The other day I was down at Wayne State, turning in my textbooks, browsing the campus Barnes & Noble. On a whim, I bought Emily St. John Mandel’s “Sea of Tranquility,” because I loved “Station Eleven” so, so much.
This week I’ve been reading it, and I was 50 pages in when I realized: I’ve already read this. And not that long ago, either. And it took me 50 pages to realize it.
Obviously, this is an affirmative diagnosis of dementia. Also, I’m out $18.
It’s still a good book. Mandel has a real gift.
How’s everyone, midweek? Man, has it EVER been winter all up in this place. It got cold early, snowed early, and now we’re getting another 1-2 inches overnight, followed by a single-digit cold snap this weekend. Our Atlanta guests are heading south as we speak, and I don’t blame them. (Also, I don’t mind the snow, either. I am large, I contain multitudes. With dementia.) Woke up this morning to two more inches of slush, with school called off, which means early-morning lifeguarding is cancelled, too, but the call came late and I was already at the pool and the pre-dawn patrol was pulling in, so? We swam. Or rather, they swam. I sat in the chair and watched.
Bloggage? Oh yeah:
President Shit-for-brains goes off-script:
MOUNT POCONO, Pa. — He had charts that he read from, touting economic data. The stage around him was filled with signs reading, “Lower Prices Bigger Paychecks.” He introduced Pennsylvanians who he said had more take-home pay because of his policies.
But if he was supposed to launch a speaking tour to connect with Americans struggling with higher prices and stagnant wages, President Donald Trump didn’t hesitate to veer off course.
He mocked the word “affordability,” touted how high the stock market had risen and said Americans didn’t need so many pencils. He launched into a number of digressions to disparage the country of Somalia, the concept of climate change and the news media in the back of the room.
Yeah, he’s back on the you-have-too-many-pencils-and-dolls thing. But remember! It’s Biden who was senile!
Miami elected its first Democratic mayor in 30 years. More bad news for you-know-who.
Can a typeface be woke? Mario Rubio sure thinks so, the dolt.
john (not mccain) said on December 10, 2025 at 10:03 am
Uh oh. Just last week I bought a dvd of a movie I already had on blu ray. I’m much too immature to have dementia yet. What’s the opposite of what the CDC now recommends to keep it at bay?
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Jeff Gill said on December 10, 2025 at 10:54 am
Tiger, elephant, giraffe.
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Julie Robinson said on December 10, 2025 at 11:55 am
Person, woman, man, camera, TV. With dementia you either have to laugh or you’ll be crying all the time.
basset, fall 1974 registration was in the Field House out by Assembly Hall. I don’t remember it ever being next to HPER.
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John H. McDonald said on December 10, 2025 at 12:17 pm
In the late 1980’s, when I was about 30, some friends took me to one of those remaindered book stores that would pop up in empty retail space, like a Halloween store–don’t know if they still exist. I was able to buy five trade paperbacks on my meager grad-student stipend, all modern literary novels. I worked my way through the pile, reading them one at a time and greatly enjoying each one. I was about 100 pages into the sixth one when I realized that I’d bought five and was reading the first book in the stack again, a month after finishing it the first time. I realized that although each sentence, each paragraph in the novels was expertly crafted by serious, professional writers who were experts at crafting sentences and paragraphs, the plots and characters were completely unmemorable. I’d recently read Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, and it was kind of painful to get through, because each sentence fell to the ground with the dull thud of a lump of clay, but the story was gripping and I can remember chunks of it 40 years later.
So Nancy, maybe it’s not you–maybe it’s the book.
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Suzanne said on December 10, 2025 at 12:29 pm
I used to joke with my kids that when I got dementia, they wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
Willa Cather is one of my favorite authors. Last winter, I saw that I had her book “A Lost Lady” on my shelf and wondered why I had never read it, so I did. When I pulled up my Goodreads account to add it to the books-I-have-read section much to my surprise, I discovered I had read it in 2016! I had no memory of the plot whatsoever so I guess it didn’t make a big impression on me the first time although I did enjoy it the second time around.
My biggest fear at this point is not dementia but that dementia Don will decide to nuke somebody somewhere because who knows why and there isn’t a d*mn Republican in Congress who would try to prevent him.
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ROGirl said on December 10, 2025 at 12:32 pm
One of our customers requires its suppliers to use a sans serif font in the product documentation generated for their orders. It’s an aerospace and aviation customer. Maybe they will be targeted by the font police for
being too woke. Doesn’t the word “Times” in Times New Roman trigger that sociopathic old fuck?
