My Brain On Books XXXXII

 

   

 

Be sure and see my tribute poem to Dewey and the Thon she birthed at the bottom of this post

Riddle in my Readathon Nest
Also featuring my Kinde Fire on a stand, headphones, a small stack of tree books I'd like to spend time with and over on the shelf my Library of Congress talking book machine

=

11:22 PM = The Culting of America is too info packed to read in one go

I set it aside after reaching 23% 111 pages in.  As much as I would like another finish for the thon, I'm happy with proving that I've plenty of time to finish before it's due just after next weekend.  But I'm glad I started it this weekend and did not leave it until next weekend when I would not have had a choice but to cram it into 1 or 2 days.  I try to spread my Libby due dates out with no more than 2 on a given day and no more than 3 over 2 days.  But with my 2 cards nearly always tapped out at 20 total with 21 days each I'm constantly having to my next choice pushed by the next due date rather than my mood.  Not to mention that my KU books get neglected and I'm actually paying for the privilege to borrow them.  If I'm not going to read at least 2 per month I might as well cancel the service.  3 or 4 would be better.  I need to shift my priority to KU or give it up.

So my plan is to go spend the next 2-3 hours with Atwood's The Testaments and if I can reach 20% I'm going to allow myself to close off the thon with Flavia De Luce.  Because I either have to have a palette cleanser before thon end or after since if The Testaments are anywhere near as intense as The Handmaids Tale, it is NOT a bedtime story.  I suffer from anxiety induced insomnia and I just reread The Handmaids Tale recently so I'm not just guessing.

Right now I seem to be going strong and expect to finish strong but I do have a circadian rhythm low point between 3:30 and 4:30 which I may not survive.  Which migh also prevent me from updating again before I sleep. 

5:00 PM - Second Finish

Just finished the sequel to Chasing Eden which I finished this morning.  How To Uneat an Elephant.  I read it in nearly one sitting.  The only thing preventing it being a single sitting was the need to put my Kindle on a charger for 20 minutes while I fixed food which gave me enough charge to finish.

It was a kind of blessing that silly graphic fought me when I tried to place it inside a paragraph below, because now it sits atop the whole post and, as long as I don't open a book below the second shelf or something non-Kindle, the cover image is right there.

I wasn't intending to finish the sequel today since it doen't have a due date and so many others are due on Libby in the next wee.  Some as early as Monday.  But I could not find a place to stop for long.  Clough seems to be a master at pacing.  I was thinking around the hafway point that she had the novelists eye and ear and wondered if she would write a novel.  I got my answer on the page that pops up when you cross the finish-line.  She has already published two in a series set during the era of immigration between Europe and America.  They are both available on Kindle Unlimited like Eden and Elephant are.  Alas! My KU limit is tapped.  Well it was until I finished Elephant but I have a long line of books in my KU wish list and several I've been hankering after.  But I will keep her novels in mind. Besides, I have too many series in progress already: Earthsea, Flavia DeLuce, Seven Sisters, Louise Penny's Inspector G., The Three Body Problem, Disc World.  

7:44 AM - First Finish

Just finished Cherielynn Clough's Chasing Eden.  It only took about one of the last three hours to finish it.  The rest of the time was used up in editing this post, posting on the Dewey fb page, making coffee and organizing the top two shelves on my Kindle to reflect my priorities for today.

...

And now I've just spent another hour taking a screenshot of my top two Kindle shelves, thinking it would be easier than going after book covers every time I finish a book.  Ha!  Tech, that thing that held so much promise for efficiency and productivity now eats up our time with hoop jumping.

Simply emailing the screenshot or sending to my email was stymied by their claim to have lost access to my google accounts due to faulty password.  But an attempt to fix that included a request for permissions that I thot excessive.  Sending via Bluetooth would not work.  There were no image editing aps on my Kindle Fire except the offer of Microsoft 365 which I don't have and won't pay for.  So finally I gave up and moved to my android tablet with a Kindle app on it and organized those top two shelves to look the same (which meant locating in the random mix on the shelves each book in the right order and opening them to send them to the top) then take the screenshot,  share it to my Google Drive, move to my laptop, locate the screenshot in File Explorer, return to my Blogger post and mark where I wanted the image to be placed, find the image displaced a dozen lines down, try to move it to the spot under the first paragrap in this update only to have it jump two lines above this update.  Several attempts to move it back failed so I gave up and started writing this paragraph of whine.

It's just that I get so frustrated when a task that I once could do in 3-5 minutes takes me an hour!  I can blame some of it on my eyes but a lot of it is because the pompous programmers and owners of the platforms have been whittling away our options for years hoping to suck more of our dimes and our data out of our dominion.  They are rich enough to buy private islands, politicians, and pardons but they keep picking the pockets of those of us on fixed incomes who are soon going to have to give up our streaming services to keep the temps in our home livable, not long after that we'll have to start choosing between our Amazon Prime and our Google account.  At that point we might as well give up our ISP.

UGH!  I just lost another hour to that rant.

