the book club: September 2005 Archives

I've been thinking about this science fiction book by John Barnes. It impressed me when I read it with a sharp clarity about a possible future. The storm he describes wipes out most of Mexico and the Southwest U.S. - bigger than what we've seen so far but the double-whammy of Katrina and Rita begins to approximate the environmental disaster that forms the central event of Barnes' grim depiction.

When I started this book by Vikram Seth on Srinivas' recommendation last spring I thought he was torturing me with an unrequited love story. I've picked it up again - trying to squeeze in (out?) the teensiest bit of pleasure reading in the midst of one of my most intensive work periods ever. Turns out there's a whole late-deafened thing going on....the process is described well I think:

"It was a strange transition from the world of sound to the world of deafness - not soundlessness, really, because I do hear all sorts of noises, only usually they're the wrong ones" (193). And this commentary on lipreading: " . . . you will never be able to learn from the lips alone if someone has lost her glove or her love" (194).