Some highlights

So I stopped in the new used bookstore -- The Golden Fig -- at Carr Mill Mall today after meeting with a couple of prospects at the Open Eye Cafe. It apparently opened last Friday and appears to be pretty well kitted out with books. I of course had to snag a couple to express my support for the welcome addition: The Plot by Jean Korelitz -- whom we knew back in Princeton and who had never given us a true warm fuzzy as a person, but this book has gotten very good reviews and one can't be catty forever. Also The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen. I had read the book's jacket somewhere else, probably at Flyleaf, and thought it looked good. I recently realized that I had been reading a few too many books by and about white males. I remember reading how this UNC grad who had written a book about teaching in the Chicago City Schools wrote that he had gone a number of years without reading anything written by white people and I have to admit there's a certain logic to it. After all, it's not like I have difficulty wrapping my head around how white males think. Korelitz is white enough, though at least she's a woman.

Anyhoo, for these two books it was fortunate to have my briefcase with me so I could get the books upstairs easily with Mary being none the wiser. I have few vices, but not none.

Returning to the theme of things white guys do, I am currently burning the first fire of the season here in the at the old abode. It is cold, it is time. Moreover, I have a great abundance of kindling here in the yard that needs to be burnt. Also some limbs that have come down and I have broken into burnable portions by whacking them upside various trees and rocks here in the backyard. They seem to be burning nicely, so they must not be too green.

With Graham returning home for the Thanksgiving holiday it will be a good time to go over to my neighbor Scott's house and steal some of the surplus wood he gets out of trees and branches that come down in his yard. It's about 100 yards to carry armloads of wood, a good upper body workout for Graham, who remains on the lean side.