4:44 AM - 
Intro Meme

I'm prepping this ahead of time and setting it to publish at 4:44.  It will probably be an hour or two before I update with commentary on my first one or two reads.  Tho I may check in over on the Dewey fb page.

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today?

Kelso Washington USA.  Across the Cowlitz river from Longview where I grew up and had been living with my elderly mother between January 2013 and late July 2021.  I moved into my 400 square foot efficiency unit in late July 2021.  This  post was a photo essay of my new space.  I really need to update on the photo essay.  There was a significant change last spring when my brother donated three large pieces==two bookcases and a tall cabinet.

So this is my 15th thon in my own home, counting the Reverse Thons in August 2021 & 2023 - 2025.

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?

Non-Fiction: The Culting of America by Dannielle Mestyanek Young

Fiction: The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?

Savory: Sushi rice rolls

Sweet:  Chocolate cake (made by my neighbor) with fresh strawberries found on my readathon finger-food shopping trip yesterday

4) Tell us a little something about yourself!

• 
  
• Riddle (featured in pic above) joined me last December as a 2 mo. old. 
• Legally blind with RP aka tunnel vision.  Have only a sliver of vision left in center of right eye.  The rest is shadows and shimmers.
• Have struggled with mood disorder of Anxiety and Depression and insomnia since grade school
• Diagnosed with high functioning autism in 2015.  In my 50s!
• Have a caregiver who comes in five days a week to help with chores and errands I can't do alone. 
• I proved during this move that I have more volume in fiber art supplies than in clothes by at least triple.
• I probably have double the volume of clothes in tree-books but since I still haven't got them all moved over I can't be sure.  But if all the ebooks and audio books loaded on my devices were tree books there probably wouldn't be room for me let alone my yarn and clothes, beanbag chair or bed...

5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to?

This is my 42nd Dewey thon so there aren't many variations I haven't tried. 

Partly by accident and then by intention, my TBR for today has a theme:

#deconstruction

Both the fiction and the nf relate to being raised or otherwise commandeered into a cult or high-control social group.  There are several memoirs, several novels and several expository nf that fall into categories like explanatory, history, psychology, theology, culture.  It's a selection that's probably double what I can expect to dip into let alone finish.  But I hope to finish at least one each of memoir, novel and expository.

This is all about the path I am on myself and I'm thinking about returning to blogging on a regular basis with the theme of #deconstruction predominating, starting with book reviews of the dozens of books on the theme I've finished in the last decade interspersed with my own story while I explore the idea of writing my own memoir.  Hopefully this will morph into returning to work on my Fruits of the Spirit Storyworld which is all about the impacts on several generations of women in one family by a fictional cult founded in the 1880s. 

Ode to Dewey

by Joy Renee

vote, fav and share for Dewey

We Miss You Dewey

 

Read more...

My Brain On Books XXXXI

 

   

 

Be sure and see my tribute poem to Dewey and the Thon she birthed at the bottom of this post

Riddle in my Readathon Nest
Also featuring my Kinde Fire on a stand, headphones, a small stack of tree books I'd like to spend time with and over on the shelf my Library of Congress talking book machine

=

9:44-11:22 AM - First Finish!

I started with the Fugelsang book for the first sprint and was still listening when the second sprint started.  I was at the 58% point at 5am and finished at quarter to nine.  I tried to start The Song of the Blue Bottle Tree (a Libby ebook on my Kindle) to listen to it as I tended to minor self-care tasks but after the third time i had to return to the Kindle and back up because I'd missed a crucial word, I gave up.  I tend to need to follow with my eyes while the robots read as they get pronunciations so so wrong so so often.  But I got enough out of the nearly two chapters I heard to know that once I sit down with it, I'll be a goner for hours.

I was going to grab the book cover for The Separation of Church and Hate and share first thoughts but having started the next book and found it irresistible I find I'd rather be reading than reviewing.  And I know that because the book's theme is so closely related to the still open emotional wounds left by the cult I was raised in and came out of 30 years ago, trying to write about it now might take me down a rabbit hole that I would not find my way out of before the end of the thon.

I will say tho that I found quite healing Fugelsang's use of humor as a defense against the overwhelming outrage engendered by the colossal hypocrisy of those claiming to follow Jesus who brag about their hate muscles and compete to see who can be the meanest judge of all those they deem unworthy--which is every sinner except they're Piously Rightjus selves.  Because of people like this, I gave up my religion but I never gave up my Jesus.  I recognize Him in the Jesus Fugelsang describes as the Jesus his parents introduced him to. The Jesus for love of Whom they followed callings that led them to pledge service to the most vulnerable outcasts--a leper colony in India.  His mother was a nun and nurse and his father was a Franciscan monk.  They left their orders to marry ten years after they met. Raised by these two he claims left him in need of intense therapy which he could not afford so he turned to stand-up comedy where he works out the logical pretzels in this theology of bullies that owns our country today.

Ooops.  I'm getting worked up just as I feared.  I really need to learn how to wield this kind of humor against the demons my upbringing planted in my psyche.  Ugh.

OK.  Time to go exorcise them with a long immersion in a good story...

