An Autistic History
Title: Not Even Wrong
Author: Paul Collins
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Genre: Memoir/ Psychology
Length: 245 pages
I’ve journaled nearly twenty pages of commentary on this book. Now, having finished it, I’m not sure what I should share and what should be kept to myself.
Collins does a spectacular job sharing memoir with known history, diving into tales from the world and mixing it with tales from his personal world. The first few chapters are dedicated to his pursuit of Peter the Wild Boy and an existing desire to write a biography on the mysterious boy who was ‘rescued’ by King George. (Reference to the boy made in Notes and Queries, of course.) Collins later discovers his son is autistic.
The entire book is an ode to his son and his autism. An ode to their life, their relationship, the world of Autists.
Therefore a lot of information is shared regarding what that means. A lot of reflection on the gene pool it takes to cook up such a neurological anomaly that is an essential part of humanity as a whole. The trifecta being science, art, and math.
Collins writes on page 96:
Apparently we have been walking around with the genetic equivalent of a KICK ME sign:
my father: mechanical engineer
jennifer’s father: musician, math major
my brother: phd in computing
jennifer: painter
me
At this point, I remember taking my own personal inventory. My father is a civil engineer, not only that he was a musician and painter, and suffers from what I think is undiagnosed and extremely mild tourettes (also discussed in Collins’ book). My immediate cousins and family members on that side of the family are musicians and scientists. Some work in labs, some in an engineering field. Although I’ve been an English and History girl my whole life, much to my father’s chagrin, I was raised by and around extremely scientific minds. I think I get all the feelings and other eccentricities from my mother’s side. But in a parallel universe, had I somehow procreated with people I had dated in college rather than the love of my life whom I married – musicians, computer geeks, Synesthesiacs (also discussed in Collins’ book) – I think I was very close to wearing that KICK ME sign as well.
Looking at the world through the eyes of Collins’ research, I think many people have been close to wearing that sign. I think everyone should read through this book and see just how close. It’s enlightening. It’s scary. It’s beautiful.
There are so many amazing people through out history who have changed the face of humanity – the way we work – integral parts of society and science… and they were very likely autistic. Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Glenn Gould, Andy Warhol, Paul Erdos. These people are essential to who we are as a species today. These people have made our world more beautiful, even though they are very likely to be the same people described on page 109: “Imagine if you tried to pretend to understand people, but didn’t really. So you rehearse it all in your head: taking notes, analyzing every social action, trying to connect it all together.” I don’t have to imagine. I may not be a genius like Albert Einstein, I may not be as clever as Glenn Gould, and I’m certainly not nearly as eccentric as Andy Warhol – but I know all about rehearsing, taking notes, analyzing, and still feeling quite out of the loop. A little bit of understanding from the rest of the world goes a long way in my book – even though I’m not so good at understanding the rest of the world, I’m trying to be better about it.
“You know, it used to be that when I saw someone acting or talking strangely, or just being odd on the bus, I’d think to myself: What’s his problem? I still have that reaction. But now I stop, pause, and have a second thought: No, really, what is that man’s problem? There is a decades-long chain of events that created the person who are seeing.” – pg. 213
Paul Collins brings a little bit of humanity and the importance of curiosity and empathy into ALL his work. For that I adore him, and will always adore him, forever.
On that note, I want to check out the artwork of his wife. I love art. I love paintings. I am the CMO of an art company called Aoristos and I’m curious to see the style of art the spouse of my favorite author paints. If anyone knows and can provide reliable links – please do.
So This is 30
It’s 9am. I’ve been up for over an hour. I’m clean. My coffee is being made. My three year old is asleep in MY bed and my husband is asleep on the couch. Nothing bad has happened; it is just the merry go-round musical chair – ahem – musical bed – way that we sleep (each one getting up and moving elsewhere a few times by morning).
A kind, old friend from school – kindergarten to be exact – posted on my facebook wall to have a happy birthday and read something for him. So today, I will absolutely do both of those things. My something? Paul Collins Not Even Wrong. It is a story about “A Father’s Journey into the Lost History of Autism.” No, my kid doesn’t have autism. I’m not even reading it because it’s about autism. I’m reading it because it is Paul Collins. And because it is my birthday. I’m reading it because I always save Paul Collins for something important, something special. He’s my favorite.
