The worst thing about Amor Towles’ otherwise insufferable The Lincoln Highway is that the last two pages are excellent. You have to wade through 600 pages of sickly sweet molasses to reach an ending that is very dark and offers an instant relief from the hyperglycemic attack that is the rest of the novel. I’m glad that I held out until the very end and didn’t quit halfway because the ending kind of almost made the novel not completely maddening. I’m never reading a word by this author again, though. I can’t stand his style of writing. It’s like the tone that parents use with very small children. It stops being cute around the time the kid learns to ride a bike.

Wow, I’ve been off the news cycle for two days and already this happened:

For foreigners: this woman is one of the craziest, most hysterical, freakishly obsessive COVID fanatics. It must be really over if even she’s ready to move on. “As we recognize this isn’t a severe disease” – I thought I’d never see the day. And I hear that Biden publicly admitted there’s no federal solution for COVID. Which people with over two functioning brain cells already knew but nobody expected the president to acknowledge.

Great news all around.