Forgot to mention

But I'm publishing a review a day for the month of September to catch up with my Cannonball Reads 6 queue - I took a break there sometime around 20 books and the end of April. I've read about a million and a half fan-fics since, but have fallen waaay behind on my book reading, and even further behind on my review writing, so if you're interested, or if you just want to see what I have to say about a bunch of books and maybe you don't already follow me on Goodreads, c'mon over.

A review I wrote last week got a comment by the author on it the other day, so that was pretty exciting! Exciting because I actually liked the book...so she was pleased by the review and I was pleased that she had seen it. It definitely could have gone the other way - I wrote a not-so-great review about another book a few days ago and it still doesn't feel great to me, because I hate to say mean things. I mostly just tried to play the "this really isn't my style" card, but... there were a lot of issues, and I mentioned that a few times. I wasn't actually mean about it, I know that, but it was hard not to follow the "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" rule.

For the most part though, I'm on a pretty good streak of books, and I think, if I survive September with any brain cells, and anybody's interested, I may link a few of my favorite fanfics and talk about them, come October. (Apparently we can review them for CBR, but since the point is to raise money for charity through Amazon, I'd feel badly since there aren't any Amazon-links to click in the AO3 fics. But this is my page, so I can do what I want. Also, at some point, I should probably recognize that I have been writing here for 9 years now, I think. It might be 10 - time to dig through the archives for that first mess of a post, and see the date again. But I know it was September, so I've got a blog-aversary coming up. And a sick-aversary come October. I'm just full of happy days [and made up words.])

So come check it out, if you feel so inclined.

TBR Mountain? Meet TBR Universe

So if you've been reading here for any length of time, I hope you know enough about me to know that I am an avid reader myself. Of everything. And anything - shampoo bottles, literary tomes, complicated scientific articles, every kind of novel ever (romance, sci-fi, fantasy, crime, thriller, YA...), obscure biographies, how-to books, and so much more. But up until last week I had avoided getting entangled with fanfiction.

My reasoning was not snobbish - I do not consider any kind of reading to be better than any other, after all, and a person who takes immense joy in selecting picture books as presents for people of all ages has very little in to say about other people's reading choices. If you like it; it's worth reading, is my basic reading philosophy. (Which does not mean, if I don't like what you're reading that I'm not going to find some way to build a literary bridge between your (poor) taste and mine, because, really if you like fairy tale retellings, I can find 72 better fairy tale retellings than the one you are reading and then we can talk about it and fangirl together, and won't that be more fun? Yes: yes it will.) Like every reader, I do have issues of personal taste when it comes to books - things that make a good book amazing, subplots I have had enough of, characters I wish would show up more, things that make a good plot go bad - but I'm no literary snob (despite the English Lit department's best efforts).

No: my reasons for abstention from fanfiction were varied & personal  -

•  A) I didn't know a lot about it, except that it's not always finished & I HATE waiting for things to be finished*;
•  B) some of the pieces I had wandered upon were ... poorly written/edited/solely smut (not that there's anything wrong with that except for - ) 
• C) I tend to have my own head canons about things - certain favorite characters, primarily - and I don't like to see those get messed up and
•  D) the sheer amount of reading material I already have on my plate & an unwillingness to open the Pandora's box of literally ever written character I've ever fallen for having an infinite number of more stories told about them.

But - even with these well-thought out & well-intentioned self-preservation techniques in place - I threw it all out the window one day last week when I started reading a phenomenal Avenger's Fanfiction series. Which I found completely by accident, and which I am very upset there are not more stories in. (See star below.)

But, as often always happens in reading - one thing leads to another and here I am, a week later, having barely put a dent in the multi-verses of fanfiction that's out there, but having a ton of non-canon Avenger feels and ignoring all my other reading responsibilities. 

Literally - I barely have read anything else in a week, and that's unusual for me, because I've always got three-four things going concurrently.  In this case, however, if I don't want to be reading Avenger fanfic, I can just switch over to Sherlock or GoT or virtually any other thing I am even the tiniest bit interested in. Not to mention crossovers. (No seriously: let's not mention them because I maaaaaaaaaaaaaay have spent an entire day and a half stuck in the MCU, and now I'm mad that the Avengers, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four don't all play together in the movies, because of stupid studios.)

There is fanfiction for everything, and for a person who reads as much as I do, this is Very. Dangerous. Information. Favorite author fan fic; favorite character fan fic; favorite book series/movie/television series fan fic; I don't play video games, but if I did? Fan fic.

And it was somewhere between the Nora Roberts/GoT crossover fanfic and the Star Trek reboot fan fic where Bones was finally getting his due that I realized something - some of the first things I ever wrote were fan fic. The Little Women retcon  FIX where Laurie does not end up with whiny Amy and Jo does not marry a professor we know very little about. The Tiny Toons Adventure scripts where they got to hang out with the Animaniacs. The alternate ending to It (spoiler alert) where Bev - who is 11! - doesn't decide to have sex with her friends for no goddamn reason, just because they're lost in the freaking sewers and Stephen King didn't know how to get them out of there without being a creep. (I was 11, and I can guarantee you that it would not have entered my mind to lead the group out of the tunnel that way.  Even if I was a slow learner - and I'll admit I was - 11??? Also: I still think that was a shitty thing to do.)

I've been re-writing endings (And middles.  And beginnings.) of stories since I started reading them.** And while I am extremely relieved that publishing as I was writing was not an option for me (although it may have been and I just... don't share what I'm writing, so it's likely that never would have happened anyways), I'm so glad that the Internet has introduced me to YET ANOTHER group of my people.

I can only rue the fact that it did not include some wormhole that enables me to read while also accomplishing other things, or an extra 52 hours in a day, so that I can devote them solely to reading and actually accomplish something else. As always, there is just so much more to read, and so little time to actually do it.

The sacrifices to readers (and writers) make. ;)



*Please see: Actual Comic Books, a literary art form that I truly love, but only in retrospect. I do not appreciate a bi-weekly serial. I do not like the cliffhanger versions of stories where I'm supposed to wait to find out if favorite characters survive. I get enough of that in my television watching, thank you very much. And also in my book series reading, which I both love and hate: Love spending so much time with characters and revisiting them, hate having to wait for the next book to come out. Am not patient about this, for some reason.  (And this is why I have a half-year's worth of Batgirl comics to catch up on: because I want to be able to read them all in one gulp.)

** One of the many books my mother saved from my childhood is a revision of The Monster at the End of this Book, the first book I remember reading out loud by myself, the first book I loved, as a reader. So, the fact that I then did my own version of it, way back when, suggests I was a little slow to pickup on the whole "fan fiction is for you, you dope."

“We are familiar with both ends of the spectrum: the short, acute infections and injuries of everyday life and the terminal cases of cancer, heart disease, or stroke that have a finite end. Chronic illness is somewhere in the middle, confounding and unfamiliar.” *

Welcome to all of you Blogging Against Disabilism Day readers ~ I hope this first of May finds you ready to read about a ton of things you wish you didn’t have to read about, to learn more about the people that make up our particular segment of the online disability community, and to (hopefully) feel like there’s issues out there that we can all do a better job of acknowledging and addressing!  (At least, that’s been my experience on previous BADD adventures: your mileage may vary, and this year might bring something completely different - but I’m excited to see where it takes us!)

My own post this year is a little bit different than some of the stuff I’ve addressed previously (you can see my BADD posts from 2012, 2011, 2010 (Oracle Post: commented on by none other than Oracle writer, Gail Simone! and is one of my favorite posts ever,) 2009, 2008, & 2007,), because I want to talk to you about a book I think might be right up your alley.

Friend of this blog (and this blogger), Laurie Edwards - author of the fabulous Life Disrupted:Getting Real About Chronic Illness in your 20s & 30s, and of the excellent posts at the blog Laurie Edwards, Writer (previously A Chronic Dose) has recently written a new - and extraordinary - book called In the Kingdom of the Sick, which is on sale now.  It’s an excellent book, that some of you might have already heard of (Laurie’s been doing a bit of a virtual book tour over the past month or so), but even so, I think it’s something worth discussing again here.

