Ugh! So many things I should write about, but let’s backtrack two weeks, because life is too difficult right now. We lost Dad last fall, Mom – whether she wants to admit it or not – is looking at the beginnings of heart failure, and I’ve got another family member facing critical illness, so I’m trying to be there as much as possible. Just once a week, I’d like a day without a crisis. This week, I think it’s the stove – My Favorite Burner (admit it, everyone has one. Along with that favorite cup, favorite spoon or fork, and the chair that is “yours.”) – is having a psychotic breakdown, burning at maximum power no matter what the setting, and I was worried a bit today when it looked like it was going to stay on even after I turned it off, but it did shut off. Have to weigh the price of repair vs. new stove, since repair isn’t always the cheapest option, and everything in my house has to be industrial. To top today off, we witnessed an auto accident, and my husband had to report a crying baby left alone in a car in a parking lot while mom shopped. Today was 79o. [Update: Stove is 9 yrs old. Part is $130. Bought a new stove.]
But anyway …
I did manage to get a day without relative crisis, not counting the weather, on March 23. For ages, I’ve been moaning how I’d love to take #7 to see The Lion King on Broadway, and of course #5 would love it, and how I’d love to take #9 and her girls, but at (cheapest seats) $138 a ticket, that wasn’t happening, and it’s almost impossible to toilet myself at Broadway theaters, let alone a disabled adult of the wrong gender for the restroom, and certainly not by myself, so it remained a moan. Until my girlfriend started moaning how she still hadn’t seen Lion King and wanted to, so I finally said “Then BOOK IT.” And we did. I was worried seven years was a little young for Broadway, but I’d already seen LK twice, and she knew the story, so I figured she’d be okay. And she’d been begging for a train ride anyway. So, the two of us, and my sister, and my best friend, book the date, get a restaurant reservation, and plan the day.
Trips always bring out the teacher in me. We read books on New York, watched videos of New York, of Grand Central, watched movies that had Grand Central in them, and watched the few excerpts of The Lion King play on You Tube, because it’s really hard to describe a play if someone’s never seen one. By the time we were done, she was pretty stoked.
But, March in New England/TriState area is a fickle friend. A week out, they’re looking at rain that day. I cross my fingers, because weather reports usually change, and I was right. By Saturday, they were looking at monsoon rains of 2” mixed with sleet and snow and a high of 40o, with flood warnings.
Yeah.
Every time I plan a trip. Or a party. You know the feeling.
I didn’t want to wear my heavy leather bomber because, well, it’s heavy, and we were doing a lot of walking. I wore the coat. I did not wear my crocs. Stuffed #7 into a new raincoat and boots. Stuffed my Disney rain poncho in my bag. It was light drizzle to the train station. Riding the train was exciting, but the sight of Grand Central brought out the awe, which was so nice to see.
The weather didn’t disappoint. The drizzle turned to on and off downpours, pelting us with sleet. We made it to Rockefeller Center, took a picture, and were so clobbered by rain we went to FAO Schwartz just to have a few moments of dryness (which of course had the floor piano, so later that week we had to watch Big to see the piano).
Walked to the restaurant, which turned out to be the wrong location, and hustled back several blocks to the right one, which was thankfully two doors from the theater. After lunch, we still had an hour to kill, and I’d promised #7 we could see the New Year’s Ball (since she hasn’t yet been allowed to stay up to see it fall. Mainly because *I* can’t manage to stay up to see it fall). This was the worst part of the day, with driving, pelting sleety rain, utterly miserable weather, but I pulled the Disney poncho over my coat and pressed on (the theater being about two doors from Times Square). We tried to walk to the M&M store, but gave up. I didn’t remember it being that far, nor on that side of the street. I wasn’t crossing in that muck. We went back to the theater and waited in the dry walkway. We bought M&M’s at the theater’s extortion prices. And of course I got begged to buy the overpriced merchandise, and in the end I gave in for the stuffed Simba. How often do you see your first Broadway musical?
Broadway magic held sway. My squirmy worm fell into the spell of good theater, whisked away to another place and time, certainly not waterlogged Manhattan. She loved it. To be honest, I don’t think there’s a better play to start kids with, because the staging and puppetry is utterly incredible. The vision, the engineering, the actors – it is a spectacle beyond imagination, with the actors moving right through the audience. I’ve watched it from the back row of the theater twice, and it was stunning, but, I must say, from the pricey seats my girlfriend insisted on, it was kind of worth it. But if all you can afford is the back row, don’t be a fool. Grab them.
We got back to Grand Central, had dinner in the basement, grabbed my overpriced pastries at Zardo’s, and caught the train, practicing the art of reading a timetable and finding a track (oh, how I miss the clickety clack of the rotating signs!). By then, the rain was ending. By the time #7 got to bed, it was 10 pm, and she was asleep in under 5 minutes, Simba tucked under her arm, exhausted but happy. She had quite the bit to talk about in school the following week.
And of course, the next day, an ad comes on for the traveling tour of Wicked at a local theater, and she immediately shouts, “Can we go to that one? Can we? Can we?”
Looking over my Goodreads list, I think I had to go back 3 years to find the last book I gave 5 stars to, and that was The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. Yes, it still deserves it. Maybe I’m just not finding enough WOW books.
Today, I gave that rating to Altered Carbon, by Richard Morgan. I have not read a SF book that good since Retribution Falls, maybe 10 years ago. Oh, RF is still my favorite novel of the last 25 years or so, one of my top 10 perhaps of all time (that I didn’t write), but – Damn! Now I’ve gone and made Murderbot retreat to his favorite episodes of Sanctuary Moon, and pissed off ART. Sorry, Murderbot, I still love you, but there is no comparison between a delightful novelette and a monster novel this complex.
Holy Crap.
This is a murder mystery noir novel worthy of Chandler, set in the distant future where life is cheap and interchangable, and people – rich people – can live for hundreds of years, in theory, never dying. Except when they do.
In a distant dystopian future, mind/soul/self/however you call it is kept on a data implant, and people are often “resleeved” – given a new copy of their body, or entirely new one. Bodies can be rented or sold, especially if the owner is in prison, cheaply kept as a data file until their sentence is up – which can stretch to hundreds of years. Good luck returning to your family after that. Or having them recognize you in that cheap new prison-assigned body they had available. You certainly won’t look anything like yourself. You can even have your mind sort of phoned in to another planet and reinstalled in another body in a matter of hours. Saves all that cost of big space ships.
