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   Staying Alive: real poems for unreal times edited by Niel Astley
   Thinking in Pictures: and other reports from my life with autism by Temple Grandin
   Brother Odd by Dean Koontz
   Forever Odd by Dean Koontz
   Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz
   Ten Big Ones
   About a Boy
   A Farewell to Arms
   Gulliver of Mars


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Reading is not dead

Judging by the lack of entries on this blog (to say nothing of the absence of all readers), one might think that reading is no longer an activity practiced by people, but several conversations in the past week have shown that reading for pleasure is still important to people.  Those people are even adults, they even are no longer in school, they even could choose to spend all of their time doing other things.

Two of the people who wanted to talk about the books they are reading are members of reading groups.  One woman's group meets in member's homes.  Generally speaking, the women find the group through their friendship with people who are already members.  For this reason most have something in common with at least one other member, but as the group has grown larger contacts have spread further afield and viewpoints and tastes encompass wider differences. 

My other friend joined a woman's reading group at her Unitarian Church.  It's a very different reading group than you'd find at a more fundamentalist church;  K tells me that most are political and philosophical liberals and are open-minded. 

Both K and D have invited me to join their clubs, but I don't.  I do love to read, but don't enjoy picking books apart looking for meanings that I've never been convinced aren't sometimes ascribed to authors who never intentionally planted them in their works.   Besides that I'm a bit shy as are many faeries, ones who keep out of sight among the stacks particularly so.

My reading--and listening, for I've been listening to recorded books lately--is proscribed by my interests and not by consensus of a group, one more reason I haven't pushed myself to join the groups.   Once I finished Moby Dick, a feat which nearly did me in!--I took on A Tale of Two Cities.  That led to A Turn of the Screw, and listening to all  three books of John Galsworthy's Forsythe Saga.    I took a turn to the dark side with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and that cemented what I love about reading books as an adult that many people read for literature courses in high school and college.

It is lovely to be an adult and to read books for pleasure that were intended to be read for entertainment.  It's sweet to be able to read them and to form opinions that do not have to conform to a teacher's lesson plan or a standardized study guide.  I loved thinking that Victor Frankenstein was a whiner and a self-centered jerk and not worrying that I wasn't supposed to think that about him.  I enjoy finishing a book as my enjoyment of it and curiosity about how it ends moves me forward instead of plowing through it desperate to finish it in time for the test.

I've also discovered that the woman who reads these books now has life experience that allows me to better understand how the characters in them are affected by things that happen to them.  I am happy that I didn't get around to them when I would have looked at them from that small perspective I had many years ago. 

That's made me curious about books I loved from back then and I am going to read some of them again.  Will I still love To Kill a Mockingbird, as I did when I was twelve?  How will Holden Caulfield hold up?

I can't imagine not loving Holden Caulfield.  I just looked at A Catcher in the Rye and  found this:

"What really knocks me out is a book, when you're all done reading it, you wished the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it."

  Holden still has it as far as I'm concerned.  Heck, I'd even join a book club if he was in it. 

.

1.3.09 02:45


Night time creepings

In the words of master reader Bunnyman,

"Time to take Koontz off"

He ends that statement "for my nightly read" while I am going to end it

"from my nightly read".

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not giving up reading Odd Thomas.  I'm enjoying it far too much for that.  However it seems that my fairy nature is too insubstantial to stand up to the creepy presences that Odd Thomas and no other living person sees slink among us.  I say no other living person because the one person who had seen them--a six-year old--was nearly immediately crushed to death.  I know scads of six year olds, hippity-hoppity live ones and thinking about that one fictional one and the bodachs he too could see and the fate he suffered woke me up in the middle of the night, feeling anxious and not immediately able to identify why.  A half hour or so later the reason identified itself, but I still couldn't sleep.

So Odd Thomas and I will keep company earlier in the day and I'll enjoy other bedtime entertainment:  one night Bryson's Made in America, another Nick Hornby's Songbook, a gift from my daughter.   Eventually I hope to work up enough courage to be able to again sleep with the lights OFF.

6.10.06 15:07


Back to the stacks

 

Enough of a sabbatical!  It's time to get the books out and get lost in them instead of in less rewarding activities.  Whether I'm talking about dusting or shopping can be a little riddle to work on while you pour yourself some coffee and stick a pillow on top of the telephone.  If it rings, you don't want to hear it--it's there for your convenience, not to interrupt its master (you) while you attend to important matters.

The important matter that calls me today is "Odd Thomas" by Dean Koontz.  I've been told it's a great read by someone whose writing makes me keep one space empty on the shelves, hoping he'll really write that book he promised me.

Ready to relax?  Good.  Let's get started.

26.9.06 23:07


8.1.06 04:16


When's the last time you read Mad Magazine?  It's just as sarcastic and inane as it always was.  And I liked it just as much today as I did when I was twelve.
19.11.05 04:23


Tonight I'm visiting a library far from my home library. 


And I was welcomed here as if it were my own library, and I've been smiled at and given a computer to work at as if I actually helped pay for the building, the books, the computer, and the staff payroll.  I love libraries!  No place else really belongs to everyone.

1.9.05 02:19


Yes, you'll notice that "Ten Big Ones" made it onto the "Books I've Finished This Summer" list long before "Empire" will.


The reason is that I laughed out loud while reading "Ten Big Ones", while I feel intellectual when I read "Empire".  Now I have to find another Rest and Relaxation book to break up those "Empire" sessions.  It won't be the other book someone has asked me to read, "Smile", which I've also started, but am finding tedious.   It amazes me that anyone could hang such an irritatingly pompous book on such a pleasant name.


Oh, yes--I need an R & R book, and I need it fast!  Tomorrow the search begins.

11.8.05 23:02


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