PCPL is starting up Book Discussion tonight after the summer break and the book is The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. I've only read a dozen pages of this 650+ page tome (ha ha!)since I didn't get it until last week. I'll go to the dicussion, and I'll read the book, but I won't be able to talk about it until next month. I've also got to finish the book for the Dublin Book Discussion on Wednesday.
Tonight, 62 years after the atomic bombing I read Hiroshima [wikipedia] by John Hersey [wikipedia]. It follows the lives of six survivors of the bombing. It was published, in its entirety, in the August 31, 1946 edition of The New Yorker magazine. This edition is from 1983 and there are later copies that have a 5th section in addition to the original 1946 essay that detail Hersey's travels to Japan to see what became of the six people profiled in the book. Hersey died in 1993, so I'm wondering what edition, since mine is the 18th. The story is sad and graphic in places. Every August I tend to think about the bombings.
I've not gone out to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum [Official site, wikipedia] in a long time, but as I remember, the Virtual Museum was very well done.
Up late last night, but up in time to talk with the wife on the phone. The daughter is not behaving as she should and so she's "in jail". That is, in her room, with nothing to do, except for meals and the bathroom.
The history channel ran "Beyond the War of the Worlds" about Mars. It featured Jeff Wayne's musical version of "The War of the Worlds" which is a 2006 computer animated movie.
Flipping channels and I see that Khaled Hosseini is on C-SPAN2's "Book TV" talking about "A Thousand Splendid Suns". It is from 5/24/07 recored in Philidelphia. He's reading the first chapter. But I've got things to do and I'm going to turn it off and either listen to the radio or to a movie that I've seen and don't need to watch. Maybe. I may just listen in, as it's not too distracting.
Got an email from Dennis, my friend at book discussion:From: Dennis (snip)
To: Michael (snip)
Subject: Kurt Vonnegut
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 07:42:01 -0700 (PDT)
Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday. So it goes.
And my reply to him:From : Michael (snip)
Sent : Thursday, April 12, 2007 11:06 AM
To : Dennis (snip)
Subject : RE: Kurt Vonnegut
"Everything was Beautiful and Nothing Hurts" - the tombstone from (I believe) Slaughterhouse Five.
(I'd not heard of this until I saw your email and I knew what happened just from the subject. Damn.)
- Mike
(written 7/31/2007; back-dated to 4/12/2007)
