My Brain On Books XXXXIII
Be sure and see my tribute poem to Dewey and the Thon she birthed at the bottom of this post
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| 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 |
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| Outside Thon Nest |
5:11 PM - Wrapup Well. Depends on which clock you ask but I finished a fourth book by 5ish: The Other Wind. I took it outside for the first two hours but the heat was making me drowsy and I'd run out of fluids and I was hungry so I went back in. I kept the robot reading while I took care of business and by the time I was ready to sit again I was wide awake tho I didn't trust that to last long. I had to stay a little bit active in order to stay awake but I made it. Now I need to crash but I think when I wake I'm going to continue participating with those who are doing an expanded version because their personal lives did not accommodate pure focus for the first 24 hours. I want to keep going because I got to neither of the books I listed in the intro meme as the ones I was most looking forward to: Bird by Bird for nf and Arabian Nights and Days for fiction. It seems I'm always doing that--holding out a carrot ahead of me until it's hanging out over a cliff and I can't reach it. I made myself read first all the books with due dates before Tuesday morning.
Well we shall see. I expect I'll be sleeping ten to twelve hours before I can read again.
11:11 AM - I spent so long on that last update I'm now at under five hours left of the thon. I can only hope to finish one shortish novel now. But maybe there'll be time to start another one or read a chapter each in several nf. But first I'm hungry and I think I'm going to move back out on the porch. I'm starting to fade and neither the couch our the beanbag are likly to discurage that nap I'm hankering for.
9:22 AM - I finished Revelation for the Rest of Us in 6 hours. I started out listening at 1.5x and gradually increased it to 2x. I'm going to have to read it via text because I retain that better plus I couldn't see how names of people and places were spelled and I need to follow some of his references to both scripture an scholars. His take is that Revelation isn't prophesy in the sense of prediction but prophesy in the sense of admonition. The whole thing is an allegory steeped in Hebrew symbology and was meant to cloak a dissident ideology from the authorities of Babylon aka Rome. It teaches how to live the way of the Lamb or Peace, Mercy and Justice or equity while living in the lair of the Dragon aka Empire or Brutal Power without giving allegiance to it. This fits with where I landed within a year after I broke with my faith family. I swore that I would never be or serve or tolerate the behavior of bullies no matter what name, title or gender they claim--whether Priest, Prophet, Pope or President; whether Prom Queen, Pimp, Preacher or Professor; whether Pastor, Police, Party or Pedagogue. The world was divided between those who used their power to control others, to profit at the expense of others and to pontificate for love of their own voice versus those who used there power only over themselves and to focus on service to others--protecting the vulnerable, providing for the needy, healing the sick and injured, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, advocating for the abused. This was the philosophy I set out to demonstrate in my Fruits of the Spirit storyworld having also identified those fruits (love, joy, peace, patience, mercy, tolerance) as the result of living as the servant in opposition or juxtaposition to the bully. I realized that all the good that had been produced by our group over three generations had not been produced by the preachers behind the pulpit pointing fingers at scripture, at the sky, at the pews, at each other but never at themselves. Well a few did. Yes. But they were also the humble ones who participated as much or more in the building of the community--feeding the crowds or the sick or elderly, building the chapels and the pews and sweeping and vacuuming the sanctuary and cleaning up the kitchen, repairing cars, roofing homes, giving away produce from their farms or dairies, providing child care, doing yardwork for the chapel grounds or a neighbor, writing the tracts and pamphlets and running the printing press and delivering them door to door or at parades and fairgrounds. And so, so, so much more. And yes, I noticed that most of that free labor was provided by the women and children who were for the most part invisible to the preachers who were quick to shame them back into their place if they called attention to themselves whether purposefully or inadvertently. This was the vision that came to me thirty years ago as those pulpit bullies tore it all down, forcing the rest of us to choose sides and then cut everybody on the other side out of your life aka disfellowship which tore apart families. And of course the women and children couldn't choose they had to go where their husbands and fathers chose. 11:11 AM - I spent so long on that last update I'm now at under five hours left of the thon. I can only hope to finish one shortish novel now. But maybe there'll be time to start another one or read a chapter each in several nf. But first I'm hungry and I think I'm going to move back out on the porch. I'm starting to fade and neither the couch our the beanbag are likly to discurage that nap I'm hankering for.
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| Revelation for the Rest of Us: A Prophetic Call to Follow Jesus as a Dissident Disciple by Scot McKnight |
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| Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New Global Disorder – The Former Ambassador's Bold Vision for Confronting Authoritarian Threats by Michael McFaul |
1:11 AM - Success. I finished Autocrats and Democrats just half an hour after Libby yanked it. Kindle always gives me a grace period of several hours but I only needed half an hour extra. I had to come inside about 9:30. It got too chilly and I was hungry.
I was planning to start the last Earthsea book next but after checking on my Libby loan list I realize I have a ten hour audio book that is due in 3 days. I should at least get started as by the time I've caught up on my sleep after the thon, there will be less than 24 hours and 12 of them will be divided between the hours my caregiver is here and the hours I need to sleep.
Again, I was hoping to avoid certain topics for the thon. This book claims to have a new and different take on the book of Revelation which is the wound that my childhood trauma is rooted in. I was raised in a Last Days cult that was a spinoff of Darby's Plymouth Brethren. This theme is also the center of my Fruits of the Spirit storyworld in which I follow a maternal line from the founding of their cult in the 1880s through to the present as the group splits and some stay and some leave altogether but they can't always leave the worldview completely and leaving often means loosing relationships which is trauma on top of trauma. That storyworld is my sandbox in which I've been exploring all the implications and probing my wounds in hopes of healing them. This book, Revelation for the Rest of Us by Scot McKnight, is one of the many books in my current TBR that supports the worldbuilding for my storyworld. I'm getting revved up to get back to work on those files.
7:11 PM - I haven't even got to read yet! I've been too busy fussing with devices, making coffee, setting up my thon nests and posting both here and on the fb page. I needed to set up a charging station that could handle multiple devices--3 tablets and a cellphone, Bluetooth headphones, earbuds, boombox and keyboard, a fan and a lamp I wear around my neck, my panic button in case of a fall. Then I set up the top two shelves on my Kindle with my thon TBR for a screenshot for this post and the one on the fb group only to discover I can't share the screenshot with my gdrive so I had to take a picture of the screen with my cell only to be told I hand too little memory so I had to uninstall about five games I'd never played since game images are too tiny on a cellphone. Frustrating! But that's what I get for the procrastination.
Now I'm going to set up yet another nest, this one just outside my front door on the porch. I'll take my folding rocking chair, my kindle, coffee, headphones, protein bar and a sweater for that evening breeze that kicks up after 8 most evenings. I'm going to start with the short story, The Daughter of Odren by Ursula LeGuin. That should be finished before my last swallow of coffee.
Then I need to try to finish Autocrats and Democrats which is due soon after midnight. It should be enough time, if I start within the hour. I had hoped to avoid the nf featuring our dark reality today but there is a waitlist and I don't have a hold slot.
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. 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 16th 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: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
Fiction: Arabian Nights and Says by Naguib Mahfouz
3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?
Savory: a huge salad. enough for three or four meals
Sweet: watermelon
4) Tell us a little something about yourself!
- i set my annual goal on Kindle and Goodreads at 222 and reached 111 at the end of June
- Riddle (featured in pic above) joined me December 2024 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 43rd Dewey thon so there aren't many variations I haven't tried.
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Ode to Dewey by Joy Renee We Miss You Dewey |
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