unfinished as of yet

I tend not to post about books while I'm reading them. I've considered it before as I read over a random bit of prose that just seems especially well crafted, those hidden nuggets that you can hardly find later when your wife wonders aloud about the book you're reading.

We seem to have a fair crop of authors who've graced the town I live in. There must be a certain something that seems to seep into certain people and bring out something good in them. It might just be the bit of smog that seems to get stuck here in our valley.

Suttree is so far as I can tell a story about a guy named Suttree, though some kid named Gene Harrogate keeps showing up. I'm not too deep in the story just yet, and I don't plan to comment beyond the following quote. It's one of those that made me stop reading for a second, sort of double take and reread.

Foreign stars in the night down there. A whole new astronomy. Mensa, Musca, the Chameleon. Austral constellations nigh unknown to northern folks. Wrinkling, fading, through the cold black waters. As he rocks in his rusty pannier to the sea's floor in a drifting stain of guano. What family has no mariner in its tree? No fool, no felon. No fisherman.

from Suttree, by Cormac McCarthy