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nancy said on December 10, 2025 at 12:33 pm
I’m glad to hear all this. This year, for the first time, I’m keeping a books-read list in the back of my planner. I had an Ann Patchett streak this spring, and while I recall enjoying the books, man, I can’t remember anything about either one. Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s “Long Island Compromise,” though? Unforgettable.
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Dexter Friend said on December 10, 2025 at 2:15 pm
Julie, I was down in Bloomington to visit friends , students, in Fall, 1974, and to see Traffic in concert at Assembly Hall…there was something going on in the old fieldhouse that we went to also. As I recall, by then it had a dirt floor. Or…a false memory?
Trump is clearly demented and is not fit to be President. I would not be surprised if a task force is already briefing Vance to be ready to assume the position, very soon.
Also, I saw a Reel pop up showing a human ear on a living man which had been shot by a hunter recently. The ear was just mangled cartilage. Trump’s ear? No sign at all of damage. WTF?
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Jeff Borden said on December 10, 2025 at 3:34 pm
My wife is such a voracious reader she began keeping a spreadsheet several years ago of every book she read. She will literally finish a book, set it down and immediately pick another up. We don’t do much in the way of holiday gifts, but I found something online that is a personalized counter for how many books per year you’ve read. She’s always been like this. My father-in-law, who planned long driving vacations that eventually took his family to all 48 continental states, told me many years ago that it drove him crazy that she spent the trips with her nose in a book. Oh? Those are the Rocky Mountains? Cool. Back to book.
Dementia is my second biggest fear after ALS, but my memory for books, movies, TV shows, records, concerts, etc. is still pretty sharp. I read a lot, but certainly no where near what Johanna does and much of my reading is periodicals and online stuff. I also pivot from fiction to non-fiction with each book. I’d anticipated diving into a new biography of Mark Twain, but the reviews have been pretty bad. So, I may have to tackle the third volume of a magisterial recounting of the Third Reich by an English historian, Richard Evans. The final volume, “The Third Reich at War,” comes in at a lean 768 pages including maps and photos. The first two were excellent, if depressing, since it sometimes mirrored what’s going on in our own government and society. Watching the feeble and tentative responses to Vladimir Putin’s outrageous invasion of Ukraine and his active sabotage of Western European nations is especially queasy when you’re reading about how Western Europe dealt with Hitler, who started with small incursions but never faced significant pushback.
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Mark P said on December 10, 2025 at 3:58 pm
My criteria for a good book are a good story, well told, about people you care about.
I read An American Tragedy in an American Lit class around 1971-72. It was the only course that I got a C in, and that book (plus the wannabe Hemingway teacher) was the reason. I hated it.
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Deborah said on December 10, 2025 at 4:14 pm
Oh goody, I love book talk. I’m reading a new book out by a member of our book club, she’s in her mid 80s. It’s very well written but I’m not very far along. She’s written about maybe 5 books, a couple are more like memoirs the rest are fiction, and she authored a text book on creative writing which has been a good income source over the years for her. This new one is fiction. We actually have 2 published writers in our book club, the other one has had stories in the New Yorker and some non-fiction books. It’s intimidating to discuss books with them.
The book for our book club this month is The Kelly Gang, by Peter Carey, again I never would have thought to read for myself except now I have to. My husband has been reading it first
I used to read a lot but since doom scrolling has become a thing I’m hooked and it drives me crazy. Why do I keep doing it? I still read a lot it’s just all articles etc on the internet not good books. And I get hung up watching art process reels on Instagram, things like making pottery, blowing glass, painting, drawing, etc etc, those things are day wreckers for me.
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Sherri said on December 10, 2025 at 6:51 pm
No snow here, just rain, rain, and more rain. ‘Atmospheric River’ is the phrase of the week, a more generalized version of what used to be called a Pineapple Express, which always brought frowns to skiers as even the mountains saw rain to melt the snow in the mountains.
This also means that our already short days are dark. I recently learned that in Scottish Gaelic, December is “An Dùbhlachd”, which translates as “The Blackness.”
Happy 10th day of the Blackness to you!
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tajalli said on December 10, 2025 at 7:22 pm
Although I might remember, after careful consideration and some dredging, the general plot of books, I can quite happily re-read whole series of books by a favorite author and still savor the crafting of individual sentences and the feeling they evoke.
Yesterday, I watched a DVD and realized I’d viewed it before but since the details were hazy, thoroughly enjoyed it anyhow: Fall with Lee Pace (The Pie Man in Pushing Daisies) as the lead/narrator.