Takeshi Kovasc, former military, is removed from prison by a wealthy old methuselah named Laurens Bancroft and tasked with finding the killer of his previous body. If he succeeds, he gains his freedom and a small fortune. If he loses, well …. What follows is a murder mystery of a dark future, with more twists and turns than a labyrinth that will keep you engaged every step of the way, as he encounters people who either want to kill him, or kill his current body – and some who want to save it. I had trouble putting this down, even though I was reading another book at the same time. It kept pulling me back and demanding to be read like, well, Murderbot.
Yeah, I could have done without a lot of the graphic sex. Yes, it made sense in the book, but Jeez, why is graphic sex a requirement of male authors? I am certainly not a prude – God, I wish to hell Raistlin had gotten hot and heavy with Crysania in Dragonlance, and I sure as hell didn’t shy away from writing them in the Prisoner of the Mind series – but too many times a sex scene is out of place and badly written and gets in the way of a good story. And the fact that a sex scene may be fine to the story, but it doesn’t need to go into extreme detail – I don’t need to know just how much garlic the character ate by the taste of their excretions. I don’t care. I don’t need that level of sexual detail in my science fiction (unless, possibly, you’re describing an alien encounter that may be vastly different, and then I do need to know because it is outside my experience). I want a sex story, I’ll go read one. I want adventure, not steam. The best romance novel I’ve read is probably still Raiders of the Lost Ark, okay? All the longing, none of the nonsense. Let me imagine it. Maybe men don’t read a wide enough variety of stories to find it elsewhere, and thus have to keep every type of story in one volume.
Men? What’s your input?
But, Jeez, layers of tight, imaginative prose (best line: “He’ll make less noise than a Catholic orgasm.”) coupled with layer upon layer upon layer of action and intrigue, until you aren’t sure who’s where and why and how this will all come together, and who’s actually pulling the strings. Sure, I still have questions, but that’s because an author reads at a deeper level. None of my questions would hurt the story.
No, I didn’t know there was a TV series made from it on Netflix. The book kept coming through my hands at the libes and finally I decided it looked interesting enough to read (which is how I wind up reading most books). So, of course, today I had to start the series. A couple of changes, the biggest of which is understandable, and some of the main characters I don’t think matched their descriptions at all, but for a single episode, I’m liking it a lot. Can’t wait to watch more, but definitely not with the young’uns around.
Go! Go read this one! Wow! Just – wow! I’ve got a serious book hangover going on, and it’s going to take me a couple of days to get over this one. Thankfully the other book I’m reading is non-fiction, and doesn’t suck up the same parts of my brain. Interesting, but certainly not a book that demands to be read.
Yeah, yeah, I know …. I’ll be back on here, I promise. But in the meantime, come out and bug me in person! I’ll be hosting a talk on my last novel, Heart of the Matter, at the Mary Cheney library in Manchester, CT on Monday, February 26. What’s it like trying to pick up a series after a 10-year hiatus? How do characters change as they age, and how do you write that? If you’re lucky, I’ll prove I know how to read… Come on out! I’d love to meet you!
I had hoped to squeeze in one more official book this year, but ended up with a solid 22. Yeah, I know, you read 135. You don’t live my life. That I managed to finish 22 is a miracle – and that’s not counting the ones I started and didn’t finish, magazines, blogs, kids’ books, the 15x I reread my own works, and the perpetual reading and rereading of the new novel I wrote and finished and am still editing. I am thrilled with 22. Not my best year, but not my worst. And those are not fluff books. You can always follow me on Good Reads.
This is what I read. Most were pretty good. My favorites have the ***s next to them.
Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss
How to use high-stakes negotiation in everyday life. Surprisingly easy to read.
Dark Carnivals, by W. Scott Poole
How politics and horror films go hand in hand with each other
Inside Rikers, by Jennifer Wynn
Case histories of incarcerated at Riker’s Island. Fabulous book if you love sociology and case histories. Some people are doomed from birth, and others can save themselves.
Sherlock Holmes: The Tiger’s Claws, by Christopher Abbott
I’m not a big Holmes fan, but Abbott nails the genre with intriguing mystery and Doyle-worthy writing. Well done.
Unmasked, by Paul Holes
Tracking some of the worst unsolved serial killers. Not overly gory. A bit outdated, as they’ve now caught several of them, but a good read.
The Limehouse Text, by Will Thomas
Still feeling out the Mystery genre, and this one was very good. Keeps you guessing to the very last pages.
Damnation Island, by Stacy Horn
A decent book on the history of Roosevelt Island, which tried to solve the existence of NYC’s poor, infirm, criminal, and insane. If you weren’t when you went in, you were if you ever came out; America’s Bedlam. Nice history, but don’t expect to learn how it changed.
Beautiul Country, by Qian Julie Wang
A lovely, poignant tale of Wang’s difficult childhood as an illegal Chinese immigrant, and her determined road to become a citizen.
Death in Mud Lick, by Erik Eyre
A tirelessly researched book on the opioid crisis in Middle America, and how everyone from the manufacturers to distributors to pharmacists all denied culpability, while people died by the hundreds. Great research, but few case histories as to the impact.
The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowel
Fascinating history of New England that you never learned in school, in a fun and irreverent style. Basically, if you complained about the religion, you got booted out to form a new state, and that’s why some places are more *’d in the head than others.
Fashionopolis, by Dana Thomas
Loved her Deluxe, and this is almost as good. Modern fashion habits are unsustainable and killing us, like all those nice cheap microfiber sheets that give off microplastics that we then ingest in our food. Excellent read.
Your Table is Ready, by Michael Cecchi-Azzolina
Tales of the high-end restaurant business by a former Maitre d’. Entertaining. Always tip well.
Dublin Tenement Life, by Kevin C. Kearns
Meh? Like Jacob Riis for the Irish, but here every story is practically the same, and after a while it just got boring. We got it. Life sucked. Move along.
Mind Hunter, by John Douglas
More outdated hunting of untraceable serial killers, who are then caught 20 years later. Interesting for the patterns they are able to create. Good, but outdated.
*** The Wager, by David Grann
A Holy Crap tale of sailors who are forced to sail an impossible route, get stranded on a desert island for years, take control, and through different means, a good number of them make it back home – only to face courtmartial and a death penalty for mutiny. True story!
Legends and Lattes, by Travis Baldree
I had no idea Cozy Fantasy was a thing. Just not my thing. D&D characters settle down after a campaign and set up a coffee shop. I don’t drink coffee and the whole lifestyle is lost on me. There’s nothing wrong with the story at all, it’s a good, harmless read, just not enough action for me. I’d much rather Dragonlance.
The Devils’ Gentleman, by Harold Schechter
The true-life story of the murder trial in 1898 of Roland Molineaux that changed the laws of trial in this country. Hard to put down.
The Teachers, by Alexandra Robbins
Following teachers around for a year, exposing just how bad their job sucks. And it does. A book every teacher – and parent – should read.
