Review: Purity

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From Purity, by Jonathan Franzen

When Pip was very young, vague stories had satisfied her, but by the time she was eleven her questions had grown so insistent that her mother agreed to tell her the 'full' story. Once upon a time, she said, she'd had a different name and a different life, in a state that wasn't California, and she'd married a man who — as she discovered only after Pip was born — had a propensity to violence."

This is the story of Pip (Purity) Tyler, a young adult with huge student loan debt and unpromising career prospects, and her search for who she is. It's also the story of her mother, a reclusive, fragile free spirit. It's the story of Andreas Wolf, an East German who finds his life-calling as a trafficker of state secrets after the fall of the Berlin Wall leaves him adrift in the world. It's the story of Tom Aberant, a middle-aged American who married young and became a journalist instead of a writer. It takes a long time to give each character his full due. In other words, it's a long novel. Is it a good novel?

After the jump, my review.

POTD: Agra Food Cart

From 2016 02 05 Agra

Today's photo-of-the-day is from Agra, India. Food carts are ubiquitous in India. This one didn't have any food, but I still found it photogenic.

Joe Garagiola, RIP

The news came yesterday that baseball great Joe Garagiolo had died at age 90. He had a middling career as a catcher for the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1940s and 1950s and a long career as a baseball broadcaster. My personal memory of Joe Garagiola was his broadcast of Game One of the 1988 World Series between the Oakland A's and the Los Angeles Dodgers. That photo of Kirk Gibson above is the reason I'll always remember that game and Joe Garagiola.

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Today's photo-of-the-day is from Delhi's Qutub Minar, the tallest brick minaret in the world. I was sightseeing when a man asked if he could take a picture of his son with me. I readily agreed. After the photo, other kids crowded in, wanting their photos taken, too. Before I knew it, I was the centerpiece of what looked like a class photo. (I'm the one in the middle on one knee...heck, no one needs help picking me out of that good-looking lineup.) Good times.

Who Cares About Urban Trees?

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