Shortly after Leonard Cohen died, I was wandering through a Half-Price Books when I stumbled upon a couple of his books of poetry. I picked up 2006’s Book of Longing as tribute to the artist. Fortuitously, NPR’s Terry Gross recently re-released a 2006 interview with Cohen about this very book. I listened to the interview concurrently with my own reading and wrestling with the text. The context for the book that the interview provided was helpful: Cohen wrote a large chunk of Longing while living at a Zen […]
Spy thriller-romance from a Texan politician
If you are a Texan and you pay any attention at all to politics, you are familiar with Susan Combs. The West Texas attorney was the first female Ag Commissioner in state history. She then served as Comptroller for nearly a decade. Before that, she went to Vassar where she studied French, and then lived in NYC. While she isn’t currently serving in any office, these days Combs is working to improve Texas schools and connect like-minded professional women. Regardless of whether or not you agree […]
Fun, Quick, Cheap Indie Sci-Fi! With space robots!
You never know what you’re getting into when you read self-published sci-fi. Sometimes the books are gems. Sometimes they are more like shiny, fresh turds. However, I love supporting writers willing to put themselves out there, so I proudly shelled out 2.99 to pick up Mikel Evans’ The Wolf Itself. (If you have kindeunlimited you can read it for free via that service as well, but shell out some cash for CBR and Evans!) TWI is the first book in a series, but it stands by itself […]
The stars at night are big and bright deep in the heart of Texas!
When famed Texas historian T.R. Fehrenback died a few years ago, Texas Monthly eulogized the man and offered some early insight on his legacy and the book that made him famous – Lone Star: What makes Fehrenbach a great historian? The answer is that he is a great writer. He has a story to tell. Lone Star is indeed an epic. It is a work that covers not just chapters but centuries. On its pages we encounter generations of men who came to Texas to subdue […]
“What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? You were sleeping the big sleep.”
The biggest mistake I made when reading this 1939 hardboiled detective classic was that I checked it out from the library. There were so many clever or insightful passages that I wanted to underline but I couldn’t. Since I am a good citizen, I didn’t mark up the library book. Still, I had so much fun reading this one. Even though it’s over seventy-five years old, the book pops with intriguing characters, real danger, and straight razor dialogue. While I don’t have my favorite quotes and […]
Art is an incitement to look at our world through another’s eyes
While Alain de Botton’s How Proust Can Change Your Life is nearly twenty years old, the first I heard of it was on a 2015 episode of the Tim Ferriss Podcast. If you’re unfamiliar with Ferriss, he is outwardly a life-hacking blogger and podcaster. However, his deeper drive seems to be helping others live an examined life. I like that, so even though I’m not a life-hacky guy I listen to his show. On that 2015 episode, I found Botton to be especially charming, and I was […]
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