4:44 AM - Intro Meme

I'm prepping this the night before and setting it to publish as my alarm goes off.  It will probably be an hour or two before I update with commentary on my first one or two reads.  I'm starting with Separation of Church and Hate by John Fugelsang as it's an audio I can listen while I sip hot coffee and eat a protein bar.  Then I'll switch to The Song of the Blue Bottle Tree by India Hayford.  Both are Libby loans due in under a week.

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today?

Kelso Washington USA.  Across the Cowlitz river from Longview where I grew up and had been living with my elderly mother between January 2013 and late July 2021.  I moved into my 400 square foot efficiency unit in late July 2021.  This  post was a photo essay of my new space.

So this is my 14th thon in my own home, counting the Reverse Thons in August 2021 & 2023 - 2025.

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?

Non-Fiction: The Separation of Church and Hate by John Fugelsang

Fiction: Letter From the Lonesome Shore by Sylvie Cathrall  (book 2 in a duology.  I read the first one in July.  It was one of the best things I've read all year and I've finished over 100 books since Jan 1.

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?

Savory: Red Hot Blues (a Spicy Blue Corn Tortilla Chip)

Sweet:  Atkins chocolate Peanut Butter protein bar

4) Tell us a little something about yourself!

• Still processing grief over the loss of Mom last October..  
• Widowed September 2020  It still smarts at unexpected moments.  But at least it is usually only once  a month now instead of constantly. 
• Riddle (featured in pic above) joined me last December as a 2 mo. old. 
• Legally blind with RP aka tunnel vision.  Have only a sliver of vision left in center of right eye.  The rest is shadows and shimmers.
• Have struggled with mood disorder of Anxiety and Depression and insomnia since grade school
• Diagnosed with high functioning autism in 2015.  In my 50s!
• Have a caregiver who comes in five days a week to help with chores and errands I can't do alone. 
• I proved during this move that I have more volume in fiber art supplies than in clothes by at least triple.
• I probably have double the volume of clothes in tree-books but since I still haven't got them all moved over I can't be sure.  But if all the ebooks and audio books loaded on my devices were tree books there probably wouldn't be room for me let alone my yarn and clothes, beanbag chair or bed...

5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to?

This is my 41st Dewey thon so there aren't many variations I haven't tried. 

Doing anything but especially reading or writing for a full 24 hours used to be my superpower but not so much anymore.  Now that I'm in my mid sixties the price I pay for that self abuse is significant as all my systems are less forgiving. 

Because of my vision issues I have always considered that the only metric on which I could compete as I'm now such a slow reader.  But I've discovered that I can rack up an impressive number of books dipped into in 24 hours.  I like to read a chapter each in 4 to 6 NF in an hour and then spend an hour immersed in a novel.

Ah but the ONE thing that I could do different that could make a lot of difference in the quality of the experience is to do a better job than in the past of staying hydrated.  But nearly equal to that in impact would be to get briefly active at least once every two hours.  But this isn't the first time I've set that intention.  Let's hope I do a better job at it this time.

Since anticipation is an insomnia trigger for me I seldom get more than 4 hours sleep the night before so for the last year at least I've been trying to change that aiming for 6-8 hours. I can't think of one time I've done better than six.  I hoped this time. But it is after midnight as I type this.  I started prepping this post two hours ago but decided to get a fresh pic of my reading corner so as to include Riddle and she would not cooperate.  But what did I expect of a diva who just turned 1 in the last 3 or 4 weeks.  (feral litter so a bit of a guess by the first vet to vet her)

Ode to Dewey

by Joy Renee

vote, fav and share for Dewey

We Miss You Dewey

 

Read more...

My Brain On Books XXXX

 

   

 

I am reading for The Office of Letters and Lights the folks who bring us NaNoWriMo today as I love what they are doing for literacy with their Young Writer's Programs and because I've participated in NaNo every year since 2004.  I have been blessed to have it in my life and would like to give something back if only kudos and link love.  I'm putting this plug at the top in hopes some who stop by will check out their site and see all the great things they do to foster love of reading and writing and story in kids. 

This post will be organized like a blog inside a blog with recent updates stacked atop previous ones. I may be posting some updates on Twitter @Joystory and the Joystory fb fanpage. But this is where I do anything more than a line or two.  Including mini-challenges that don't require a separate post..   

Be sure and see my tribute poem to Dewey and the Thon she birthed at the bottom of this post

My folding camper rocker new last summer.  Hoping to spend some time in it this thon.  The weather is perfect 

=

4:44 - Third Finish!

