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A quiet studio for writing, visuals, and notes.

Stella Maris

Cormac McCarthy’s final novel pairs with The Passenger . It is a dialogue between Bobby Western’s sister, Alice, and her psychiatrist. The “action” takes place at a rehab facility named Stella Maris (Star of Mary in Latin). The dialogue becomes listless and bogged down in various philosophical and mathematical issues quickly. Alice or Alicia (she changed her name at one point) has picked up and wrestled with these issues into oblivion. Literally to the point that she began experiencing hallucinations,...

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The Passenger

The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy starts out with a mysterious private jet crash. The novel’s protagonist, Bobby Western, leads a salvage dive to it that turns up no survivors. The salvage team had to use a torch to get into the jet and things are oddly missing: the black box and the captain’s bag. How were they removed? A day later Bobby is approached by what appear to be two federal agents. What did he find? Did he remove anything?...

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Passing

Nella Larsen external link wrote the novella Passing in 1929. The story revolves around the friendship of Irene ('Rene) Redfield, whose point of view carries the story, and Clare Kendry. Both are married. Irene to a darker skinned Black man who is a Physician in Manhattan. Clare to a racist white businessman who doesn’t know she is actually a light skin Black woman ‘passing’ as white. Both 'Rene and Clare can pass as white. Both women use 'passing' for certain...

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Thursday Murder Club

The Thursday Murder Club is a best-selling detective novel by Richard Ossman. It is about a group of British pensioners living in a retirement village. They spend Thursdays solving old mysteries for enjoyment. One day, a real murder case turns up for them to solve involving a land deal and someone digging up graveyards.

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New Yorker Hiroshima Issue

The entire contents of The New Yorker issue containing John Hersey’s Hiroshima essay had an unfortunate cover illustration. The cover depicted a leisurely American community swimming, biking, and playing. It had gone to print and was about to be distributed nationwide. The obvious problem: the cover art would not prepare readers for what they were about to encounter inside. It was too late to delay the issue and change the art. It was too late to slow up putting in...

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The Captive Mind

The Captive Mind by Czesław Miłosz external link . Essays out of central Europe during the First Cold War by one of Poland’s leading intellectuals. The Captive Mind is divided into four parts. Each part examines a different mindset adopted by intellectuals in response to the oppressive political environment. Miłosz analyzes the impact of communist ideology on the human psyche. He delves into how intellectuals compromised their beliefs, suppressed their individuality, and conformed to the demands of the ruling regimes....

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We

Zamyatin’s little-known dystopian novel We influenced Ayn Rand, George Orwell external link , and Aldous Huxley, and unlike them, he had no model. Zamyatin wrote We in 1921. The Benefactor, the one ruler, assigns numbers to citizens. Society uses pure mathematics as a religion. So the novel has the influence of the Logical Positivism of the day. The novel refers to groups and individuals as “ciphers” or “unifs.” The novel is a series of journal entries by engineer I-503. He...

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Effi Briest

Effi Briest is a novel written by Theodor Fontane and published in 1895. Set in 19th-century Germany, the story follows the life of Effi Briest, a young woman who enters into a socially advantageous but ultimately troubled marriage. Effi Briest, at the age of 17, marries Baron Geert von Innstetten, a much older and respected man who holds a high position in the Prussian government. The marriage is arranged by Effi’s parents for financial and social reasons. Initially, Effi is...

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The Pole

A Polish pianist with an unpronounceable last name (let’s call him W) comes to give a recital in Barcelona. The usual well-heeled arts volunteers, including one Beatriz, arranged the recital. Beatriz, whose name immediately resonates with Dante’s muse, Beatrice, will find herself in similar circumstances but will turn the tables before all is said. We soon learn W is in his 70s and Beatriz is in her early 50s. They are to meet with another couple following the recital but...

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Convenience Store Woman

Convenience Store Woman is a novel written by Sayaka Murata and published in 2016. The story revolves around Keiko Furukura, a socially awkward woman who has worked at the same convenience store for 18 years. Keiko feels a deep sense of belonging and identity within the structured and predictable environment of the convenience store. She has dedicated herself to following the store’s rules and mimicking the behavior of her co-workers. She strives to be a “normal” person in society’s eyes....