Let me first say, that it’s complicated for me to talk about this book, particularly in any sort of unbiased way, since I’m in it.  Quite a bit, actually:  Over the course of the last four years, Laurie’s been interviewing me, and asking me a bunch of thoughtful, challenging, questions - both specific and sweeping in scope - and then listening to me blabber on and on in response. She somehow managed to cobble a lot of my bits of nonsense together with the insights of other patients and bloggers and respected health care advocates, and combined them with years of dedicated research into the social, environmental, and cultural implications of chronic illness and come up with a sophisticated, well-rounded, and solid take on what it means to live with chronic illness in America. 

I’m going to talk about this book on two different levels - as someone whose personal story was told in its pages, and as just a reader, focusing on the compelling themes and discussions that Laurie manages to include in her chapters. 

On a personal level, I have to say how strange it was for me to see my story in print. To have my experience of illness not just represented truthfully and succinctly, but respectfully.  If you are a patient, like me, with often invisible/misunderstood chronic illnesses, you learn pretty fast that your word is not to be taken as gospel truth, that your story is to be heard with skepticism, that your experience of what it’s like to live in your body doesn’t translate to how people think it should be, and is therefore invalid.  But - as a chronically ill adult herself - Laurie has dealt with these attitudes on her own, and knows how important it is to make sure that she listened to and honored our experiences - I can only speak for my own interview process, but there was never a time when I felt as if what I was saying wasn’t being heard, and that really comes through in the final text. 

Which, for me, wound up being quite startling when I actually read the book: there’s my story.  All typed up and neat between the covers of an actual book - with my real name attached even!  (Which, considering I run an ‘anonymous-ish’ blog, gave me some pause about posting this here: but my concern is more that the people who know me in real life don’t find the blog me, not that the people who know blog me don’t find out who I am in real life, so I’m willing to take the risk.)  Even knowing my own experiences, they were hard to read: in some cases I was harsh on myself, or my family, and in others, the reality of my story is that it is often stark, as chronic illness often is - at least in this context.  So, it was sometimes hard to read about how doctors are dismissive of my pain, or how my family and friends (and teachers and doctors) so often discounted what I was feeling in favor of what they thought I should be feeling.  But the thing that Laurie manages to do so well here is incorporate all of the random pieces of my story and intertwine them with the stories of so many others, and place them in historical, social, medical contexts that make them so much more than just my stories: she makes them matter, in a way I hadn’t considered before.  The book is both my story and not my story  -  The author is honoring & using our anecdotes and non/mis-diagnoses and perspectives to discuss a more universal story, to show the patterns that surround the lived experiences of individuals & groups with chronic illnesses. 

This is one of the things that I found most fascinating about the book (and most relevant to my own experience of living with a chronic illness): that there are certain things that are universal to people living with chronic illnesses and disabilities - “We want science to give us clues when we’re surrounded by darkness, but we do not want to be reduced to impersonal statistics.” for example - but it’s still such an individual process. And that Laurie is able to blend and balance that so well is a credit to her skill as a writer.   

Laurie is able to see the big patterns - to identify and illustrate broad themes over long periods of time - but to make them feel real and relevant by using the true stories of actual, living patients.  By focusing on how the concepts of illness and patients have evolved over time, and using specific examples from those she’s interviewed, she manages to prove that illness doesn’t exist in a vacuum, but that the “stereotypes, assumptions, and challenges” that accompany our perceptions of illness as a whole, disability & chronic illness in particular are doing real harm (or, could be harnessed to give true benefit)  to real people in real time.  (A fact that will be well noted on your BADD journey today, I’m sure.) 

The example that most relates to my own life is that of the Tired Girls (a phrase coined by Paula Kamen in her excellent book All In My Head): those suffering with auto-immune diseases, invisible illnesses, migraines, pain syndromes & chronic fatigue.  Set against the backdrop of the 1980s, a time when (once again)  “the fit body became at once a status symbol and an emblem of an individual’s purchasing power, moral health, self control and discipline,” and our culture decided that being unfit was a moral failing, the stereotype of

 “The Tired Girl stands for so much that society disdains: weakness, exhaustion, dependence, unreliability, and the inability to get better.  She is far removed from the cancer survivor triumphantly crossing the finish line in her local fund-raising event, surrounded by earnest supporters.  The Tired Girls have few cheerleaders, and, often lacking correct diagnoses or effective treatments, wouldn’t even know how to define what or where their finish line is.”

 Later on, she continues:

 “The issues apply to chronic illness in powerful ways.  For one there is obviously no finish line with chronic illness, literally or figuratively; we just live with symptoms that wax and wane and will continue to do so.  Without that finish line that denotes survivorship, there is not the same level of cultural awareness or acceptance of our diseases, no backdrop of success with which outsiders can judge our journey.  Our survival is more subtle and nuanced; it entails adaptation and negotiation, and is as fluid as our disease progression and symptoms are. … It is a murky gray space...”  

What does survivorship mean to someone who will never cross a finish line, who just has to make it through the next day? What does it mean to live in a society that embraces the power of fitness and an ideal of “you can do it if you try hard enough”  for groups of people who just can’t live up to that goal of perfection- and how does that effect not just the way they are treated by the culture they’re living in, but by the medical establishments that exist in that culture;  It’s an area that’s often overlooked, and I’m glad to find it here. 

Again and again, Edwards uses words like “unpalatable” “Antithetical” “disdain” “blame”  “untenable” “Overreacting”  “dismiss” - in her discussions of how society, the medical world, and sometimes even the patients themselves view people with illnesses such as  Chronic Fatigue Syndrome  & Fibromyalgia, and - as a sufferer for 18 years -  I can only agree that these are still the pervasive attitudes.  She talks about the importance of medical research (and funding - or lack of) as “critical to better acceptance and better treatment options”, as anybody with an underfunded, misunderstood disease can attest to. 

There are also compelling discussions into the intersections of gender and illness (which she also touches on in this recent New York Times article about Pain & Gender); environment and illness, class and illness; and how much of our experience of illness relies on the time and place in which we are living.  For example, most of us in America right now have the privilege of living in a ‘post-polio’ time, but less than 70 years ago, that would not be the case.  What attitudes and values from the post WWII era of "irresistible progress, a time when it seemed like science was on the brink of curing so much of what ailed us..." and yet "chronic conditions that were somehow beyond the reach of medical science - would appear that much more unpalatable" are we still carrying over and living with today - in our daily lives and in our medical establishments? How much of what we now understand about diseases like Multiple Sclerosis or Epilepsy would be shocking to someone from the early 1900s?  And what will we learn in the next 10-50-100 years that will change how we view the misunderstood illnesses of today? How do new technologies that will help us discover the inner workings of the brain, or processes of pain or genetic implications of illness, clash with the ever-present theory of self-improvement and moral judgements surrounding things like weight and lifestyle choices? Somehow, she manages to touch on all of these topics and many more.

The book is definitely, as the subtitle proclaims, a “Social History of illness in America”  - peppered through with patient interviews and perspectives are the broad trends and social constructs and how they inform our experience of illness - both as patients and as observers/outsiders. 

She looks at the Disability Rights movement in the larger context of the times - as emerging from the basic principles of the Civil Rights movement, and the Women’s Rights movement - and how it sometimes has come into conflict with both of those - If you’ve spent anytime on the Internet, then you know that not everyone’s feminism is intersectional, not to mention that if women’s right’s activists were arguing for equality, and certain illnesses were keeping women from being able to claim that equality, well, there would obviously be conflict.  Also true is that chronic illness, in terms of the disability movement as a whole, is not always welcomed and appreciated by the decision makers: and that the needs of people with chronic illnesses both intersect and diverge from the ‘mainstream’ disability rights movement (if there even is such a thing any more).  As Laurie puts it “Invisibility affords many opportunities for alienation.” 

She also provides one of the clearest perspectives about chronic pain I've ever read.   And doesn't shy from mentioning the judgements that often come attached to having something so debilitating that people - including doctors -can’t see or often measure reliably (and therefore don’t trust) -

“Chronic pain, especially severe chronic pain, is so encompassing and omnipresent it makes concentrating on anything else other than it nearly impossible.  Chronic pain can make it excruciating to engage in physical activities, keep up with a regular work schedule, or even leave the house.  Over time, chronic pain erodes so many aspects of the patient’s identity that it sometimes seems all that is left is the minute-by-minute experience of simply surviving the pain itself.  It makes the threads of everyday life blurry and out-of-reach, yet pain becomes the narrow, sharp lens through which everything else that matters is filtered.  This is the reality behind the statistics, the jobs left behind, the co-pays for painkillers that invite as many problems as the fleeting relief with which they tempt. .. It’s an untenable situation: patients are considered lazy or indulgent if they remain housebound, but should they manage some activity or productivity, then their pain can’t be as severe and exhausting as they claim.  Here again we see the contradiction so common in the social history of disease: the absence of outward physical manifestations of illness somehow negates the actual experience of having it.”

 and later

“Widespread pain conditions like fibromyalgia or CFS are especially social conditions, since their symptoms have a direct impact on a patient's ability to maintain various roles and identities.  Ties to the outside world via employment, family obligations, activities and hobbies, and social engagements are whittled away, and physical and psychosocial isolation increases.  Add to this process the fact that their symptoms and complaints are routinely viewed with skepticism from physicians, loved ones, or both, and the alienation of individual patients takes on more momentum.  In The Culture of Pain, David B. Morris writes that pain “cannot be reduced to a mere transaction of the nervous system.  the experience of pain is also shaped by such powerful cultural forces as gender, religion, and social class … Even when it just grinds on mercilessly, pain, like love, belongs among the basic human experiences that make us who we are.”” 

Right?  How much do I love that somebody gets all of that?

I’ve managed to include just a few of my favorite quotes out here, but trust me - there’s a million more in the book (see attached photo with number of sticky notes in my (!signed!) copy: and I promise that I did not sticky note myself).  I didn’t even get to mention the rise of consumerism, survivorship and personal responsibility, or the emergence of social media as not just a place for activism (shoutout to #BADD), but also a place for community building, patient research and all sorts of evolving questions about the role ‘participatory medicine’ will play in the lives of current & future patients.

 In the Kingdom of the Sick is comprehensive: it’s super compelling to anybody who’s interested in how disabilities and illnesses have been and are now perceived in our culture, and how that might change moving forward, and is incredibly relevant in a world where nearly everyone is impacted in some way by chronic illness (if you don’t have one, I guarantee you know someone who does).

 Highly, highly recommended, and hats off to the wonderful Laurie Edwards, who I’m so glad I get to call my friend.

---
I'll be back at some point with my favorite BADD quotes round-up: I hope you all are hitting as many sites as you can, and leaving as many comments as you can (Trust me, they really matter!)  Speaking of: please let me know in e-mail (bbckprpl@gmail.com) if you are having trouble with the comments on my site: Blogger does not always cooperate, and I've tried my best to shut down the captcha, but it doesn't always stay off.  Thanks for reading! 

*Laurie Edwards, In The Kingdom of the Sick, p10

Went to 2 different comic book stores today

Had two completely different experiences. 

The first, Hub Comics*, is right down the street from the old house, and UJ (who I was visiting with this morning).  I'd been messaging with one of the employees there about subscriptions and prepaying so that they'll hold my book longer than a few days if I can't get in right away to pick it up (Chronic Illness and deadlines: we do not coexist well!)  The guy was super nice about it, and when I went in today, even though there were two different guys, everything seemed to work out fine.  Although... now that I'm thinking about it, I didn't prepay for the next issue, which is what I meant to do, and brain fog why do I take you places?!?!? Damn it.  OK, well: I'll have to pick that  issue up right away, and prepay while I'm in there, but anyways: the guys were nice and help set me up with my subscriptions.  They let me browse without imposing or being weird or pushy.  Only issue I had was a) two steps, which is not optimal in the chair (must fix accessibility, Hub Comics people!) and b) dogs came in for biscuits which was really cute but not good for my whole 'let's remain breathing' portion of the afternoon.  Luckily, after obtaining said biscuit, doggy and owner quickly left, or else I might have had to.  But, overall, totally positive experience.

But they didn't have one of the books I was looking for, so I headed to the Meadow Glen Mall (which is not a hoity toity mall, trust me) and Harrison's Comics (which I did not know had another location: note to self).  So here's a thing I did not like: Wednesday is new comics day (as you may or may not know), and they had all the new comics out on the wall, with signs that said "Not for sale till tomorrow."  I am not a huge comic book store person, so I did not realize that "not for sale" also meant "you can't touch these" till tomorrow, and when I went to touch one of them (Did you know Castle has a comic book?  I did not!  And now I have to find out more about it, because, is Nathan Fillion drawn in it?  Because... must make it mine, if so.) and when I went to pick it up, the guy bit my head off!  "Miss! Those are not for sale till tomorrow!"  (He only get's 1/2 a point for barking Miss instead of Ma'am.  I'll give him that, anyways.)

Now, I am socially awkward enough in places where I am not ... super confident.  (Ok, so that is technically everywhere, except for ... say the library: confident. I know the rules there!) And comic book stores tend to be (for me) intimidating anyways, because I'm new to comics and there's so much that I don't know.  And when the guy yelled at me?  I wanted to die.  I mean literally, I am 33 years old: I have no idea how old the guy was (because I never looked at his face because I was bright red the entire rest of the time I was in the store, which was all filler time of me thinking "how fast can I get out of here without it looking like I am running away because this guy snapped at me?"), but I felt about 7, getting caught shoplifting or something equally horrible.  I do not like to be reprimanded.  I am so bad at it.  And all I did was ALMOST touch a comic that wasn't for sale yet. So I just sort of slunk up and down the aisles for another five minutes, all beat red, hoping that the other guy would take the register so that I could check out with him, but no such luck.  I mean, I get that it's the policy of the shop, but if you have 25 signs that all say "Not for sale till tomorrow," maybe, for the sake of the newbies like me, at least one of them should say "which means you can't even look at them even though they are on open shelves just like everything else in here."  For the sake of my blushing cheeks, anyways.

And yes, I know that some of this is just me being totally awkward and why do you even care what he thinks, but still... clearer signs for people who don't know all the rules would still be nice.  And less snapping, even if you probably have to tell people not to touch about 17 million times every Tuesday. (which might be prevented by clearer signs, just FYI.) Definitely a less positive experience, and they didn't have the book I was looking for either (although I did pick up a Women of Marvel poster book which looks super cool.  (Just wondering, comic book people - do you not take those apart to get the posters?  Because I'm totally going to take them apart for the posters, but it also seems kind of sacrilegious because it's a book....)

But look at me, out and about, going to places where I'm totally not comfortable.  Didn't ask about game nights though - which I heard they have around here somewhere, at Hub because I forgot (oh Fibro Fog, seriously?  You are screwing up my whole day - I thought I'd done pretty well!) and at Harrison because Hells No, my face was on fire, are you kidding me?  Oh well: there's always next month**

*Also please note their super adorable signage: Love.  :)
**Hub's website says Tuesday nights from 5-9.  Tonight was Tuesday: why didn't I wait a few hours? Next time, Fibro Fog: no forgetting.

"I Go To Seek a Great Perhaps"****

Well, here we are less than twelve hours into the New Year, and I've already made at least one wise decision:*  Early this morning, after watching the ball drop and wishing my mother a happy birthday, I snuggled down in bed with my first book of 2013, John Green's fabulous (and wrenching) Looking for Alaska .  I went into it knowing absolutely nothing: I thought Alaska was the state, if that gives you a clue as to how little I knew about the book (for those who don't know, Alaska is a girl's name).  But I had just spent three days in December watching John Green and his brother Hank (along with various other Internet-famous peoples) talk and read and work out and be awesome and chat live on YouTube with millions of Nerdfighters, all for charity. 

I don't know how I wandered across this year's Project for Awesome: I follow both Wil Wheaton and Miss Zoot, who are huge John Green fans, and I've been building up to reading The Fault is in Our Stars , because it's on every single "Must Read" list I've seen (and so many people I trust have loved it) - but it's also supposedly truly heartbreaking, which I can't really deal with yet, so it's been on the "I'll get around to it when I'm less weepy" pile for me. Anyways, somehow, I found out about Project for Awesome, and it was (awesome, that is).
  And in the midst of all the last minute Christmas shopping and bustle of wrapping up the entire known world of gifts, I carved out two days to sit and listen, and comment on various YouTube videos made in support of a million different charities.  The way P4A works is that each comment is worth a penny for a charity, and cumulatively, with over 700,000 comments they/we managed to raise $483,446 for the Foundation to Decrease World Suck.  I'm sorry, but if that isn't the BEST TAGLINE EVER, then I'm a unicorn.**

So after spending nearly three days listening to the Green brothers (and friends) speak and ramble and make up songs about their faces in the middle of the night, and try to auction off everything from googly eyes to unpublished, unfinished stories, and be as honest and heartfelt as just about anybody I've ever (not actually) met, I fell in love with them.  And it turns out, there's plenty to love: Their YouTube videos are amazing and informative, and have just enough snark to make me glad there are other people as sick as me out there.  Although there are SO MANY of them, and it is a little bit overwhelming right now, I'm glomming as fast as I can.

ANYways - back to the book.  It was, as expected, super awesome.  Quote-worthy, of course, but also moving and emotional in a way that I find much more often in Young Adult books than in what's supposedly "great literature" (make sure you read that in a snotty, British accent, okay?) I know there are people who look down on YA as a genre - these are the people who point at the dreck that is Twilight and pretend it represents the entire spectrum of what YA produces - but those people are obviously dopey non-readers, because the amazing stories, characters, themes and plots that exist in the YA section of your bookstore definitely hold up against any other, purportedly more 'grown-up' tales.

And Looking for Alaska is a good example of that.  Life and death is no less serious just because you haven't turned 18 yet.  Fear and love and hope and wanting - none of those things feels any less real or any less significant because you don't have a driver's license. I guess grown-ups forget that truth is truth no matter how old you are, and pain doesn't skip over you because you aren't ready for it.  I guess some grown ups forget that, anyways:  John Green certainly doesn't. 

I loved the book, is kind of the point, even though it was hard to read it, and even though I probably should've tried to sleep instead of reading it all in three hours in the middle of the night.  I loved it, and I'm going to read the rest of the box set I bought myself (even though it was two days before Christmas and I am seriously poor) as soon as I feel up to confronting a book about kids with cancer.*** 

If you've been here a while, you know that I don't like to do resolutions for the New Year, mostly because I can talk myself out of them just as easily as I can talk myself into them.  Instead, I like to pick a word, an overall theme that I hope to inject into my year.  One year it was Closer, another Breathing, yet another Worth.   All worthy, and not a single one worked out as I'd hoped.

Still, they each helped me to get through some tough times: keeping the word 'closer' in mind helped me get through some seriously shitty doctor's appointments; remembering to 'breathe' was the only thing that kept me sane this summer, when everything was crumbling around me and I was watching a woman I loved wither away; remembering that I am 'worth' something helped me confront some serious injustices in our family.  These mottoes have become important to me, have become keywords that help me cope with everything from getting out of bed in the morning to how to help someone you love say goodbye to everyone they love. 

But I was having such trouble coming up with a word for 2013 - I couldn't think of a good enough theme to propel me to where I want to be, to help me realize that where I am is both good enough and not enough.  I wanted something powerful, something ... all encompassing.  Of course, I came up with some 'almost right' words: try, accomplish, be willing.  But none of them were just right.  I've been playing Goldilocks with this year's keyword for almost a month now, trying to narrow it down. 

And then, this morning.  And John Green's obsession with last words (which, if you ask me is a wondrous obsession to have).  And The Great Perhaps. 

There's a labyrinth too, and that's a good word, but it's not my word.  Nope, my word for this year is just Perhaps.

Because sometimes I need a little push, and perhaps opens up the possibility.

Because perhaps makes me question things I already think I know the answer to.

Because perhaps is a positive maybe, and maybe is all I ever know.

Because perhaps is hopeful, and I want to be, too.

Because perhaps makes it seems like the choices are mine, even when they don't feel like they are.

Because perhaps holds your hand through the horrid stuff, and (while I personally could use a year free of all of that), it's comforting to know there's something to hold onto when it inevitably happens. 

Because perhaps comes from a new friend, and I'm hoping it will lead the way to more of them.




Because perhaps I can decrease some world suck of my own, thank you very much.

Happy 2013, everybody.  I hope your year is full of Perhaps as well.  


*I say "at least one" because I also did things like eating breakfast and taking my pills, which, in the long run, will prove to be wise decisions, I hope. 
**I am unfortunately not a unicorn. 
***Which isn't today, and IDK when it will be. Even though I know it's going to be really good, there's too many tender points that'll get poked, and I can't do that today. 
****Check Here for more info
 

Nymphs are not what you think they are

Did you know a baby llama is called a cria?  Yeah, me either.  There were some other surprises too: just finished reading Chuckling Ducklings and Baby Animal Friends   to LilGirl for her bedtime story, and I was not aware of a lot of those names... Elvers (baby eels), leveret (baby hare), eyas (hawk).  A lot of new information for two very tired brains.  I have a feeling we'll be reading it again tomorrow, just for some clarity.  But the pictures are adorable, and it's pretty cute, overall.  She really loved it, and her big brother was paying attention when we were naming some he didn't know either, so that's a bonus.  It's great when facts are presented in a fun way, you know, so you can trick kids into learning. 

By the way, the title refers to one that wasn't in the book: did you know that a nymph is another name for a baby cockroach or grasshopper?  I'm going to go with grasshoppers, just because roaches should not have such evocatively beautiful names. 

Tastes like... chicken?

I just finished reading the most intriguing book, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake , by Aimee Bender.  It had such a unique premise - a little girl who suddenly develops the 'skill' to taste, in the food that someone has made, their true feelings.  It's kind of a tempting, exotic idea - to almost be able to read people's minds just by eating something that they've made - or even handled, as she can tell if the factory worker is disgruntled, if the truck driver is ready to retire, if the farmer is lying about how organic his crop is.  But with all 'gifts', there are some very severe drawbacks; When Rose first eats the birthday cake her mother has made for her, she is totally unprepared for the overwhelming hollowness that accompanies it, and that, she realizes, must reside within her mother's heart. 

The story was both foreign - what an odd concept, when you really think about it, to be able to decipher the thoughts, hopes, dreams, disappointments, trials of a person's life by whatever part of their essence they've left behind in the food they are making - and completely familiar: hers is a mostly normal family, with mostly normal people.  The way she talks about sitting at the dinner table and how each person at the table had such a distinct role to play - the brother who tunes them out, the father who pretends everything is fine, the mother who chatters away, the daughter who struggles to survive the next bite.  The relationship - lack of, building of, hope of - between Rose and her father was especially poignant to me, definitely reminded me of some of the times I've spent with my dad (either of my dads, really), and the sense of occupying the same space, but entirely different planets. 

