Reading List

Lindsey Sterling

CREDIT ROB LOUD

This week's picture is a shot of Bruce and I at the Pemberton Music Festival in July last year. Sure, there's a lot of other stuff in the way: the fine violinist Lindsey Sterling, and a whole bunch of other people, but we are very clearly visible, just above the sun totem - Bruce has his hands folded over his chest and I'm standing on his left (your right) in a white shirt and orange pants. I think it's a good likeness.

We have booked our return visit to Pemberton for this year's festival. We'll be there after we partake of a family reunion in Qualicum Beach on the 11th of July and after three days of hiking and hanging around in Whistler.

Should be fun.

Just so I have lots of fodder for small talk at the reunion, I'm catching up on some of the reading I didn't do in high school. Subscribers may recall that I started that project a while ago with The Great Gatsby (TGG). Now, I'm reading In Cold Blood (ICB).

My experience reading TGG was that what they teach about the book in high school classes isn't what I think the book is about.

The same seems to be the case with ICB. Better written than TGG, ICB - so far; I'm about halfway through - seems to me to be about Truman Capote's powerful identification with Perry Smith, the half-Irish, half-Cherokee, artistically and musically gifted natural born killer. Smith's parents were rodeo performers but when that work dried up, the family broke up and what followed was a long unhappy story of group homes and social isolation until Perry joined the merchant marine where he was wooed and maybe raped by sailors.

The weirdest thing about ICB: Richard Avedon's photos.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen