Funfare for the Common Man

We’ve made it to the end: Part 10 (of 10) of my August 2020 Challenge.  Where do we go from here? If you’ve missed any of the previous 9 parts, a recap: Part 1: A decade in quotations: Part 1 (of 10) of the August 2020 Challenge Part 2: My readers ask, I answer: Reader Mailbag, part 1 Part 3: We live in a haunted house Part 4: The Joy of Getting Away From It All Part 5: Looking for truth in all the wrong places Part 6: From the wilds of Western Ukraine to the wild 1970s Soviet Union: Yaremche v Tiraspol Part 7: My wife tried to kill me: [mis]adventures in the Carpathians Part 8: Why my language skills suck: Part 1 Part 9: Why I speak such lousy Ukrainian – even after 10 years in Kyiv So what comes next? First, a quick English lesson: the past simple versus the present perfect. This should be easy for most of you. Compare: This pandemic period was difficult. This pandemic period has been difficult. Are they both correct? No. In the first example, the use of the past simple – was ...

When it comes to reading, the question I probably get asked more than any other is this: ‘how the hell do you find the time to read?’ More specifically, it’s more along the lines of ‘where do you find the time to read so [damn] much?’ ‘Reading is the best education.’ (Fran Lebowitz) In 2005, I started keeping a meticulous list of what I read, something bibliophiles sometimes refer to as a BOB:  ‘a book of books’. It’s a great snapshot of how reading shapes me during a particular period of my life, or at the very least, a simple way to keep track of what I read. Though I’d heard about this idea long ago, the editor of the NYTBR captures this far more eloquently than I could ever hope to: “Bob offers immediate access to where I’ve been, psychologically and geographically, at any given moment in my life,” she explains in My Life With Bob . “Each entry conjures a memory that may have otherwise gotten lost or blurred with time.” I can’t tell you the precise figures, b...