Currently reading
Reading progress update: I've read 83 out of 272 pages.
For Augustine, the end of his work was inextricable from the end of his life. Perhaps his heart would beat for a few more empty years after the work was done, or perhaps not; it didn't trouble him to think of it. So long as his legacy burned bright in science's archives, he was content to flicker and die alone, a few degrees shy of the North Pole. In a way, the evacuation only made it easier. But something happened to him when he looked across the Arctic mountains and saw the great yellow polar bear looking back at him. He thought of Iris. He felt gratitude for a presence instead of an absence. The feeling was so unfamiliar, so unexpected, it moved something inside him, something old and heavy and stubborn. In its wake there was an opening.
2