Xmas' Picks

My favorite book of all time: The Little Follies: The Personal History, Adventure, Experiences and Observations of Peter Leroy (So Far). Do yourself a big favor and buy it here. Well, or anywhere; what do I give a fuck if Amazon gets more money.

Laugh-out-loud funny, heartbreakingly poignant, and Proustian in the way it opened the door for me to the idea that a story is as truthful as our memory allows. Whats more important is that it's a good story.

"I think the memory of most of us can go farther back into such times than many of us suppose; just as I believe the power of observation in numbers of very young children to be quite wonderful for its closeness and accuracy. Indeed, I think that most grown men who are remarkable in this respect, may with greater propriety be said not to have lost the faculty, than to have acquired it; the rather, as I generally observe such men to retain a certain freshness, and gentleness, and capacity of being pleased, which are also an inheritance they have preserved from their childhood.

I might have a misgiving that I am ‘meandering’ in stopping to say this, but that it brings me to remark that I build these conclusions, in part upon my own experience of myself; and if it should appear from anything I may set down in this narrative that I was a child of close observation, or that as a man I have a strong memory of my childhood, I undoubtedly lay claim to both of these characteristics." - Charles Dickens, "David Copperfield"