Category Archives: Books

The Warmth of Flowers

Posted on February 15, 2021 by hessd

We are having a power outage here at the moment.  I have been going back and forth on the question of whether I should write a little note about Little Dorrit.  I get used to the power of Charles Dickens’ … Continue reading →

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Discontented Thoughts

Posted on October 29, 2020 by hessd

Here is a passage I found in Middlemarch this week.  There is not the slightest indication that the author, George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) or the character who thought them, intended these remarks to be taken in a political way, … Continue reading →

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Living without stories of our own

Posted on September 2, 2020 by hessd

There are some things novelist Neal Stephenson just does better than anyone else.  This post is about two of them.  The first is that he builds these thick amazingly dense alternative worlds—worlds with their own history and people and languages.  … Continue reading →

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Boredom: A Sermon to Myself

Posted on August 18, 2020 by hessd

Since this is a sermon and since I come from a tradition where sermons are, nominally at least, based on texts, I have a text to offer.  This comes from Neal Stephenson’s Anathem and it is said to be a … Continue reading →

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Metabolizing the minutes

Posted on November 29, 2019 by hessd

Neaera H. It used to be that I stayed up till all hours and still felt time-starved, none of the day seemed to be metabolized into living.  Now the minutes make me strong. Here is my text for the day.  … Continue reading →

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When meaning gets thin

Posted on November 19, 2019 by hessd

I have been working for some years now on Ursula LeGuin’s book, The Farthest Shore. There is a lot to like about the book. It is the third of her EarthSea Trilogy. [1] I liked it first because it was … Continue reading →

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Shared “reality”

Posted on September 27, 2019 by hessd

The Crucial Text Most of the material below has been taken from Neal Stephenson’s novel Seven Eves.  My strongest interest in this small slice of the novel is the expression with which it ends.  It is: “consensual historical hallucination.” I … Continue reading →

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Neaera H. comes to life

Posted on November 11, 2018 by hessd

In 1975, five years after ending the series featuring Frances the Badger, Russell Hoban wrote Turtle Diary. Turtle Diary is a book for adults—not “an adult book”—about William G and Neaera H., two losers who, in freeing some turtles from … Continue reading →

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All the “Yes” you will ever need

Posted on June 5, 2018 by hessd

I have been thinking this year about the Resurrection.  There is no way to avoid it, really, because at the First Presbyterian Church of Portland, Oregon (hereafter, “my church”) Easter is not a “day,” it is a “season.”  So on … Continue reading →

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“I love her shoes”

Posted on April 18, 2018 by hessd

I owe the sentiment to Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford) of The West Wing who is talking about a potential nominee for the Supreme Court, Evelyn Baker Lang (Glenn Close). [1] He means that he likes everything about her as a … Continue reading →

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