The quality of the writing here was kind of startling, as well: I haven't heard of Ms. Bender before, but I've already added her backlist to my bookmooch wishlist, because she has a really excellent storytelling voice.  And every once in a while, one of her sentences would just sneak up on me, pounce: Truth!  Example: "After the incident in the ER, I no longer wanted to advertise my experience to anyone.  You try, you seem totally nuts, you go underground.  There's a kind of show a kid can do, for a parent - a show of pain, to try to announce something, and in my crying, in the desperate, blabbering awful mouth-clawing, I had hoped to get something across.  Had it come across, any of it?  Nope. " (p 106)   "You try, you seem totally nuts, you go underground:" That sentence there sums up a large portion of my life - you put yourself out there, and if people don't get it, if people don't get YOU, then back into your shell you must go, immediately.  And it takes a hell of a lot to try again.

I was greatly impressed by this book, by Rose and her family, and the secrets they all had.  By the way Rose just keeps sticking her neck out there, as best she can - and by the way she maneuvers her way through when she doesn't feel strong enough to try again - those days (weeks, months, years), and the getting through them matter too.  So: Excellent and intriguing story, one I think is going to stick in my mind for quite a while.  

And then I fell over... backwards

If only that title was a movie reference or something. Nope: I literally fell over backwards. About two weeks ago, we took the kids to a local low-key amusement park, I got out of the car and into my chair, put my front two wheels up on the curb, thinking that Mum was right behind me, lifting up the back two wheels - like we do a million times, all the time - but she had turned back to the car instead, and I somehow lost my balance, tipped back, slid up out of the chair a bit & my head and upper back met the concrete in an intense and immediate way. Besides being shocking - What the what??? - and completely embarrassing (although some very nice older gentlemen came rushing to help and made lots of jokes about revoking my license and ha ha, not uncomfortable at all!!!), it was.. majorly painful. "Majorly painful" is, in fact, the most definitive of understatements, but since I can't think of an all encompassing word for how bad I have felt since then, it will have to do.

After a few hours of trying to be in total denial ("I'm fine; let's go play skee ball!!) and downing both migraine & pain meds, I realized that I was in fact doing the opposite of fine, and I got myself all checked out at the ER. Where a snippy nurse tried to insist on getting my weight (No: I do not stand up well on good days, today is a very bad day, screw off, sir and take your "but you look fat to me, so I have to know the number" attitude with you); I got to spend a few hours looking at screwed up wall murals and trying to figure out if if it was me or them that was off (It was them); and a very nice doctor ran me through the CAT scan, pronounced me mildly concussed and apologized for the fact that fibro + fall = major suck, and sent me home.

Where fibro + fall has, in fact, equaled complete and total suckage. Although I was kind of shockingly unbruised, the part of my back that hit the ground has been untouchable. As in, I've been wearing button down shirts backwards and unbuttoned for two weeks, keeping my door closed so I can be a lay around Lady Godiva, because holy hell clothing is not allowed to touch that part of me. I've attempted attacking with every painkiller in my arsenal, but it's not doing much. That's not true: it's helping more now, but those first few days, it was like I was taking baby aspirin, or sugar pills, or swallowing pieces of paper, for all the good it did. I never even felt them. My back/neck have always been my most sensitive spots, but there have only been two or three times the pain has been this bad - mostly when I've been sick or flaring in other ways - and never due to something that I had done to myself. It's not exaggerating in anyway to say that I am not sure how I got through those days. Those first three days, there wasn't a person here - it was all just a big pulsing block of pain - I don't even know.

And then, when the pain had dialed back a bit just enough that I could put my eyes on a piece of paper and focus on them, I took myself as far away as I could go, and wandered through all 40 or so (the ones I have here) of J. D. Robb's In Death series. Started back at the beginning of 2058 with Lt. Eve Dallas and all her cohort, and tried to live with them through the next three years or so of her life, so I wouldn't have to be in mine. I know I talk about reading a lot, and how important it is, and it gets to be all blah blah blah books, but if I didn't have a place to escape to, if my mind didn't have a chance to just shut down and follow Dallas and Peabody and all the rest through their cases and humor and horrors and becoming a family, if I couldn't escape the pain by going there, or to Hogwarts, or to Avonlea, or Concord during the Civil War - I don't think I'd still be around to live through things. And that's just plain truth.
(Also honest truth? If you haven't read the In Deaths, you are majorly missing out ~ can not recommend them enough!)

I'm doing better now, tiny bits at a time - still avoiding shirts at all instances (which is not me-like at all, I must confess, and feels incredibly odd) and popping whatever pills are left in my stock, but bit by bit, getting better. It's still complicated since I can't lay on my back, and I can't normally sit up for too long anyways, and either side has time limits on how long I can lean on them, so it's complicated, but it's improving. Talked to a couple of people on the phone, so they would know I wasn't dead. Checking back in here, and in other online spaces, to see what I've missed. Reading voraciously through my poor neglected Google Reader. Actually turned the TV on this morning - before the noise and mess and lights and all that were too much, too confusing - to find a 98% filled DVR: unacceptable with new seasons starting, missy. So I'm battling back, and I just wanted to say hey!

And to remind everybody about the Disability Blog Carnival, hosted here, by moi, in just a few weeks. Keep me busy people ~ Help me catch up on some posts that I've missed!

It's the way we answer the question, How can such things be? Stories suggest that sometimes -not always, but sometimes, there's a reason

I've fallen in love with more than one writer, during the course of my life: I've talked before about how I'm a certified Noraholic, and how the fact that there isn't a new Harry Potter book coming out this summer (or any summer, :sob:) makes me want to cry. But it's always been this way for me: loving books, loving writing, loving writers.

Even at a young age, the ability of Laura Ingalls Wilder to make me feel like I was living in the Great House in the Big Woods (where children would rejoice to receive oranges in their stockings), or of Louisa May Alcott to convince me that maybe having three sisters (at that point, I only had three sisters) wasn't, in fact, the worst thing in the world, seemed like magic. Beverly Cleary got me through some tough times with her Ramona, who was as much of a pest as I was, and poor Anne, out there on Prince Edward Island, trying to make the most of her dratted red hair and freckles, was not just a friend, but a true Bosom Friend to me. Probably, a lot of young girls - young, literate girls, anyways - could say the same. Even today, I'm pretty sure I could find an eight year old who - while everyone else is outside hooping and hollering (or inside playing Call of Duty, more likely) - is alone in her room, crying, because Amy just fell through the ice, and maybe Jo and Laurie won't be able to pull her back out in time.

But the summer I turned eleven, I fell in love with an author so inappropriate that even my grandmother - a fifth grade teacher and stout supporter of my right to read "anything you can get your hands on and your mind around" - was appalled. That was the summer I fell in love with Stephen King. Later on, when I got to high school, I would find out that boys had also fallen in love with Stephen King around the same time, but I didn't know that then, or that he had fan clubs aplenty and movie directors vying for his next, scariest Baddie. At the time, I felt like it was I alone who had discovered him, like he was writing just for 11 year-old, gawky, and often times completely invisible, me.

The book was It - not his most famous book, perhaps, but surely the cause of more than one person (including my younger sister)'s coulrophobia. It was around a thousand, tissue thin pages of absolute terror, which, had I known what I was getting myself into, I more than likely would never have started. In fact, although it was the first book that made me feel like I was on my way to being a grown-up, I only started reading It for the most childish of reasons - because someone told me I couldn't. Between getting the rare kibosh from my Nana and my older (male) cousin's insistence that there was no way I'd be able to read it the whole way through - because I was a girl, and would get too scared - I basically had no choice but to read it. And the thing is, I think King would have gotten that, might even have gotten a kick out of it: the whole 'I dare you, chicken/ this is forbidden' vibe. Of course, that's exactly the kind of vibe It wound up having, so sometimes, maybe, the book you pick picks you instead.