What better way to spend the Big 3-0 than with coffee and a good book? Oh, yes, I know I do that every morning. But I suppose that that’s the thing about being 30, I’ve become a little set in my ways.
My sister took me to Peli Peli on Thursday – one of my favorite restaurants – where we devoured shrimp cocktail and stuffed mushrooms and thought we had died and gone to heaven by dessert. That was for my birthday. It was a special treat.
Tuesday I’ll be starting a new bike club – specifically for cruisers that live in my neighborhood – so I suppose that’s a new leaf (turned from the bike club I started in July 2013 that has evolved and grown into something I had never imagined).
So this is 30 too… lunch with my sister at fancier restaurants than I would have gone to at 20. Bike clubs and organizing community activities – even if I’m not getting paid to do it. At 20 I would have only started something I was getting paid to organize and direct (Kung Fu Day Camp anyone?).
At 30 I am less busy, but possibly more involved. (Sounds odd coming from such a busy person, I’m sure.) At 30 I still sit down with coffee and a good book, but it’s more likely to be a memoir written by a parent than a piece of fiction about drug addicts and orphans (I vaguely recall reading White Oleander in my early 20’s). I have a copy of Herodotus that I’ve been devouring all week, but even that history book is a far cry from my business text books of college.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot this year. At 20 I was way hotter, in much better shape – I earned my 3rd degree black belt that year and was running about 5 miles a day. At 20 I had a pile of friends that I practically lived with, I was constantly surrounded by stimuli and activity. I worked three jobs. I went to school full time. I didn’t sleep. I still managed to party a lot. But I wouldn’t go back.
Now, I am just as broke all the time, still paying off my school loans, reading whatever I want for the most part, and writing novels. Now, I am homeschooling a three year old, savoring my quiet moments of coffee (because quiet is not come by with ease), and starting bike clubs. I’m alone with only a toddler for company fairly often, and running out and scraping up cash for dinner isn’t as easy as when you don’t have little person at your side. (I remember picking up shifts on the fly when I was waiting tables just to be able to eat for the weekend when I saw that grocery money was low, when I was 20.)
So… this is 30 and…
I think I like it.
A few months ago I wasn’t so sure I’d be able to say that today.
Finally, Part Three
Yep, still talking about this.
I finished Committed last night just before bed. I let it settle in my mind. I avoided circular obsessive thoughts about it – circular, obsessive thoughts are usually how I handle most things from something someone said that day to mortgage payments to the last few sentences of whatever book I have just read (thank you, Codependent No More).
Amazing how I was able to sleep when I took some deep breaths and let it go. I’ll think about it tomorrow. I never tell myself I’ll think about it tomorrow. I always just think about it until tomorrow. This typically evolves into some kind of extreme emotion by morning – what Gilbert quotes the Gottman’s as calling “flooding.”
That being said, I don’t have any stunning perspective or revelation now that I have finished the book. I merely have some quotes that struck me as notable. So notable that I didn’t just underline them in the book like a maniac, I actually copied them down into my journal.
“My mother herself had probably given up long ago trying to draw tidy ultimate conclusions about her own existence, having abandoned (as so many of us must do, after a certain age) the luxuriously innocent fantasy that one is entitled to have unmixed feelings about one’s own life.” – pg. 201, Committed
Me of excessive and obsessive thought who feels passionately one way or another on almost EVERY topic found this relieving. Lately, I have felt passionately about opposing thoughts – as in I feel BOTH sides passionately and have felt that this means there is something wrong with me. Apparently what I have seen as the ultimate sin – a conflict of beliefs and ideas and feelings – are just the growing pains of adulthood.
