Casey's Just Sayin'

This is my first experience with Mr. Howey's work read via recommendation from a trusted friend. I'm not, per se, a great fan of post-apocalyptic fiction, although Wind-Up Girl was fantastic. So I approached this story with a hint of trepidation. In short, it was excellent. The setting is extremely well-drawn, details fed to the reader carefully and meaningfully over time. The story is complex and involves different points of view, micro and macro influences, short and long-term histories. The cast is vast, varied, deep and fully-developed. And I guarantee you don't know what's going to happen next. I will say that reading this as five separate stories would be deeply frustrating, as the so-called endings of each section are not so much cliff-hanger as cliff, not to mention they are way too short individually to be satisfying. The way this needs to be read is right here, as one great novel. Posted with Blogsy

Resolutions aside, here's a brief summary of what went down in December and where I'm at now in writing and, well, everything.   I want to start by saying that this year, especially, we all have a very strong common reason to appreciate every glimmer of good in our lives. This post is not about that tragedy. But before I talk about my little tiny life, I want to say for the record I sincerely believe we all owe it to humanness itself to remember and appreciate.   Negatives:   1) We almost ran out of gas getting the Christmas Tree at George's in Paynes Creek. But we didn't. 2) My sister's home in the country is our traditional Christmas Eve location and this year she decided to drive her family to Idaho to spend it with my brother and his family. So we tried to bring that Christmas Eve magic to our house, but it didn't turn out. The picture above is my brother's house. Can you really blame her? 3) The place where we've purchased our