My Fall Reading List

Yes, I'm still reading this book and yes, our living room/closet/etc. is kind of messy.

You guys, I have been working on this compilation of Bradbury stories for months now.  Just admitting it makes me realize how rarely I read these days, which in turn makes me want to make more time for reading, then I get sleepy from stressing so much and just want to take a nap.

Anyway I figured I'd share with you some of the books in my "To Read" pile.  It keeps getting bigger and I'm hoping the guilt will motivate me to read blogs less and read books more.

1. Rez Life by David Treuer.  Written by a Native American (Ojibwe) novelist, this is a memoir that focuses on the author's childhood and life on the Leech Lake Reservation in Northern Minnesota.  I found this at the one non-chain bookstore in Santa Fe, and bought it because I realized that I know close to nothing about life on reservations or life as a Native American is the modern-day United States.   Plus I love memoirs.

2. Loud in the House of Myself by Stacy Pershall. This is another memoir recommended to me by my therapist because the author is (apparently) anxious/depressed and high-strung and tattooed and quirky, which reminded her of me.  I'm pretty excited about this one actually.

3. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II by Iris Chang. Can you tell I like nonfiction? I got caught in the Wikipedia rabbit hole one day and started reading about the Nanking Massacre.  I don't know about you all, but I had never learned anything about this horrifying period in Chinese history and reading about it totally fucking shocked me.  I found this book at the aforementioned Santa Fe bookstore and felt like I should probably educate myself on it.

4. Death's Acre by Dr. Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson. This book is about the "Body Farm", a partially outdoor forensic science laboratory that's mostly comprised of rotting bodies.  Scientists working at the "farm" use the bodies to study decomposition and the effects of various climates/environments on human flesh.  Is it weird that I kind of want to visit it?

5. Room by Emma Donoghue.  My only fiction book on the list!  My sister Megan recommended this to me (and I believe it was recommended to her by our mother).  I believe it's about a kidnapping victim told from the perspective of the son she had with her kidnapper, but I don't know much else about it other than Megan really enjoyed it.

The last two are eBooks which don't make for nice photos.

What are you guys reading this fall?

A New Favorite Author

Unlike apparently the rest of my countrymen and women, I was never required to read Fahrenheit 451 in high school and to this day have yet to read it.

A couple of months ago when Ray Bradbury passed away, my father-in-law recommended the book "The Illustrated Man" to me, which I bought on a whim at our local bookstore with Robbie one day.  I'd never spent much time reading sci-fi so I went into it unsure of what I'd think.

Source

If you haven't read "The Illustrated Man," the book centers around a man in a circus act who is covered in tattooed illustrations, each of which depicts a different story that changes when one watches the illustration move.  The entire book is composed of the short stories that these illustrations tell--each story is different, with different characters, settings, plots, motifs, and messages.

I hate to sound crass especially in reference to such important literature, but I'm honest with you guys, and this book and Ray Bradbury rocked my fucking world. Never ever have I been so drawn in, so disturbed, so amused by short stories.  Each story, few spanning more than 10 pages, had me absolutely engrossed.  The amazing thing is how timeless they seemed, an impressive feat given that the book was published in 1951 and that many of them reference complex technology that only existed at the time in Bradbury's mind. And though most of the stories are based in science fiction, others touch on a plethora of other topics, each just as well-written as the last.

I passed the book along to Robbie after I read it and I think he was almost as equally moved as I was, particularly by a story called "The Rocket Man." Because I felt like I needed even more of Bradbury's stories, I promptly bought a large 900-page volume of short stories that weren't in "The Illustrated Man."

I'll spare you more of my excited babbling about how amazing Ray Bradbury is, but if you don't mind I'd like to share some of the passages that have moved me the most. A few of these passages are from "The Illustrated Man" and others are from the other collection of Bradbury stories I bought.

From "The Rocket Man":

   I asked Mother about a few things that morning after Father had been gone a number of hours. "Dad said that sometimes you don't act as if you hear or see him," I said. 

  And then she explained everything to me quietly. 

 "When he went off into space ten years ago, I said to myself, 'He's dead.' Or as good as dead. So think of him dead. And when he comes back, three or four times a year, it's not him at all, it's only a pleasant little memory or a dream. And if a memory stops or a dream stops, it can't hurt half as much. So most of the time I think of him dead-" 

 "But other times-" 

  "Other times I can't help myself. I bake pies and treat him as if he were alive, and then it hurts. No, it's better to think he hasn't been here for ten years and I'll never see him again. It doesn't hurt as much." 

From "No Particular Night or Morning":

“We're all fools," said Clemens, "all the time. It's just we're a different kind each day. We think, I'm not a fool today. I've learned my lesson. I was a fool yesterday but not this morning. Then tomorrow we find out that, yes, we were a fool today too. I think the only way we can grow and get on in this world is to accept the fact we're not perfect and live accordingly.”


From "The Laurel and Hardy Love Affair":

"From that twilight hour on the piano stairs on, their days were long, heedless, and full of that amazing laughter that paces the beginning and the run-along rush of any great love affair.  They stopped laughing long enough to kiss and only stopped kissing long enough to laugh at how odd and miraculous it was to find themselves with no clothes to wear in the middle of a bed as vast as life and as beautiful as morning."

"I think it's our mouths," he said. "Until I met you, I never knew I had a mouth. Yours is the most amazing in the world, and it makes me feel as if mine were amazing, too. Were you ever really kissed before I kissed you?"
   "Never!"
   "Nor was I. To have lived this long and not known mouths."
   "Dear mouth," she said. "shut up and kiss."


That's all I will share for now to spare your eyes. Have any of you read Ray Bradbury, or any other sci-fi author?

Weekend Stuff & Things

Here are some of the things we've been doing this weekend.

1. I have been having the most vivid dreams EVER you guys.  I haven't been able to figure out what exactly is causing them; the only thing that's different is this cream I'm putting on my face for the treatment of milia (gross) and I can't imagine something I'd put on my skin could actually affect how I dream.  All of the dreams I've had have involved very strong, negative emotions--in my dreams over the course of the last few nights I was threatened with broken bones and sexual abuse by the evil guy in "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", I had a really horrible miscarriage while fighting with my husband in Iraq and woke up sobbing, and last night I had to sneak into Cypress's daycare to get a picture of her teeth and was caught.  That last one doesn't seem as intense but I promise you, it was pretty stressful.  Anyway though you might think that this would make me not want to go to bed, I'm actually interested each night to see what my brain will come up with.  Is that weird?

2. Rob and I saw a hockey game with his brother and his brother's wife last night.  As I've told you guys before, hockey is literally the only sport I can tolerate and actually enjoy watching.  It's fast-paced, very high-tension, and the periods are the perfect length of time (and the sport doesn't require you to stop every 5 seconds like football).  Plus our team won and we got to see some blood from one of the fights, and who doesn't love a good old-fashioned brawl?

3. I finally sent my Nikon away to get repaired so you guys won't have to deal with randomly-sized iPhone images for too much longer.

4. I'm getting very close to my trip to Santa Fe and I've narrowed down the places that I most want to see. I can't really make appointments until next week, so I have all my fingers and toes crossed that the ones I want to see are still available at that time.  I don't want to jinx any of the good ones so I won't share any here...but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

5. I just finished this book about poison in Jazz Age New York and I loved it.  Maybe it's because I'm a huge crime nerd but I found it absolutely fascinating, and written in a way that was extremely approachable and intriguing.  Every time I'd read it I would excitedly tell Rob some fact or another that I had learned about Prohibition, murder, or poison.  I'm pretty sure he loved it judging by his half-hearted "mm" and "huh"s.  Also, this was one of the only times I've been genuinely disappointed that a book ended.

6. On a somewhat related note to the previous bullet point, in the book the author explains that the body of a person who was poisoned with arsenic decays at a much slower rate; she even cites one case in which a body was exhumed over a year after death that, aside from some "patches of mold" on the face,  was in near-perfect condition.  I decided to learn more about that, because I find things like putrefaction interesting.  So I started Googling, and fell down ye olde Internet Rabbit Hole and long story short, ended up on an article explaining why the Holocaust never happened.  A quick aside: this is not in line in any way, shape or form with my beliefs; the article was also about carbon monoxide detection in corpses, which probably doesn't assure you any further of my stability but there it is.  Anyway, a bit shocked to say the least I scrolled to the top of the screen and realized I was on the forum of a White Supremacist website. And interestingly, they had a whole forum dedicated to White Supremacist recipes you could make for your family. So if this blog gets shut down it might be because I'm being investigated by the FBI for racist cooking.

What scary and possibly damning websites have you visited this weekend?

Weekend Bits & Pieces

This was one of our last calm, non-packing weekends and it was a lovely one.

1. We saw "War Horse" tonight and all in all, it was a pretty good movie.  I was in tears most of the time, though, because war scenes + animals in pain = fragile Caitlin.  Can I tell you something weird? When I watch war movies, whether it be the Civil War or Vietnam, I think about how our lives would've been different if Rob had fought in one of those wars instead of Operation Iraqi Freedom.  And sometimes I wonder if in some other time, in some other place, we were together in some way and he did fight in one of those wars.  I know that sounds crazy and yes, I totally stole it from an X-Files episode, but regardless the thought always causes me to well up in tears.

2. Does anyone else eat plain fresh mozzarella as a snack? I could eat cheese all night and all day, and that is simply fact.

3. Isn't my dog just so fancy?

4. I just finished the 3rd book of "The Hunger Games" series and I must say, it's a great read.  It surprised me, but I really did enjoy reading it and quite frankly couldn't put it down. I think what I liked about the ending--without giving anything away--is that the emotions and actions of everyone involved were very realistic.  Instead of everyone just frolicking on their merry way I think the toll of war/stress etc. seemed pretty believable.  I don't want to give away anything else but if you like dystopian fiction, you should definitely read it. My next book is "The Poisoner's Handbook" all about murder by poison in Jazz Age New York.  Morbid? Probably. Warning: Reading any of the book I have below might give a little bit away if you plan on reading it.

What did you do this weekend?