Monday, March 2, 2015

Recovering From the Cold of Self Pity

2a
Last week I went out to dinner, lost my wallet, and caught a cold. Other than that it was a very pleasant evening! The wallet problem was fairly simple to fix; the last thing to replace will be my drivers license, which I plan to do tomorrow. (Why the last thing? I wanted to have my new glasses when I got it, and I had to get the credit cards to pay for the glasses.)

The cold wasn't actually not that bad, mostly a cough and a runny nose (so, two symptoms that maximized my germ factory and distribution capabilities), so I stayed home a lot. But on Monday and Tuesday, a sudden surge of self-pity also rose up and made me incapable of independent action. It was amazing how incapacitating it was.

I've had flu, so I know how it feels to be exhausted from turning your pillow over. But this was different -- all my energies went into feeling sorry for myself as I went through tissue box after tissue box. I didn't even feel that poorly. Is this what the stereotypical sufferer of Man Flu goes through? If so, my sympathy now runneth over. Luckily my nephew came over after school on Monday and brought me some water to drink. Having people care for you is the best cure for this terrible disease.


I'm now fully recovered, so I am ready to make an examiniation of my reading week. So, what did I spend my time on this week?

Monday: Life After Life, The October Country, Archangel's Shadows
Tuesday: Archangel's Shadows (completed), The October Country,  Reading and Learning to Read, Shadows and Dreams
Wednesday: Life After Life, Shadows & Dreams, The Edge (audio), On Immunity, The Jury
Thursday: Weeping Willow (started), The Edge (audio), Shadows & Dreams, On Immunity
Friday: How to Tell If Your Cat Is Plotting To Kill You (started, completed), The Edge (audio), Weeping Willow, Shadows & Dreams (completed),
Saturday: Blood of Tyrants, The Edge (audio), On Immunity (completed)
Sunday: Blood of Tyrants, Weeping WillowThe Jury, Salvage (started),

And the report from last week, which included some vacation reading:

Monday: Tell the Wolves I'm HomeThe Edge (audio), The Danger, Slow Reading in a Hurried Age (completed), Anna of Byzantium, About That Night, Wildflowers, Inkheart, TinkerOn Immunity (started)
Tuesday: Tinker, The October Country, Possession
Wednesday: Life After Life (started), Shadows and Dreams, Blood of Tyrants, The October Country, Archangel's Shadows (started), Out of the Easy, On Immunity, The Edge (audio)
Thursday: The Edge (audio), Out of the Easy, The Danger, Life After Life, Blood of Tyrants
Friday: Out of the Easy (completed), Life After Life, The Danger (completed), The Edge (audio), Archangel's Shadows, On Immunity
Saturday: Life After Life, The October Country, Archangel's Shadows
Sunday: Life After Life, Archangel's Shadows, 

So I finished six books, and started another six.  But this week I expect to finish all the library books I started the year with, so I'll have a few weeks of reading my own books before I'm allowed to open the floodgates again.

On Immunity: An InoculationSlow Reading in a Hurried AgeI like reading books about reading. Slow Reading in a Hurried Age reminded me of the deeper joys of reading, of the chance to talk to minds across time and space. So I've tried to reserve some books for slow, careful reading, saving the lighter stuff for reading in grocery lines, waiting outside school events, blah blah blah. Both Eula Biss's On Immunity and Roz Chast's Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant repaid this effort, Biss giving me insights into what could make otherwise responsible people deny their children their vaccinations. (They are still stupid, but I see how that stupidity can happen. It's not like I don't do dumb things myself.) And Chast's book made me both revisit my father's decline and death and hope for a more prepared time when I start down that rapidly sloping path.

Shadows & Dreams (Kate Kane, Paranormal Investigator, #2)Archangel's Shadows (Guild Hunter, #7)On a lighter note, during the day I enjoyed the latest Nalini Singh archangel paranormal, with her combat ready men and women dashing about being heroic, battling inner demons, and having hot sex. As one does. I couldn't quite get in the mind set of Alexis Hall's Shadows & Dreams  -- the concept of a lesbian P.I. dividing her time between mystery and her vampire royalty lover seemed fun, but Kate's dedication to being hard boiled made me lose respect for her intelligence.

Weeping WillowLife After LifeIt turns out that Weeping Willow takes place in Virginia, not West Virginia, so just as well I didn't stay up all night last year to finish it. It's a fine presentation of teen age life in the late fifties, but I'm squeamish about the incest parts. Kate Atkinson's Life After Life also puts me off with it's dedication to hitting every cliche plot possible (it can do this because of the restarting conceit). I preferred Jo Walton's My Real Children for the philosophy of it all.

Out of the EasyBlood of Tyrants (Temeraire, #8)I finally got far enough into the latest Temeraire book for traction, and thank goodness the amnesia plot didn't last the whole story. I suspect it's messing up my memory of the European wars of the early 1800s, though. I finally finished Out of the Easy last week, so I should go back and see what won the Cybils last year.  I won't look at this year's results until Christmas, of course!

The DangerThe Edge
I'm enjoying my Dick Francis books -- my current car audio and my complete pleasure read. And just to make myself feel productive, I polished off a small Christmas present, despite having my kids constantly pluck it from my lap to reread a few pages.

How to Tell If Your Cat Is Plotting to Kill You

I'm off to sign up to see what everyone else is reading lately at bookjourney's and Teach Mentor Texts lists.

2015 Challenge Progress:
  1. Cybils 2014: 3/81. Started a fourth.
  2. Where Am I Reading?: 13/51. Reading a Virginia book.
  3. Award Winning Book Challenge: Can I count this page as a review? If so I have three.
  4. Full House Challenge: 4/25
  5. Book Riot Read Harder: 8/24
  6. Alphabetically Inclined:  I J X Y Z still missing. 
  7. TBR Challenge: 8 books, 21 library books.
  8. Best of the Best 2012: 52/25.  I am stalled.
  9. Reading My Library: Library temporarily closed, so on hiatus.





2 comments:

kmitcham said...

I feel bad about the wallet, since it happened near me.

The Tremaire books really went downhill. I have zero motivation to seek out this one, but I might read it if it fell into my lap.

Beth said...

I've very happy with my new SAFE wallet, so don't feel bad for me. That wallet was falling apart anyway. In fact, the pictures that I thought I had lost had fallen out into the well of my car because that wallet was so threadbare, so I didn't lose anything!

Yes, I'm on the lap-falling plan with them as well. But there is only one left, so my completist tendencies will carry me through if the next one falls on me.