“If there is one indignity I shall never endure gracefully, it is watching people mess around with my most cherished personal narratives about them.” – pg. 206, Committed
Yes! This enrages me! And that is ridiculous. Gilbert may profess to never endure it gracefully, but that is definitely an aspect of my character I want to learn to change. It was roughly around this point of my reading that Annie Lennox started singing “Fool on the Hill” with Paul McCartney in the front row of the audience on TV and I decided that there will be sins I can’t kick, feelings I can’t change, that I will take to my grave. But enduring other people being themselves, even if it is not how I view them, gracefully is something I would like to be able to do sometime. The thoughts and the song and Annie Lennox may be unrelated, but forever in my mind they will be synonymously seared into my brain… don’t be a fool, summon your grace.
There was also a bit about porcupines that intrigued me. It’s a blurb Gilbert writes about another author’s work, Deborah Luepnitz’s Schopenhauer’s Porcupines:
“[…] Arthur Schopenhauer told about the essential dilemma of modern human intimacy. Schopenhauer believed that humans, in their love relationships, were like porcupines out on a cold winter night. In order to keep from freezing, the animals huddle close together. But as soon as they are near enough to provide critical warmth, they get poked by each other’s quills. Reflexively, to stop the pain and irritation of too much closeness, the porcupines separate. But once they separate, they become cold again. The chill sends them back toward each other once more, only to be impaled all over again by each other’s quills. So they retreat again. And then approach again. Endlessly. ‘And the cycle repeats,’ Deborah wrote, ‘as they struggle to find a comfortable distance between entanglement and freezing.’ ” – pg. 223, Committed
I read that and immediately thought of heroine and addiction. No, I’m not a heroine addict. But I’ve seen them in action. And if I’m to be honest I have a tendency to feel like one in regards to the people I care about the most – all of whom I can count on fewer fingers than I have on one hand.
Gilbert’s book is lovely. I’m sorry I sharked her memoir and made it all about me. I hope if she ever stumbles across this blog, she will take it with a grain of salt and not see me as a pirate of some kind. I recommend reading this book, regardless of what you thought about the more famous Eat, Pray, Love.
If I’m to get one over all message from ALL of my reading this weekend/ week, it is this:
I really needed to get this message.
Things I Learned in a Weekend…
… But will take longer to undo.
This is a Part Two post to my review of Committed as well as a response to Codependent No More.
Saying “I am not in control of that” is not the same as being helpless.
Counting is not productive.
Trying harder sometimes doesn’t offer results, but rather drives you a little nuts.
I am allowed to have contradicting feelings as long as I am honest about both and do not bury the less favorable/ moral one. A feeling is not a decision. But bottling feelings and under-reacting to things that hurt your feelings can turn into a very foolish and very public behavioral issue similar to a train wreck or a volcano that kills an entire village.
“What am I to conclude when my grandmother says that the happiest decision of her life was giving up everything for her husband and children but then says – in the very next breath – that she doesn’t want me making the same choice? I’m not really sure how to reconcile this, except to believe that somehow both these statements are true and authentic, even as they seem to utterly contradict on another. I believe that a woman who has lived as long as my grandmother should be allowed some contradictions and mysteries. Like most of us, this woman contains multitudes. Besides, when it comes to the subject of women and marriage, easy conclusions are difficult to come by, and enigmas litter the road in every direction.” – from Elizabeth Gilbert’s Committed.
I can’t control other peoples’ thoughts and feelings. Nor, if I’m to be honest do I want to. What I decide for them takes away from me making healthy decisions for myself.
Other people making a decision I do not like is not a slight on me as a human. I am still in tact. I can say my piece in peace without expecting them to bend to my will. In fact, I want to enjoy the freedom of talking out my feelings knowing that it does not change the outcome of life. My words won’t make or break the world and the people in it. I am not that powerful. I don’t want to be that powerful. I want other people to feel comfortable making their decisions based on what they need. Would I like for them to consider my feelings when they choose to follow that decision? Yes. Do I want my feelings to be the basis of their decision? No. God, no.
What I want and what I need are allowed to be out of sync sometimes, as long as I take time to process my wants and needs in a calm manner without panic – without drama – and without superfluous descriptions. As a writer I am apt to take a small situation and find the epic, extraordinary, or devastation in it. As a survivor I take big things that may actually be epic, extraordinary, or devastating, and belittle them – act as though they are nothing. (Someone dies, I roll with the punches. Someone says something irritating, I come out swinging. It doesn’t make sense. It has been a long running joke among many of my friends that I’m the girl you need at a funeral. I’m the girl you need in a physical crisis, on the battlefield even. Put me in a room of people having a good time, and suddenly I’m twitchy.)
These are things I used to know, and for various reasons, I have lost sight of. These are things that I need to remind myself daily, if not hourly.
So my newest truth above all – there is no shame in reading self-help books and memoirs by people who have a very different world view from yourself. There is no shame in believing that, “this woman should not be condemned or judged for wanting what she wants.” In fact that’s a very beautiful belief.
Finding balance is the hard part. When does what you want step on what someone else wants and needs? When does what you want need to be suppressed and when does it warrant being spoken? My understanding of this balance is erratic at best.
Making a very open attempt to find this balance has been interesting too (I say this as though I’m well seasoned at the effort that I’ve been making for a whole of four days). I am diving into all this for myself. Go back a few blog posts and you may notice my sanity attempting to escape me. Yet, it hasn’t just begun to calm me, it’s helped me stop and smell the roses.
Roses that, though not real physical red petals and thorny stems, are more present than I supposed.
Roses like: I actually get more done when I am busy acting instead of busy reacting. Roses like: when I attempt to be as direct as I once was my husband attempts to woo me like he once did. This is nice. I’ll take that rose. Yet, I am not being direct so that he will woo me, I am being direct because I need to be, the wooing is just a happy accident. And, for once, wanting to be wooed doesn’t sound like an act of selfishness – it sounds like an act of being feminine. Yes, I’ll admit that typing those words were difficult, that in that admission I nearly panicked.
I don’t have all the answers. In fact, I have pretty much no answers. The only answer that I do have is that I hope to be less self-destructive this year than last year. I hope to be more open, but less vulnerable.
This year, I plan to internalize something that’s been hanging in my own Grandmother’s kitchen my whole life…
God grant me the serenity To accept the things I cannot change
Courage to change the things I can
And wisdom to know the difference.
Be patient with me, God is not finished with me yet. And, I’m not done reading this book!
Committed – Part One
Title: Committed
Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
Genre: Non-fiction of some kind. In a bookstore it would go in the memoir section, I’m sure – but it’s so much more than that.
I’m aware that when one decides to follow a book reviewing blog, they don’t expect the posts to start turning into self-aware sob stories. However, I cannot fully digest a book without it becoming part of me and my psyche and putting a little bit of pressure on my world view and myself.
When I read Eat, Pray, Love a few years ago, you may or may not remember my indignation. I was so irritated. This woman was so flippant! How dare she walk out on her marriage and go gallivanting and call that spiritual growth! I loved Gilbert’s writing style, I loved her way with words, but all I could think was, “What a selfish whore.”
That was unfair. I see that.
I’m reading Committed now. A friend had told me Gilbert would redeem herself in my eyes in this book. I was skeptical. How could I ever see eye to eye with this woman?
But that’s the thing. I don’t see eye to eye with her. But now, I’m ok with that. Not because of this book, though, I’m sure that helps; but because of me. I’ve come to realize some things about myself in the very short time that it has been 2014.
I have a very intense moral code. So intense, it is probably filled with much higher expectations for life than is humanly obtainable. Stepping outside of this moral code in the past has left me trembling. It terrifies me, because, simply:
I fall short. It is impossible to live up to it.
I expect others to live up to it. If we all strive to live up to it then maybe we can have a chance in hell of making it.
We don’t.
I see this now.
Yes, that makes me a hypocrite, I suppose. Often.
Yes, that means that deep down I hate myself for not being able to live up to my beliefs. Even saying this is in contradiction with my beliefs… I believe the whole bible to be true and even the bible says that we all fall short of the glory of God. I believe in being a strong, independent, secure human. Both of those things are in contradiction with me hating myself for falling short.
You see, it’s not just me being unforgiving of others. I am completely unforgiving with myself too. Especially when what I perceive as truth, and what I believe is right, is the polar opposite of what I want.