I’ve been using Beanstack online to record my reading, generally 8-10 books/month. It’s available through libraries using [domain name of your library.beanstack.org] if they participate, of course.
We’re having record cold and a hiatus in rain after a very early start with a few big storms in October. Various sites in California are running about 75% to 400% of normal for the season so far, so significant. I remember as a child we’d be concerned that Santa wouldn’t have snow to land on the rooftops on Christmas and am amazed to hear some of you folks talking about receiving several inches already in the same general region in which I grew up.
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Peter said on December 10, 2025 at 9:10 pm
OK, I don’t remember every detail of this story, but famous British architect Christopher Wren was in a cab on his way to a speaking engagement when he saw a beautiful church.
He made the cab driver stop while he looked around the church. Wren got back in the cab and marveled at the church. The cab driver said he had several passengers who said that the church was beautiful, but all he knew about the church was that it was designed by a Mr. Christopher Wren.
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Julie Robinson said on December 10, 2025 at 9:20 pm
Keep notes works fine for me. I’m up to 133 this year, mostly audiobooks, and plenty of fluff.
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Sherri said on December 10, 2025 at 9:30 pm
While I’m safe on top of my hill, as many as 100k people may have to evacuate for flooding, which is expected to hit historic levels.
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FDChief said on December 10, 2025 at 9:58 pm
Raging about immigration, autopens, woke, filthy aliens, etc is NEVER “off-script” for Felony Fats. He knows his cult gobbles those rage-bait memes and will gleefully open their wallets and lose their jobs and savings provided he promises to savage the people they hate.
He’s always been a gifted conman, and knows that’s how you pull the marks.
In the immortal words of Sam Spade; “The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.”
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basset said on December 10, 2025 at 9:59 pm
Maybe it was the fieldhouse out on 10th, entirely possible that my memories have gotten confused. The student ID was definitely accurate, though, and the swimming pool.
Dexter, I was at that concert, Fairport Convention opened, and as I recall Traffic was not at their best.
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Sherri said on December 10, 2025 at 10:09 pm
Sometimes, I just look in awe at how Trump destroys every fig leaf his supporters have for why they support him other than white supremacy.
Affordability? Hah, I’m going to slap tariffs on everything and make everything cost more!
Elites getting away with stuff? I’m going to have the most openly corrupt administration you’ve ever seen! You want a pardon? What’s in it for me? Merger? Better give me a sweetener!
Only immigrants who do it the right way should come in! Hah, how about if I send my ICE goons to a citizenship ceremony and grab all the darkies!?
I like a president who tells it like it is! You’ve got a President who lies about everything just to stay in practice, even on the rare occasions he knows what reality is!
I hate all this woke stuff. I believe in free speech! Here’s the list of words you can no longer use, and by the way, that font is no longer acceptable, either.
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FDChief said on December 11, 2025 at 9:07 am
The thing is…what else CAN he feed them? Prosperity? Health? Happiness?
Those are for my rich asshole buddies, chump! Not for you! Your “reward” is knowing that as a poor, ignorant unemployed cretin, because you’re White the blood of pure Aryan Greatness fills you. Now get out there and vote Republican!
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alex said on December 11, 2025 at 10:39 am
One more reason I’m gladly not renewing my WaPo subscription is that my comments are increasingly being rejected even though I cannot see how they violate the Post’s stated policies on comments. Meanwhile the editorial board is making increasingly stupid pronouncements like today’s praise of Pam Bondi for dropping disparate impact standards from Title VI enforcement, which they called a “welcome rollback.” So I guess when invidious discrimination isn’t invidious on its face, you won’t have any recourse if the employer or agency in question wasn’t wearing a Klan hood when it fucked you over.
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Jenine said on December 11, 2025 at 10:55 am
I’ve started The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow ‘a grand dialogue’ about the entirety of human history. It’s been recommended as a better researched contrast to Sapiens by Harari. My husband read it and loved it. I have been intimidated because our hardback copy is the size of two bricks. But so far so great.
I use goodreads to track my reading. I’ve tried a couple of alternatives but they didn’t stick. It’s owned by Amazon but it doesn’t feel like they pay it much attention.
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Sherri said on December 11, 2025 at 12:08 pm
Of course, Trump has nothing else to give them, never had anything else. Yet, very serious pundits told us over and over that we were wrong to blame it on racism.
In the same breath, very serious pundits will tell us that the Dems will never win over Trump voters unless they stop focusing on “identity politics” and be less woke, by which they inevitably mean, make the white man the most important again.
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