From the Jil Schwartz Memorial Library here in Sultry, Savannah, Georgia, this is obscure.

Season 4 in American Tragedy.

I'm your host, your friend, your ear lover, your literary,

Mansplaner in Chief Michael, Ian Black approaching the new year with as always terror and

resignation. You know the days of optimism about the new year faded perhaps in 2016 heading into 2017 and my optimism has not yet recovered since that new years we have really

just undergone horror after horror. I would say this past year,

2023, perhaps was a little bit better than the ones that preceded it.

And yet, this year was just a misery, was it not, for so many in this world. Me not so much. I mean, look, personally speaking, I'm fine. Slowly going broke, but fine. And, you know, I got no real complaints. In fact, I have, you know, a small thing to celebrate,

very small thing by the way, which is that one of the great joys of having older children and my kids are now 22 and 20 is that sometimes they will do or say things that you know provoke some thought

and some introspection or some fine conversation for, my daughter returned from Budapest a few weeks ago,

recommended to me a book that she just finished,

called A Little Life by Hanya Yana Gahara.

I'd never heard of it. What do I know about Hanya Yaniagahara. I'd never heard of it. What do I know about

Hanya Yaniagahara? Nothing. And I didn't know this book, although I guess it's very popular,

won the Summer Award with the Kirkus Award for Fiction or something came out in 2015

Kirkus Prize for Fiction and so she she finished it it's like 600 pages she's like

hey I think you should read this. I started reading it. It's terrific. Great book. And you know, it gives me and my daughter something to talk about. Not that we don't have things to talk about, you know it's fun it's fun having an

adult child or children with whom you can share adult pleasures and that maybe

sounded not at all the way I intended it to but you understand my meaning as you get

older there's things that you and your adult children can do together that you couldn't do

with them when they were kids conversations you can have, you know, books you can read together, films you can watch, all kinds of stuff.

And they have a more mature perspective.

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