*** I know Who You Are, by Barbara Rae-Venter
Ah! A Modern story of solving the long-cold case (see Douglas and Holes above) of the Golden State Killer by a retiree sitting at her kitchen table, using a computer and DNA trees. And when she starts crediting the people she learned from, those names were very familiar (Douglas and Holes). And suddenly, thanks to her, we’re solving long-cold cases of missing people and serial killers at the rate of several a day…. And I traced my own family back 12 generations using her techniques.
*** We Have Always Lived in the Castle, by Shirley Jackson
If Wednesday Addams has a favorite novel, this is it. A psychological thriller, but more so some of the most beautiful prose and story structure you’ll ever read. It was an incredible delight.
I Must Say, by Martin Short
I never gave Martin Short much credit, because his characters on SNL always came off buffoonish and few people transitioned from SNL with any success. But I loved him so much in Only Murders in the Building, so I read this, and I have so much love and respect for him now. Wow.
Where the Light Fell, by Paul Yancey
I had no idea Yancey was some big Christian writer; the cover blurb just sounded good. Yancey survives a childhood under a resentful abusive psychotically religious mother who could have been best friends with Sybil’s mom. I hated the woman, and I never lived with her. I don’t use the C word, not even once a year, but it fits her. A good read if you like biographies.
Have a Happy New Year! Thank you for reading my blog, and stay tuned for some really incredible new stories!
I stepped away from Christianity almost 20 years ago now, but nobody can beat Christmas music. Whether it’s Handel or Bach, or Springsteen and Bowie, there is nothing more stirring to a spirit. Yes, I’d love to sit through Handel’s Messiah in some big ancient cathedral, because I can’t think of anything that would rattle the history in one’s Human memory, with the accoustics it was written for. Oh, what a thrill!
And yes, you can not be a Christian and still sing Christmas music, the same way I sing Hanukkah songs and listen to Buddhist chants, and am neither Jewish or Buddhist. Music is music, and helps us bridge our differences. And if you’re singing Deck the Halls, or Oh Christmas Tree, or Wassailing, you’re pretty much sticking to the Pagan origins anyway.
It’s been a tough year, and I haven’t discussed the rest of the Ugly cards that have fallen this month, because it’s not my place and I’ll get yelled at if I do, but there are plenty more, on top of Covid hits on two elderly relatives (so far we’re clear). I did pass my physical with flying colors – a cholesterol level that was the lowest in 25 years, lower than when I was taking the )(*&^ statins. So that was a nice plus.
This coming year, which should be a doozy for the country no matter where you are, I wish you peace and patience. Be kind to the ignorant, because they don’t realize their ignorance. Let that person out of the parking space. Let them go first at the stop sign. May the coming year bring us hope, peace, love, health, and more prosperity than we have today. May those in the face of war know love and safety and a full stomach, and may all our conflicts end. Share your blessings, for that is the way to make them return to you.
Blessed Solstice
Blessed Yule
Merry Christmas
Happy Hanukkah (okay, I’m late, but I hope it was happy)
Happy Kwanzaa
Happy Boxing Day
linksmų Kalėdų
С Рождеством
And best wishes to anyone I missed. May your holiday be filled with light.
Yes, I’ve been on a bit of radio silence. I’m still somewhat dour, despite a desperately needed 4-day vacation that let me forget everything stressful (save the thigh cramp that left me crippled and unable to bend my knee for two days. Yes, I still hobbled 10 miles a day on it.)
Yule is the season of darkness. The final harvest (of the Northern Hemisphere) is over and Earth is at rest, readying for the rebirth of Spring. The Romans didn’t even give winter months calendar space: after the Saturnalia was a 63-day month of “winter,” our January and February, which would cover the darkest days until after Imbolc and Spring arrived again. This year, our darkness came early.
My mother’s mother died in November of 1992, a cold, gray month. My father’s mother died in January of 1963, a cold and brutal time to be standing in a windy cemetery. My father’s father died in December of 1971, making holidays tough. My father-in-law died just before Thanksgiving last year, making it slightly easier for the family to spend an entire week together.
This year, we lost my father, Bob Staneslow, on November 5, 13 days shy of his 85th birthday, at a time when, with global warming, the weather was exceptionally pleasant.
No one knows why he died, beyond the direct reasons. He had no detectable infections. He had no major system imbalances. He did have prostatitis, not uncommon in a man just shy of 85 (he was born a month past his due date, at over 11 lbs, so if I count that, he was already 85), which led to tubes, which, in his semi-demented state, he refused to leave in, so his hands had to be tied down. His ability to swallow suddenly diminished, leaving him seriously choking on not only food but water. While waiting for tests to find out why – and being limited to only IVs, he rapidly lost weight he couldn’t afford to lose. Some days he was himself, other days, he was in another dimension. Without food he would die, but more food would mean a feeding tube, which meant his hands would have to be forever tied to the bed.
Dad did not want tubes, and certainly would not want to be tied to a bed for the remainder of his life, be it days or years. To put him in Hospice meant more or less giving the hospital permission to kill my father, when, on the good days, he was his normal self. He neither gave permission for it nor refused it, because he had no idea what was happening. He just went from one room to another, and they removed his tubes and freed his hands and let him drink his Coca Cola again, in small sips, and he was happy. And we put on happy lying faces and sat there telling him he would go home again as soon as he got stronger.
As he starved until the point his kidneys shut down, and then the rest of his body, aided by medications to make him forget what was happening. It took three days.
I understand the point of Hospice. There are people, who, in the throes of excruciating end-stage cancers, in a country that won’t allow you to do it yourself, allow you the medications that will ease your pain and end your life without horrific misery.
And that’s a mercy. But overall, I do not like Hospice.
Life does not end willingly. Death is a struggle. People can seem on their last breath, then sit up and speak, then collapse again. They can moan, yell, scream, claw the air, speak to people no one can see, fight someone trying to calm them. Anyone who has heard an agonal scream – a scream made by those in the process of dying – is not likely to forget it.
I never will, and that was only a cat.
And there are the cases – that I personally know – where the diagnosis was vague, the person was very much still aware and talking despite some health issues, and the nurse came in with medication as the visitor was leaving and the person was dead before the visitor left the parking lot.
For my grandfather, with end-stage cancer that had spread to his brain, it wouldn’t have made much difference, and he died quietly at home.
NOT Dad’s Gibson guitar
The hospital did every last thing they could for my father – I have no complaints there. They ran tests that were pretty well pointless, desperate for something they could fix. They gave it their all, above and beyond. But everything seemed fine. His final diagnosis was vascular dementia, which isn’t enough to calm the grief. Wacky doesn’t mean you die from it.
