Author: D. A. Hosek
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Susurrus
I happened in one day to come across the words “susurrus” and “susurrate” in two different books (Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead and Tom McCarthy’s C). Finding the coincidence delightful, I went home and told my wife about the new word(s) I had learned. “Ahh, sussurate,” she whispered. It took me a while to realise that my wife,…
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Beautiful sentences
There was in fact a circle of hell beneath this one that required an entirely different set of skills that she did not possess. Ann Patchett, State of Wonder.
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Beautiful sentences
As Rumi once explained, intelligence comes in two forms. There is the secondhand intelligence of a child’s memorizing facts delivered through books and teachers—the sort of intelligence that will get you a job as a civil engineer or help you distinguish between the Five Pillars of Islam and the seven sacraments of Roman Catholicism.…
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Beautiful sentences
He was pale with high red cheeks, a fellow traveller who wanted her to ask him why he was flying to Miami and if that was his final destination. He wanted her to tell him she was going on to South America so that he would be impressed and ask her what she planned on…
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Beautiful sentences
Every year I tell my BU undergraduates that there are two worthy pursuits for college students. One is preprofessional—preparing for a career that will put food on the table and a roof overhead. The other is more personal—finding big questions worth asking, which is to say questions that cannot be answered in a semester, or…
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A thought on the state of the church
Over the past year as we’ve been adapting to the new language of the liturgy, I’ve found myself thinking that this would have been a good point for me to have converted to Catholicism since the self-consciousness of not knowing the responses as well as those next to me in the pews would be ameliorated…
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The big countdown
Tomorrow is my birthday so today I did the life expectancy calculator at http://calculator.livingto100.com/calculator This year, I was told I will live to 87, a year less than last year’s calculation, I think largely in consequence of my lack of good exercise. Apparently, I could add 4.5 years to my life by exercising more.
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Beautiful sentences
There was inside of her a very modest physical collapse, not a faint but a sort of folding, as if she were an extension ruler and her ankles and knees and hips were all being brought together at closer angles. Ann Patchett, State of Wonder.
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Recommendations are hard
In today’s e-mail. I’ve chosen not to identify the online bookstore behind these recommendations. They’ve suffered enough.