I didn't make it the full 24.  That last update took me longer to write than it toom to read the book I was talking about.  That work triggered self-reflection which triggered as it often does a nap attack.  There was already light in the window so it was definitely after 5 abd probably after 6 when I gave up.  I woke at 10am but it took until noon to get my mind and eyes and ears in sync with reading.  Then I spent several hours working my way through a chapter each in several more NF:

• The Great Influenza by John M. Berry
• Not in God's Name by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
• The Tree Collectors by Amy Stewart
• White Trash by Nancy Isenberg

I Am Maria by Maria Shriver

Then I started Maria Shriver's new book,  This was 90% poetry and 10% memoir/personal essay.  I usually slow down to a snail's pace to read poems and dole them no more than three in a sitting.  But I couldn't stop turning the pages and so I decided I was going to push on and make it my third finish with the understanding that I was going to have to go back to the first poem and re-read them slow to give me time to reflect, absorb and appreciate the insights and the word play.  At least I hadn't waited until the last five days of my loan to start it so I had over a week to do it over the right way and now when I go back to the beginning maybe my curiosity about the who, what, when, where, how will have been sated so I can keep it where it belongs as the backdrop and not the heart of the message.

I was surprised at how many ways Maria developed similar wounds to her psyche as I had. The dynamics between herself and each of her parents was so similar to my own in spite of the fact that my family did not live in the public eye.  Still there were similarities enough that when her poems contain conversations she is having with her younger self and her mother at various crisis points in their relationship I feel her words touching something raw that quivers in recognition.  That's why I know I need to go back and sit with those moments and those words and let them probe what is trying to speak within me and maybe wake up my own words and my own healing energy.

But I must remind myself that she didn't get to the level of healing she has reached by reading a poem.  Or a hundred poems.  She got there by sitting with the pain until it spoke its truth to her and that doesn't happen in a moment or a minute or an hour or a day.

12:22 AM - Second Finish

I spent a couple hours reading a chapter in each of several NF books:

• The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy by Robert P. Jones
• The Untold Story of Books by Michael Castleman
• Being Seen by Elsa Sjunneson
• The Collected Poems of Maya Angelo

Then I started another novel.  Well, I thot it was a novel and it was fiction but it's length was in that grey area between novel and short-story.  It was over 100 pages but not by much.  There were no chapter breaks so I never paused let alone quit and once again read beginning to end in one sitting.

Once upon a time about three decades ago that was an everyday experience for me but that was before my visual impairment crossed the line defined as legally blind.  Then my reading speed was cut in half and a few years later in half again.  I must admit tho that I'm managing this today by listening to the Kindle robot at 3.5x while following along with my eyes.  This gives me back close to my reading speed as a teenager with eyes only.  I can't reach that speed with eyes only or ears only.  Due to hearing loss I loose syllables if i'm not also watchng the words highlight on the screen.  With ears only I can seldom speed it up past 1.5.  With eyes only I often drop below 1x which is equal to the speed of speech ( 200-250 wpm).  

Convenience Store Woman
by Sayaka Murata

So the story (novel? novella? short story?) was Convenience Store woman by Sayaka Murata.  This was a very unnerving story for me.  I'm assuming, tho I'm not sure I should be, that the author meant it to be unnerving but because it's POV character's character was so similar to me in some significant ways, I identified with her only to find myself cringing as her choices went off the rails even tho those choices were solidly based on the very same characteristics that I identified with.

To clarify, like me Keiko was obviously neurodivergent.  This wasn't said directly but made obvious by her interactions with family, classmates and teachers as a child along with her first person narration reveals her to struggle with social interactions and expectations.  She is constantly saying and doing things that shock others and she is shunned at school and shamed by family.  Then she learns to observe and mimic those around her until she soothes their nerves as they begin to hope she is finally 'normal'.  But it never lasts long as she always miscalculates like a cat crossing a balance beam and stepping on its own tail and tumbling to the ground.

Then as a college student she gets a part time job at a convenience store and it seems she has finally found her element.  The rigid protocols, the scripted interactions with customers, the perfectly lined up product on display, keeping all the surfaces clean and gleaming--all of this is her happy place and the added benefit is that those around her now treat her as normal and she feels like she finally belongs.  Her parents are proud of her.  Her classmates and teachers congratulate her.  Her boss praises her and her co-workers include her in their circle.

She was content to continue in this way for the rest of her life but that was another miscalculation as after a number of years it is made clear to her that she is expected to move on to a full-time job or a profession or marriage and children.  Otherwise she is not contributing enough to the community.  It was at this point the story took that dark turn when Keiko made cringy choices.  I dare not say anymore as I can't clarify any further without spoilers.

8:44 PM - First Finish!

I sat on the porch from 5:22-8:33 and read a book start to finish in one sitting for the first time in a very long time.  Of course I was listening to the Kindle robot read at 3.5x while following with my eyes--but still!

Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks

The book was Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks and it was a memoir about the loss of her husband in 2019.  It was a meditation on grief and loss.  The very short chapters alternate between the events in the hours, days and months following his death and Geraldine's months long retreat (alone) to a remote Australian island three years later to free and confront all of the emotions surrounding the events of 2019 that she had felt she had to sublimate behind a socially acceptable mask.

What she shares goes deep and speaks to me as I continue to process the grief from the loss of my Dad in 2005, my husband in 2020 and my Mom in 2024 all.  My Dad on my husband's birthday, my husband the day after his birthday and my Mom one month after those anniversaries and three weeks before my birthday.

4:44 PM - Intro Meme

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today?