I was taught that my wants were frivolous nuisances to be disregarded. Bury them. Pretend they’re not there. Doing what you *should* do is far more important than doing what you want. Wants are things that destroy people, families, cities, empires. Look at history – use your brain. Don’t feel, use logic.
Somewhere in that teaching, there’s a logical fallacy. Like Gilbert’s ice cream purchases correlating with drownings example – which made me laugh out loud. (Statistically where there are higher ice cream purchases, there are more drownings. Obviously, this does not mean that buying ice cream will increase your chance of drowning yourself, that would be a logical fallacy – yet, that’s exactly the kind of logic that has been ingrained in me.)
Now, 10 days away from 30, I feel a strong urge to fix this problem.
This is not something that can be fixed in 10 days.
Shockingly, despite my looming 10 day notice, I find myself a little at peace while reading Elizabeth Gilbert – author whose views I have previously found revolting – has spent page after page talking about forgiveness.
Things I have always been really cranky about – HOW does someone behave THAT way – she spells out. Instead of just saying, “It happens,” she takes great descriptive pains that only an eloquent writer could take to tell me how. To explain. Pages 108-110 left me in tears. Finally, I see why people have been so angered by my judgement. Finally, I see why I have no right to judge.
I was wrong. I’m sorry.
I’m not sure how this will effect my future decisions. But at least I can start to not hate myself, whatever they might be. Yay for mid-life crisis number two (and I’m not even mid-life yet, am I?).
I’m not finished reading yet, but I’m sure I will be soon. I have so much to say and think about this book and there will be a second post on it in the future.
Elements of Safety and Coziness
I am trying to be more conscientious of italicizing titles. I pretty much never do it, even though I know it is grammatically incorrect not to do so. It’s just a little button, so why am I so lazy? Who knows, but it seems as of late I’ve been accused of all kinds of laziness, and I do not want my writing to be one of those things.
Unrelated, (but also an exercise of habitually italicizing titles I share) I want to catalog cozy lines… my favorite bits of words and phrases and sentences and paragraphs that come to me in books that relate how I want to feel about the world. Things like this:
“It was one of those moments when you know the world is as it should be, believe everything is good, and trust you will always be safe.” – from Voltaire’s Calligrapher, pg. 86
And of course John Banville’s The Sea, which I have mentioned before:
“Life, authentic life, is supposed to be all struggle, unflagging action and affirmation, the will butting its blunt head against the world’s wall, suchlike, but when I look back I see that the greater part of my energies was always given over to the simple search for shelter, for comfort, for, yes, I admit it, for cosiness.” – pg. 44
This line of thinking actually began as I was reading Pablo de Santis’ Voltaire’s Calligrapher, and while prepping to write a review I came across the above mentioned quote. Add to the fact that I’ve had Lana Del Rey’s “Born to Die” playing on repeat half the morning while I read and clean the house, and, well, it’s just one of those days.
It’s too cold outside. It’s too cold outside and it’s not warm enough inside to make up for it.
I was reading through the reviews of my novella as I prep a second edition to release roughly around the same time as the sequel and there’s mention of the story being too easy. The characters have too much ease in erecting the Bookshop, they don’t encounter any dilemmas or properly struggle as you would in real life. I agree. As a storyteller I failed in that regard. Wondering how I could have done such a thing without a second thought, I realized – this isn’t the book I intended to write. I’ve been working on a sci-fi piece for years, but necessity required I scoop something together and try to make a buck. I wanted it to be easy. I needed it to be easy. Life has been too damn hard the last few years and I needed something simple to bury myself. Perhaps I shortchanged my readers, something I hope to remedy with a second edition and a sequel, but honestly, it was exactly what I needed. Minus the loads of money it’s NOT making. Seriously, if you want to feed my family for a whole day, buy my book
The problem is, I don’t think half as many people read these posts as pretend to. If everyone purchased my book that followed this blog, I’d be able to pay all my bills for a month. It’s a dream. Things being easy is a dream. I suppose that’s why I wrote my novella the way I did. I just wanted to live in a dream for 130 pages. The one liners weren’t doing it for me that month.