So this is a dark month, the second dark December in a row, full of dark humor, bleakness, and those million little moments when you say, Oh that would be perfect! I’ll take/call/tell/give Dad ….
No, I won’t. I just finished a manuscript I know he would have loved, but no matter how many times I think it, he won’t give me feedback.
My mother opted to not do any funeral, but maybe have a service in the spring (which, knowing my mother, won’t ever happen, nor would she attend it), so there has been no closure, no way of compartmentalizing anything, just an emptiness, expecting someone to be there and then almost confused when they’re not. Over and over and over.
Dad died, of course, hours after the funeral of his best friend, whom he hadn’t seen in several years, partly because they were now 1500 miles apart. One of his chief complaints was that he was lonely because all of his friends were dead, save his brother 1500 miles away in Minnesota, and a cousin 2500 miles away on the west coast. Despite being a bit of an introvert, Dad loved talking to people about music, cars, or history. He loved babbling in his languages. Although he came out of several health crises speaking more Italian than English – we had to warn the nursing staff that it wasn’t dementia, he spoke other languages – when it came down to the wire, it was French he was still speaking at the end.
I do not want my kids to go through the agony I did. I want to die in my sleep at age 100, preferably of a stroke, nice and quick. I think 100 is a nice round number. At least the 00’s are.
Hug your loved ones. Call them and tell them so. Even when you know the end is coming, it’s still a blow.
It’s Christmas, full of the music my father loved. The library is having a concert of 15th-century music on appropriate instruments, something my father would have loved dearly. The radio played a carol on guitar today, very much in a style my father would have played, as he played them every Christmas Eve.
And I cried.
It’s a dark month, the darkest of the year, and harder for some people than others. Just remember, as the Romans knew, the dark days may seem long, but the rebirth of the world in Spring, spiritually and physically, is just around the corner.
No one in our family has Alzheimers, and according to DNA testing, I am very unlikely to get it, but Alzheimers isn’t the only form of dementia, just the one you hear about most often, because it has a known cause, and it makes a lot of money for drug manufacturers and care givers. Untreated, good ol’ Syphilis will give you dementia (general paresis), the disease that did in no one less than Al Capone. Severe alcoholism will give you dementia (Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome). There’s Lewy-body Dementia, which killed Robin Williams, and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, which keeps killing young football players from repeated head trauma. You can get dementia from a narrowing of the blood vessels in the brain. That’s what’s believed to have done in my great-grandmother, who was into her 90’s by then.
And then there’s my father. My dad is a brilliant man. Skipped a grade in school and started University at 16. He can get around in about 6 languages. There’s a gene in his family line for photographic memory, which is strongest in his brother’s line. While we don’t have the full capability, Dad knew an amazing amount of information. Until the 80’s, when cars became computerized, he could tell you just about any fact from any car ever made, and probably repair it. He loved science, and history, and etymology, music and singing, mechanics, science fiction, Lord of the Rings, teaching, computers, and above all, antique cars, the older the better. There is no doubt in my mind my dad is the reason for our ADHD, and I do think, with his lack of social graces, if he was born in more recent times, he’d probably carry the label of high-functioning autism. I hate that label, hate that we have to find a “dysfunction” for people who just used to be accepted as “absent-minded professors.”
Thyroid cancer survivor
My father, being almost 85, has cheated death three times, not counting his life-long history of amazing klutzy accidents worthy of TV show competition. The first, and most serious, was when he was 72. One of the things he inherited from his father was heart disease. Of course, in the 60’s we didn’t have much diagnosis beyond a stethoscope and EKG, so when my grandfather died in 1971, the cause was “heart attack.” My dad, forty years later, had the benefits of modern computerized imaging, and somehow had two heart conditions that in theory cannot exist together: his heart was too thick and stiff to pump blood, which leads to congestive heart failure. At the same time, his heart was so enlarged and floppy, it was pulling apart the heart valves, and the heart wasn’t able to move the blood along. Dad was so out of breath he could barely move from a chair to the bed. He needed heart surgery, but wasn’t strong enough, leading to a 6-week stay in ICU to get him ready for a surgery than had less than a 50/50 chance of survival. Dad was terrified because this was a month before his 73rd birthday, and his dad died at 73.
In the middle of a blizzard that paralyzed the state and left the hospital running on generators, Dad sailed through that surgery, getting a new mitral valve and tightening some others. Three days later he was climbing stairs. He did have a pacemaker, and in the long run it was still heart failure, but he felt better than he had in 10 years.
Five years ago was cheat #2. Dad came down with shingles, the latent exacerbation of inflammation in anyone who has had chickenpox. Dad’s blisters were horrific, a patch the size of your hand over his left eye and forehead. If the pain wasn’t enough, he started to get wonky. Because of his age and his heart, they gave him anti-viral medication.
Dad went off the wall.
Whether it was the medication, which is known to not be tolerated well in elderly and can build up toxic levels in people with kidney issues, or the virus messed with his brain, dad started screaming at invisible things on the walls, raging because objects on an invisible clothesline were not organized right, and then I realized he was having seizures. I took notes on them for an hour, then gave it to nursing and told them to get a doctor to see him ASAP. It took more than 6 hours for doctors to see him, while he seized the whole time. He wound up in ICU on a ventilator – and MORE anti-virals, which I am firmly convinced, with prolonged seizure activity, fried his brain. Dad’s reality died that day. When he did recover, he was in a fantasy land, and those fantasies never left. He still believes them to this day. For a long time we didn’t think he would recover. He came back to reality, but never fully. He was never the same, frail and forgetful and slowly losing himself. He was left with permanent, horrific, pains and itching, and despite 5 years of unending search for relief, everything short of physically severing the nerves, he suffers to this day. For the love of all that’s holy, get your shingles vaccines the minute you can. They are the worst vaccines I’ve ever had, the pain lasts days, but nothing, not a fraction, of the torment my father’s had.
Two years after that, we hit death cheat #3. Covid became epidemic in February of 2020, and my parents, extreme risks, holed up tight in their house. My sister would come home from work, decontaminate in the basement, run upstairs and shower before even saying hello. But in November, the luck ran out. Heidi got Covid, and by the time she realized it, my parents had it, too. The second Dad ran a fever, Heidi got him to the ER. Now, Dad’s O2 levels normally drop when he sleeps, but the hospital took that as a drop from Covid. He got whipped to a room and given anti-viral medication – not the same as the Shingles one. Despite having 5 or 6 comorbidities that should have killed him, by day 3 he was up and bored and itching to go home. Dad came home no worse for wear, just tired.
Bard at a local Renfair. Dad thinks anything after 1800 is modern.