Kelso Washington USA.  Across the Cowlitz river from Longview where I grew up and had been living with my elderly mother between January 2013 and late July 2021.  I moved into my 400 square foot efficiency unit in late July 2021.  This  post was a photo essay of my new space.

So this is my 13th thon in my own home, counting the Reverse Thons in August 2021 & 2023 & 2024.

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?

Non-Fiction: Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks

Fiction: Letter From the Lonesome Shore by Sylvie Cathrall  (book 2 in a duology.  I read the first one two weeks ago.  It was one of the best things i've read all year and i've finished over 60 books since Jan 1.

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?

Savory: baby carrots and broccoli blossoms dipped in Ranch

Sweet: cold grapes and blueberries

4) Tell us a little something about yourself!

• Still processing grief over the loss of Mom last October..  That's why I'm looking forward to the Geraldine Brooks book Memorial Days as it is a meditation/memoir about her grief after loosing her husband
• Widowed September 2020  It still smarts at unexpected moments.  But at least it is usually only once  a month now instead of constantly.  
• Legally blind with RP aka tunnel vision.  Have only a sliver of vision left in center of right eye.  The rest is shadows and shimmers.
• Have struggled with mood disorder of Anxiety and Depression and insomnia since grade school
• Diagnosed with high functioning autism in 2015.  In my 50s!
• Have a caregiver who comes in five days a week to help with chores and errands I can't do alone. 
• I proved during this move that I have more volume in fiber art supplies than in clothes by at least thee times.
• I probably have double the volume of clothes in tree-books but since I still haven't got them all moved over I can't be sure.

5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to?

This is my 40th Dewey thon so there aren't many variations I haven't tried. 

Doing anything but especially reading or writing for a full 24 hours used to be my superpower but not so much anymore.  Now that I'm in my mid sixties the price I pay for that self abuse is significant as all my systems are less forgiving. 

Because of my vision issues I have always considered that the only metric on which I could compete as I'm now such a slow reader.  But I've discovered that I can rack up an impressive number of books dipped into in 24 hours.  I like to read a chapter each in 4 to 6 NF in an hour and then spend an hour immersed in a novel.

Ah but the ONE thing that I could do different that could make a lot of difference in the quality of the experience is to do a better job than in the past of staying hydrated.  But nearly equal to that in impact would be to get briefly active at least once every two hours.  But this isn't the first time I've set that intention.  Let's hope I do a better job at it this time.

Ode to Dewey

by Joy Renee

vote, fav and share for Dewey

We Miss You Dewey

Read more...

My Brain On Books XXXVIII

 

   

 

I am reading for The Office of Letters and Lights the folks who bring us NaNoWriMo today as I love what they are doing for literacy with their Young Writer's Programs and because I've participated in NaNo every year since 2004.  I have been blessed to have it in my life and would like to give something back if only kudos and link love.  I'm putting this plug at the top in hopes some who stop by will check out their site and see all the great things they do to foster love of reading and writing and story in kids. 

This post will be organized like a blog inside a blog with recent updates stacked atop previous ones. I may be posting some updates on Twitter @Joystory and the Joystory fb fanpage. But this is where I do anything more than a line or two.  Including mini-challenges that don't require a separate post..   

Be sure and see my tribute poem to Dewey and the Thon she birthed at the bottom of this post

My new folding camper rocker which will be an integral part of thons from now on.

 

It is supposed to rain off and on the whole thon but unless it is below 50 degrees and/or the rain is being driven in under the porch awning I will try to spend some daylight time out here.  Other times I have the beanbag chair, the rocker and the couch/bed.  Also the mini-tramp if listening to audio.

I never got to sit outside.  It rained all day and was also windy and thus chilly with occasional blasts of rain under the awning.

1:44 AM - Time to eat again

And therefore time to listen to another disc of A Sudden Light by Garth Stein.  See below at update 5am.


12:22 AM - oops! my Kindle Fire shut down in the middle of a sentence

The Closing of the Western Mind
 by Charles Freeman

I was 11 screens from the end of the chapter I'd been reading for over an hour when my screen blinked black and powered off.  Ugh.  I hate when that happens.

I don't typically spend over an hour with a NF (except memoirs and biographies and books about writing craft or creativity.  Well maybe true crime and some investigative journalism that has a throughline as compelling as a novel) but this one was slow reading as it is so dense with quotes and references to other texts--and dates! Not to mention detailed presentations of the various arguments made by the early theologians of Christianity between Jesus and Constantine, including the influence made on them by Judaism and the Hellenistic philosophers.  Lots of things to keep straight.

I wouldn't have persevered if the book wasn't due tomorrow (well today now) probably before I wake from my post thon stupor.  I did not want Libby to snatch it from me before I'd finished that chapter or I'd probably have to reread it on my next turn. It was over 80 screens long!

This is the latest book on my currently reading shelf related to my obsessive decades long study of Comparative Cosmology which is the overarching concept that includes: Theology, History of Christianity (and other world religions and spiritual paths), Sacred Texts, Anthropology, Philosophy, Psychology, Quantum Physics and Mythology.


7:44 PM - Back to Reading!