And as I say every morning when I wake up, “I’ll do better next time.”
So I’m here summoning all my best to offer you guys for book two. I’m here writing all over my novella, trying to edit out all the typos the editors missed. I’m here wanting things to be cozy and warm – desperately missing the sunshine and every cozy moment I’ve ever had with anyone ever. Because the world is not safe. Things are not cozy. Bills don’t get paid on time, foraging is just as much a necessity as a neat thing to teach my kid, and every day and every moment is a struggle to continue to exist.
MORNING COFFEE: FRIDAY EDITION
Photo compliments of Hannah from Coffee Scribble. (Formerly known as Musings from the TARDIS.)
Torture
The worst level of torture happens in our own minds – mostly in the form of perceptions and lies.
I live in a state of an aching mind. The pressure behind the eyes. The mean reds. The emptiness in the pit of my gut, my heart, and my soul. And most of this ache is something I should be able to think my way out of, if I’m to embrace my own belief systems. I should be able to choose to be happier. I should be able to read something positive until I feel it. I should be able to think in truths and not get caught up in whatever lies I have allowed myself to believe that day.
But my aching mind has been here for months. Months and months and I just can’t kick it.
Eating doesn’t fix it. Working out doesn’t fix it. Reading suppresses it. Praying seems to make it worse – if only because my image of God is much like my memories of my own dad (smacking me on the head and saying, “Just don’t be stupid” as you can imagine is *so* helpful).
It’s that need to cry and not being able to. It’s the need to scream at the top of your lungs into a cavern and enjoy the echo back, but never having the opportunity to do so. It’s the need to sleep unabashedly half naked in the sunlight like I did when I was young and that being completely out of the question. It’s the need for something, something so generic and so specific at the same time it’s completely absurd and renders me inarticulate.
It’s a terrible want that I can’t kick. A want I’ve never had before so I don’t know how to kick it, really.
Anger is easy. I’ve learned to calm my anger. I’ve become quite an expert at completely suppressing it for someone else’s emotional well being. Frustration is not so easy, but putting frustration aside is a daily exercise when you are chronically poor and have a toddler. Wanting material things is easy to kick. Wanting a lot of things is easy to kick.
It’s easy to kick things you have similar experiences with… but how do you kick a feeling you’ve never had?
Wanting something you can’t even identify. Something so imbedded in your core it makes you physically ill. It’s torturous to see shadows and glimpses of this something, but it never comes fully to light. The ache, the want, just hiding around the bend and under a rock. Just out of reach. Just out of sight. But pulsing, and radiating, and letting you know that it’s there and that you are missing it.
In the mean time, I’ll bury myself in The Bridge of San Luis Rey, and see if I can put it off for another night.
Reading List 2013
Every end of December I post the list of what I have read that year. Most titles have corresponding reviews here on my blog. Some do not.
Obviously I read a lot of books out loud to my child. The ones I have included on the list are the chapter books. Our daily dose of picture books are left unlisted because that would just get ridiculous, although they take up a huge chunk of my day. (Note: The Magic Tree House & Reading Guide listings are two separate MTH books that correspond in subject. Because they are such short children’s books, I make them share a number. It takes me about four hours to read each pair out loud.)