But Dad’s luck was running out. His heart was getting weaker, and couldn’t pump enough blood into his brain, meaning his brain cells were dying from lack of oxygen. Extra oxygen doesn’t help; his O2 levels are generally fine. The O2 just can’t reach his brain. I first noticed something wrong around 2015, four years after surgery and three before shingles. Dad was the biggest fan of my books, my primary beta reader and editor for my first series, a grammar guru in multiple languages. He loved Adobe photoshop, editing his 40,000 (no joke) car photos pixel by pixel to remove unwanted reflections, a program I can’t begin to use. He worked diligently on my bookcovers, playing with details at the pixel level, me adjusting and approving, and he making the changes. He had a little trouble with Ancient History, but we made it. And just six months later, when it came to Prisoner of the Mind, he couldn’t do it. Nothing. He looked at the photo, and had no idea what to do, this photoshop whiz. I was stunned, trying to walk him through it. I knew what he did, but I didn’t know how. I could describe what he should do, but he had less concept of it than I did.
And I was horrified.
Little by little, Dad started to slip. He forgot all his passwords, which, of course, could be in any language or any ridiculous phrase, nothing a normal person might follow. He has 6 Facebook accounts, because he never kept anything on shortcut and couldn’t remember passwords. Then he couldn’t remember how to view his car photos, couldn’t find them. Then he forgot how to turn on the computer, this educator who taught multiple coding languages in 1980, and later did programming for insurance companies. He recalled how terrified he was, going out to pick up Chinese food at night in the rain, and didn’t know where he was, how to get home, couldn’t see anything, and finally made it back.
We didn’t let him drive at night anymore. Then we didn’t let him drive.
We got his rifle out of the house.
Little by little, he stopped being able to do anything he ever loved, even when we simplified things for him: watch movies, watch TV, read a new manuscript for me, play his guitar or sing the thousands of songs he knew. He stopped calling, because he no longer thought of it, and couldn’t use the phone. The last call I got from him, which must have taken tremendous effort, was when he was trying to make lunch for my mother (he’s still her caretaker), and he dropped the eggs and they broke on the floor and he was having trouble trying to clean the floor and was confused. I drove over like a bat out of hell, cleaned the floor, got them lunch, and made sure the kitchen couldn’t catch on fire.
Music in the park
Sometimes he’d be okay, sometimes he’d take a jump downward. Every trip to the doctor was the same overwhelming joy over the number of trees and rocks in the area. His words started to slip: first just thingamabobbies, like everyone gets. But more. And the wrong word. And then straining to recall the right word, and then finally not talking because he knew he couldn’t get the words out. Then it was just babbling nonsense, having an idea but only the wrong words came out, and it was hard to follow. He couldn’t follow conversations, and couldn’t name the people who lived with him. He slept a lot. He was unsteady on his feet. He lost weight – more than 50 pounds, over time – because he forgot to eat and drink, which made his confusion worse. We fiddled with his meds, but nothing made a big difference.
So the other day, Dad was loopier than usual – usual being upset because it’s 2 am (or 2 pm) and he’s dressed and begging to be allowed to go home, why can’t he go home, he just wants to go home, while standing in his living room of 59 years, hadn’t slept, hadn’t eaten or drank anything, and hadn’t been able to pee all day. So, off to the ER, on a night when they were already hopping. As the night wore on, he got loopier, and he was pulling at his IV and catheter until they tied his hands down. Eventually he lost every last shred of himself, yelling, compulsively trying to walk, trying to rip out tubes, hitting me when I tried to stop him, this normally gentle, kind man – but normal for dementia behaviors, behaviors he’s never before exhibited. And by the next day, after knocking him out with three different drugs, he was his normal self, sitting up, making sense, happy to see people, not even tied to the bed anymore, functioning as well as any other day. Test upon test upon test, and no one can find anything remarkably wrong. A little fluid on his lungs, but he’s had that. He has heart failure. If we turn off the pacemaker, he’ll flatline. He’s severely dehydrated, but even on IV, his urine’s very dark. He does have some moderate kidney issues. His white cell count was going up, but in normal limits, so he got antibiotics in case. Today, day 5 in the hospital, he was out of it when we got there, but got better with more conversation. His lunch arrived, we untied him and let him eat, and he swallowed wrong and went into a full choke, unable to breathe. It was over a minute before he started to gasp, and they finally came running and suctioned string beans out of his throat, unchewed. Now they realize he’s having trouble swallowing even water, and he’s allowed nothing by mouth, this man who, five days ago, was walking around eating and drinking as well as anyone.
We know he cannot return home, and probably never will.
Is there a physical cause? Is there something lurking we don’t know yet? Has the dementia taken that big a dip? Any small thing can set off a bad cascade in the elderly. Is this just a natural progression, or something more malicious? We have no idea.
But I know he wouldn’t be this bad if he’d never gotten the shingles.
Brothers
He’s been on borrowed time for 11 years. We know there is no rainbow at the end of this hospital stay. Comfort is the word of the day, but because even a slight illness can whomp the daylights out of the elderly, we keep hoping to find a reason that, if fixable, can at least give him some dignity and life again. If we can’t, we accept the inevitable. Keep him happy. Keep the invisible things at bay. His brother, almost 10 years older, wasn’t expected to live out this week, but is also hanging on. Are they tied together, like some weird-coincidence TV show on a junk channel, or is this just bad timing? Not the best way to bring family together. It’s a year next month since we lost my father-in-law.
Would his heart have brought on the dementia all on its own? We’ll never know. But I do know that severe seizure activity, left unchecked, can rob a brain of oxygen and leave crippling damage, and I do, without a doubt, pin much of it on malpractice with his shingles treatment.
We’ve had it easy to this point, relatively speaking. Dementia, whatever the cause, robs people of their very soul, millimeter by millimeter. It steals the essence of who they are, their life’s meaning, the things they love. It’s a heartbreak no person, no family, should have to bear. If you can prevent it, even by a few percentage points, then make every effort to do so.
Oh, I’m gonna get a lot of hate mail for this one. But at this point, I really don’t think you can dredge up enough data to change my mind.
I’m clean!
I had a run of the mill virus last week – no different snot bug than any other year, you sneeze, your nose runs like a faucet, I had laryngitis for a day, and then it quit and moved on. It went through the whole house; I was somewhere in the middle. But, me being me, it triggered my asthma. 358 days a year, my asthma does not bother me. Sure, heavy exercise will bring it on, or sudden overpowering smells (perfumes, scented deodorants, or my bane, the Overpowering Dryer Sheet, etc), and general irritants (bug sprays, paint fumes, wind – yes, drying out my throat is an irritant, and sure, viruses), but most of the time I don’t even pay attention to it.
