Reading On The Edge

I finished reading Ken Liu's fabulous The Grace Of Kings on the morning commute so, while I wait for Amazon to deliver the sequel, I began reading Anderson Cooper's Dispatches From The Edge on the train journey home.

To be honest, I went cold turkey from C.N.N. about six years ago. I came to feel that it was something akin to mainlining misery and that I could devote the time I spent watching that to doing something more productive and conducive to a more positive outlook on life. I do feel a lot better for removing that monkey from my back, but the one thing I do miss is Anderson Cooper's reports. There is a view that news reporters should be dispassionate and purely objective in their reporting. That makes sense but, though I do agree with that view in many ways, I always appreciated and enjoyed the humanity, empathy, passion, humour, anger, pity and, dare I say, soul with which Cooper imbued his reports. Just a few pages into this book and I have already been deeply moved while gaining a fuller understanding of the man behind the stories.

Thank you to Arthur for dropping everything when I returned home from work so that he could take this photograph before I took off my coat, hat and scarf.