1. The Prominence League – C. David Cannon (January)
2. If These Walls Had Ears – James Morgan (January)
3. March – Geraldine Brooks (January)
4. Magic Tree House & Reading Guide: Dinosaurs – Osborne (January)
5. Magic Tree House & Reading Guide: Knights – Osborne (January)
6. Magic Tree House & Reading Guide: Mummies – Osborne (January)
7. The Small Room – May Sarton (February)
8. Magic Tree House & Reading Guide: Pirates – Osborne (February)
9. Lords of Finance – Liaquat Ahamed (March)
10. The Secret of Lost Things – Sheridan Hay (March)
11. God’s Love – Calvert Tynes (March)
12. Eden’s Outcasts – John Matteson (March)
13. Inheritance – Louisa May Alcott (March)
14. The Wild Girls – Pat Murphy (March)
15. Fizz & Peppers – M.G. King (March)
16. On Chesil Beach – Ian McEwan (April)
17. Magic Tree House: Ninjas & MTH: Rainforests – Osborne (April)
18. Lunch in Paris – Elizabeth Bard (April)
19. Magic Tree House & Reading Guide: Sabertooths – Osborne (April)
20. The History of the Ancient World – Bauer (April)
21. Magic Tree House & Reading Guide: Moon & Space – Osborne (April)
22. Lessons Learned – Andrea Schwartz (April)
23. Bitch Factor – Chris Rogers (April)
24. Teres – Gershom Wetzel (April)
25. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – Carson McCullers (May)
26. Magic Tree House & Reading Guide: Dolphins & Sharks – Osborne (May)
27. The Hunger Games – Collins (May)
28. Catching Fire – Collins (May)
29. Mockingjay – Collins (May)
30. Don’t Die By Your Own Hands – Holmes (May)
31. Slice of Life – Chris Rogers (May)
32. Magic Tree Houses: Ghost Towns/ Lions – Osborne (May)
33. The Princess Bride – Goldman (June)
34. Magic Tree House & Reading Guide: Polar Bears – Osborne (June)
35. Born to Run – Christopher McDougall (June)
36. Storybound – Marissa Burt (June)
37. The Prominence League II – Canon (June)
38. The Distant Hours – Kate Morton (June)
39. John Adams – John McCullough (July)
40. Magic Tree House & Reading Guide: Pompeii & Rome – Osborne (July)
& Magic School Bus: Volcanoes
41. Spindown – George Padgett (July)
42. The Cry of the Icemark – Stuart Hill (July)
43. The Color Purple – Alice Walker (July)
Magic Tree House: Day of the Dragon King – Osborne (July)
44. A Passage to India – E.M. Forster (August)
45. Letters to the Granddaughter – Schubert (August)
46. Over Sea, Under Stone – Cooper (August)
47. The Gospel According to Starbucks – Sweet (August)
48. Aphrodesia – John Oehler (August)
49. The Lightning Thief – Rick Riordan (August)
50. My Antonia – Willa Cather (September)
51. Magic Tree House & Reading Guides – Osborne (September)
52. Surprised by Joy – C.S. Lewis (September)
53. Love is a Choice – Minirth (September)
54. Thomas Jefferson: Art of Power – Meacham (October)
55. Going Native: Biodiversity (October)
56. Just One Evil Act – Elizabeth George (October)
57. The Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion (October)
58. The Evolution of Jane – Cathleen Schine (October)
59. The Immortal Class – T.H. Culley (October)
60. Aspects of the Novel – E. M. Forster (October)
61. Death Without Cause – Pamela Triolo (November)
62. Player Piano – Vonnegut (November)
63. Seed Savers: Heirloom – S. Smith (November)
64. The Bookshop Hotel – A.K. Klemm [yes, I re-read my own book as I’m currently writing the sequel] (November)
65. The Sparrow – Mary Doria Russell (December)
66. Harbinger of Evil – Meb Bryant (December)
67. Confessions – Saint Augustine (All Year)
68. Been There, Done That, Really! – Paulette Camnetar Meeks (December)
69. The Secret Keeper – Kate Morton (December)
“Can’t believe I didn’t hit 70 this year. I’ve been slacking!” I lamented. Then, when I went to grab the next Magic Tree House selection, I realized I never documented The Titanic Unit.
70. MTH #17 & Research Guide: Titanic – Osborne (some time in the Fall 2013)
– Books Piled Around My House Unfinished –
I am notorious for starting books and leaving them willy nilly somewhere until the mood strikes me to pick it up again. So where it is not uncommon for me to read a book in one sitting, it is also not uncommon for a book I like to take months or even years for me to finish reading because I’m waiting for that right moment to dive in. Like a real-life vacation, sometimes you want to be in a cabin in the mountains and sometimes you want to be on the beach in Fiji. It doesn’t mean you don’t like mountains and it doesn’t mean the beach is awful, it just means that: if you’re in the mood for mountains why would you go to the beach? Because I have reached that point in my life as a reader that if I hate it, I won’t bother setting it aside… I’ll just get rid of it.
