From Are Bookstores Just a Waste of Space? (New Yorker):
Two-thirds of the books released by the top-ten trade publishers sell fewer than a thousand copies, and less than four per cent sell more than twenty thousand.
I knew that bestselling authors dominate book sales, but these are humbling statistics for anyone contemplating the Herculean effort of writing and publishing a first book.
Currently reading: Somehow by Anne Lamott 📚
Finished reading: The Public Library by Robert Dawson 📚
Currently reading: The Public Library by Robert Dawson 📚
Currently reading: Table for Two by Amor Towles 📚
Finished reading: The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis 📚
Who knew a book about Chess could be so intense! This was a great, great book. ★★★★★
Currently reading: The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis 📚
Finished reading: City of Glass by Paul Auster 📚
A strange meta-detective novel with an unreliable narrator who slowly dissolves into insanity. I followed maybe half of the literary and Biblical allusions. Not at all what I expected, but oddly satisfying.
Currently reading: The Age of Louis XIV by Will Durant 📚
Finished reading: The Age of Reason Begins by Will Durant 📚
My quest to read all eleven volumes of Durant’s Story of Civilization continues. Volume VII has returned to the shelf with hundreds of scribbles and notes and many, many exclamation marks. If you think the world is crazy now, you ought to revisit these darker times of wholesale human butchery, religious wars and inquisitions. This has been an eye-opening and hair-raising experience.
Finished reading: Here is New York by E. B. White
Finished reading: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver 📚
Finished reading: Move on Down to Mexico by 📚
Finished reading: Real Tigers by Mick Herron 📚
Currently reading: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver 📚
Currently reading: Real Tigers by Mick Herron 📚
Finished reading: You Like It Darker by Stephen King 📚
This is a wonderful collection of short stories and novellas by our generation’s master storyteller. I enjoyed every piece, but particularly liked Rattlesnakes, a sequel of sorts to Cujo. It’s meditation on the persistent grief of losing a child masquerading as ghost story. I’ve read most of Stephen King’s shorter works. This newest one tops them all.
Finished reading: Dead Lions by Mick Herron 📚
My second Slow Horses book and just as good as the first. There were a few more departures in this book frm the TV version, which kept me guessing. Herron is a talented writer.
I’ve seen so many beautiful postcards and photos of Crater Lake over my life. None of them, including this one I took today from the crater’s edge, capture the true beauty of this place. Yowza.
We’re one week into a six-week circuit from Arizona through Nevada and Oregon to Washington State, then down the coast through Oregon and California. We’re staying primarily in National Parks in our little self-contained RV, but we’re not rushing: three days at each stop. We’re at 6,000 feet elevation here at Crater Lake, but my lungs seem to fill more completely as I walk through these ancient woods. We’ve been in the Southwest now for over two years, and I didn’t realize how much I missed the trees, and streams and green of the Northwest. I’ve traveled a lot, but almost all of it was point A to point B: airports, conference rooms, dinners, homogenous hotel rooms, and jet lag. Did I really see all those cities?
Going slow, stopping often. This is the way to travel.
