This is over 800 pages. That's too big to just plow through. I'm reading five pages every night. I'm up to where they wrote the Constitution and then the First Amendment. Jill Lepore makes it live.

The Times reviewed Ann Petry's two novels today. One was written in 1946; the other in 1953. It's an impressive review and an impressively-written review. You can get it online if you didn't already buy the hardcopy paper. This part about Petry's life. Jesus, you say to yourself. 'Her family was one of four black households in small-town Connecticut and faced routine harassment. She was ordered to leave a public beach as a child, and pelted with stones as she walked to school, where white teachers refused to instruct her.'

The just-came-out-today New York Magazine cover of 'Mayor Pete' who announced yesterday that he's running. I'm interested in the phenomenon of Pete. He's most of the talk right now. All the print and all the radio and all the TV love him. The other candidates must envy it. Does he present too perfectly maybe? Maybe. Could it get annoying? It could. I'm still a Bernie guy. We'll see what happens. 

Milkman won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in England and it won the National Book Critic Award here. My neighborhood library responded appropriately. If my or your library doesn't have the book you want they'll get it for you. You can make your request online if you want. It's fun to order that way if it's midnight and you've just read about a book that excites you.

'Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.' 
― Beverly Cleary

Walt Whitman exhibit at the big library:

Two hundred years after his birth, Walt Whitman remains one of America's most influential writers, arguably our national poet. His life's work, Leaves of Grass, is a perennial best-seller, and Whitman himself has attained the status of cultural icon, his name nearly a byword for notions of inclusivity, equality, sensuality, and the value of the individual.

Drawing from collections across the Library, Walt Whitman: America's Poet examines many of the individuals, beliefs, and experiences that shaped Whitman's work while also noting his literary legacy and continuing cultural impact.

March 29, 2019 - July 27, 2019.
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III Gallery