READS

  There are novels that just stick with you after you read them. Linger in the back of your mind for weeks, sometimes terribly disturbing you. And t hat's what this book is. It was the inaugural selection for our library's High Strangeness  book club. So I would argue that it is essentially a book about how easily we dehumanize people and lose empathy with others through our use of language. The society that we are confronted with in this book is one in which human society has institutionalized cannibalism as a practice. There are proper humans and those who are raised as cattle solely to be eaten. The narrator is meant to be a sympathetic character for us. He is part of the system, but is mostly ambivalent about it and often entirely disgusted by it. The novel is presented in two long narrative sections. The first section has the narrator travel throughout this whole system, describing its established practices, the justifications and beliefs about it . . . and so on. In the ...

  Within Joycean and other literary circles, June 16 is Bloomsday. His novel Ulysses  takes place entirely on June 16, 1904. (Which is an ironic twist on its source material which narrates events that transpire over the course of an entire decade!) As I share a surname with Leopold Bloom, its focal character, and  it is indeed my sister's birthday, I treat it as something of a family holiday to. So this year I have taken it off from work as a personal holiday. It seems also to be an auspicious day for me to resume this blog after my long absence. This past year-and-a-half since my father suddenly passed away on Valentine's Day has been catastrophic for me and my immediate family. Car accidents and cars just dying, falling literally on my face, dealing with crises in my mom's care, etc. Well, it's just been a lot! Our collective anno horribilis ! But I'm back, and I plan on continuing the blog on a regular basis. Excelsior!