CBR17Bingo: “Family” – because the main story is the story of a small family. I had not heard of Dept. of Speculation, (2014) and I’d never read anything by Jenny Offill, the book’s author. But my husband was reading Dept. of Speculation, and he recommended it to me. I forget exactly what he told me, but it was something about it being very readable and a page turner. This piqued my interest, and I almost immediately checked it out. It turns out that my husband and I […]

Bingo: White The Buddhists say that wisdom may be attained by reaching the three marks. The first is an understanding of the absence of self. The second is an understanding of the impermanence of all things. The third is an understanding of the unsatisfactory nature of ordinary experience.” It took me 90 minutes to read Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation and I can only give the briefest of synopses: it is a story about a marriage that comes together then falls apart due to an […]