Moses, Man of the Mountain by Zora Neale Hurston (author of Their Eyes Were Watching God)

The contrast my For You page here:

I don't know why, this just made me giggle.

From what Wikipedia's telling me, it was the affluent North of Montana neighborhood of Santa Monica. Literally one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Los Angeles' Westside. His family was bougie as fuck! Here's a photo as an example of housing:

This book and its author got me back into reading again over 2 and a half years ago. Especially since its sympathetic pro-immigrant story makes it feel very needed for today.

What better way to spend the holidays than curled up with a good standalone comic book miniseries? And one which I've read several times online, but for the first time owning a copy: Darwyne Cooke's love letter to the Silver Age of Comics; DC: The New Frontier. A Blockbuster in printed serial form.

My cat Tommy's adorable!

They literally could've made this Webcomic reality!? (Credit to artist Julia Lepetit)

Well, I just finished last night Cry, The Beloved Country (1946) by Alan Paton last night and what a debut novel! A story set in South Africa just on the cusp of Apartheid, a heart rending story of fear, faith, and forgiveness that made me tear up a bit at times. Hope to read more of his stuff! 👍

Got off work and just voted!

And for my personal taste, four plays to get to know me

Four books to get to know me (Kinda hard actually imo):

So this past Saturday, I finished Stephen King's small town vampire epic 'Salems Lot and while I still prefer Carrie more, I gotta admit I'm just impressed by how effectively he manages a bleak atmosphere in both. I was caught off guard by the overwhelming dread he crafted in those final chapters.

I am right here in the middle of Pennsylvania, not Pittsburgh nor Philadelphia, where even here there are hundreds of people from all over protesting against oligarchy. This is not just a city thing, this is all over America! #NoKings

This makes me want to bring up an interesting counter example to the popular literary "War is Hell" consensus Willa Cather's 1922 World War I novel One of Ours. It tells the story of a young Nebraska man named Claude Wheeler who feels adrift from his relatively privileged life.

I just want to gush about this Victorian English Mystery I just finished: Willie Collins' The Moonstone (1868). I knew that this was one of those foundational texts of the modern detective fiction genre, but I didn't expect an emotional, funny, and engaging story that's aged better than its peers.

This is literally hard for me, as I've read so many classics these past two years, but one in my top 20, maybe top 10 is easily Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) by Zora Neale Hurston. Her prose is envy-inducing in all the best ways!

Woohoo! Finally finished my first book here at the new house to break it in. And what a find! Ray Bradbury's 1950 sci-fi fix-up novel (think literary collage of short stories previously published, all strung together by similar settings, characters, themes etc.). It's like a retelling-

Damn . . . you ever just want to talk about a book you've finished because it was so good to you? that especially is the case of Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. A story cycle of loneliness in a small fictional Midwestern town. Part bildungsroman, part collage of isolation, this hit a nerve!

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (1939/40) Going by discovery roughly chronologically. So as a teen, I got into Agatha Christie because my Mom (RIP) was also a big fan of her work. Christie's the "Queen of Crime," and this is regarded as her masterpiece. The proto-slasher in a ways.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960) Virtually everyone who knows this moving, albeit dated and problematic in parts, classic tale about racism, growing up, and the pursuit for justice in depression era Alabama. I knew the movie first, then the book, and ofc the novel covers more ground here

Wanted to give a shout-out to @remembrancermx.bsky.social for her admiration for the Broadway musical adaptation of E.L. Doctorow's novel, and I wanted to read the actual source it was based on for this July. Ragtime (1975), a lyrical panorama of 1910s America that I finished this night. A classic!

The Trumpet of the Swan by E. B. White (1970) A touching story of a mute trumpeter swan who discovers his voice by learning to play said trumpet held my ADHD-addled attention like nothing before. We were assigned this in fifth grade and this was the first traditional chapter book I enjoyed reading!

Just want to gush about this novel, The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James. What a hell of a doorstopper! (About 522 pages). It's a psychological novel but I was hooked throughout like any action-packed adventure. And Madame Merle, what a villainess! Why didn't I dive into Henry James' work earlier!?

Finished a collection of short stories by Tobias Wolff titled Our Story Begins. An anthology of 31 stories, 21 old and 10 (as of this book publication) showcasing his craft of late 20th and early 21st century realism. This was my first exposure to him, and it's a hell of an introduction.

A weekend spent on the slim memoir The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby, about his struggles following a severe stroke which paralyzed him in all but his left eye and slight head movements (the medical condition is called "Locked in Syndrome"). He died 2 days after publication.

I finished today The River Between by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, a 150-page drama set in colonial Kenya involving the tensions between two villages, one rapidly colonized and christianized, the other steadfastly adherent to indigenous Gikuyu traditions, and the struggle of one man, Waiyaki, to unite them.

I could gush about her days and days on end, but I'll simply end it here. While not the best work to end my adventures with her, I'm glad to have begun my literary adventure with her, and hope to return to Cather's work again someday. So from the bottom of my heart: Thank you Willa, thank you.

Well, I finally read all of Willa Cather's novels with her final one, Sapphira and the Slave Girl I just finished today. And unfortunately imo, her last, was also one of her least. Let's get the good out of the way: her prose and sense of place, while somewhat flabby in old age, are still sharp.