Drawing in

 

"The nights are drawing in." That's an old English saying, meaning the days are getting shorter.

Good reading weather. I'm looking forward to Irving's new novel, hot off the press. The last full price hard cover novel I purchased was Irving’s "The Last Chairlift," and it was a big slog at 912 pages. 

Well, hope springs eternal. Supposedly Irving "gets back to his New England roots" in this one, whatever that means. I've been an Irving fan since the 1970's, and during the pandemic, reread just about everything he wrote. The violence (and downright cruelty) in some of those early books took me by surprise once again. Irving is famous for the long "story within the story" plot, which drives some readers crazy.

I haven't read any "Esther" reviews yet and don't intend to until I finish it. There won't be a publicity tour either. John Irving, longtime resident of Vermont, lives in Toronto.  Quote from a recent interview he did with the NYT:  

“I could not, would not, in good conscience go to my birth country,” Mr. Irving said, “when there is such an authoritarian bully in the White House, and when the craven Republicans in the House and the U.S. Senate are complicit in their silence.”

OK then. Still opinionated at age 83.

Not much news here, just one atmospheric river after the next drenching the northwest. I haven't been to ukulele for a few weeks but will go today, out of practice of course, but no one cares or notices. In the winter we meet at The Bridge restaurant on a covered outdoor patio, where the temperature is something between warm and cold.