Books Read:
55. You Are Not So Smart — David McRaney
Kilometres Ran:
this week — 51.36
to date — 1,810.47
I read You Are Not So Smart when it first came out in 2011 and I was reminded of it when I came across an article by David Ignatius in the Washington Post back in August called “Why facts don’t matter to Trump supporters” so I thought that McRaney deserved a revisit. My mother cancelled Christmas. It came via email the other day. Seems that she got into a bit of a squabble with my sisters when she announced that she was/is a Trump supporter. Is “squabble” racist? I don’t think my sisters have read Ignatius or McRaney. I don’t think it would have mattered. A couple Christmases ago my mother gifted me a copy of Steven Galloway’s first novel Finnie Walsh, while lamenting that she wished that she could have gotten him to sign it for me, alas. I asked her if she read it and what she thought and she said it was fine but she really found the foul language off putting, as if she imagined Steven and I were still seven years old playing K9 cops with his two pure-bred german shepherds back in Kamloops in his yard that neighboured my grandparents’ pink house on Parkcrest Avenue. There’s nothing better than a conversation without room for any nuance. Like everything is black and white. Zero shades of grey. You’re either with us or the terrorists. Or the racists. Or the child pornographers. Or the apologists. That copy of Finnie Walsh is my signed copy that I lent my mother to read. Too bad Christmas is cancelled. I guess that war’s over.
I ran, and I’m tired.