This virus, however, whatever kind it was (we tested it, and nothing – not one common virus – showed up, so I must truly be over it), irritated my throat. And it left asthma behind. I want to cough with every breath I take, which is exhausting. My inhaler is helping, but so is running humidifiers and wearing a mask, because it keeps the air I breathe humidified. So I’m not overly active today, which meant I got to binge-rerun several episodes of Andor in a row.
And I have decided that, outside of the original trilogy, and Rogue One/Andor, the rest of Star Wars …. Sucks.
You can keep your fights about the prequels and sequels. I did enjoy the last 3, but I agree, the scripts sucked. All you did was update the original for a new audience. Loved them, but in the same way I loved Season 3 of Picard. Original cast? YAY!
I’ve suffered through all of the mini-series. I loved Mandalorian and Boba Fett. Wonderful. But they suffered through the same issue that EVERY SW mini-series has suffered – a 2-hour show, ssssstrrrrrreeeeeetchchchchcheeedddd out to 8-10 hours. They are so slow I could grow a corn crop, harvest it, and make my own popcorn to watch the last installment with. Obi Wan, to me, was the worst, but I can now say Asohka (whereever that damned H goes) wins that award. I loved Syndulla, but that was about it. By episode 3, I was done. I was so bored, there was no action, Ashoka’s lines were timed to have massive pauses between every one and were said with no inflection whatsoever (and I know the actress can act). It was so utterly dull I gave up. You lost me. I had no idea why the Bad Blue Guy looked like Elon Musk, or why anyone was supposed to care whatsoever about Ezra, or why the nasty woman who looked like Nana Visitor had turned gnarly. I didn’t care. And Wtf – you have people running around named Syndulla and Ahsoka and Grievous and Ackbar, and you suddenly pull in some biblical name? So totally, trendilly, out of place. Here are my children: Arsook, Kiz, Ginges, Floofloo, Verx, and Elizabeth.
Bad Writing.
While I love the original trilogy, corny as it is at times, you can easily talk me into saying Rogue One is the best Star Wars movie. Why? It has substance. It has characters who are believable, everybodies who get caught up in something bigger than themselves. It’s not the same old, same old, same old rehashed story line. Empire is Bad! – I’m joining the resistance! – We’re gonna fight the Empire! – We need a Jedi! – Oh, a lot of us are going to die! – Least likely hero wins the day!! Yay us!! Which is the entire plot of almost all Star Wars entries. How many times can I read/watch/handle the same exact plot? I am so, so, so sick of watching Jedis fight. At this point, I’d love to tell you where to shove that lightsaber. I’m tired of major timeline issues, and bad lines, and endless repetition. Here’s the star destroyer we’re going to take down. Here’s the evil commander on the bridge with his hands crossed behind his back. Here’s the Big Bad Guy who’s controlling it all but only by distance, here’s an incoming hologram. Here’s the gutsy woman who’s required and is actually interesting, but the fan boys will bash and trash her on social media until the actress gets death threats.
And that’s, perhaps, why I love Andor more. Sure, if I find Diego Luna hiding under my bed, I will never let him leave, and yes, Andor suffers the same slow pace as the others, though I find it less so because there’s a continuous stream of information that comes with it, like a drawn out Agatha Christie, and there are no Jedi. There’s no posturing of “Let’s join the Rebel Alliance!”. It’s still grass-roots at this point; there’s no great base on Dantooine. This is it. This is the actual pressure cooker. Here is the grit and the grime and the suffering that’s at the core of the rebellion. There’s no smart-ass Leia posing with a gun. There’s no wailing droid making comedy. There’s no comedy here. This is as grim as it gets in a repressive regime. People are dying for trying to live. People are tortured to set an example. People are treated as nothing more than a commodity for exploitation. Need new workers? We’ll make up some crimes and get you new convicts (looking at you, China). This series is made of the small stories – the proud Empire officer who fucks up badly and is kicked out, only to be berated by his mother, who’s enough to make you jump out an airlock. He’s a real SOB, but to see how he’s treated by his mother almost makes you feel sorry for him. Here’s the guy who hates the Empire because they stole his brother’s land and his brother committed suicide because of it – not because of some great noble idea, not because of a human rights issue, but because it’s deeply personal. Andor doesn’t want to fight, he just wants to get his family free of the oppression hanging over them, earn a decent living so they don’t freeze in the winter. His goals are small, until he’s dragged into the cause in the name of money and freedom from prison. Andor has none of the gimmicks that make people roll their eyes about Star Wars, and that same grit and originality carry over into Rogue One. (Or are continued, since RO came first).
These are shows you should be watching, and thinking about how and why other places, other cultures are at war, before you choose sides. The US has a habit of backing ALL sides in a conflict, depending on who can give them what at that moment (your shame won’t die, Ollie North). You don’t always get the full story on the news depending on where our interests lie at that moment, and when one group of people finally can’t take it anymore and starts a conflict, sit back and find out why before choosing sides. Yeah, sometimes they really are assholes and terrorists. But, sometimes, their grudges have good reason. You really think women are walking here from Guatamala on foot, through the jungle, risking rape and murder, with a child strapped to their back, risking being shot by border guards, because they have a burning desire to pick lettuce in America? Or steal the bed-making job at Best Western? I’ve never yet seen a college kid making beds in a hotel as a summer job.
And I can’t compare it to Star Trek, either, because Star Trek doesn’t beat the same horse to death in every series or every episode (and the pace is usually much faster. Orville, I admit, can drag). Star Trek can go in any and all directions; Star Wars does not. No one on Star Wars sits around developing a new vaccine, or a space warp improvement, or how to end the famine on Tattooine. No one but Boba cares about the Tusken Raiders. As long as there’s a light saber, a flying ship, preferably of a new model people can memorize, and some epic (after 200 times, epic loses its meaning) battle, which doesn’t even seem to be about good vs. evil anymore, Star Wars is set.
I’ve even watched Donnie Yen in Chinese-language films. I think he really IS a Jedi.
But I’m bored with that. And that’s why I like Andor/Rogue One. It’s the same world, but fresh, different, thoughtful. It adds actual meaning to the struggles, as we see that the people of these worlds have more in common with us than we thought (I’ve never seen a moisture farm on Earth, sorry. Never yet seen a pilot who can jump into any plane anywhere and immediately fly it.) We see how those in power are starting to pull together, seeing where the iron fist of the Empire is leading, and refusing to be a part of it. If anything, Mon Mothma is the true hero.
I’ve always liked the little stories, since the big stories are so over done. I like to see the Huge Characters as background, see the impact they have on the regular people. Maybe that’s why I liked Joker so much – he’s a very real person, played absolutely real, and crossing paths with Bruce Wayne and never knowing it. That’s real magic.
