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Lily Fairbairn
Half-elven
Jun 5 2022, 3:45pm
Post #1 of 3
(268 views)
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It's the occasional reading thread!
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Can't Post
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June is busting out all over!
I'm still listening to The Fellowship of the Ring, in the new reading by Andy Serkis. The hobbits and Aragorn have reached Weathertop, and darkness is falling....
I'm also listening to SPQR, by historian Mary Beard. This is a long (eighteen hours) history of Rome, including almost too many characters. We're just now, almost halfway through, getting to Julius Caesar. But the material is absorbing, not least because the author doesn't hesitate to interpolate her opinions on how reliable the sources are and how the events of the time resemble our own.
On paper I read The Puzzler by A.J. Jacobs, which is a quick fun read about, well, puzzles, from Sudoku to jigsaw to rebus to crossword and beyond. I'm pretty good with this sort of thing, but the new puzzles created especially for the book are so difficult I had trouble figuring out just what I was supposed to do!
Also on paper I read Many Deadly Returns, an anthology by The Murder Squad, a group of English writers including Anne Cleeves and Martin Edwards. Several of the stories mention Covid, with at least one using it as a motive. I’d say almost all the stories are crime, not mystery stories, about the commission of the crime rather than whodunnit. I liked Anne Cleeves’ dark-humored story set at Malice Domestic, a conference I'm very familiar with, but way too many of the others are grim, dark, and ugly.
I also read Give Unto Others, by Donna Leon, number 31(!) in the Commissario Brunetti series. Leon factors the pandemic into her sequence of events, even though Brunetti and his family/friends haven’t aged a bit since book one. Other than that, the story is typical of the series, if lower-key than many. She's still spending too much time on Brunetti’s office politics, IMHO.
I’m now skimming the Martin Walker anthology, Bruno's Challenge. It’s like a French version of the Hamish Macbeth stories, a chief of police (Bruno Courreges) in a small town in southern France, with lots of recurring characters---and very flat, tell-don't-show, writing. The stories are mostly vignettes rather than stories, with many, many words devoted to food and cooking. Bruno is a nice, clever guy but seems to have very little personality.
I also read the library ebook of The Sacred Bridge by Anne Hillerman, newest in her continuation of her father Tony's mystery series. She, too, acknowledges the pandemic. While she evokes the scenery of the Navajo Nation and Lake Powell very nicely, the plot is disjointed---Jim Chee works one case, his wife Bernie Manuelito works another, totally separate one. And both of them act foolishly.... Well, spoilers. 
So what have you been reading?
Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow....
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Annael
Immortal
Jun 5 2022, 5:06pm
Post #2 of 3
(264 views)
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good news is I get to go home today (been convalescing at my brother's) where I have all my books!
But I did order and start reading Interbeing by Thich Nhat Hanh. Recent events have given me a glimpse behind the veil between here & the other side. I've been blessed to see how interconnected we all are, like jewels in a shining net. The Hindus call it "Indra's net"; the Quakers talk about seeing the Divine Light in everyone; and the Buddhists call it "interbeing." All these words fall short, of course. But the book has practices that can help me stay in touch with that moment of knowing.
Before this I was getting into reading about emotions, both from the neuropsychological aspect and by reading Brene Brown's Atlas of the Heart about all the different emotions that apply to human connection. But the other thing that happened to me was that I became detached from emotion. I think emotion, like ego, belongs to our physical existence, and when you're close to letting go of that, emotion gets jettisoned too. I say this because if anyone out there is grieving or regretting not being with a loved one at their last moments because they worry that the loved one would have felt lonely or unloved, I don't think that's what happens. In fact people often die when everyone has left the room - my dad waited until I ran an errand - because the emotions hold them back from leaving. If you weren't there when they left, they wanted it that way. If that's any comfort. Anyway, I'm less interested in emotions right now, although I'm also kind of hyperaware of them in other people - especially when people get triggered - but in a very dispassionate way. I don't seem to be hooking in and reacting to others' emotionality like I used to. (Call me Spock . . .) So I'm putting those books aside right now. Anyway, I need to get back to the book I'm writing and I have some history to read, so probably that's next up.
I am a dreamer of words, of written words.
-- Gaston Bachelard
* * * * * * * * * *
NARF and member of Deplorable Cultus since 1967
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Lily Fairbairn
Half-elven
Jun 5 2022, 7:04pm
Post #3 of 3
(255 views)
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Thank you for your insights---and keep on keeping on!
Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow....
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