My goal for the New Year is to polish off more of these before starting (and temporarily abandoning) too many others. Because these are books I actually really like, I’m just waiting for those magical moments when I know I’ll enjoy them best to return. What’s ridiculous about the books on this list is that I am about halfway through all of these books.
* If On A Winter’s Night a Traveler – Italo Calvino
* Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell – Clarke
* Freddy and Fredericka – Helprin
* The Path Between the Seas – David McCullough
* Storyteller – Sturrock (this one is actually amazing! I started reading it in November and I’m still picking my way through it)
* The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (still reading this aloud to the kiddo every night before bed)
* The Lacuna – Kingsolver (reading this for the January Half Price Books Humble Book Club meeting, should be done by the end of the week)
Impromptu Post on Being Changed
There’s a little chain status going around on facebook that I recently participated in…
Completely off the top of my head, in about five minutes versus the fifteen offered, and in no particular order I wrote:
Soon after posting my version of the status update, conversation ensued. One of my friends posted his own list on my thread instead, Tanya Egan Gibson felt honored to be on the list (she is so beautifully humble and I just love her and her work, she tickles me), and a college buddy posted a query.
Andi, I’d love to hear more about your thoughts on how “Metamorphosis” was life-changing for you. I studied it, but would have never thought of that one, so I’d be interested to hear how it was, for someone unlike me. : )
I started to answer right there on facebook, but I thought it deserved a blog post instead.
I read Metamorphosis first in… I’m not sure… 8th grade? I think it is best first experienced during puberty when you’re going through that everything creepy is wonderful phase. Young teens are always the ones who haunt the shelf where Edgar Allen Poe is; and for me it was Edgar Allen Poe, Franz Kafka, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. I identified greatly with Gregor, which if you read a Sparknotes’ character summary, try to think of a 13 year old geek who wouldn’t.
Gregor Samsa – A traveling salesman and the protagonist of the story. Gregor hates his job but keeps it because of the obligations he feels to pay off his father’s debt and care for his family. He has transformed into a large bug and spends the rest of his life in that state. Although hideous and unrecognizable to others, Gregor retains his some of his inner life and struggles to reconcile his lingering humanity with his physical condition. (-from Sparknotes)
Obviously a teen is the protagonist of their own story, they hate their job (school) but keep going because of obligations (to their existence, their parents, and the government). Teens work their butts off seemingly for the sake of their family… chores, chores, more chores… honestly what 13 year old thinks they’re doing the dishes for themselves? And rarely do they actually think school is for themselves. I wanted to learn and I enjoy research, but ultimately I wanted to make sure my parents weren’t pissed off by my report card. Gregor is hideous and unrecognizable to others, and at thirteen who doesn’t feel gross and pimply – simultaneously invisible and on display to the world like a freak show. At thirteen you’re sub-human, neither child nor adult, and most of your life feels like it’s happening in your head.
Or, maybe that was just me.
To quote another post I wrote:
[…] I read The Metamorphosis over and over again, wrote a paper on it in high school and two more in college. I can’t count how many times I’ve read it, I just think its so wonderful. After reading The Castle and The Trial, however, I’m realizing that Kafka’s greatest skill is in writing the most frustrating scenarios a human being could be plopped into – alienation and bureaucracy. Whether it becoming a giant bug, living under mysterious and unfair authorities, or dying after a year long quest to discover what crime you have been accused of, Kafka has helplessness down to an art. I love Kafka!
I love him because his concepts are fascinating. He is the most wonderful creator of modern day myth that I’ve read. […]
(-from my review of The Trial)
When you read something that reminds you that you are not alone in your feelings, that even this great emaciated and pale world renown author could understand you, everything seems a little bit better. If a dude can turn into a giant cockroach, I can get through middle school – at least I’m not literally a disgusting bug.
I recommend that anyone re-read The Metamorphosis, but from the eyes of their 13 year old self. What do you think of it now? I remember feeling like my parents were repulsed by me. I remember feeling like every adult saw me as a liar and was distrusting of my existence. I remember feeling alone and wanting a friend. What do you remember?
Anakalian Whims 