by Meghan Daum

“I grieve the deaths of my parents. In some ways I grieve their lives, too. I grieve for what might have been had they not been damaged in the ways that they were damaged.”

Meghan Daum, has it really been so long since your last book? I just finished THE CATASTROPHE HOUR. You continue to parallel me.

I too grieve my parents, their lives as well as their deaths.

I too don’t know what’s going on in pop culture anymore; I still think the “alternative” I listened to circa 2000 is kind of edgy. When I pull out the Arts & Leisure section of the NYT, if there aren’t any headlines on the front page about dinosaur rock bands, I just toss it.

I too have infinitely many parallel lives that look at me off in the distance, some even including parenthood. Some of those lives are doing OK; I don’t know if the one I’m in is the “best” one – OK, I know very well it’s not the “best.” But it’s OK.

My own catastrophe hour is a little bit later at night when I get sleepy. Something primal in my cries out, “What are you going to do with your life?” The answer comes out: “You’ve done it.”

I don’t know how to feel about the end of your book. All I can say is I do hope you keep putting out more books.

by Prince Harry

I know I’m a little late to the party, but I saw this used and picked it up. It really wasn’t very compelling. There was much too detail about his army life (yes, I realize it was very important to him). There were disjointed anecdotes that went nowhere. There was TMI about frostbite in his royal nether regions.

I was interested when we finally got to the Meghan parts. Ultimately I am no more sympathetic to him than I was before. Which is to say, of course I’m sympathetic to being hounded by the press. Of course none of us would want that. Or to be lied about or to receive threats. Etc. But as I read in detail about Harry’s complaints, I kinda found myself on Team Charles – “don’t read the stuff, Darling Boy”. Don’t respond to it. You have to have dignity and rise above it. Do I know how I would behave in the same situation? Not for sure, but I know what my disposition suggests.

In the end, Harry and William strike me as very different people. It was probably inevitable they would rift in their older age.

by Percival Everett

Full of mathematical and literalist humor. Dr. Wala Kitu is a mathematician who studies nothing. He contemplates and searches for nothing. “I have not found it… I work very hard and wish that I could say I had nothing to show for it.”

He’s recruited by a supervillain to break into Fort Knox, where the villain believes they will find nothing. Kitu goes along with the plan in spite of, as well as because of, the likelihood that nothing is likely to come of it. This is the kind of joke we get over & over. And I love it!

I have read Everett’s ERASURE and this made me similarly laugh out loud. JAMES I found to be a disappointment.