In The Washington Post, Steven Wright wrote about @CanYouPetTheDog and pettable pups in video games (and yes, you can pet the dog in this article). I’ve watched this gif 700,000 times today and I’m not done yet.
“Bad Dog,” a New Yorker story by Anna Heyward, is kind of about a time she loved a dog but couldn’t find a way to live with him, and kind of about how people and animals live together or fail to, and kind of about how there are no good or bad dogs but what we make. It’s not easy to summarize without making it sound sort of boring, but it isn’t.
And finally in Haines, Alaska, recently the scene of the great Hammer Museum heist, Shannon Stevens learned the number one rule of outhouses which is: ALWAYS LOOK IN THE HOLE. There is a bear involved. Always look in the hole.
If you subscribe, the comments are open. I have two questions today:
How are you? No, but, how are you really?
What was the best novel you read recently?
Happy Friday, everyone. Somehow, you made it.
Friday Open Thread: Who's the Good Boy
I should probably answer my own questions! I am like, alternating between hard pandemic wall and "basically fine?" Several things in my work life are changing for the better this month and we got some very good financial news this week, so all in all, I'm hanging in there.
Novels! I finally read some Le Carré, and "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold" blew my mind, it was so good. "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" was not as good but I still liked it. I read a few more and didn't love them. C. Pam Zhang's "How Much of These Hills Is Gold" was amazing. And what got me through most of the pandemic were Andrzej Sapkowski's "Witcher" novels. They're not... GOOD, but there is something good about them. I don't know how to put it other than that. They're written very strangely and there's a lot of truly terrible dialogue and excess drama, but at heart there's something deeply human about the characters that makes them work.
I am absolutely falling apart. Thank you for asking. Books?! In this economy