Kevin's Watch

Anyone else a fan? I have to say, it's my favorite single novel of all time, and I re-read it every year.

I've just started this year's re-read, and I'm trying to do something like the dissection discussions here about it, on my blog, a chapter at a time.

Please drop on by, if you've read it, or want to read it...

writingdreams.net/?p=2519

I've got it on my Kindle but have yet to read it. Maybe I'll do that next.

I might have to look into this Helprin chap. I was searching for books with wizards, and found a site where someone posted that question. Here's one of the responses:

gauche wrote:Not fantasy, but Mark Helprin's A Soldier of the Great War is an amazing book about the life of a boy who survived World War I (not a spoiler) and grew into an old Italian professor of Aesthetics. He doesn't become a wizard or anything, but it is a remarkable piece of humanism and worth reading.

I read it years ago, it stays with me because of its mythic and yet somehow very accurate depiction of upstate New York, where I spent a good chunk of my life and love very much. His prose is just magical.

I still cringe to think of the sex scene between several homeless children. Yuck. But then Helprin isn't the only author who ought to have kept their weirder fantasies to themselves. Even the later lovemaking between the hero and heroine (he breaks into her house and she invited him into bed) is a complete stretch of suspension-of-disbelief... other than those elements, I loved the book and as I said, it stayed with me. Worth reading, but be forewarned.

Where in NY did you live, deer? I'm not really upstate. Born in Montgomery, living in Walden. Near Middletown/Newburgh.

I lived in Pottersville, an Adirondack hamlet, for a few years; and then Johnson City, a village outside of Binghamton. Nothing like a frozen river to strap on some skates and let the wind blow you away! Went dogsledding on the ice more than once, too. Colder than Middletown!

Yeah, you've been in colder places. Heh. I went to school at Cortland for a year. I'm pretty sure it snowed every single day I was there.

Hadn't heard of Pottersville. But Google maps shows the Word of Life Bible Institute nearby. Guess you may have hung out there.