I remember lying on my bed, in the middle of a summer afternoon - windows open, cars zooming by, other kids outside running through the yard, every so often yelling at me to 'come and play' or taunting me for being a 'four eyed bookworm' (back when I wore my glasses just for close-up work) - reading this book. Knowing that I had to finish this chapter (or the next chapter, or the next) before the sun went down, because there was no way I was reading it in the dark of my room by streetlights that night. Something I would have no problem doing with any other book, certainly. I often think, now, that if I had known about Joey's trick of putting a scary book in the freezer, the pages of that first copy of It might have frozen off, instead of worn down over the years. And, while it was - by far - the most frightening thing I had ever read, that is not what kept me reading.

What kept me reading, aside from the hope that the scariest-ass clown in the entire universe would eventually get what was coming to him, was the people. A bunch of eleven year old nobodies, playing around in the overgrown wilderness on the edge of their town, ignored by just about everybody, brought together through a series of chances, and calling themselves the Losers. A real group of Losers, who were like kids I knew (hell - they were like the kid I was), who wound up taking on the biggest, baddest Evil of all time - a timeless Evil, even - with their slingshots and asthma inhalers and the knowledge that if they didn't do it, nobody else would. That's all they had - the idea that it had to be done, the certainty that nobody else was going to do it, and each other.

And the fact that the author - a grown-up - understood that sometimes kids have things that are so big, they can't tell their parents, or their sisters, or anybody who wasn't there and felt it too. That sometimes they do things that are so out of the realm of possibility of who they normally are, it's hard to imagine it was them. That kids have lives of their own, even at eleven, and that they have So. Much. Power. - the idea that King got that, and got it enough to write such this book, was like magic to me.

It still is - maybe even more so now that I'm a grown-up. Now that I have a nephew who is eleven, and I cringe to think of what his own power might have to be used for, or what his private world might consist of, and I see just how easy it is to pretend that it just doesn't exist. That kids are just kids, and not young people. It's amazing to me that anybody is able to remember that experience - and retell it in such a powerful, truthful way.

I quickly glommed all of his other books - I am a backlist whore, more often than not: if you write something I like, I must read everything else you've ever put down on paper - and many of them, particularly the short story collections, also became favorites. The Mist , is my mom's favorite, and it still turns up to tickle my brain on a day like today when the sky couldn't be grayer, and even the headlights don't cut through the fog enough to show you which way you want to go. I loved The Body , another story about kids and powerful friendships - and Stand By Me, the movie they made out of it, of course: I can't read it now without Richard Dreyfuss doing the voice over in my head. Pet Semetary and The Stand, Needful Things and, later Insomnia all sped their way through my head and into my heart (and my keeper shelves): the only King books I didn't immediately like were from the Gunslinger series, and I think that's just because I wasn't a fantasy reader when I read them: they're certainly in my TBR pile now.

And when he wrote his tome On Writing , the writer in me rejoiced. (And cried - my previously friendly relationship with adverbs had to come to an abrupt halt. I wrote that last sentence just for him. ) It is still one of my top two books on writing ever: it makes sense (King's writing style is both chummy and no-nonsense); it talks about writing as a J O B (not just something any fool can sit down and do, as some people might purport) that you have to get up and do every day, but also as "magic" (which is what it winds up feeling like, if you ever finish anything); and manages to balance the menial (grammar and editing) with the grandiose ("And if I am able, even briefly, to give you a Wilkes'-eye-view of the world - if I can make you understand her madness - then perhaps I can make her someone you sympathize with or even identify with. The result? She's more frightening than ever, because she's close to real.")


The majority of Stephen King's writing is creepy, sure. His books, more often than not, will keep you awake at night. And that's why I can go years without reading them - when things are already heavy, when your grandmother has cancer or your own body is betraying you yet again or when everything after "wake up in the morning" on your to-do list seems like an impossibility, it can be hard (at least for me) to be reading about other people's terrors and nightmares - I'm the kind of reader who looks for happy endings when I'm stuck in the middle, a shining light instead of more dark. But sometimes, that extra dark is just what you're looking for. Sometimes, even if you're not looking for it, it turns out to be what you need.

This weekend I culled through my (bookcase-sized) To Be Read pile, and pulled out one of King's latest, Full Dark, No Stars , yet another short story collection. (I think if I had known that it wasn't a full length novel, I would've tackled it before now, but that belongs in another story - about the overwhelmingness of my TBR pile - as opposed to this one.) It was a horrifying and overwhelming read, for one reason: because each of the stories was all too real. Almost too true.

There are four short stories, each build around a significantly simple premise -
You've killed your wife;
A short cut leads you very far astray;
There's a price to pay for everything (but you sometimes might be willing to pay it);
You never really know anyone, not even those you love the most

- and goes off in directions that only King could take them. The best part, for me, was - as I was fumbling for my sticky notes and trying to count how many pages until the end of this story, because could it really end this way? - finding out, or remembering really, that I am still in love with King. He's not my steady, any more: I find I need more happily ever afters as I get older - but he's still my guy & I'm still his "Constant Reader", and when the afterword comes (oh, how I love a good afterword, and King never disappoints) , I know that I'll be back again to see him sometime.

And even though I realize that he'll most likely greet me with some paralyzing glimpse into the darkness of my own soul - or down the sewers of any given city - I find that I'm more than looking forward to it.

*The Post title quote is, of course, from Stephen King, Full Dark, No Stars.

A book recomendation

I just finished reading Raising Children Who Think for Themselves by Elisa Medhus, M.D., and it was incredibly thought provoking. I didn't always agree with her approaches or suggestions, but the main theme of the book - that children should be learning (through discipline, their environment, our role modeling and other means) to evaluate and assess their own behaviors, internally, based on their own expectations of themselves (that we've been teaching them) rather than external (either parental or societal) expectations of them.

In other words, kids who think for themselves. She raised a lot of interesting points, and provided a lot of practical examples of how to "guide, then step aside." I was really impressed with her knowledge of kids motivations for certain behaviors - and how to best guide them into turning their attentions in more positive directions.

I was, of course, horrified to see myself (or family members) in some of the more negative portrayals, because I know that the reasons we've done certain things have always been with the best of intentions, but the (often negative) outcomes are so easy to see when they're on paper like that. I recognized myself most when she talked about how often we step in to spare our kids (or, in my case, the nephews and niece in my life) from suffering & therefore eliminate their chances of learning from mistakes or problem solving their way out of them. I've noticed lately that I've become a 'warner' (my term, not the author's): I'm constantly saying "Maybe it's better if you tried it this way," or "do you really think it's a great idea to balance all of those dolls in one trip, why not make two?" Why not just shut your whore mouth (sorry: If you're not a Prankster, that probably seemed like it came out of nowhere, but I've been reading Aunt Becky a lot lately, and couldn't help myself) and just let the kid figure it out on their own? What's the worst that could happen? She drops the dolls and has to make clean up the mess? The horror! So I definitely recognized that I have a real need to step aside and just let them learn on their own - The worst part of this whole thing being, obviously, that I am a teacher, and know this already, so how did I get to this point of having to open my mouth all the time, but if I'm going to teach them to be willing to recognize when they've made mistakes, I have to step up and recognize my own as well. That's a problem area for Auntie NTE, and will be addressed posthaste.

So much of the strategies that Medhus proposes in her book are not new to me, but the practical parenting examples she incorporates into the text really made me think about how I am applying my training (and where I am failing to apply it), and how often, in the heat of any given situation, discipline doesn't stay true to it's logical guidance roots and instead turns into a form of punishment or control. It's easy to forget, when a four year old is throwing a tantrum in the store, that their problems are their problems, and I don't need to make them mine.

I will give myself a lot of credit for being the "this is unacceptable behavior" line draw-er in our house, but it's kind of hard to hold the line when there isn't a lot of follow through on the part of other people. After all, I am not these kids parents: They have awesome parents who love and care for them. But when the rules are so much different at Grammy's house then they are at home, it's hard to keep the behaviors that I consider unacceptable (whining and nagging, bickering and meanness) from bleeding over: Kids are going to get away with what they can get away with, and trust me, the kids in my life are no exception. So we have a little issue with consistency, and I know that doesn't help them to internalize things, but I'm really going to work on it for my part (and see if I can't convince my brother that he'd like to read this book as well).

