The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time

By

“And that is why people think that computers don’t have minds, and why people think that their brains are special, and different from computers. Because people can see the screen inside their head and they think there is someone in their head sitting there looking at the screen, like Captain Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation sitting in his captains seat looking at a big screen. And they think that this person is their special human mind, which is called a homunculus, which means little man. And they think that computers don’t have this homunculus.

But this homunculus is just another picture on the screen in their heads. And when the homunculus is on the screen in their heads (because the person is thinking about the homunculus) there is another bit of the brain watching the screen. And when the person thinks about this part of the brain (the bit that is watching the homunculus on the screen) they put this bit of the brain on the screen and there is another bit of the brain watching the screen. But the brain doesn’t see this happen because it is like the eye flicking from one place to another and people are blind inside their heads when they do the changing from thinking about one thing to thinking about another.

And this is why people’s brains are like computers. And it’s not because they are special but because they have to keep turning off for fractions of a second while the screen changes. And because there is something they can’t see people think it has to be special, because people always think there is something special about what they can’t see, like the dark side of the moon, or the other side of a black hole, or in the dark when they wake up at night and they’re scared.

Also people think they’re not computers because they have feelings and computers don’t have feelings. But feelings are just having a picture on the screen in your head of what is going to happen tomorrow or next year, or what might have happened instead of what did happen, and if it is a happy picture they smile and if is a sad picture they cry.” Pgs 118 - 119

Book 44

The imperfectionists

By Tom Rachman

Book 43 

No ordinary Joes : the extraordinary true story of four submariners in war and love and life

By Larry

Book 42

Displaced Persons

Lot’s wife: “To look back was to turn into a tall mound of nothing but grief, dry grief. Not a punishment but a natural consequence. She turned into salt because those who looked back turned into salt. Not a punishment. A fact.” Pg 72

“Lola had studied genocide at Yale University, years ago. What Chaim would not discuss at home, she discussed in class, read in books, wrote in papers. Sometimes, when she was home for vacation, he would steal a look at them.” Pg 281

No Ordinary Joes: The Extraordinary True Story of Four Submariners in War and Love and Live

Captain Fitzgerald “York leaned over to look, and read: ‘Keep your peckers up, men.’ It had been written in blood by Captain Fitzgerald.” Pg 167

On the theme of survival and just getting through the past, not ever being able to shake it, one of the guys from the story said so much. You can’t never get it over you just keep getting through it.

By Ghita Schwarz



Book 41

The Cave Man

By Xiaoda Xiao

Solitary confinement for nine months has its effects on an individual that stretch outside of the prison walls and beyond that deprived space. In this book, Xiao explores the complexity of gaining your freedom from imprisonment with the necessary illusion that you are putting that part of your life behind you. But is that possible? Can we ever free ourselves of what we have experienced in the past or do our experiences sometimes haunt us, propelling their painful reminders into the future? What of the dreams that willed one through the experience of imprisonment and isolation? Even they can be questioned or more confounding, simply dissolved in the day to day realities of existence. 

Book 40

The Madonnas of Leningrad

By Debra Dean

This book was recommended by both my parents.

"But now I know, while beauty lives

So long will live my power to grieve."

- Alexander Pushkin

This story moves between Russia during WWII and a modern elderly couple, one of whom is struggling with Alzheimer's disease. It is at once a story about that couple and how they survived the war and how they are currently struggling with how to survive this disease. 

It is a beautiful story seeped in rich descriptions of art, detailed history of a harrowing time in history and a simple story of love and age.

"The bond that had first brought them together as children existed whether they spoke of it or not, the bond of survivors. Here in America, a relentlessly foolish and optimistic country, what they knew drew them closer together. She was his country and he hers. They were inseperable.

Until now. She is leaving him, not all at once, which would be painful enough, but in a wrenching succession of separations. One moment she is here, and then she is gone again, and each journey takes her a little farther from his reach. He cannot follow her, and he wonders where she goes when she leaves." Pg 119

"No one weeps anymore, or if they do, it is over small things, inconsequential moments that catch them unprepared. What is left that is heartbreaking? Not death: death is ordinary. What is heartbreaking is the sight of a single gull lifting effortlessly from a street lamp. Its wings unfurl like silk scarves against the mauve sky, and Marina hears the rustle of its feathers. What is heartbreaking is that there is still beauty in the world." Pg. 161

Book 39

Just Kids

By Patti Smith

I never listened to Patti Smith. Until after reading this book. I love her version of "Hey Joe" and "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (the extent of my post-book read you tube search for Patti Smith).

I loved this book. I loved her writing. What I really loved, was such a beautiful account of a deep and true friendship. This book is based on her long-standing friendship with Robert Maplethorpe; a friendship where each acted at once and alternately muse and artist. 


"I was both scattered and stymied, surrounded by unfinished songs and abandoned poems. I would go as far as I could and hit a wall, my own imagined limitations. And then I met a fellow who gave me his secret, and it was pretty simple. When you hit a wall, just kick it in." Pg. 170


"Robert took areas of dark human consent and made them into art. He worked without apology, investing the homosexual with the grandeur, a presence that was wholly male without sacrificing feminine grace. He was not looking to make political statement or an announcement of his evolving sexual persuasion. He was presenting something new, something not seen or explored as he saw it and explored it. Robert sought to elevate aspects of male experience, to imbue homosexuality with mysticism. As Cocteau said of a Genet poem, 'His obscenity is never obscene.'" Pg. 199


"Why can't I write something that would awake the dead? That pursuit is what burns most deeply. I got over the loss of his desk and chair, but never the desire to produce a string of words more precious than the emeralds of Cortes. Yet I have a lock of his hair, a handful of his ashes, a box of his letters, a goatskin tambourine. And in the folds of faded violet tissue a necklace, two violet plaques etched in Arabic, strung with black and silver threads, given to me by the boy who loved Michelangelo." Pg 279

Book 38