No, I won’t watch the animated series. No, I don’t read all the background wookipedia articles. I haven’t read a SW novel since about 1985, because again, they were all the same crap, because that’s what sells. This is my entertainment, not my religion (I will die on my Delta Shield. I have to. It’s inked on my chest.) I had such hopes for Solo, but damn, that may be even worse than the prequels. Thank goodness for Grogu pumping new life into the franchise.
I’ll stick the originals, because they’re simple and complete and despite their faults, they shook up the entire entertainment industry. But I can forgo all the rest, in favor of Andor and Rogue One. They’re my kind of story.
I went down a rabbit hole. Deep, deep down a rabbit hole. (and for the life of me I can’t change this font).
I read a wonderful new book, I Know Who You Are: How an Amateur DNA Sleuth Unmasked the Golden State Killer and Changed Crime Fighting Forever, by Barbara Rae-Venter. It seemed like it would be interesting. Earlier this year, I’d read a book on cold cases, and not very long ago I’d read another one on solving cold cases, so this just seemed like it was destined to be. I sort of remembered the guy being mentioned as one that no one had a clue on, and then they suddenly solved it, and I’m interested in DNA science, so what the hell, let’s read it.
Now, let’s remember some easy facts here: California spent FORTY YEARS and $10 million to hunt this guy down, and really didn’t have a lead. He was a criminal of the most heinous kind.
Rae-Venter, a retired Patent lawyer who had dabbled in helping adopted people find their birth parents from her kitchen table, spent $217 and it took her 63 days to figure this guy out. Her methods changed the way law enforcement looked at cases, and suddenly all these cold cases started being solved.
I finished the book in two days. I could not put it down.
The book does not go into excessive gore or details, which was good, because I can’t handle that crap. I have kids. And even though you’re a woman, and thoughts about danger flick through your head every time the dog barks for no reason, it doesn’t come close to the worries about danger if you have kids. If there’s any chance of real danger, it doesn’t matter if it’s 2500 miles away, you’ll sit up all night with a shotgun just to be sure. And I need to sleep at night. One major horrific psycho murder in my town was enough.
Yes, DNA profiling has been used for a while, but in the form of “The FBI has this guy’s profile, and we think it matches with the one we just got.” Venter didn’t do that. Unless the killer’s DNA was already on file, which, in the 80’s and 90’s, it probably wasn’t, certainly not the 70’s, you were out of luck. What Venter did was take any samples and run them through on-line data bases (Ancestry, 23&Me, etc) as a person looking for relatives. If she could get a hit that was as far back as Great-Grandparent, or best yet, cousin or sibling, she could work the chain forward or backward, zeroing in through old-fashioned sources like birth and death certificates, prison records, taxes, etc. By eliminating suspects who were no match at all, they got closer and closer to the probable suspect, locating and testing illegitimate children, cousins, and more. After picking through the main suspect’s trash for items he’d touched, they had a perfect match. The killer had been found.
Of course, that process, which solved a large number of cold cases in a very short time, set off a huge outcry – how dare they use people’s DNA to find killers! Some relatives refused to give a sample, because they knew they had siblings who were wanted by the police. All the ancestry sites had to let people opt in or out on their DNA being used for police purposes. The truth, however, wasn’t as frightening: your DNA was probably never going to be used. By law, DNA couldn’t be used to track down Johnny for stealing a Baby Ruth from the Kwiki-mart. DNA was only an option for the hardest crimes: murders, rapes, kidnappings, missing children, etc. You shot your neighbor in an argument and fled to Montana? Cousin Betty was probably safe from having to rat on you.
The book was fascinating, utterly fascinating, easy to read, and focused on the methods, not the gore. Of course, I’m reading the book, and she’s in contact with Paul Holes, one of the leading cold case investigators. Yep, read his book. Holes talks about how he learned it all from John Douglas – yep, read his book, too, outdated as it was, and I started to feel weird, since I’d already read all the source material…. Rae-Venter’s book is new – this year – and she talks about wishing they’d been able to solve the Long Island murders, and of course, just a few months later, they did solve it, through her methods.
Uncle Art
So, having a family that’s fairly deep into genealogy, and can theoretically trace back (on one quarter) to the Mayflower and Nathan Hale (who left no descendants, so it had to be through a sibling), I thought, well, what can I find out, then? I still have not even a birthdate on Uncle Laurie, and though my family DNA tree has a hundred hits that branch off my great-grandmother Madeline LaPointe, I know NOTHING about her. Absolutely nothing. We have a vague idea of when she died (on-line sources give a 5 year range, but we’re pretty sure of the year), but not where she’s buried. Nothing.
Great-Grandpa Art, who died of prostate cancer when I was 3
Rae-Venter talks about research being a rabbit hole, and three hours, six hours, nine hours can pass without you realizing it. And yep, that happened. I started with my Great-Uncle Arthur, since he was a WWII vet and would have a better shot through military records. Yep. Here was a photo of his grave (I know where it is. I went to his funeral. He’s buried with my grandmother. I can find it on Google Maps). The site was Find a Grave. It listed his father. Hm. I know some about Great-Grandpa Kathan – he didn’t die until I was 3, though I don’t ever remember meeting him. Clicked on that. Wow! Here was HIS father and mother listed, and THEIR parents and all siblings, and then THEIR parents… I wound up going back EIGHT generations, more or less, to 1795. They all seemed to be clustered around Dummerston VT, a town in New Hampshire, and a county in NY State. So I’m like, what did they do, have a gypsy caravan that drove around in circles? No. Turns out Dummerston and Chesterfield NH are directly across the river from each other, so they were literally neighbors. Issue solved, except for the New York crew. I see a road trip in my future. Like Rae-Venter said, time stops, and three hours passed in about 10 minutes.
But Great-Grandma La Pointe remains a mystery. I know she died in 1923, not immediately but not long after Uncle Art was born. I found out when and where she was married (Portland, Maine), and a possible birthdate, but there are two different months given. What I need to do is waddle my backside down to New Haven records and do some digging. I know that’s where they were living when she died, I do have the address, and my grandmother actually graduated from Hill House High in New Haven, around 1933? We have her yearbook somewhere. Maine is a closed-records state, so I will just cough up the $15 for them to ship me a copy of the marriage certificate, and maybe it will list her dates on that.