But first food!  So back to the audio of A Sudden Light by Garth Stein while i fix and eat.  See below at 5am.


5:00 PM - Into the mystic

Savage Beauty
by Nancy Milford

Subtitled: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay

I've been reading this one for several months and am still only about 15% in.  In this sitting I reached the point where she was 'discovered' at age 20 after submitting  a remarkably mature poem to a national contest in 1912.  It was her poem Renascence and after many pages of a play by play of that year in which lines from what she considered her first mature poem had been teased throughout the narration, the entire poem was presented in full. 

I was blown away.  I also got a lesson in how to read a poem.  Or maybe a reminder.  I tend to try to speed read but poems are not meant to be read that way.  Rather they need to be read mindfully, savoringly, and with careful attention to grammar, punctuation, image and metaphor.  I had to keep backtracking to pick up the thread again because I kept missing the signals (mostly punctuation) that indicated what phrase or image was referencing which previous phrase or image in order to complete a thought, an action, a comprehension... 

Missing these signals changes the meaning or throws the mind into confusion like being lost in a maze.  But once it all clicks into place...  WOW. 

I'm not proficient at reading poetry.  I'm too impatient maybe.  But on the random occasions when I manage to connect to one it always changes me.  This is no exception.  As i finally finished after nearly an hour on the poem alone, I exclaimed in my head: OMG she's a modern mystic.  How did I not know that?

Go find a copy and read it.  Better yet get this book and read also about her childhood and the influences on her writing of her experiences and her relationships with her parents and sisters and journals.  Yes, journals.  She named them and spoke to them as if in conversation with a person.  Not just a person but a beloved.

I have a feeling I won't be dilly-dallying my way through the rest of this book.

I will also be looking for a collection of her poetry very soon.

How did I not know she was a mystic?  I became drawn to mysticism in the mid to late 90s during my explorations into Comparative Cosmology.  Milly is the most modern one I've encountered so far.  Unless I missed the signals when I did encounter them, which is quite possible especially if I encountered them before my exposure to the Medieval Mystics during my Comparative Cosmology studies.

Oh my!  I think I need to return to the poets I discovered in my late teens and twenties two decades before my comparative studies and encounter with the concept of mysticism.  Emily Dickenson, Sylvia Plath, Walt Whitman...

There were others.  Mostly women writing in the 1900s and several publishing in the decades before and after my high school graduation.  I can't remember any other names in this moment but I'm raring to go seek them out somehow.

So poetry is apparently a form of mindfulness!

Just had that thought as something in me made the connection with something I read hours early in The True  Secret of Writing.

Something in me wants to apologize for getting off track but then I rebel against that because this is how I encounters with words and story and ideas affects me.  This is my brain on books!


2:00 PM - Sit Walk Write

The True Secret of Writing
by Natalie Goldberg

I'm about one third thru this after two weeks.  The secret can be summed up by three words understood in the context of Zen:

•  Mindfulness
• Non-Judgement
• Practice (Sit Walk Write)

12:00 PM - Next...

If it Bleeds

by Stephen King

I moved on from the Stein audio at 7AM.

Usually I would spend the next several hours after being immersed in a novel reading NF, spending 15-30 minutes in each of several.  But because of what happened this morning when I accidently opened a Stephen King book on my cell phone while preparing to sleep, I was eager to return to the novella that kept me awake until an hour before the official start of the thon.  Sigh.

I returned to the last novella in the collection, Rat, which was another of Kings exploration of a writer's mind and the bargains they are willing to make to succeed.

Since I'd finished my first coffee and my breakfast of yoghurt, cottage cheese and blueberries I moved from the rocking chair where I'd listened to the A Sudden Light for two hours over to the beanbag where I immersed in Rat for forty or so minutes before I started struggling to keep my eyes open.  So I moved back to the rocker for another half hour or so until yet again the drowse began to take me.  I developed a stitch in my side, a crick in my neck and twinges in my hip from the way I was slouching in my chair.  So I moved to the couch which is also my bed but I was sitting on it like a couch until at some point I wasn't.  I didn't notice the time I surrendered to a nap but it was probably after 9:30 and possibly after 10:30.  I woke at 11:11 when my cell alarm went off.  It is one that goes off every day to remind me to check in with myself and ask certain questions, like:

• have you hydrated in the last two hours?
• have you taken your meds and/or supplements?
• Is it past time to have something to eat?
• Is it past time to get up and move about?
  

Lately because of not sleeping well or much at all the main question it is asking is: Shouldn't you be awake already? Today it startled me into asking: Aren't you supposed to be reading?  Can't you even stay awake for Stephen King?  Oh far have the mighty fallen?

i got up and fixed a second coffee and sat in the rocker reading Rat off my cell for at least another hour.  I'm used to reading a King novella in one sitting so it was very frustrating to have it broken up like that.  It makes it difficult to hold it in my mind like the faceted gem it usually is.

