What is Life?

I'm three-quarters of the way through Philip Roth's "American Pastoral" and I came across an interesting passage...

"The final question assigned to the class was "What is life?" Merry's answer was something her father and mother chuckled over that night. According to Merry, while the other students labored busily away with their phony deep thoughts, she -- after an hour of thinking at her desk -- wrote a single, unplatitudinous declarative sentence: 'Life is just a short period of time during which you are alive.'"

Odd Place to Find Actual Literature

How did one of my favorite books ever end up in the Dollar Store next to Sarah Palin and the Bible?I went ahead and bought the darn thing. I'll give it to somebody deserving.

Unfortunate Coincidence

This Frank McCourt is giving this Frank McCourt a bad name. One man has left his team in ashes. The other wrote Angela's Ashes.

Go Down, Moses.

Just bought a paperback copy of Faulkner's dense tome Go Down, Moses (for three bucks!) at the used bookstore down the street from the office and the curmudgeonly proprietor of the store (who seems to hate his customers but on occasion gives me free books) took one look at it and exclaimed:

"Oh Jeez, You're in for it readin' that!"

International Buy a Koran Day

I understand that the people behind "International Burn a Koran Day" are just a bunch of undereducated, rednecked, allegedly Christian idiots, but I'd say in counterbalance to their stupid, incendiary protest we should all go out and buy a Koran on 9/11.

Join me in celebrating "International Buy a Koran Day."

Let's show the haters they can never win.

The Tender Bar

"We went there for everything we needed. We went there when thirsty, of course, and when hungry, and when dead tired. We went there when happy, to celebrate, and when sad, to sulk. We went there after weddings and funerals, for something to settle our nerves, and always for a shot of courage just before. We went there when we didn't know what we needed, hoping someone would tell us. We went there when looking for love, or sex, or trouble, or for someone who had gone missing, because sooner or later everyone turned up there. Most of all we went there when we needed to be found."
--J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar

[That's the touching opening paragraph to Moehringer's The Tender Bar. This amazing book tells the tale of a simple neighborhood bar and all the people who love it. Moehringer is the man who co-wrote Andre Agassi's autobiography.]

Classic Overbuild

In the parlance of the real estate appraisal industry, this is what's called an over-improvement...

...the [George W.] Bush Library [is] a 225,000 square foot affair that will sit on a 22-acre site to be completed in 2013, at a cost of between $200 and $500 million.

Seems a little on the large side to hold two stinking books. [1] [2]

The Beginning of the End

A new book discusses the exact moment the world would change forever:

The second plane, as no one needs to be told, was the one that hit the World Trade Center’s second tower. And it was the one which, as Martin Amis found himself writing within a few days of the event, utterly annihilated the hope that what was happening that September morning might have been nothing more than a terrible, tragic accident: “That was the defining moment. Until then, America thought she was witnessing nothing more serious than the worst aviation disaster in history; now she had a sense of the fantastic vehemence ranged against her. ... That second plane looked eagerly alive, and galvanized with malice, and wholly alien. For those thousands in the South Tower, the second plane meant the end of everything. For us, its glint was the worldflash of a coming future.”