Aside from "guide, then step aside", some of the other concepts that the author did a great job of explaining include the need for using guiding questions to help kids arrive at the right answers; the benefit of empathy in creating kids who aren't just focused on their own needs, but on the lives of those around them; the idea of respecting failure as a key step towards growth and that personal excellence is greater than perfection; the need for all consequences to arise as naturally as possible from a given behavior (and to be logical); and the vital role that adults play in modeling appropriate behavior.

It was all reasonable, common sense stuff, and it was presented in such a way as to not be overwhelming or tell you what a horrible job you were doing raising your kids: in fact, it was an optimistic and enthusiastic book whose title really reflected its overall goal - you can make changes in your behavior to help your kids make lasting changes in theirs. You can have kids who aren't motivated by whether or not they're going to be punished for doing something wrong, but rather on if something feels wrong to them and how important it is for them to follow that instinct. There are so many strategies for helping children gain confidence in their own decision making skills, in their ability to recover from mistakes, in their intuitions, and in their ability to do what's right when they recognize it.

I thought it was a worthwhile read, for parents and teachers (and aunties ;) ) because it helps you clarify what your intentions are as you raise your kids, or as you contribute to the raising of children: I know I want the kids in my life to be able to make their own choices and find their own ways in life, to be able to recognize happiness in whatever form it takes for them, and to have the courage to reach for it (regardless of if society says it is something they should strive for or not). I want them to be able to think for, and act, and believe in themselves, and I'm glad that I've got some more strategies to try in order to help them achieve that.

Today, I'm heading to the movies to see HP 7 ; I am quite excited. Through a jumble of circumstances, this year it's going to be Big/Only Brother, Youngest Sister, NoLongerYoungest Nephew and me. Which is an odd group, regardless, mostly because B/O Brother isn't all that big on outings, and Youngest Sister has too busy a non-family social life to wind up spending too much time with me, but it's also kind of neat. Because B/O Brother and I took SisterK to the very first Harry Potter movie back when it first came out (9 years ago!) for her 13th Birthday.

Sister K was, as the target audience for Harry Potter, the first person (not in my Children's Literature class) that I was able to share the HP books with: She'd received the first book as a gift from a teacher when it came out in the US, but she was just finishing it up about the same time I was assigned to read it for class the following fall, and she told me how much she liked it.

Best Friend/College Roommate and I bought one copy and shared it between us, just like we did for any classes we were both taking (which, since we had the same Ed major, was a lot) but I have to say that the closest we came to arguing was over that one copy of The Sorcerer's Stone: She started it first, since she was a slower reader than I was, and - as she did with other books we shared (a lot, as we shared a lot of classes) - she would leave try to leave it in the room so that I could pick it up if I got around to it. But she liked it so much that she started carrying it with her, in the hopes of sneaking in some reading time between classes or whenever. I was displeased, because I wanted to get my hands on it: by now, reports were coming back from all over campus - and across the country - about the boy with the lightening bolt scar, and how great his story was.

Eventually, she finished and then I finished, and then I talked to Sister K about it for-ev-er. We dissected it, and re-read it and ran out to the get the sequels as they each made their appearance. When the last book came out, Sister K laid at one end of my bed and read Book 7 while I laid at the other, finishing my re-read of Book 6 and reading Book 7 (I didn't want to be too far ahead, and spoil the whole thing for her). We both cried - some of us more than others (but that was just because she was reading too slow to be where I was!) - and munched on salty foods, and I may have had to close the book at one point and wait for her to get closer to where I was so I could talk to somebody about what happened (!) But it will be, forever, one of my favorite days: just the two of us, lost in the English countryside and castles with Harry, Hermoine and Ron. (Even though she didn't finish till Monday, which made me want to tear my hair out because I didn't have anybody to squee or cry with, and yes, I realize I am too old for squeeing: shut up.)

It was a few years after the first book came out that I managed to convince O/B Brother that he - Star Wars fanatic that he is - would enjoy them too. And by then, the first movie was coming out, and I talked him into taking us for Sister K's birthday. And we had a ball, and planned to make it a yearly event. I haven't seen any of the others in the theater, unfortunately, because the sicker I got the harder it got to make it to a movie theater. Between the uncomfortable chairs, the overwhelming loudness, the insistence of movie people to include zooming scenes galore (compounded with gigantic screens), not to mention the years I couldn't be around other people's germs at all, and the years when I didn't have the energy to roll over in bed, let alone add an outing to a non-required place, I think I didn't go to the movies for at least three years. But then some things got better, and other things didn't but I learned how to adjust (earplugs! skip quidditch scenes all together!) and then I found out about this place around here with actual COMFY chairs to sit in (and they sell real food, but whatever: COMFY CHAIRS, people!), and I've been able to make it to about one movie a year ever since. (Last year, in case you care, it was Where the Wild Things Are, the year before that Indiana Jones and The Crystal Skull, and this year, it's Harry Potter 7 Pt1 .)

And even better, is that I've been introducing NLYNephew to all things Harry Potter over the course of the past year or so, so he's excited to come with us too! He hasn't made it as far as the last book yet, but he's caught up on the movies, and is a slow reader, so he's extremely curious to find out what happens. I have a feeling that, since it's only Part 1, he might not be too satisfied by the end of the movie, but I think it's still going to be awesome.

Which means I should go get dressed now or something, before I convince myself that it's ok to go out in public in my pajamas. (again). :)

Hope your weekend is bringing you something equally exciting to you!

Best shots - 2 for the price of 1

Here are two of my best shots from the last little while -

Here's Lil Girl, down at the beach. Since Auntie and sunlight are not friendly, we sat up under the bandstand and blew bubbles that floated down to the ocean. Then the kids collected shells and rocks, and we ate pizza and drank Shirley Temples. It was the very definition of a fine summer day.



And here's another recent favorite - (No Longer) Youngest Nephew, reading along with the Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets book on tape. I love this picture for so many reasons: The fact that he was voluntarily reading; The fact that he'd never used actual tapes before and I had to instruct him on how to flip it over and press play (even though it made me feel ancient); The fact that, since the spring, he's powered through three of the books, and he's as excited as I am about part one of The Deathly Hallows coming out in November. It's just an all around favorite.



So there are the two kids I'm spending most of my time with this summer; Don't forget to head over to Tracey's place to check out who she's spending her summer with, and the rest of the Best Shots.

From the Random Files in my brain

Here's an interesting article about "dystopian fatigue". The author discusses her need for happier slanted movies and TV shows, leaving her looking for a little Glee or a Modern Family to brighten up her viewing habits. I agree with much of what she's saying, and hope that programmers are listening - I am so far behind on the heavier things that are sitting in my DVR, but I watched ABC's Comedy Wednesdays live, every week. (Except for Cougartown, which I refuse to watch because the title makes me want to puke.)

That said, I also just read a fabulous dystopian YA book that I can highly recommend - The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan. It's gripping and moving, and I read it in an hour and a half, and am going to read it again, with post it flags and pencil at the ready, as soon as I can get my hands on the sequel. I chose it based on some great reviews, so I know it's not exactly an unknown book, but if you haven't read it, then you are missing out on something special. There were parts of this book that were ridiculously difficult to read, which I know some people shy away from, but, for me, it just shows what an exceptional writer the author truly is. Set in a far distant and horrifically frightening future, it could have been one of those books that was just a good read, but doesn't feel likely or truthful. Exactly the opposite is true - this book is REAL, zombies or no - and makes me want to gobble up anything else Carrie Ryan has written.

Bits and pieces, like I said.

The end of the world?

It has not been my Best Week Ever.

Of course, it also has not been my Worst Week Ever, so there's always that.

