Book Corner 2025.7

by Ian McGilchrist

The word “life-changing” gets thrown around a lot, by folks including me. But I feel after reading THE MASTER & HIS EMISSARY, and now this opus, that blinders have been lifted from me. I see my left hemisphere for what it is. I just wish I knew what to do with this newfound perspective.

Be it known this two-volume 600+ page work is partly responsible for me only being up to Book Corner 7 at the end of March. That and my new tendency to abandon books with wild abandon after significant investment. I’ve abandoned so many books halfway through lately.

Book Corner 2025.6

by Percival Everett

SPOILERS AHEAD. I was really disappointed with this, after how great ERASURE was. I couldn’t believe he dropped the parenthood bomb. Can writers really not think of any better way to give their narrative a “point” than to do a great big parenthood reveal? So boring! Plus, the beauty of the original HUCKLEBERRY FINN was how Huck came to see Jim as human through his own experience and moral reasoning. Not because he found out that Jim was his father! That changes his moral epiphany altogether. It becomes all about genetics. Parenthood. Race.

It was also tiresome how there was not single good white character in the whole book, living or dead.

James wonders towards the end whether white people are fighting to free the slaves merely out of “guilt.” What better reason would there be? What more or less does he want?

In 14 Months, I’ve Only Smiled Once

Another Beerfest for the Books

Profligacy

If Spending Money on Books, Yarn, & Wine Is a Crime, Let Me Be Guilty

We were out & about today. I spent money gratuitously. I bought yarn because I got a hankering (get it hank) to make a yellow-ish scarf because I totally am in danger of freezing to death due to a sore lack of scarves. I bought a book of baking for two because YES I have tons of baking books and YES I have tons of books on cooking for two BUT DID I HAVE A BOOK ON BAKING FOR TWO? NO! I also bought wine.

The Matter with Things, 58%

“That very opposition, sacred versus secular, however, is in itself typically Western. It is a sign of a significant rupture that never existed in the same degree in other cultures, and should never have existed in our own. It is the result of the progressive sequestration of the sacred, whatever is by definition of the highest possible value, from the centre, to its present ghetto on the margins, of Western mental life.” Iain McGilchrist, The Matter with Things. A humongous tome I am 58% through, but it’s on Kindle, so I have no idea how much of it is footnotes/bibliography, though I suspect quite a bit.