re: #270 Barefoot Grin

OT: my younger boy read War and Peace when he was twelve because he read in a Calvin and Hobbes strip how hard it was. He agreed. Didn’t understand a lot, but finished it. A month ago he picked my copy of Don Quixote from my bookshelf. He finished it a couple of days ago and understood it pretty well, he said (he read the translator’s intro this time). It’s his 14th birthday soon. What does he want for his birthday? Another big classic? “Dad, can you get me Trouble Boys: The True Story of The Replacements? and “All Shook Up”?” Not sure how I feel about this, but it’s not like he hasn’t encountered drunkenness and wanton mayhem in the fiction we’ve let him read already.

Double OT before I get some more work done before bed: I love most of what Lucinda has done, but I pulled “Essence” out tonight and just fell in love again. “Gonna have to steal your love…..” Oh man.

I’d get him The ‘Mat’s book & a classics literature novel as well. Perhaps Hemmingway’s best work, A Farewell to Arms?

Oh, and was that “All Shook Down” the Replacement’s last LP? Or something else?

Oh, and don’t forget the excellent ‘Mat’s documentary “Color Me Obsessed” en.wikipedia.org