5:00 PM - Starting with:

A Sudden Light
by Garth Stein

I read The Art of Racing in the Rain after seeing the movie last spring and fell in love with both.  Like that one, this one is set in the Seattle area of Washington state which I visited many times in my childhood.  But that is only one of the draws.  Both books also have elements of mysticism and/or magical realism.  This one might be a ghost story unless those elements are related to the use of gaslighting techniques by one or more characters on the rest.  The POV narrator is a 14 year old boy forced to join his father on a cross country trip to meet his grandfather whom his father has been estranged from for 23 years.  The dynamics of these two father/son relationships (both dysfunctional) interact.  The boy begins to understand that the grandfather has Alzheimer's and his father and his aunt who he's also never met and who is the grandfather's caregiver are on a mission to gain power of attorney so they can sell the mansion and acres of forest it sits on so they can afford to put their father in a nursing home and still have a significant inheritance.  He hears them speaking about 'developing' the land.  Also about a curse on the property and family because the family riches had been gained by exploiting the land during the era of the timber barons.  

This is first because it is an audio book on CD and for the first hour I'm awake my eyes are gluey and I'm at risk of falling back to sleep if I don't stay active.  So I will turn it on and listen while I make coffee and while I continue to prepare my beanbag chair for occupancy.  It became a fiber collector the last few weeks--from clothes to bedding to yarn and fiber WIP.  I was going to finish that project before I slept but ran out of time if I was going to get a solid sleep before 5.  

Yeah, right.  Fat chance!  Good intentions and all that.  Instead of clearing off the beanbag I sat on the edge of the bed and organized my ebook library on my cell.  It was suppose to be calming and make me sleepy.  I was suppose to be moving to the top several shelves the dozen or so books I was most interested in encountering in the next 24 hours.  At some point I accidently opened a Stephen King.  It was the If it Bleeds anthology.  I had left off some months ago with one novella left to read and of course I started reading.  Next thing I knew I had one hour left for sleep.  I turned off the cell and the light and settled in to try to catch a nap at least.  But all I did was lay there anticipating the alarm.  Ugh.  It could be a long day.  Coffee will be my friend.  Would it be wrong to take an extra Adderall?  Probably.  Maybe I'll just use coffee until around the 12 hour mark. Sometime between 4 and 6 this afternoon and then take he one Adderall. Ah well.  Times wasting...

4:44 AM - Intro Meme

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today?

Kelso Washington USA.  Across the Cowlitz river from Longview where I grew up and had been living with my elderly mother between January 2013 and late July 2021.  I moved into my 400 square foot efficiency unit in late July 2021.  This  post was a photo essay of my new space.

So this is my 10th thon in my own home, counting the Reverse Thons in August 2021 & 2023 & 2024.

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?

Non-Fiction: Savage Beauty by Nancy Milford (a biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay

Fiction: A Cautious Traveler's Guide to the Wastelands by Sarah Brooks

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?

Savory: Jalapeno Poppers

Sweet: Coconut Bites (with Goji, Cranberry, Chia seeds and Chocolate

4) Tell us a little something about yourself!

• My Mother died Thursday evening.  If there are any family events taking place over the next 24 hours I will have to set aside thon activities but for whatever hours of this 24 that I'm alone I will read and update.  The grief is still fresh but reading is one of the ways I process strong emotion and sitting and stewing won't help.  I may return to one of the books that helped me through the loss of my husband 4 years ago last month.
• Widowed September 2020  It still smarts at unexpected moments.  But at least it is usually only once or twice a month now instead of constantly.  
• Began living alone for the first time ever three years ago July. Sometime in the last few months it began to feel like home.
• Legally blind with RP aka tunnel vision.  Have only a sliver of vision left in center of right eye.  The rest is shadows and shimmers.
• Have struggled with mood disorder of Anxiety and Depression and insomnia since grade school
• Diagnosed with high functioning autism in 2015.  In my 50s!
• Have a caregiver who comes in four days a week to help with chores and errands I can't do alone. 
• I proved during this move that I have more volume in fiber art supplies than in clothes by at least thee times.
• I probably have double the volume of clothes in tree-books but since I still haven't got them all moved over I can't be sure.

5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to?

This is my 38th thon so there aren't many variations I haven't tried. 

Doing anything but especially reading or writing for a full 24 hours used to be my superpower but not so much anymore.  Now that I'm in my mid sixties the price I pay for that self abuse is significant as all my systems are less forgiving. 

Because of my vision issues I have always considered that the only metric on which I could compete as I'm now such a slow reader.  But I've discovered that I can rack up an impressive number of books dipped into in 24 hours.  I like to read a chapter each in 4 to 6 NF in an hour and then spend an hour immersed in a novel.

Ah but the ONE thing that I could do different that could make a lot of difference in the quality of the experience is to do a better job than in the past of staying hydrated.  But nearly equal to that in impact would be to get briefly active at least once every two hours.  But this isn't the first time I've set that intention.  Let's hope I do a better job at it this time.

Ode to Dewey

by Joy Renee

vote, fav and share for Dewey

We Miss You Dewey

Read more...

