2016 Books 7 & 8

I got a duplicate book for my birthday but my friend was smart enough to get a gift receipt. Since I left Sunday unscheduled, Boyfriend and I went to this delightful independent bookstore. He left me unsupervised. Considering all the books I looked at and thought about, only adding 2 wasn’t that bad.

Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution by Mona Eltahawy
I can’t get this at my local library (I checked) and it was right there.

The Feminist Utopia Project edited by Alexandra Blonsky & Rachel Kauder Nalebuff
An anthology of text and art about women’s different ideas of what a more feminist world would look like.

If you’re wondering, I did get another book which is why these 2 count.This brings my collection for the year to:

1. Illustrated Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling
2. This Is Why You’re Single by Laura Lane & Angela Spera
3. Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken & Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson
4. The Green Man by Ellen Datlow
5. Sisters of the Revolution edited by Ann VanderMeer
6. Sharkpunk edited by Jonathan Green
7. The Feminist Utopia Project edited by Alexandra Blonsky & Rachel Kauder Nalebuff
8. Headscarves and Hymens by Mona Eltahawy

Hodor?

Now that the mystery of Hodor's limited vocabulary has been solved, there's much depend about his free will. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go watched GoT or pick another entry because Holy SPOILERS Batman!

In Days of Future Past, they had to send Wolverine's mind back in time to his old body because he was the only one who could handle the mental trauma. I think something similar happened to Wylis/Hodor. When Bram warged into past Hodor to get present Hodor moving, it created a strange time loop Wylis's mind wasn't meant to endure. It broke him.

His fundamental personality of being warm and kind remained and he could make very small decisions but he couldn't calculate. When he was being tormented by the Night's Watch Wildling Party, he couldn't think enough to strike back. He knew to run away but not to fight back.

He knows who treats him well and, therefore, who he cares about. He wanted to protect Bram so he chose to hold the door. Had Bram not made Hodor move, Hodor would have likely been wight chow. Rather than run scared (a valid option), Hodor chose to stay and protect his friend.

The actor who played Hodor said that aside from the initial push, everything else was Hodor's choice. You can even see it in his eyes. I firmly believe that when the end came, Hodor made the difficult and brave choice to die for his friends. Now we just have to find out whether the writers will torment us by making him a wight or not.

Richer Reading Life Book 6

Poetry is brought to you by Poisoned Apples: Poems for You, My Pretty by Christine Hepperman is an anthology of fairy tale themed poetry and images geared toward teens. I like anything with a fairy tale motif so when I saw this at the library, it was game on.

I definitely felt a bit old for this but I appreciated the references. There are a lot of things I don’t miss and being a teenager is one of them. The eating disorder theme was very prevalent. A great deal of time is spent trying to be thinner, prettier, younger and it’s all just a media sponsored game that has us chasing our tails.

Rather than give spoilers, I’ll just say my favorites: Shape Magazine, Anorexic Eats a Salad, Vindictive Punctuation, First Semester Haiku, Ugly Stepsister, Boy Toy Villanelle, Nature Lesson, Love Red Handed, The Beast and Assassin. It’s short, sweet and fun. Definitely recommend. My only complaint is that they images lost something being printed on standard pages. 4/5 stars

Richer Reading Life Activity #6

I rarely do much of anything outside let alone read. I’m a firm believer that I’d like outside better if it had fewer bugs getting in my face. Despite that, I decided that 3 was the magic number of times I had to read outside before I could check it off my list. What was the experience like each time?

March 11

I’m enjoying the outdoor seating while I wait for Boyfriend to finish work and join me for dinner. This is a part of town that has plenty of restaurants, office buildings, parking garages, and very little nature. I can’t tell if I’m inhaling bus exhaust, car exhaust, metro fumes, or cigarette smoke.

March had just had it’s first big warm up and I’m in the midst of it’s first cool down. The temperature is either in the low 60s or high 50s which is perfect for me. I can hear people’s kids filter through the restaurant doors so I don’t mind the relative quiet of outside. I would rate this experience as middling.

April 6

I’d finished my second round at the eye doctor and the liquid nitrogen ice cream place wasn’t open for another 20 minutes. I decided to kill some time on a bench in a nice space across the street. It’s not exactly a park since it’s pretty well paved but there’s benches, a fountain, and a jungle gym in side a U of stores. I chilled on a bench while I worked toward the end of Patrick Ness’s More Than This.

It was a warm spring sun but with a cool blustery wind. Since it was the middle of a weekday, it was pretty quiet. Not too many mom’s with strollers, people with dogs, or anyone else. The only unpleasantness was a hobo who interrupted me to ask for money. She left after I told her I didn’t have anything (which, with a $45 copay, is not wholly inaccurate). It was a pleasant experience I’d have carried on for longer if I hadn’t had to get work done.

May 14

During a trip to the coast, I had several chances to read on a trip to the boardwalk. It was relaxing, sunny, gorgeous weather. Warm spring sun paired with cold front winds. Boyfriend would go off to check on something while I relaxed and read. Extremely pleasant experience. 10/10 would do again next year.

2016 Books #6

Yup. I done done it again. This time, it was inspired by something I’d previously Kickstarted. The editor sent an email with his previous publication information. There was a shark anthology.

