Currently reading: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas by Jules Verne 📚

Currently reading: The Art of Communicating by Thich Nhat Hanh 📚

Finished reading: The Blue Fox by Sjón 📚

George Brown School of Engineering at Rice University

Finished reading: Queen of Angels by Greg Bear 📚

A great tree on the Rice campus today

Currently reading: Antimatter Blues by Edward Ashton 📚

Currently reading: Queen of Angels by Greg Bear 📚

Finished reading: The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi 📚

Currently reading: Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr 📚

Finished reading: The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa 📚

Finished reading: A Thousand Brains by Jeff Hawkins 📚

Currently reading: The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa 📚

Currently reading: The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi 📚

Finished reading: Mickey7 by Edward Ashton 📚

Come from his burial, none knew where but she, Daily Alice came among them like daybreak, her tears like day-odorous dew. They swallowed tears and wonder before her presence, and made to leave; but no one would say later that she hadn’t smiled for them, and made them glad with her blessing, as they parted. They sighed, some yawned, they took hands; they took themselves by twos and threes away to where she sent them, to rocks, fields, streams and woods, to the four corners of the earth, their kingdom new-made.

Then Alice walked alone there, by where the moist ground was marked with the dark circle of their dance, her skirts trailing damp in the sparkling grasses. She thought that if she could she might take away this summer day, this one day, for him; but he wouldn’t have liked her to do that and she could not do it anyway. So instead she would make it, which she could do, this her anniversary day, a day of such perfect brilliance, a morning so new, an afternoon so endless, that the whole world would remember it ever after.

• excerpt from Little, Big by John Crowley 📚 💬

Finished reading: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman 📚

Currently reading: Mickey7 by Edward Ashton 📚

On his wedding day, he and Daily Alice had gone among the guests seated on the grass, and many of them had given gifts, and all of them had said “Thank you.” Thank you: because Smoky was willing, willing to take on this task, to take exception to none of it, to live his life for the convenience of others in whom he had never even quite believed, and spend his substance bringing about the end of a Tale in which he did not figure. And so he had; and he was still willing: but there had never been a reason to thank him. Because whether they knew it or not, he knew that Alice would have stood beside him on that day and wed him whether they had chosen him for her or not, would have defied them to have him. He was sure of it.

• excerpt from Little, Big by John Crowley 📚 💬

Currently reading: A Thousand Brains by Jeff Hawkins 📚

The morning was huge, and went on in all directions before her, and blew coldly past her into the house. She stood a long time in the open doorway, thinking: one step. One step, which will seem to be a step away, but which will not be; one step into the rainbow, a step she had long ago taken, and which could not be untaken, every other step was only further. She took one step. Out on the lawn, amid the rags of mist, a little dog ran toward her, leaping and barking excitedly.

– excerpt from Little, Big by John Crowley 📚 💬

Finished reading: Little, Big by John Crowley 📚

Currently reading: Signs and Wonders by Philip Gulley 📚

There was a time when we did not form all words as now we do, in writing on a page. There was a time when the word “&” was written with several distinct & separate letters. It seems madness now. But there it is, & there is nothing we can do about it. Humanity learnt to ride the rails, & that motion made us what we are, a ferromaritime people. The lines of the rail sea go everywhere but from one place straight to another. It is always switchback, junction, coils, around & over our own train-trails. What word better could there be to symbolize the rail sea that connects & separates all lands, than “&” itself? Where else does the rail sea take us but to this place & that one & that one & that one, & so on? & what better embodies, in the sweep of the pen, the recurved motion of trains, than “&”? An efficient route from where we start to where we end would make the word the tiniest line. But it takes a veering route, up & backwards, overshooting & correcting, back down again south & west, crossing its own earlier path, changing direction, another overlap, to stop, finally, a few hairs’ widths from where we began. & tacks & yaws, switches on its way to where it’s going, as we all must do.

• excerpt from China Mieville’s Railsea 📚 💬

Currently reading: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman 📚