I have acquired yet another sinus infection, which came as a surprise to even me, since I was so busy recovering from Monday's poking and prodding ("Oh look: she's super hyper-reflexive today, let's see if she keeps doing that if we keep hitting with this little hammer!") by the doctors that I didn't even recognize all the build up to the infection until my fever was raging and I was (TMI Upcoming: skip if eating) gagging on the post-nasal drip. By Wednesday, I was pretty sure that my sinus cavities had been packed as fully as they possibly could be, and by yesterday, I was seriously wondering why we ever stopped drilling holes in people's heads as a cure for things. I'm sure it would've cured what ailed me, at any rate.

Today is a slightly different story - less of the throwing up, more of the actually being able to inhale without crying, which is all for the better, in my opinion. Aside from completely missing the trash barrel 9.8 out of 10 times I threw a tissue in that general direction, I have also been reading a lot this week. The books have all been some of my past favorites, comfort reads from my personal library, which is totally my modus operandi when I'm sick: Old friends are better friends when it hurts to open your eyes and you have to roll over every 4 minutes so that whatever has infiltrated your head can slowly drip into the other side of your face. (And that's the answer I've been looking for, the one I should give when clueless people ask me why I keep all these books - "It's because something needs to keep my mind off of the fact that my brain is leaking out of my nose, ears and eyeballs, and I don't see you volunteering!")

Anyways, halfway through my second Nora Roberts trilogy yesterday, I realized that the books I was reading all seemed to have something in common: Everything I was reading had to do with the end of the world... or better yet, preventing the end of the world. Demons, vampires, gods, goddesses, ancient alien beings, epic warfare and battles filled with love and loss, blood and sacrifice. And the stories of people who are called upon to fight, even knowing that they're outnumbered, that the enemy is probably a lot stronger than them, that they might lose everything and everyone they care about.

Nothing like the end of the world to make the fact that 2/3 of the areas you use for breathing no longer function correctly seem like a minor detail.

In case you're interested, I started with her Circle trilogy, read Part I of Stephen King's It (if not my most favorite book ever, it's definitely in the top 3), and then worked my way through Nora's Blood Brothers trilogy (which is very reminiscent, at least to me, of It). I was going to read the fabulous post-apocalyptic Life as we knew it by Susan Beth Pfieffer next, but I'm still waiting for a copy of the sequel, so I think I'll see if I can't find some other sort of literary mayhem that appeals to me.

Stepped in it this time

Today I managed to start a big family brou ha ha, which only reminds me why I try not to talk to people and makes me wish I lived in one of those hibernation caves you hear so much about. (Minus the bears.) Long story short(ish) - my grandmother, uncle and littlest sister weren't going to come for Thanksgiving, only littlest sister (SisterK) didn't know that. When I told her, her response was "Why do they hate happiness?" and then she called them and asked them what was up. 5 phone calls, (at least) 3 sets of hurt feelings, and one "let's not let this shadow the holiday" later, they're coming for Thanksgiving. And they'll be happy (ish) about it!

No, seriously: I have no idea how things went off the rails in regards to that whole discussion, but they went waaaay off the rails, and just blah. I know we are champion avoiders, so it will all be forgotten(ish) and never discussed again, but in the meantime, it's just too much drama. The kind of thing I have labeled (in my head) Llama Drama, because it is just so unnecessary, and everything in my life must somehow be related to a book, even if, in most instances, it's a picture book.

After all the Llama Drama, I just want to never answer the phone (and I wasn't too keen on it before all this), but I will have to, I suppose. In the meantime, I'm going to watch the cast of Nine on Oprah and hope for some rousing musical numbers ("Be Italian happens to be one of my favorites, because it is so, totally my dad).

Ah, to be this organized...

Not feeling better today, so please enjoy pictures of bookcases - not ours, unfortunately, as the not feeling better has extended to still not getting the books any further than random piles on the floor - but ones from various tumblrs and whatnot. Bookcases... drool.

Via the blog on the bookshelf




Via FYReading

Via Infinite Butterflies

Alright Folks - Readathon's Final Hour

End Meme


1. Which hour was most daunting for you? Somewhere around 5 o'clock, and hour 19, when I completely lost the ability to do math.
2. Could you list a few high-interest books that you think could keep a Reader engaged for next year? My first two books of the Readathon, The Sugar Queen and The Perks of Being a Wallflower were definitely winners.
3. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year? Maybe I will when I have some time to think about it, but not right now.
4. What do you think worked really well in this year’s Read-a-thon? Using audiobooks for exhausted/overly busy time periods; having enough of a TBR pile that I could just skip ahead to the next thing if what I was reading wasn't working for me. The Amazing Cheerleaders!
5. How many books did you read? 8 complete books (and 2 halves of other books)
6. What were the names of the books you read? The Sugar Queen, The Perks of Being A Wallflower, My Father's Dragon, Tempt Me At Twilight, Crouching Vampire Hidden Fangs, Positively Pooh, Visions in White, Bound By Your Touch and half each of The Introvert's Advantage and The Areas of My Expertise.
7. Which book did you enjoy most? The Sugar Queen, I think: it was the most enchanting, and unique.
8. Which did you enjoy least? The Introvert's Advantage: By the time I got to it, I wasn't in the mood, and there was a lot of specific science that I would like to read about, just wasn't happening for me today.
9. If you were a Cheerleader, do you have any advice for next year’s Cheerleaders?
10. How likely are you to participate in the Read-a-thon again? What role would you be likely to take next time? I know I'd love to participate again, I just am not sure whether I'd do it all exactly the same.

That said, I had a fabulous, fabulous time and I can't thank the cheerleaders/challenge leaders/organizers enough!

Hour 22

Into the last couple of hours here, and while I wouldn't say I'm still going strong, I am still going. Not all that unusual for me, except that I don't usually post every hour or two of my insomnia, so it's weird to try to think of things to say, or to attempt to add numbers together (thank god for calcuators!) Here are my latest, updated stats... I probably won't check back in again till it's almost finish-line time, so I just want to wish everybody who's still playing along a great last little while: You can do it!

Title of book(s) read since last update: Vision in White, Areas of my Expertise by John Hodgeman
Number of books read since you started: 8 & 3/4
Pages read since last update: 65
Running total of pages read since you started: 1840 + 167 (hour 19) + 210 (hours 20/21) + 65 (now) = 2282
Amount of time spent reading since last update: 40 min
Running total of time spent reading since you started: 180 +140 + 40 +909 = 1269 = 21.5 hours
Mini-challenges completed: 8
Other participants you’ve visited: None since about 1 o'clock this morning
Prize you’ve won: 1! Yay! From JoyStory.

Hours 20 & 21

Yeah, I'm still having issues with the maths, but I do know that I finished another book, which I'm pretty sure makes it 7, but I'll have to go back and double check in a little bit. It took me a little bit longer because of sleepy brain cells, but another 210 pages are done. And there's on a few hours left, so I'm going to turn off the lights and listen for a while, see if I can't get closer to the end of one more book.

Hour # I hate maths (also = 19)

We're getting into the wee small hours, here, and I'm not exactly feeling the number-love, so this post is just going to say that I finished another 100 pages of Tempt me at Twilight and am 67 pages into Vision in White by Nora Roberts, which is my first re-read of the whole Readathon. I've been reading non-stop since my last update, an hour and a half ago, so that's 180 minutes. And now I'm going to listen to the end of my audiobook, or head back into La Nora, (something nice and easy) with a short break to go grab another water and to close my window because it's getting cold.

Before she went to bed, Mum says to me "If you happen to feel your eyes closing... don't fight it," which is kind of one of those very sad jokes that only we get, because I've had insomnia now for at least 7 years: You can wager any amount of money that, challenge or no, if my eyes started to close? I would let them. She did have a good point though, that if somebody tells you you can't do something, it makes you want to do it even more, because people are perverse that way. So maybe, in the next couple of hours, I'll figure out that the way to solve my insomnia is to tell people I HAVE to stay awake. You could also lay a wager down that, if that works, I will pay someone to tell me that. Every night, for as long as it takes.