Book report

I'm listening to a really wonderful audio book in the car right now--The Memory of Running, by Ron McLarty. McLarty is an actor and playwright, and a well-known and respected narrator of audio books. In fact, The Memory of Running was released as an audio book first, then later (apparently after Stephen King recommended it in his column in Entertainment Weekly) was published in hardcover.

It's the story of self-described "fat ass" Smithson (Smithy) Ide, who loses his parents in an automobile accident, and the next day finds out that his psychotic older sister, who disappeared years ago, has died, homeless, in Los Angeles.

Smithy works as a quality control supervisor in a toy plant (he makes sure that G.I. Joe's arms and legs are correctly installed) and spends his evenings numbing himself by watching television and drinking. But almost without thinking about it, he ends up making a cross-country bicycle trip--from Rhode Island to California--to claim his sister's body, and has some wonderful (and terrible) adventures along the way. He's drunk when he gets on his beloved old childhood bike, and by the time he comes to, his journey has already begun.

I suppose The Memory of Running is reminiscent, in a way, of one of my other favorite books, Anne Tyler's Ladder of Years, in that the protagonist finds himself, through a series of events, leaving his lifelong home, finding out that he can survive on his own, and finding a kind of personal redemption.

It's an amazing book, and I'll be sorry to reach the end of it.

I built a site for the tarot cards last night--Rare Peace. It's not completely finished yet, I'm sure I'll be tweaking for a few days anyway, and I need to figure out a way to present the cards on the suits pages, but I feel good about having gotten it up there. I've got a bunch of freelance work that I've been putting off, and that I really need to do this week, so there probably won't be any more cards until at least the weekend, but I have a few ideas that I'm working on.

It's turning out to be a really fun project for me. I'm very grateful for all the positive comments I've gotten. I was telling Misty the other day that I seem to do better in both writing and in other creative endeavors when I have an "assignment," i.e., when I have a particular goal or set of goals, rather than just sitting down and doodling. A Tarot deck has 78 cards, so it's a BIG project, but as well as being long, it's wide.