An update for the New Quarterly's Who's Reading What page.
I'm reading For the Time Being by Annie Dillard. I imprinted on Dillard -- Teaching a Stone to Talk -- when I was 12, and always find her amazing as I waddle along behind her. This is even more amazing than usual. For the Time Being is about clouds, sand, human birth defects, the clay soldiers of the Emperor Qin, Teillard de Chardin (a hero of mine) and the problem of pain and evil. This book makes me want to revive the older meaning of the word "awful."
Tonight I read this: "Twenty-three million of us are refugees. Sixteen million of us live in Cairo." Somehow I think of the city of refugees, where the buildings are made of suitcases, and a thousand langauges are spoken. (I think Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities -- sometime in Junior High -- also pressed in early and deep.)
My dad gave me both those books when I was way too little for them. They didn't make me strange -- I was already strange. But they did change me.
