Visited the Seminary Co-op Bookstore in between exploring the Oriental Institute
and seeing The Originalist at the Court Theatre.
Acquisitions
Category Archives: books
New books and other great stuff
This week provides a bit of a breather between two fairly momentous events: my older daughter’s college graduation and my younger daughter’s departure for an internship at [insert name of U.S. national laboratory here]. Soon, everything will change again, but in this brief, not-quite-yet space, we have been assembling our Girls Rule! summer book club list (more about that soon), shopping for career wear (theirs), swapping work stories, planning the next few weekends of theater and museum adventures, walking, working in the yards, and simply enjoying one another’s company.
My school year concludes soon, which should translate into a bit more time to post about some of the terrific books I’ve read and plays I’ve seen this year. And I have plenty to say about adult music-learning and -making, too. Until then, pics of recent acquisitions must do.
Birthday gifts
In the week since I last posted, we have experienced temperatures ranging from the high twenties to the mid-seventies. Today, temps may reach eighty. Spring in northern Illinois is usually brief and not always beautiful, but this is one of the briefest and ugliest I’ve seen. Excessively dry, the ground has stingily offered wan blooms and pale grass. As if incredibly perplexed, the trees and bushes have budded with what can only be described as reluctance. It is 10 a.m. on May 1, and the thermometer in the shade already reads 71 degrees. If I am accorded an average life expectancy, I will see two dozen or so more springs. Is it wrong to wish that they were lush, flower-filled seasons colored daily by butter-yellow sunshine and clear, blue skies and fueled nightly by cool, gentle rains?
Regardless of spring’s length or appearance in any given year, it’s arrival coincides with the arrival of birthday gift cards from Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and books make everything better. My haul this year is pictured above.
I did not hate my mother. I feared her.
From Ariel Leve’s 2016 memoir, An Abbreviated Life:
p. 137
He tells me that scientists have found connections between children who are psychologically abused and permanent changes in the brain. We are discussing the neurological effects when a child’s rational responses are continually invalidated.
“The coping mechanisms that were adaptive in childhood become maladaptive as an adult.”
He gives an example.
“When you have an erratic, unpredictable, and aggressive parent, a child will detect signs and know when not to say something or know when to hide, so a threat-detecting sense begins to emerge early on. In the end, it wires the individual to be acutely aware and highly reactive to perceived threats.”
p. 145
The times I remember my mother most at peace is when she would stand without moving, unaware of passing time, reading or rereading passages from a book she’d picked off the shelf. Words were liberation from the frantic world she occupied. She could lose herself temporarily in the sanctuary of the lyricism. Unlike people, words were always enough.
p. 266
I did not hate my mother. I feared her. I feared her destroying my life. I feared her lies would turn others against me. I feared the incessant and unending conflict I would be forced to engage in with someone who couldn’t see past her own reality.
Acquisitions
Weekend stack
What the bunny brought
Watching the world as a writer
From Cory Taylor’s memoir, Dying:
p. 31
I don’t know where I would be if I couldn’t do this strange work. It has saved my life many times over the years, and it continues to do so now. For while my body is careering towards catastrophe, my mind is elsewhere, concentrated on this other, vital task, which is to tell you something meaningful before I go. Because I’m never happier than when I’m writing, or thinking about writing, or watching the world as a writer, and it has been this way since the start.
p. 45
No, my priorities remain the same. Work and family. Nothing else has ever really mattered to me. It might sound odd for a writer with my small output to claim work as a lifelong preoccupation, but it’s true. When I wasn’t writing, I was preparing to write, rehearsing ideas, reading, observing life and character, learning from other writers. As Nora Ephron always said, everything is copy. If I was slower than some at finding success, it isn’t because I wasn’t trying. I was trying and failing all the time. That’s what I’m doing now and I hope failing better.
Recent acquisitions
People have tired of talking about it.
From Voltaire’s Candide:
p. 95
‘But what was this world created for?’ said Candide.
‘To drive us mad,’ replied Martin.
From debbie tucker green’s hang:
p. 24
People are too embarrassed to say anything.
To say anything of use.
To say anything of use any more.
People say nothing, presume I’ve stopped
waiting for them to say anything. To say
anything useful. People presume, I’m, over it.
Over the worst.
People have tired of talking about it,
they’re all cried out about it.
Nerdishly 