The biggest advantage of traveling without Internet is time. Time to read. Time to write. On my way to my next destination I wrote three scenes for the novel, read two books and reread part of another.

The first two books were excellent but dark reads. Becoming Chloe by Catherine Ryan Hyde is the heartbreaking story of two teens on the streets. Throwaways, as Ryan Hyde calls them, not runaways because runaways have parents who want them back. Nobody wants Jordy and Chloe back. A dark book but one with a hopeful ending.

The other one was The Nest by Kenneth Oppel, one of my favorite writers since his Silverwing trilogy, with gorgeous dark illustrations by Jon Klassen. The Nest is a harrowing story, of the sort that grabs you by the throat and won’t let go, about an anxious boy who becomes convinced that angels will save his sick baby brother. But there’s a twist. A dark twist.

 

Both books were right up my alley and especially The Nest left me gasping for air. And gasping for air reminded me of a scene in My Struggle: Book 1 where Knausgård, after the death of his father, says that he no longer poached air, because that’s what you do when you breathe, you trespass on the world. I remembered that I grappled with the vision of breathing as trespassing on the world. After The Nest I went back to My Struggle: Book 1 and reread that particular scene. I can see the poaching, the stealing of air from the world. The breathing as trespassing. Not so much. I would say that living is trespassing on the world and while you trespass you poach the air.

 

Man, my brain rambles when it’s up in the air…

 

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