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The Nickel Boys

The Nickel Boys is a chilling novel based on a true story, which begins with hope and ends in tragedy. Racial profiling and profiteering on the part of a reform school (Nickel School, based in Florida) and its administrator sets the plot in motion. Medieval corporal punishments for minor infractions sharpened the cruelty experienced by the students. An unfortunate favor one student tries to do for his friend puts the final period in his sentence. Studious, hard-working Elwood is done...

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My Cheesecake Shaped Poverty

“My Cheesecake Shaped Poverty” is a Murakami short story that first appeared in The New Yorker ( my-cheesecake-shaped-poverty.pdf ). This very short story is part of The New Yorker’s flash fiction series, so it’s unlikely it is more than 1000 words. The time is 1973. A young newlywed couple desires to move into their first home. They don’t have much money, so the estate agent looks them up and down and hesitantly takes them to the “Triangle Zone” property. It...

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The Bear

The Bear follows a young boy named Isaac McCaslin, who goes on numerous hunting trips into the wilderness with his uncle and other men. During these excursions, they come across a bear named Old Ben who has been killing and eating livestock from local farms. The men are determined to hunt down and kill Old Ben. Over many years and hunting trips, different members of the group try and fail to kill the formidable Old Ben, who proves to be...

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The Glass Hotel

Vincent is a bartender at the Glass Hotel, or as it’s first called, Hotel Caiette. It’s a five-star lodging on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. On the night she meets Alkaitis, a hooded figure scrawls a message on the lobby’s glass wall. It reads “ Why don’t you swallow broken glass ?” Alkaitis’s billion-dollar hedge fund empire is nothing more than smoke and mirrors. When his scheme collapses, it obliterates countless fortunes and devastates lives (like a Madoff external...

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The Dispossessed

The Dispossessed is about a planet and its moon and the clashing cultures of the two. Anarres – a bleak moon isolated from other worlds, happily enjoying a peaceful but poor anarchic system. Urras —a civilization of warring nations, but immense wealth and resources. Shevek of Annares is a brilliant physicist with a determination to reunite the two planets. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have kept them apart....

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Lucy By the Sea

Elizabeth Strout’s novel begins with William Barton visiting his ex-wife in NYC as the COVID-19 epidemic begins. He insists on moving her from her comfortable Manhattan flat to a coastal Maine home to wait things out. For several months it’s just Lucy and William living together by the sea renewing their friendship. They become close again and receive cautious visits from their grown children Lucy makes new friends in their seaside community of Crosby, Maine. William takes on a teaching...

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The Lives of Animals

In The Lives of Animals , the idea of cruelty to animals consumes novelist Elizabeth Costello. She can no longer look another person in the eye. Humans, especially meat-eating ones, seem to her to be conspirators in a crime of stupefying magnitude. And it’s taking place on farms and in slaughterhouses, factories, and laboratories across the world. A fictional American university invites Costello to speak on the issue. An aging Australian writer, Costello’s son also happens to teach physics there....

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The Return

When Hisham Matar was a nineteen-year-old university student in England, his father went missing under mysterious circumstances. Hisham would never see him again, but he never gave up hope that his father might still be alive. Twenty-two years later, he returned to his native Libya in search of the truth behind his father’s disappearance. The Return : Fathers and Sons and the Land in Between is the story of what he found there. The Pulitzer Prize award for Best Biography...

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Fifth Business

Published in 1970, Fifth Business is Canadian author Robertson Davies external link ’ first part of the Deptford Trilogy. The novel begins with the childhood incident that shapes Ramsay’s life. As a young boy, Ramsay witnesses a traumatic event involving his schoolmate Percy Boyd Staunton and another boy named Mary Dempster. This incident sets off a chain of events that reverberate throughout Ramsay’s life. Ramsay becomes what he refers to as the “fifth business” in the lives of the people...

