Here’s a photo of Chris being pissed off that someone stole his “Buddha Gouda” cheese idea. Read more for our books of the week…

“This seems to me absolutely one of the quintessential things about the human condition. It’s what actually distinguishes man from any other animal: living with those who have lived and the companionship of those who are no longer alive. Not necessarily the people that one knew personally, I mean the people perhaps whom one only knows by what they did, or what they left behind, this question of the company of the past, that’s what interests me, and archives are a kind of site in the sense of like an archaeological site.”
― John Berger, Portraits: John Berger on Artists

Chris and Hannah are both reading Catcher in the Rye—Chris reading it again, Hannah for the first time. Chris stumbled upon a quote from Vladimir Nabokov about how much he enjoyed Salinger (but not many other “great” writers of that time). Hannah didn’t want to read it when she was younger because she associated it with that jerk that killed John Lennon. Not fair of her, really. She thinks it’s a helluva book and is finding old Holden’s sassy syntax permeating her brain. :-)

This week we’re reading:

The Book Against Death by Elias Canetti
and
our pal Mike B responded last week to let us know he is reading Birds, Sex and Beauty: The Extraordinary Implications of Charles Darwin’s Strangest Idea by Matt Ridley.

What do Connie Converse, Daniel Johnston, and Bernard Hermann have in common? They’re all in this past Useless Necessities newsletter!

Here is a link to a short and sweet past DDRC Useless Necessity

Chris’s mail order nickel fiasco…

Here’s a link to a fave past newsletter Full of puppets and Gabors galore!