Saturday, April 13, 2013

Saturday Listmania

I've got writer's block, kitchen block, design block..is there also such a thing as life block?
I've got them all this week, along with a kick-ass cold and water spilled on my keyboard.

So what have I been doing to get through all this down time? As my friend K. and I were FB'ing back and forth--I've been READING.

Here, a book list of the latest and greatest I've devoured over the last few months of reading ebooks from the TPL:

1) Gone, Girl. Gillian Flynn. Do not spoil this for me! I'm only about a third of the way through. I can't put it down. The 8 week wait on the long library list was worth it.

2) Sharp Objects, Flynn again. I read this while I waited for Gone, Girl. It was good. Disturbing. A lesson about Missouri, that place in the Union that is part mid-western and part southern. The south facinates me. Utterly.

3) Tiny Beautiful Things, by Cheryl Strayed. Yes, I've mentioned it before. Just read it, get it, read it. Please. Do it for me. Then buy your own copy. And buy it as gifts for people. This book, with its common sense and compassion, is like a balm for our troubled world.

4) The Bride Stripped Bare, Nikki Gemmell. This was a re-read. I originally read it years ago, and it was penned under the guise of "Anonymous". A lurid read--British housewife 'overhears' her husband having affair (note my non-use of the word hubby, a word I think should be banned from the English language, along with calling nights 'sleeps'. Banned. BANNED).  So she overhears this affair, be it real or imagined, and embarks on her own...awakening. Puts Fifty Shades to shame, let's put it that way. (I have not read Fifty Shades all the way through. I read about twenty pages and knew, this ain't for me). BSB is also written in the third person, so there's that. I love that.

5) With My Body, Nikki Gemmell again. She's an Aussie. This book is also in the third person, also quite lurid, but there's a backstory with a bad parent and a forgiving nature that begs to be read. Plot-driven. Mad love. All good.

6) Service Included, Phoebe Damrosch. About working in Thomas Keller's Per Se restaurant in New York City. Average. But I enjoyed immersing myself in the industry again, from a distance. And I'm obsessed with Thomas Keller (see also: Soul of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman. Loved that).

7)  Tender Bar, J.R. Morhringer. This one got it's own post. Loved it.

8) The Long Goodbye, Meagan O'Rourke. Own post too. Read this.

Okay. My memory is blinking, I'm going to post this and think of some more. I wish the library website had a 'reading history'. I keep forgetting there are so many I've blazed through.

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Thursday's Early Morning Dream

In the feverish legarthy that has been one of the worst colds I've had in oh, two goddamn months, I have yet to sleep the night all the way through this week, despite pill-popping with abandon.

I dreamed my dad was alive again, he was still dying, but it was now, almost two years on, and he was back, just for a smidge of time, and we got to say good-bye again. Except I was scared to say it a second time, the first time was hard enough. Hard enough.

And I couldn't figure out what to tell people "Yea, my dad was dead, now he's not, but he is dying, again, and I need some more time to deal with this". How would people take that, I thought, even as the dream was playing on, mid-dream I was wondering this.

My dad was young again, mid-thirties, as was my mom, who was doing a kind-of hand-wringing routine of 'what now, what next'. My sister was there, too. We sat close to my dad, touching his arms, his shirtsleeves.

What can I say.
It's been a stressful week.
Sometimes I just have to go somewhere else.