And I had to laugh, at how times have changed. There’s a book that traces the lineage of Captain John Kathan, who founded Dummerston, Vermont in the early 1700’s. He is my direct ancestor on my mother’s side. The book was written in 1902, and of course there are few surviving copies. In the late 70’s, early 80’s, my great-uncle acquired one, but would not copy it for my grandmother. My grandmother borrowed it “to read,” and instead, my mother sat and typed an entire copy, by hand, on a manual typewriter, so my grandmother could get her copy of an out of print book. She typed 8 hours a day or more, for more than a week. So, while I’m doing all this accidental research, I come across the book, and its history. I’m like, Could it be? And son of a bitch, there’s a button on it that says, Do you wish to download a PDF of this book? So of course I click YES. And just like that, in a millisecond, I have a copy of the book for myself, no copying involved. One of his children married the first white child born in Dummerston. Or Vermont, I don’t remember. Still, weird stuff.
Mae Ellen Kathan, Daughter of the American Revolution
So I haven’t made it as far back to the Mayflower yet, but I’m within a hundred years,and that’s in just 3 hours. I think my grandmother had that all written down. I’ll have to compare notes. She would have cried to see the ease in which I did all this from my own chair, photos and all. Still haven’t pinned down the LaPointe side, or Aunt Grace, who died around the age of 2, but what year, I don’t know. My grandmother swore she could remember the funeral, but Grace was older, so we’re all confused. If her parents married in 1913, and Grandma was born in 1915, Grace had to be pretty close in age. I found a relative who must have died in childbirth – married the year before, at 17, baby born and mother died the same year. Another who had twins, and one died, and another who lost 4 of their 7 kids in a month – three in one week. I’m betting on diphtheria, since that wiped out families more often than any other disease beyond flu.
I highly recommend the book – so far one of the two best books I’ve read this year. And while you’re at it, try Find a Grave. It was a wild ride.
I’ve always been a reader. I think I started somewhere around three, because I was reading Dr. Seuss – at least Hop on Pop and such – by four. I do remember that much. By Kindergarten I was one of just two or three of us (Kindergarten still being Kindergarten back then, and not trying to shove a second-grade curriculum down a five year old’s throat) who could read, and we got to read books to the class. I suppose I should feel honored, because the other two kids who could were super-smart and incredible math whizzes later on. One of them was Jeff Quinn. (Ever watch Weatherman Lonnie Quinn on CBS news in NY? Yeah. Jeff’s his younger brother. Lonnie was about 2 years ahead of me in school).
And this one
I read like a demon through school. In highschool, I read a book a day – 250 pages or more, and that was in addition to school. I would read between classes, one finger out to feel the wall so I didn’t crash into anything. I probably still have my 10th or 11th grade report card that says I’d do better in school if I didn’t read so much (Yes, really. Because I wasn’t reading school stuff). I did the same in college, plowing through a good book in 1-2 days on top of everything else I was doing.
This was my fun reading in 8th grade
Now, I read in spurts. Some of it depends on my time – if I’m really involved in a project, I don’t waste time on reading. Ideally, I love to read while waiting for the kids’ buses, and if they run late, it could be a half hour or so each way, so that’s an hour of reading a day, and in general I read a page a minute, if it’s not technical stuff. I try to read during kids’ sports, but it’s not always possible anymore, and if I try to read on a treadmill I tend to fall off. But I steadily read at least SOMEthing. And yeah, I do reread my own stuff almost every year, because, after all, I wrote stories I want to read!
I can’t say I read any one genre. I most definitely read more non-fiction than fiction, and I’ve learned a lot of new good authors through researching stuff for writing my own. I like the classics – Dickens, Poe, Steinbeck. I love the grit of Dashiell Hammett, the twists and turns of Le Carré, every word ever uttered by Murderbot, some of the better steampunk, and my beloved Chris Wooding’s Ketty Jay. I would love to read more science fiction, but there’s so much else that’s fascinating, too, and the books fly through my hands at 300 an hour some days.
Books my friends won’t read
I love psychology. Sociology. I’ve read several true crime that have been utterly riveting. Science. Virology. Epidemiology. Genetics (my beloved Smith’s Recognizable Patterns of Human Malformation). Paleontology. Archaeology. Ancient History. Modern History. The history of food (milk, butter, beer, bread, grocery stores). The dynamics of High Fashion (I am perplexed by this, as I would be happy wearing the same jeans or sweats, with flannel shirt or tee shirt, until they fell beyond repair. Advertisers hate me, because I just don’t care). Biographies. Memoirs. Histories of New York City. But rarely anything on a best-seller fiction list. I read the blurbs and want to cry from boredom and nausea. Not for me.
So what is everyone else reading? What do you recommend? Better yet, what books did you hate? I’ve started several this year that I gave up on, because even 100 pages in, they just weren’t catching me. One I hated was Six Days of the Condor, which was so misogynistic and offensive I shut the book and brought it back. Ugh. The Boy Detective, which, after 50 pages, was so somnolent I gave up in bewilderment. How the hell did that crap get published?
This has been a good year for reading, as I try to avoid working on a manuscript and have spent more time waiting for buses and vans and kids. I usually do a full review in December, but here’s the last five books I read:
The Teachers, by Alexandra Robbins, an excellent, compelling work following three teachers and diving in to the vast difficulties they face just trying to do their jobs.
The Devil’s Gentleman: Privilege, Poison, and the Trial That Ushered in the Twentieth Century by Harold Schechter. A fascinating true story of murder and mayhem that was so sensational it ushered in new trial laws that are still followed today.
Legends and Lattes, by Travis Baldree. A cute little Dungeons and Dragons style story about a coffee shop in a D&D village. This introduced me to the term Cozy Fantasy. While it was cute and I liked the characters, I thought it rather dull and predictable. If you just want a nice story, this is great for you. Maybe because I don’t drink coffee and never, virtually never, set foot in coffee shops and could care less.
The Wager, by David Grann. This may be the best book I’ve read so far this year. The Wager is a British ship sent to sink Spanish Galleons off Brazil and steal their gold for England. Instead, a hundred men become wrecked on an inhospitable island off the tip of South America, and begin to starve. A true story that is utterly amazing and very, very hard to put down. I think I read this in 2-3 days, tops.
Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Serial Crimes Unit, by John E. Douglas While this was good, and thankfully not overly gruesome, it is woefully out of date, with Douglas doing all of his investigating 30-40 years ago. Many of his unsolvable crimes have now, with the advent of DNA testing, been solved. But it was still a decent read.
See? You’re not pinning me down with this batch. If I go back one more, it’s Dublin Tenement Life, which was interesting for about 50 pages and then everyone basically just said the same things over and over and over. I think I found Jacob Riis (yeah, 1880’s Jacob Riis) more interesting.
If you’ve read Heart of the Matter (and you should!) or any of my other works, PLEASE leave me a review on Amazon, even if it’s just three words, or just some stars. Don’t care if you liked it or not – not everyone will – but Amazon authors depend on them for their rankings.)
What was your favorite book so far this year?
Still my favorite book of the last 10 years, I think. I just reread it again last week.
Camp Chaos Rules 