The End of Another Year

I think it's back in 2005 that I started this blog without a clear idea of where it might go. I got a lot of fun out of it at first, had some followers and commenters on it; maybe that was before we all started spending so much time on Facebook, me included. I remember looking at where looks were coming from, some around the world, Europe and Asia and all over the US. I got a kick out of that, knowing that people in other places had an interest in what I was posting. Things petered out. But there's no reason not to write, right? It's been a pretty good year. Taught a class for DSU this fall semester in "AI in Literature and Media." It went pretty well; I got good feedback in person from the people in the class, and who cares about the surveys they took. The wife and I traveled to Finland, Estonia, and Latvia this summer, having a good time once again far from home. Our Estonia time was mostly with a couple of great hosts, Jack and Sirje, who used to live in Madison and are now in Florida. They showed us around that remarkable country and gave us an idea of what the people there had been through. Beautiful places, all three countries, with a bully of a neighbor to their east. I managed to do most of a porch rebuild this summer, though winter came on before I could finish the porch rails. Still, it looks much better. This spring I sold the house I'd worked on for a year and a half. That was cool, a nice profit. I edited another issue of Pasque Petals, the poetry magazine of the South Dakota State Poetry Society, SDSPS, and we poets traveled around the state reading and hosting poetry gatherings. That was especially rewarding. In all, a pretty good year. I hope yours was too, and your next one better.

The Secret History

 My latest book was The Secret History, by Donna Tartt, which I finished last week--and then took up Bill Bryson's In a Sunburned Country, a completely different kind of book.  More about that later I hope.  

Tartt is the author of The Goldfinch, and both of these books reveal an imagination by the author that goes into such detail the lives of the characters are fleshed out in such detail you can see them walking the streets.  

I was a little disappointed by the ending of The Secret History, but Tartt takes the reader on a spectacular ride through a little Vermont town and its liberal arts college.  The students there, who make up the cast, are insulated by the wealth of their families, which allows them to indulge in ways most of us only imagine--and generally frown upon.  One exception is the narrator, who (like Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby) is an outsider, a student there on scholarship, not wealth.  This character, Richard, is taken in by a group of wealthy students, and he hides his western, middle-class background from them.  

This mix of students, and the faculty member who dotes on them, are ripe for trouble, and Tartt gives it to them in spades.  Though it sometimes left me marveling--and wondering--about the inclusion of some detailed asides, it's a great read, and at about 600 pages, will keep a reader engaged for a nice long time.