Later.

Okay, I just finished Song for Night by Chris Abani (see below posts) and holy shit it was good, in the way that only books that really bum you the fuck out about being human can be.

That is how I should blurb it: "It's great, if you're into the kind of book that eviscerates you and fills the empty space with something like the black tar lava of existential loneliness and hopeless despair."

Only, that isn't really accurate. It is a testament to the skill of Abani's writing that I don't really feel that way. I'm heartbroken, yeah, but it is more complex then that. I won't say anything cliche, like, that I have any hope left, but rather, maybe that I have been reminded of the size and scope and depth of what our humanity can suffer. I wish I could make everyone alive read this book. 

So go get on that. You'll thank me/hate me later.

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A Little Bit.

So I'm still sitting by the pool, still reading this book (see below post), and in case you're ever curious and you happen to have the first edition of Song for Night, published by Akashic Books, printed in Canada in 2007, the one with the picture on the cover of a boy casually holding a Russian-made RPG-7, then turn to page 86 because that is the first time in a really really long time that a book has made me cry a little.

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The Blast.

I am right now sitting by the pool in weather far too pleasant for March and doing reading for school. I am reading a book called Song for Night by Chris Abani. It is about a mute African child soldier who works as a clearer of land mines. So, you know, just some light reading. I just got to this sentence, which I love despite the fact it is just awful in its pragmatism:

"The rule of thumb is that if you hear the explosion, you survived the blast."

That's life, isn't it?

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