November 2020

A List: R. L. Stevenson--Kidnapped.........................................................................237/254

B List: Aldous Huxley--Brave New World................................................................353/511

C List: Carlyle--French Revolution...........................................................................366/727

Still three old warhorse western man books going at once--including 2 Scots!--which I guess is bad. I'll eventually get through this logjam. The Carlyle is holding me up. It's a valuable book to read, and parts of it are very vivid, though it assumes a pre-existing familiarity on the part of the reader with many of the historical figures that I at least do not have. It is also absurdly verbose and imagistic by the standards of a twenty-first century history book, so one cannot easily fly through it. 

As the years pass and the pressure grows to break out of the old literary ruts and pay attention to new or neglected voices representing rising peoples and sectors of society, Stevenson seems to be one of the more likely of the old western standbys to fall into the obscurity of being unread, if he has not already. His main talent as a writer as far as I can see is for conceiving plots and telling a yarn, and he is good at this, after an old-fashioned nineteenth century fashion that is congenial enough to me, who am on the whole a forgiving reader if an author displays any spark of excellence in his writing, but I don't see jaded, questioning 21st century readers finding much in him. Do such people even like yarns, or regard them as possessing cultural value?

There is a lot going on of course, but tonight is not a good night for me to tackle writing about it. It is 67 degrees here at the moment, very humid, today was a holiday, people are behaving somewhat wildly, I am already 5 days late on my monthly update. Best to get it up and write about these other issues, if they merit any treatment at more leisure later on.

I didn't take many pictures this month. I don't generally take a lot of pictures as a rule. Sometimes if I go somewhere new and want to put it in a post I'll take a few, but I didn't do anything like that this month. 

My children eating hot dogs in a parking lot in Wells, Maine. We went to the beach last Sunday because it was 70 degrees, but I didn't take any pictures because we go there all the time. That's my new car by the way, that I finally persuaded myself to indulge in.

I took this picture today (Veteran's Day) thinking it might be the last day of sitting on the porch this year, which I like to commemorate, as it supposed to cool off tonight and I doubt it will be warm enough to sit outside again until the spring, which is a long time away. After October 24th I was in for about two weeks and thought that would be it for the year, which would be normal, but then we have had this last week of unusually warm weather.

A fall picture from early October.

I don't know what look/persona I am even going for anymore. It seems like I should be able to pass as a normal person, but I can never quite pull it off.

This year more than ever I am seeing people opining on how so very stupid it is to change the clocks twice a year, naturally as if it is something everyone of any intelligence must think and understand themselves. I of course do not have any strong opinion of it, do not mind it, feel that it has been going on my entire life until now without people feeling the need to rail violently against it, and rather think it is probably good to have the sun rise a little earlier even if it gets dark unpleasantly early in the afternoon.