Kroe: Anatomy

@ Leasle:

Should you decide to drop that dreadful (that's an exaggeration and a piece of prejudice, as I haven't read it myself, but you couldn't remember reading it in the first place, so it couldn't possibly be very good, now could it?) North & South novel - have a go at Philip Roth's The Anatomy Lesson. Read it, love it, and take your time taking in that final sentence. Best reading experience for me in a long, long time. If Middlemarch, The Mists and The Bone People (as well as Gut Symmetries, but that was slightly too strange for your tastes) made the short list of my teens, this one's most assuredly at the top of my personal roaring twenties' list.

We've established that I never get enough of Mika, Mr. Mercury, and, of course, perfection incarnate Mr. Federer (five more matches to go, my slicing, spinning, gliding love!), but this Roth fellow - whom I 'm not so sure you'll actually like, but I want you to read him anyway (and to return the favour I'll have another look at that bloody mess of a dissertation) - I am completely in awe of. The outrage, the puns, that final sentence - and everything in between, really. Wow.

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Don't really have any words of wisdom for the rest of you.

I do have a request, though: please send your loving thoughts to the people in Greece, and I mean all of them.

Their beautiful, beautiful country, which they invariably love (and sometimes scorn) with unmatched dedication, ablaze all summer... And now, with all the casualties and the historic sites burning away... It's horrific. Just horrific.

My mum says over the phone that she's crying all the time, Maria's heart is bleeding, and I just know that everyone over there is incosolably sad.

I think about them for a minute, and I realise (yet again) that art and words are cheap, undeserving of our awe. Nevertheless, they are the best that I have and know of, once you're ready again to be consoled.

For now, I can only say that I hope my darling girls and Marioula take care of themselves and their loved ones.

Axxx