1. A little before 9:00 I leapt into the Camry and soared over the 4th of July Pass and on into the Greater Spokane Valley and Spokane Proper metropolitan area and parked in the cell phone lot, awaiting Debbie's arrival from Washington, DC and the Salt Lake City.
Debbie's travels progressed without a single setback and by about 10:45 she was in the Camry's luxurious passenger seat and, by about midnight, Debbie and Gibbs reunited.
2. As I read the copious detail she develops and the many angles Sierra Crane Murdoch tells Yellow Bird from, my impression is that she wants to bring to life as much of the complexity of Lissa Yellow Bird's character and the realities of the oil boom on the Ft. Berthold Indian Reservation as possible.
When Leah Sottile included this book in the book list she posted, she commented that Yellow Bird was both a work of superb journalism and "literary as hell".
To me it's Murdoch's commitment to detail and complexity and to developing several story lines simultaneously that makes her book read like a novel to me.
The novel is the most flexible of literary genres. A novelist can transport readers in time and place, sometimes turning on a dime and can tell stories from multiple points of view, to mention just a couple of features of the unrestricted nature of the novel.
Sierra Crane Murdoch's books moves its readers back and forth in time, tells its stories from different perspectives, and employs a variety of ways to tell this book's story.
I enjoy all of this a lot. Yes, it requires me to be patient some times and it can be tiring, at least for me, to keep the several story lines and persons in this book straight.
I'm good with that. It stimulates me. As does the beauty of Murdoch's writing.
And, lastly, one of the deeply satisfying payoffs of Murdoch's commitment to detail and fullness is that Lissa Yellow Bird develops into as contradictory, complex, maddening, and admirable a character as I've ever encountered, whether in fiction or non-fiction.
3. That little jar of lemon pesto I bought a while back at Trader Joe's tasted pretty good on the leftover Trader Joe's rice medley combined in the same bowl with some leftover Trader Joe's mashed cauliflower. I also boiled a helping of penne pasta and put lemon pesto on it and enjoyed it.
I'll be heading into Spokane on Monday for an early morning blood draw and I'll return to Trader Joe's and see if I want to restock some of the items we've used or if I want to make some different mad, just for fun purchases.
For me, it's a fun way to shop for food on occasion: just buy what seems fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment