Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee

Book 1 — 4 stars. Also, reflections at the start of 2023.

It’s January 1st, 2023, a sunny day after a week’s worth of heavy rains (rains that overtopped the banks of San Francisquito Creek by Stanford to a degree unseen since the 90’s and probably will be found to have disproportionately impacted East Palo Alto, the kind of inequity that was the focus of one of my 2021 papers). While caulking up some holes I had made in the walls of our house (which we purchased in late-2021) for minisplits I installed in 2022 and some flashing between the chimney and roof that appeared to be the site of some rain infiltration yesterday, and while walking Millie (a 60-lb black labradoodle we got in March last year) on a 5-mile loop to my parents’ house (purchased last summer) to check for any leaks (since they’re in China at the moment), I had plenty of time to finish (having started three days ago) my first (audio)book of 2023, Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee.

I feel the need to add a lot of parentheticals in part to fill the gap in writing over the past close-to-two years. They’ve been wonderful, in a way that I suppose was either correlated with or partially caused by a broad apathy for and abstinence from broadcasting themselves online. A lot has happened — homeownership, marriage, career — that I would simply rather relate and savor the joys of through private, unique, and increasingly IRL conversations. Blogging thus fell far by the wayside, but seeing as I did pretty well with my reading goal this past…