Relaxing Saturdays

It's Labor Day weekend. Since I had an adventure last weekend (that included an encounter with seed ticks), I'm taking it slow this weekend. It will also be a nice refresher before the busy working month ahead. I started my morning at Barnes & Noble. This is a dangerous, but wonderful place, like most bookstores are. It'd be nice to have a local store, but B&N will do. Booksmart Tulsa is hosting author Salman Rushdie later in September. I'm trying to figure out how to go. The first step was getting tickets, which involved buying his latest book at B&N. That step was easy. It was a low-risk scenario. Yes, it cost me (at a couple of discounts) the cost of a hardcover book. But I got the book and the tickets and regardless of how the tickets work out, I still have the book. Why is it possible that the tickets won't work out? I have a scheduled trip to Denver the weekend before this event, and my return flight leaves Denver 2 hours (considering time zones) after the start of the event in Tulsa. So that's a piece I have to figure out. It may be an eleventh hour decision. Airlines and I are not friends, so the attempt to make this happen may be fraught with futility, especially considering all of the ways one airline could figure out how to make this an even more expensive ticket to see Mr. Rushdie. I have my limits, so we will see.

I did some work at B&N this morning, inspired by some contemplative thinking during a massage last night. I also read up about Design Thinking in Harvard Business Review, some additional research for another project at work. And because I'm in a bookstore, I picked up another book. One that's been on my reading list. "Beloved" by Toni Morrison will be a heavy read, but also an important one. I read the forward and first chapter. The writing is differently structured, but beautiful; and Morrison's way with words is, in the least, fascinating and poetic. Since it is the third of three books I have going at the moment (1, The Book of Speculation and 2, The Magicians), my progress with it may be slow. I also intend to read a Rushdie book by the time of the event in less than a month (either his latest, or Midnight's Children...haven't decided yet). I also have Charles M. Blow's memoir on its way, and I'm eager to get into it. No matter what, it will continue to be a great month of reading. Regardless of how the Rushdie event pans out, I will also be visiting a Booksmart event with author Garth Stein in mid-September. Tulsa has some pretty great stuff going on this month.


Because, books.

~MJ

The book without earmarks.

I purchased this book on one of the many days when books need not be purchased. I had spent most of 2014 not buying books for the sole purpose of saving money. It was more or less successful, except for those few moments when I caved. And by few, I mean - at least every two months. But that, my friends, is still progress.

The book. "A Sudden Light" by Garth Stein. He also wrote "The Art of Racing in the Rain" which Barnes & Noble and/or the publishers aptly reminded me about with an extra sleeve over the dust cover with the latter's book art. I'd seen it multiple times and had avoided it. But I was in Colorado for Christmas, and at Barnes & Noble to get some last-minute gifts, and the book was there. So I read the first chapter in the store. And then the second. And I had to keep reading, so that's when $26.95 (actually, less, because I am a member after all) was spent - but not needlessly.

I finished the book on New Year's day, so it counted as my first book of 2015. There were so many wonderful things about this book - rich language, an enticing story, fresh characters, some surprises and some supernatural occurrences. It's also a beautiful hardback copy, with artsy, uneven paper edges. And so I didn't bend any corners to save memories of words & phrases worth saving.

But I remember loving the main character, a young boy with an adventurous heart who only wants his dad's affection and his mother's attention and for them to get back together. His aunt was strange - I never really liked her. His dad was broken. His mother was largely absent. His grandfather was being abused (by the aunt). And they lived (well, not the mom) in an old house with tremendous family history - and (literally) ghosts of the past. Moments were light. Moments were slightly scary. Some moments, in dark corners of the house, there was some creepiness. There were also some heartwrenching moments  - ah! the story of the great uncle & his love! - and a big tragedy (didn't see that coming - seriously)!

It's an enchanting ghost story about families and progress, how humans cope with change, and how we make meaning of our past & present. Like "The Art of Racing in the Rain," my soul was filled with warmth after reading. My soul re-filled with what it means to have a good book, a great story, complete but not forgotten.

I did manage to take a picture of a page that resonated - to serve as acpseudo-earmark.

"Perhaps that's what life is about - the search for such a connection. The search for magic. The search for the inexplicable. Not in order to explain it, or contain it. Simply in order to feel it. Because in that recognition of the sublime, we see for a moment the entire universe in the pal, of our hand. And in that moment, we touch the face of God."

With that, I leave you, with recommended reading.

~MJ

oh, and in the search for the other photo in this post, I found this:

"Words were different when they lived inside of you."

From, "Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe" by Benjamin Alire Saenz. Also, recommended reading.

30 books, and shifting paradigms

It's May 2015, and I missed the half birthday of my last post. Since that time, I've closed out the year of adventure by cruising the Caribbean, visiting lil' Rhody, and seeing Colorado. I also finished my master's program. Booked a trip to Vietnam. Spent a week at Disney World. Heard news about a new book by Harper Lee. I also saw Neil Gaiman in real life at the Tulsa PAC. Read 29 books in 2014.

I'm also working on a goal of reading 30 books in 2015, and I'm 8 books in:

1) A Sudden Light, by Garth Stein

2) Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs

3) The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, by Jeff Hobbs

4) Looking for Alaska, by John Green

5) The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz

6) Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison

7) Flight, by Sherman Alexie

8) One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Around book 4, I decided to try and read books by authors who were not white males. Somewhere in there, I also started reading "A Brief History of Seven Killings" by Marlon James, and had an epiphany: not only is it easiest to find books by white, male authors, but in a world that favors white culture, reading books from non-white cultural viewpoints can present challenges. It also can be profound. 

I am committing to reading 30 books this year and that the majority of them will be by folks who are not white males. Around the time I made this commitment, I read this article about a "racebent" Hermione Granger. It's a powerful read about the importance of diverse cultures and perspectives in literature. In the article, Junot Diaz is quoted a couple of times:

"Look, without our stories, without the true nature and reality of who we are as People of Color, nothing about fanboy or fangirl culture would make sense. What I mean by that is: if it wasn’t for race, X-Men doesn’t sense. If it wasn’t for the history of breeding human beings in the New World through chattel slavery,Dune doesn’t make sense. If it wasn’t for the history of colonialism and imperialism, Star Wars doesn’t make sense. If it wasn’t for the extermination of so many Indigenous First Nations, most of what we call science fiction’s contact stories doesn’t make sense. Without us as the secret sauce, none of this works, and it is about time that we understood that we are the Force that holds the Star Wars universe together. We’re the Prime Directive that makes Star Trek possible, yeah. In the Green Lantern Corps, we are the oath. We are all of these things—erased, and yet without us—we are essential.

He also said:

"You guys know about vampires? … You know, vampires have no reflections in a mirror? There’s this idea that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. And what I’ve always thought isn’t that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. It’s that if you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves. And growing up, I felt like a monster in some ways. I didn’t see myself reflected at all. I was like, ‘Yo, is something wrong with me? That the whole society seems to think that people like me don’t exist?’ And part of what inspired me, was this deep desire that before I died, I would make a couple of mirrors. That I would make some mirrors so that kids like me might see themselves reflected back and might not feel so monstrous for it."

I am also committing to posting my reflections more often. I'm no longer writing grad school papers and I really should log my reading reflections. How's 1 per week? We'll start there.

To reading (&writing) & learning,

~MJ