Sam and I had a chat this morning regarding Angels and Ages, as she wanted to know what I find so fascinating about this book and why it is that I usually burn through books, but I am savoring this one. I think it makes me miss being in school. I have learned some pretty cool things: that embalming humans was developed during the civil war to get bodies back to their families without being grotesquely decomposed.
For the last year or so I have been reading all the fiction books I never had time for. I have been exploring genres like sci-fi and vampyres. I really dug the Joe Pitt series that Charlie Huston wrote. Made me think of quotation marks and vampyres in a whole new way. Another blogger had the good fortune of interviewing Huston, you can read that interview here. Huston does not designate speech from his characters with more anything more than a - dash, leaving the reader to interpret who is speaking... totally awesome!
Again, the Jim Butcher Dresden Files books were kick ass. There is a pile of fiction waiting for me to read on the table at home, but for now, here are a few passages that are resonating with me today.
Part of Shakespeare's genius lies in his ability to create characters who intend no harm and end up covered with blood. And so Shakespeare suits liberal violence, with its corrupted currents, admirable ambition, and casual slaughters-and what makes Lincoln and Truman admirable, if not heroic, is that they knew that.
People thought that natural selection might prove that Britain was powerful because nature intended it to be, as they thought that Einstein's relativity might imply that anything goes at a party. (In fact, the point of natural selection is that Nature doesn't play favorites, just the odds, just as Einstein's relativity is special because there's something in it that isn't relative, the speed of light, which is absolute. It would make more sense for us to become sun worshippers in the light of Einstein than moral free-for-allers.) - Adam Gopnik Angels and Ages
As Tocqueville had seen a little while before, homemaking, which ought to make people more selfish, often makes them less so: it gives them stake in other people's homes. It is not so much the establishment of a garden but the ownership of a gate that moves people from liking a society based on favors to liking one based on rights. Enclosing our gardens broadens our circle of compassion.-Adam Gopnik
Sam and I are still reading Angels and Ages and we both found this paragraph a beautiful way to tie Lincoln and Darwin's fierce love of their families into the review and comparisons of their lives. We are spending more time on this book than we thought we would, re-reading and researching, intrigued by two men's lives we knew very little about.
The Book that Changed your life was the topic of the podcast-ed episode of the This American Life that I listened to this morning at the gym. There was an act about a gal whose life was infected by reading playwright Moss Hart's biography, a gentleman that became a book collector all because of Lewis and Clark, an easy for me to relate to tale of how influential the Little House on the Prairie series was to another gal who shares my name and David Sedaris made me laugh out loud, as always, with his story of a dirty book he found as a young boy and how it changed the way he viewed his mother. This episode really got me thinking, "is there just one book that has changed my life?"
I think the answer is no. I think there are many books that have definitively changed the course of my life though. I was thinking specifically today about the book I was reading when I met Sam as she has grown to be one of my closest confidants and brings me joy everyday.
I had gone to my favorite used book store in Boise, Rainbow Books, and scored a copy of The Color Purple. I had no real idea of what I was about to read, I had never seen the movie, had no real concept of the plot, but a close friend told me I just had to read it. My parents had just bought a house that was 110 years old and I was living in one of the upstairs bedrooms. It was summer, and summer in Idaho is damn hot, the house being 110 years old it had no central air, I was not old enough to go to the bar just yet, and every coffee shop I liked to hang out in would of proved problematic for me as there was bound to be someone I knew there and would inevitability be interrupted. So I climed up the stairs, switched on the fan and started a wonderful journey.
I did not come out of my room until later that evening when I finished the book, finished crying and felt that I said a proper good-bye to one of my all time favorite literary characters, Celie. There was a pregnant cat at the top of the stairs, which was really weird as my folks had never had a cat and were very vocal about never wanting one. She glanced at me for only a moment and went back to cooling herself in front of the fan in the hall, The cat was living with my sister but she had a pretty unstable living situation at that time and so Sam came to live with us. She had her kittens a few weeks later and I so badly wanted to keep one in particualar. It had a perfect heart shaped fur patch on her shoulders and I was heartbroken when I could not keep her. She and the rest of her litter mates ended up living going to live on my Aunt's farm and I think they all had good lives.
My sister came and went, but Sam stayed with my folks until 6 years ago when they got a puppy. Sam was a nervous wreck around that dog, she would hide under the bed for days, until she actually made herself sick with a bladder infection because she would not get close to that dog. Sam came to live with me in my little house that sat behind Nino's after that. I found her under the bed, took her to vet and got her feeling better. I had another cat living with me at the time and it took almost a year for Sam and I to really bond. The other cat sadly died and Sam was a great source of comfort for me.
No one in my family really knows how old Sam is. She came to us in the summer of 1994 and we think she must of been between 9 months and a year since she was pregnant. That would make her about 16. She is sitting across from now, and I would never guess by looking at her that she was a day over 5.
I suppose this story is a bit convoluted, but is about Sam and how I love her and I love books. Both of them have undeniably changed the course of my life.
I went to the library today for Sam. She opted to stay home and watch LEGEND. I ended up getting an interesting book called Angels and Ages by Adam Gopnik. It is a comparative of Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln. We like it so far, but neither Sam nor myself have ever cared that much for Lincoln, our eyes are being opened to some new ways to think about the actions he took. We will check in soon to let you know how it ends up.
Jim Butcher's Dresden Files.
Both Sam and I were fascinated by this series. The whole idea of a Wizard P.I., Harry Blackstone, living in modern day Chicago fighting the good fight for those of us that are too busy to see the trolls, vampires, etc of the world damaging the world as we know it, well, it made us feel much safer. The characters are compelling, especially Toot Toot, who Sam told me she wanted to come live with us so she could piggy pack him across the apartment. Basically Sam wants her own pet, which is cool... I did not have the heart to point out that since Toot is fairy, he has wings, and does not need a ride... But Sam is her own cat and she can have her own fantasies. Sam and I have talked about getting matching Toot Toot tattoos someday; we liked the character that much.
I have a few friends who read books, I even have one or two who read them as voraciously as I do. I find myself discussing books more often than not with my cat. Samantha T Cat.
For the last two days I have been reading The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston. He is a classic pulp noir writer and Sam and I are enjoying this novel very much. I have also read his Joe Pitt series, which Sam and I both highly recommend. I just reserved two of his other books from the library and am anxiously awaiting the email telling me they are ready to be picked up, brought home and devoured and discussed with Sam.
What are you reading?
What are you reading?
What are you reading? Why are you reading it? Did your bff recommenced it and you are too afraid to tell them it is drivel? Did you pick it up at the bus stop? Should I read it?
