Not quitting yet.

Skippsed a month and a half. But I've been reading a lot and went to a book event yesterday. Finished several books lately---OUR COUNTRY FRIENDS by Gary Shteyngart. I saw him speak yesterday. It's the first novel that really deals with the world of 2020. He does it in a way where the pandemic doesn't dominate the novel---it's not solely about the pandemic but the characters are all living in our times. He said something interesting during his talk, he said basically anything written from now on that is set in contemporary times is going to be about the pandemic, comparing it to novels written during WWII. d Even if they weren't war novels, the war hung over them. It's a complicated novel, with a lot of characters and relationships, but I think he handles it admirably. He's been one of my favorite writers of the last decade, beginning with SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY, then the memoir LITTLE FAILURE and his previous novel LAKE SUCCESS. I've also enjoyed his earlier work, ABSURDISTAN, though I don't think I've read his debut novel THE RUSSIAN DEBUTANTE'S HANDBOOK. He is very funny in person. I also enjoy his magazine writing, he had a recent piece in THE NEW YORKER about his botched cirumcision that caused a lot of consternation.

Willy Vlautin is a local writer whom I htink I first read during my Great Recession Book Binge that is chronicled in the early years of this blog. His most recent work THE NIGHT ALWAYS COMES, has a little too much in the way of Portland fan service [there seems to be a local reference in every other sentence.] But his stories catch like wildfire and just about everything I've read by him I've read in no more than a day or two. I just picked up a novel this afternoon from a couple of years ago, DON'T SKIP OUT ON ME which I think I'm probably going to finish tonight. He says he likes to write about broken people and that's what he does. I feel so bad for the characters but I can't wait to see what happens to them next.

I just finished BEWILDERMENT, the new Richard Powers novel, and it's probably one of the saddest things I've read in a while--I'm afraid that it may be our future.

As far as my own future, I don't really know what it holds. My job continues to be a source of unhappiness, and I'm looking elsewhere, but who knows what might happen. My personal life is becoming just wake up, work, read, look at stuff on my phone, go to bed. On weekends, more reading and looking at the phone. The book event was a rare outing, though I'm starting to go to the movies occasionally with a group of people, but I don't see much changing in my life. I'm a rock at the bottom of a stagnant pond.