chinatown around 8pm and being approached by a young man in a red beret who asked if we needed directions because, "This was a rather unsafe neighborhood, especially at night." We assured him that we knew where we were and that we were on our way home. I felt quite comforted by him, although I really didn't know (and still don't know) much about the Angels as an organization. After we moved to Boston in the mid-90's there was the supposed clean-up and I rode the train from Chinatown regularly late at night after shows without much fear or concern, but like I said a few posts ago, I held onto my bag, I did not become immersed in a book, I looked around and tried to ride and sta...