North Woods by Daniel Mason
The only way to understand the world as something other than a tale of loss is to see it as a tale of change.
This is somehow the 113th book I've read this year?! I don't feel like I've been reading more, or reading shorter than usual books; in fact I feel like I read more than a few doorstoppers this year.
I don't really set myself reading goals any more. Several years back I did want to try to read 100 books in a year, a goal which I met by October. So after that I starting making lists of woman writers, or non-American writers, or American writers of color, to explore. Like a lot of older generations, I was mostly given dead white men to read in school, and as an adult they were still kinda the default.
Don't get me wrong, there are many dead white men that I love to read. The two authors that made me fall in love with literature were Ernest Hemingway and Kurt Vonnegut. I have read every novel William Faulkner published (and have even visited his house). I am obsessed with Stephen King (he's still alive--still publishing!) and could probably write a dissertation on his relationship with Generation X. But it is limiting if that's all you ever read.
Anyway, after a few years of doing that I feel like I retrained my brain enough that I don't have to go out of my way to find those kinds of writers. I also have a few online resources, sites that review literature by those kinds of writers, and I get a lot of my to-read ideas from them.
++++++++++
Friday the 13th strikes again: somehow the alarm setting on my phone got switched from am to pm, so of course I overslept this morning. By an hour, which meant no matter how much I rushed I was going to be late, so I didn't bother freaking out. My manager doesn't care about stuff like that anyway, at least so long as it's not becoming a habit.
I'm not superstitious, I don't think my alarm fucking up--I must have accidentally done it when I turned it off and re-set it for Friday on Thursday morning--today is anything other then a coincidence.
I'm getting my pneumonia vaccination today. I think I should look into getting an MMR booster, there's been a lot of measles outbreaks in the past several years, and that ain't gonna improve with Señor Brainworm at the helm.
This is somehow the 113th book I've read this year?! I don't feel like I've been reading more, or reading shorter than usual books; in fact I feel like I read more than a few doorstoppers this year.
I don't really set myself reading goals any more. Several years back I did want to try to read 100 books in a year, a goal which I met by October. So after that I starting making lists of woman writers, or non-American writers, or American writers of color, to explore. Like a lot of older generations, I was mostly given dead white men to read in school, and as an adult they were still kinda the default.
Don't get me wrong, there are many dead white men that I love to read. The two authors that made me fall in love with literature were Ernest Hemingway and Kurt Vonnegut. I have read every novel William Faulkner published (and have even visited his house). I am obsessed with Stephen King (he's still alive--still publishing!) and could probably write a dissertation on his relationship with Generation X. But it is limiting if that's all you ever read.
Anyway, after a few years of doing that I feel like I retrained my brain enough that I don't have to go out of my way to find those kinds of writers. I also have a few online resources, sites that review literature by those kinds of writers, and I get a lot of my to-read ideas from them.
++++++++++
Friday the 13th strikes again: somehow the alarm setting on my phone got switched from am to pm, so of course I overslept this morning. By an hour, which meant no matter how much I rushed I was going to be late, so I didn't bother freaking out. My manager doesn't care about stuff like that anyway, at least so long as it's not becoming a habit.
I'm not superstitious, I don't think my alarm fucking up--I must have accidentally done it when I turned it off and re-set it for Friday on Thursday morning--today is anything other then a coincidence.
I'm getting my pneumonia vaccination today. I think I should look into getting an MMR booster, there's been a lot of measles outbreaks in the past several years, and that ain't gonna improve with Señor Brainworm at the helm.