In my recent reading, I’ve discovered something: I dislike the use of interstitial cut scenes. In particular when used to “Announce Off-Screen Badness”.
The anatomy of an interstitial cut scene:
A review of David L. Ulin’s “The Lost Art of Reading: Books and Resistance in a Troubled Time.”
Resistance? Reading? Books? Lost Art? Sign me up for this reminder to make time to read and reflect.
As I read “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead”, the narrator (and author) pulled me into their pastoral world shaped by the narrator’s own eccentricities. Living in near isolation during the winter months in a small mountain village, the narrator describes her routines and astrological-based conjectures on murders now plaguing the village. She also talks of William Blake, teaching children, and a conspiracy that the animals are rising up against people.
In a good year, I’ll read about 25 books. One year, I set a goal to read 50 books. Another year, I set a goal to limit my reading to women authors. And in each of those challenges, I came up short.
During the year I set out to read 50 books, I learned about Jorge Luis Borges and his masterful short stories. I grabbed a copy of “Collected Fictions” (link to WorldCat).
Diving in, I was looking at the table of …
The trees lean in, listening to us; Once hungry for our breath, now breathing in the gluttonous excesses, these vigilant giants provide hope. Oak, poplar, and pine, they don’t need us. We need them.
With sun beneath them and the warmth of the day’s meal fading, they exhale, sustaining us in their quiet contemplation. They see two worlds in motion: those that move in and out of sight each day, and those that grow up alongside them.