In case you missed the leggings and tank I just bought, you may not have noticed I’ve got a bit of a thing for sharks. When I realized Sharkpunk edited by Jonathan Green was out of print but available new, for a price comparable to retail, I pounced. I want to see if they do sharks justice. While they are apex predators who are worthy of fear, they’re also living creatures who are worthy of respect. They play a critical role in the ecosystem and can be incredibly beautiful. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Richer Reading Life Book 5

My translation comes from a library haul earlier this week. Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera was translated from its original Spanish. There's a chapter at the end by the translator who goes into great detail about the importance of getting it right to capture the beauty of Herrera's prose.

A native of Mexico, Herrera's story is about a young woman who crosses the border to find her brother and give him a letter from their mother. We hear about her journey and the difficulty she has finding an illegal immigrant in a land where people like her are hated and discriminated against.

It was written in a style that reminded me of Cormac McCarthy. It lacked the common punctuation that made it easy to follow dialogue. You had to read carefully to not miss anything. I wonder if something was lost in translation that made it easier to follow in Spanish or if it was similar for that audience as well.

For a small tale it was very poetic and memorable. There is a part toward the end with a poem that was very powerful. I was very surprised at the ending. When all you want is to go home, life throws you a curve ball. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Genres I Typically Avoid: Christian Books

There are three big genres I avoid and since it’s coming up on time for me to address that category, I’m going to go over why I’m not a fan of those three genres. This week? Religion, more specifically, Christian books.

I’m agnostic/spiritual. While I think there’s an order to the universe, I don’t think any one religion got it exactly right. Almost all faiths have a grain of truth residing in their core belief systems that is worth finding and exploring. However, the politics of organized religion can readily obscure that.

**This post is a bit long so if you want the TL;DR, skip a bit**

My father wanted me to be Catholic like he was but it never stuck. He tried to take me to church but it was just a boring obligation where I couldn’t read and didn’t understand what was going on. I think he may have expected me to just inherently have the faith he did without having to do much of anything to explain it to me. Clearly, this plan did not work.

I wound up going to a Catholic high school because the public schools sucked and the nondenominational private schools were hella expensive. Obama sends his kids to one of them to paint you a picture. The only classes that were mandatory all 4 years were English, math, and religion. 10th grade was church history and Odin’s eye did that backfire on me. The crusades, the Borgias, the woman pope, and the fact that the Catholic church controlled most of Europe for the better part of 1,000 years soured me on the inherent divinity of that faith. Not long after this the priest sexual abuse scandal in Boston broke and all my respect for the Catholic faith was stone dead.

Between a Catholic high school and comparative mythology class in college, I noticed a lot of inconsistencies in the Bible. The two main narratives in Genesis don’t line up. Some of the ‘thou shalt nots’ contradict each other. Hell, the Old Testament and New Testament contradict how God behaves. Did he create Zoloft in between?

How about all the books that were left out by the massive editing committee of papal authority? Where they less true or divine or did they just not fit the correct political image necessary at the time? And can we please acknowledge, for once, ever, that someone, somewhere, may have fucked up a translation? It’s been a few thousand years so can we not rule that out?

What really sent me running from the faith and it’s literature wasn’t the history or politics but the people. Jesus was a nice guy who had a lot of important things to say. Some of the modern people might want to go back and reread them because something clearly got misinterpreted. Let’s modify What Would Jesus Do and replace the verb with Bomb, Torture, Rape, Kill, Shoot, Deport, Judge, or Hold a rally against?

**TL;DR start below**

Even on a smaller social scale, I have met so many Christians who are the most holier-than-thou, judgmental, and generally useless wastes of carbon. My mother worked with someone who would bog down everyone’s mail box with daily blessings full of bad gifs and clip art. The same woman wanted her house to be so Martha Stewart perfect her husband didn’t live there. She was so obsessed with her stuff that she had it written into her will that her kids can’t throw out any of her things until she’s be dead for a year.

A woman I used to work with would blast her gospel music all day, every day. If I asked her to turn it down, she ignored me and turned it up. It would have been less annoying if she didn’t constantly snap her fingers, tap her feet, and sing along. Did she care that it bothered me and distracted me from doing my job? Nope. Worshiping her god at work was more important than the comfort of others. She was just one of many catty ‘good Christian’ woman in that office who didn’t like me. One who stopped just short of openly hating me had a book about how to be a good Christian wife!

The only thing I did wrong to those woman was not tolerate their BS. The only reason they turned the other cheek was so they could gossip about other women who weren’t as devout/nice as they were. Other than church, gossip, and bad reality TV, I don’t think there was anything else that interested these women. I can think of several other examples but we’d be here all day.

I have known and currently socialize with several people of faith. It is a part of what makes them such high quality human beings. But no amount of awesome on their part can redeem the faith to the point where I’m jumping on board. I’ll respect it and be kind to those of faith who are kind to me but the sour taste runs deep.

I can’t get past all of the ugly history and horrible people tied to the Christian faith. I found a book that really spoke to me in Barnes & Noble once but seeing it labeled as Christian Fiction made me put it down. I eventually came back to it but I dragged my feet. Dear Mr. Knightley was a lovely book and it was mislabeled as Christian Fiction. Faith was only a small part of the story and by no means dominated.

Once again, I ask you, internet, if you know any Christian fiction that has plenty of story going on and doesn’t beat you over the head with Jesus?