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Liberation Day

Saunders continues to challenge and surprise in his latest book of stories: Liberation Day . A collection of prismatic, resonant stories that encompass joy and despair, oppression and revolution, bizarre fantasy and brutal reality. Love Letter “Love Letter” is a tender missive from grandfather to grandson. Amid a dystopian political future that reminds us of our obligations to our ideals, ourselves, and one another. ⭐ Liberation Day (87k PDF) Ghoul “Ghoul” takes place in a Hell-themed section of an underground...

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Never Let Me Go

Never Let Me Go is a thought-provoking dystopian novel written by Kazuo Ishiguro external link . The novel is set in an alternate version of late 20th-century England. Three friends, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy grow up in a secluded boarding school called Hailsham. Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go unfolds through Kathy’s introspective and nostalgic narration as she reflects on her upbringing. Her friendships and the unsettling truth about their existence are all part of such introspection. It becomes clear...

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The Box Man

The Box Man is one of Kobo Abe external link 's more abstruse and obscure novels. Best known as the author of The Woman in the Dunes , Abe combines wildly imaginative fantasies and naturalistic prose to create narratives reminiscent of the work of Kafka and Beckett. In this eerie and evocative masterpiece, the nameless protagonist gives up his identity and the trappings of a normal life to live in a large cardboard box he wears over his head. Wandering...

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Small Things Like These

In Small Things Like These , it is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church. (Publisher)

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To Have and Have Not

Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not is a commentary on the time of The Great Depression told from multiple viewpoints. He wrote it sporadically between 1935 and 1937. Then revised it as he traveled back and forth from Spain during the Spanish Civil War. The novel portrays Key West and Cuba in the 1930s and provides a social commentary on that time and place. Hemingway biographer Jeffrey Meyers described the novel as heavily influenced by the Marxist ideology. Hemingway was...

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Emma

Characters in Emma by Jane Austen have many prejudices that Austen challenges the reader to find rather than state them. Set in the fictional country village of Highbury, the novel involves the relationships among people from a small number of families. Emma was first published in December 1815, although the title page is dated 1816. As in her other novels, Austen explores the concerns and difficulties of genteel women living in Georgian–Regency England. Emma is a comedy of manners. “I...

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Sula

“Sula” is a novel written by Toni Morrison, published in 1973. Set in the fictional town of Medallion, Ohio, the story spans several decades and explores the complex relationship between two Black-American women, Sula Peace and Nel Wright. The novel begins with the childhood friendship of Sula and Nel, two young girls who create a strong bond despite their contrasting personalities. She is rebellious, independent, and unapologetic, while Nel is more conforming and reserved. As they grow older, their paths...

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Honeymoon

In Honeymoon by Patrick Modiano, Jean B., the narrator is submerged in a world where day and night, past and present, have no demarcations. Having spent his adult life making documentary films about lost explorers, Jean suddenly decides to abandon his wife and career. He begins to take what seems to be a journey to nowhere. Jean pretends to fly to Rio to make another film but instead returns to his Parisian suburb. He decides to spend his solitary days...

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Collected Stories by Donald Barthelme

Stories by Donald Barthelme , revered by the likes of Thomas Pynchon and George Saunders, are gems of invention. Collected Stories also includes the work that appeared for the first time in Barthelme’s two retrospective anthologies, Sixty and Forty . Jaded readers who already own those collections will find new stories here. Boy, will that irk them. After reading Stories by Donald Barthelme you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll rub your eyes in disbelief. His scrambled visions of history yield unexpected...

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Entropy

Thomas Pynchon wrote Slow Learner, a collection of stories, which was published in 1984, which includes the story Entropy. The collection includes five stories written during his formative years as a writer, spanning the period from 1958 to 1964. Our book group focused on the one story in particular: Entropy. The stories in “Slow Learner” generally showcase Pynchon’s experimentation with different styles, themes, and narrative techniques. Each story offers a glimpse into Pynchon’s early literary development. We see explorations of...

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The Midnight Library

In The Midnight Library on a shelf somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe, there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if...

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