Books
Currently reading: Different Seasons: Four Novellas by Stephen King 📚
💬📚 “…a story’s as much a house or garden as song.” Jane Alison, _Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative _
💬📚 “The essential element in nurturing our creativity lies in nurturing ourselves.” Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way
💬📚 “As blocked creatives, we focus not on our responsibilities to ourselves, but on our responsibilities to others. We tend to think such behavior makes us good people. It doesn’t. It makes us frustrated people.” Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way
Day 3, #TheSealeyChallenge, Rose, Li-Young Lee 📚
This is a gorgeous book, full of grief and beauty.
Selected quotes:
Water
In water
my sister is no longer
lonely. Her right leg is crooked and smaller
than her left, but she swims straight.
Her whole body is a glimmering fish.
Eating Alone
White rice steaming, almost done. Sweet green peas > fried in onions. Shrimp braised in sesame
oil and garlic. And my own loneliness.
What more could I, a young man, want.
Visions and Interpretations
Truth is, I’ve not seen my father
since he died, and, no, the dead
do not walk arm in arm with me.
I’ve got an ARC of The Nap Ministry’s book REST IS RESISTANCE ready for me to download from NetGalley, and will probably take it to the beach with me next week. I also asked my local library to purchase it. They ordered FIVE COPIES. 📚
💬📚 “Perhaps people who experience the world in ways that are considered atypical have an intuitive feeling for the limits of typicality.” Ed Yong, An Immense World
💬📚 “A scientist’s explanations about other animals are dictated by the data she collects, which are influenced by the questions she asks, which are steered by her imagination, which is limited by her senses.” Ed Yong, An Immense World
Good to remember about all research.
💬📚 “[The senses] pull relevance from randomness, and weave meaning from miscellany.” Ed Yong, An Immense World
Day 2 #TheSealeyChallenge, Leaves of Grass Book I: Inscriptions, Walt Whitman 📚
Selected quotes:
Eidolons
We seeming solid wealth, strength, beauty build,
But really build eidolons.
To the States
…Resist much, obey little
Thou Reader
Thou reader throbbest life and pride and love the same as I,
Therefore for thee the following chants.
Day 1 #TheSealeyChallenge, Fieldnotes on Ordinary Love, Keith S. Wilson 📚
Selected quotes:
6:45 pm
…God, it’s pretty.
But what does any of it mean?
A Unified Theory
You think, what if I am stuck like this? What if
I never change? So what.
Never change.
Moments are not for revision—
if they are lived honestly, they are open to one interpretation.
only. They make you like a child.
Of course that’s what they make.
📚💬 “Animals are not just stand-ins for humans or fodder for brainstorming sessions. They have worth in themselves.” - Ed Yong, An Immense World
📚💬 “It is all that we know, and so we easily mistake it for all there is to know.” Ed Yong, An Immense World
Finished reading: The Brilliant Abyss: Exploring the Majestic Hidden Life of the Deep Ocean, and the Looming Threat That Imperils It by Helen Scales 📚
Want to read: The Empire of Death: A Cultural History of Ossuaries and Charnel Houses by Paul Koudounaris 📚
📚 In 2008, 8 years before my kid was born, I replied to a Slate article that asked, “do you really want the Hulk teaching your kid to read?" with a resounding “Yes but Spider-Man or the X-Men would be better.” I stand by my earlier sentiment.
Finished reading: Star Trek: Discovery: Succession by Kirsten Beyer 📚
I honestly don’t know how anyone is left living in the Terran Empire. Mirror Universe stuff stresses me out. But Discovery Annual #1 is chef’s kiss. Seeing how Paul and Hugh meet? 😍
Finished reading: Star Trek: Discovery - The Light of Kahless by Mike Johnson 📚
Finished reading: The Dead Zone by Stephen King 📚
I love the way King has characters reference his own other work. “Like in that book, Carrie!”
Another, as W. puts it, compulsively readable book. A little chilling in its political prescience, really.
Currently reading: The Dead Zone by Stephen King 📚
Finished reading: Carrie by Stephen King 📚
I don’t recall the last time I read a book inside of 24 hours.
Editor Jordan Pavlin says historical fiction “has a unique ability to elicit deep compassion and empathy,” and I can’t help but wonder if that isn’t the precise reason the people leading the call for book bans want these books gone. 📚
Finished reading: Borderland edited by Terri Windling and Mark Alan Arnold 📚
The beginnings of woodland goth. I love it, of course.
Finished reading: The Puzzler: One Man’s Quest to Solve the Most Baffling Puzzles Ever, from Crosswords to Jigsaws to the Meaning of Life by A.J. Jacobs 📚
Great fun with some good insights for the rest of life, not just puzzles.