The Fault in our Stars - Some Thoughts
Well, the last book read of the year was...wow. This was an absolutely wonderful, painful, and beautiful book to read. It is the story of two teenagers who each are fighting cancer and the relationship they develop. While cancer is a common thread throughout the book, it doesn't feel that its the central character or central issue. Love and its expressions and its experience are what are at the core for it as I read the story. It was also a story of finding beauty in life even in the midst of the most awful of circumstances. It is not an easy book to read by any means but it is powerful and moving in many many ways. Two quotes capture a great deal of the book for me - one about the experience of love and one about the experience of life.
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I can’t talk about our love story, so I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this: There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There’s .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I’m likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
Desperately Lonely Swing Set Needs Loving Home One swing set, well worn but structurally sound, seeks new home. Make memories with your kid or kids so that someday he or she or they will look into the backyard and feel the ache of sentimentality as desperately as I did this afternoon. It’s all fragile and fleeting, dear reader, but with this swing set, your child(ren) will be introduced to the ups and downs of human life gently and safely, and may also learn the most important lesson of all: No matter how hard you kick, no matter how high you get, you can’t go all the way around. Swing set currently resides near 83rd and Spring Mill.