One Last Time

 

Mom Summer 2023
age 91

My Mom has been in home hospice since Saturday.  She had been in the hospital for a week while they tried to figure out why she had suddenly started choking and then aspirating while attempting to swallow.  They never figured it out definitively other than to suspect it was neurological; possibly a mini stroke that went unnoticed or another degenerative condition.  She's almost 93 now and has been in a slow decline since her fall last Thanksgiving week when her bones announced they would no longer bear her weight and her foot nearly broke off her ankle.  She has been completely bedridden ever since.

They had to give up trying to help her last Wednesday because everything they tried to treat one condition created or worsened another.  The aspirating created pneumonia, then she went into a-fib because lack of nutrition caused potassium deficiency but she couldn't tolerate the potassium infusion.  Then her oxygen levels started dropping.  All the testing was also hard on her.  So my sister and the doctors in consultation with Mom decided it was time to switch to palliative care and home hospice.

Yesterday she was pressing her lips together to refuse all but ice chips.  Today she became nearly completely unresponsive and her breathing sounded like gurgles.  Half an hour ago I got a text from my sister that her breathing has started going into long pauses.  I am beside myself with sadness and feeling more than usually trapped by being a shut-in separated from her by a river and maybe two miles by bird flight but at least six by car.

Then it crossed my mind that what I needed to do was write.  But journaling was not going to cut it.  I remembered how I used to be able to take moments like this to my blog as easy as breathing.  So I decided to repost the Mother's Day Musing poem one last time under whatever musing I need to do about what is happening right now.  At first I balked thinking 'Don't make this about you.'  Yet even tho it is about her it is also about our Mother/Daughter relationship and thus about my grief.

I got to visit her in the hospital last Thursday when she was still alert part of the time.  She's been aphasiac since her stroke in 2008 but she had a few words and phrases.  For the last couple years she seems to have enjoyed listening to me talk about my crochet.  We bonded around crochet because she taught me.  Twice. The first time my senior year of high school when I made two afghans for Home Ec.  But I didn't really take to it then.  The second time was in 2009 about six months after her stroke when she didn't yet have much of her language back.

When my Dad died in 2005 I'd found a crocheted bookmark in one of his books and I asked Mom if she'd made it.  But she said no and thought it had probably been Grandma Thelma.  She told me I could have it.  I asked if she could teach me to make one.  She said yes.  But I was packing to go back home to the Rogue Valley Oregon so we promised we would on the next visit.  But we had not done it yet before her stroke.  She still had nearly zero words tho.  So she took the hook and thread and had me watch her make the chain and put the first stitch in and then complete the row.  Each row was twelve double crochet creating a single shell stitch.  Then she took it out and handed it to me and watched me try.  And try and try.  She shook her head no if I wasn't doing it right and nodded when I finally did.

So I got to see her at her house again on Monday and she was still responsive enough to know I was there and managed to stay awake as I chattered on about my crochet WIPS.  Whenever I paused too long she would say 'Uh huh'  until I started up again.  I ran out of things to say about my current crochet and then hit on the Jimmy Carter memoirs I've been reading since January.  So many.  But it wasn't the memoirs I wanted to tell her about.  I asked if she remembered President Jimmy Carter and she said 'Yes!'  very emphatic and I swear there was an actual smile in her tone.  So I told her he had just had his 100th birthday October 1st and had been in home hospice for over a year. She said several times, 'Oh My!  Oh My!'  Then I said 'He was a Sunday school teacher before he ran for office.  And she said, 'Yes!'  In a way I knew she was all there and remembering the Carter years clearly.

That was probably my last true conversation with my Mama.  Tuesday she barely acknowledged she understood I was there and could not stay awake.  There were no 'Uh huh' only 'Mmm hmmm'

Today I asked my sister not to try to get a response.  Forcing her to consciousness meant forcing her to suffer the pain.  I just wanted to sit with her and the family that was there.  To give and receive support form each other.

______________________________________
At just after 9:30pm, half an hour after the message that her breathing had gone into long pauses, I got the message that she is gone.  And that my brother and his wife are on the way from Portland.  My sister asked if I'd like to come sit with them and I said yes.  So now I need to get ready to go.  So I can't take time to edit this now.  Maybe I will later tonight when I get back home and add a postscript while I'm at it.

Meanwhile enjoy my Mother's Day poem photo essay honoring Mom.  It's a repost from way back.

A Mother's Day Musing

by Joy Renee

Have you ever noticed,
while flipping the pages
in a family photo album,
how often
mothers seem to not be
in the picture?

Even though we all know,
if we consider for just
one moment,
that every breath

every bite

every step

and every bright
smile

depends on her
involvement.


Maybe it's because
she was the one
taking the picture
or so busy making
stuff happen
or just
making stuff--
from matching outfits

to fully outfitted
snowmen


from flapper dresses

to wedding dresses


from birthday cakes


to wedding cakes;

picnics,

stage props,

rag curls,

curly tops,

smart bow ties

and...

matching eyes.

There needs to be,
don't you agree,
more than one day
each year when
the one who makes
it all happen,
who makes home
feel like home,
who frames all the pictures
of our earliest
memories,
is given her rightful
place
right in the middle
of the picture?

Read more...