Burns

Money to burn, headline from foxnews.com: “Crypto investor pays over $6 million for viral artwork — then eats it.” Photos from Google Images:

Born in Pittsburgh in 1980, her immigrant Chinese parents scientists, Celeste Ng earned a Bachelors’ at Harvard and an MFA at Michigan. When she was ten, the family moved to the affluent community of Shaker Heights, Ohio, the setting of her second novel, Little Fires Everywhere. Published in 2017, set in the late ’90s, it’s the story of a vagabond female photographer, her 14-year-old daughter, and the rich family of six from whom it rents a house, and for whom the woman does housekeeping and cooking. The title refers not only to an actual conflagration but the problems of humans, the conflicts. It is thoughtful and grounded, nothing straining credulity, the type of work I enjoy most. The characters are well drawn, not stereotypes. I was glad the narrative isn’t a takedown of the city, just outside Cleveland, described by the author as her “beloved” hometown. It is a manicured place where order and comfort are cherished. Although almost exclusively white, it welcomes minorities. As someone who is pro-life, I’m always uncomfortable reading about abortion, although it is a fact of life, millions performed in America each year, a legitimate topic for exploration I’ve covered in my own work, which has a pro-life bias. Ng’s has a pro-abortion bias, although she depicts the act as far from benign. I won’t reveal anything else about the plot. I cherry pick this excerpt: “…You could see it every time you looked at her: layered in her face was the baby she had been and the child she had become and the adult she would grow up to be, and you saw them simultaneously, like a 3-D image…” Although the prose and dialog are rock solid, the novel is a bit overwritten, the 336 pages of the large paperback edition, whose print is small, reading like more. 182,000+ users at Amazon have rated Little Fires Everywhere, forging to a consensus of 4.4 on a scale of five. I’ll go with 3.75. Seven years after its release, it is still selling well at Bezos’ behemoth. An eight-part miniseries adaptation starring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington aired in 2020. Ng has had stories published in literary magazines of note and has won several awards. She has two other novels in print. She is a mom of one. Kudos, Madam. Photo from Google Images:

From FN: “Jewish children, teens violently attacked in London: ‘streets are no longer safe’.” Attention Parliament.

There was enough sunshine for the Anti-Inflation Book Shop to operate today, despite the cold. My thanks to the kind folks who made purchases. Here’s what sold: nine Christmas novels, one kids’ pictorial on Hannukah; a beautiful graphic novel of Homer’s The Odyssey; Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown; The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media; A Thought Of Summer: Your Daily Personal Notebook & Journal of Your Thoughts, Poems, Ideas, Plans and Dreams by B. Fun; The Wedding Singer (1998) and The Lord of the Rings (2001) on DVD. The highlight of the session was the return of Occupy Jack, who recently had extensive heart surgery. He’s living in an old, mini school bus he bought and renovated. He’ll soon be driving down to FLA for the winter.

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