purchased for our next bookclub book -- I better start reading -- we're supposed to be halfway through by Saturday!

Finished today after bookclub. More later.

Journal update 6/25/2006:

I've done it again. Waited too many months to write my review. I have a ton of pages folded down, but no marks in the book, and am feeling lazy. Let's see what I have to say . . .

oh dear. I need to get this book off my desk and pass it on. I promised it to someone a milliondybillion months ago.

I realized that it's really hard to write a single journal entry on a book that's been discussed at book club. I need to start writing notes each week after we meet. So that's a fine resolution for future books, but what do I write here?

Well first, that this book grew on me, and I liked it more as it went on. Second, that I think part of what makes it a classic is that it would get better and the reader would get more out of it with each reading.

I'm looking at some of the pages I folded down and trying to remember what I wanted to write on. Here's a passage I know I wanted to note because of how accurately it portrayed the way I felt when my dad died. The writer is referring to the recent death of a loved one:

My departure for Ingolstadt, which had been deferred by these events, was now again determined upon. I obtained from my father a respite of some weeks. It appeared to me sacrilege so soon to leave the repose, akin to death, of the house of mourning, and to rush into the thick of life. I was new to sorrow, but it did not the less alarm me. I was unwilling to quit the sight of those that remained to me. . .

This is exactly how I felt when my dad died -- I couldn't believe I was expected to go back to work; that people would actually ask me how to use their computers (I was a trainer at the time), and that I couldn't just stay in the house with the rest of my family for a very long time. This writer beautifully puts into the words the way real people feel.

Another passage I marked:
A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs.
I think many people decide to have children with these types of thoughts in their minds. They might not say them out loud, but are most assuredly thinking them. Again, a great commentary on the human condition.

I can't think of anything more intelligent to add, but I do think I will re-read a copy of this book again some day.

(pictured -- my dad with my oldest nephew)