The 2009-2010 book list

Okay, sorry this took so long. I'm really feeling the limitations of my blogger skills right now. The titles in italics are books I already own (I've already read the first 3, and I'm in the middle of number 4). Through the year, these are the books that I'll be covering in my semi-regular "What I'm reading" posts. (Possibly some extras too.) Give a holler if you have any other suggestions. I'll update on the hubby later in the day, or later in the week.

1. Ta-Nehisi Coates The Beautiful Struggle
2. Moveable Feast, Hemingway
3. Push by Sapphire
4. Kathleen Kent The Heretic’s Daughter
5. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
6. The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
7. Word War Z: An Oral history of the zombie wars by Max Brooks
8. Looking for Calvin and Hobbes by Nevin Martell
9. Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman
10. Dream City by Harry Jaffe and Tom Sherwood
11. The Puttermesser Papers by Cynthia Ozick
12. Eyal Press Absolute Convictions
13. Robert Leleux Beautiful Boy
14. Uglies by Scott Westefeld
15. Blindness by Jose Saramago
16. Grand New Party by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam
17. The Billionaire’s Vinegar by Benjamin Wallace
18. Toy Monster: The Big Bad World of mattel
19. Look at Me by Jennifer Egan
20. Quiverfull by Kathryn Joyce
21. Erasure by Percival Everett
22. Super in the City by Daphne Uviller
23. Voluntary Madness by Norah Vincent
24. Gimme Shelter by Mary Elizabeth Williams
25. Dating Jesus by Susan Campbell
26. Escape by Caroyln Jessup
27. A Grand Army of Black Men by Edwin S. Redkey
28. American Slavery, American Freedom by Edmund Morgan
29. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
30. American Odyssey by Robert Conot
31. A Nation Under Our Feet by Stephen Hahn
32. The Purity Myth by Jessica Valenti
33. The rage of a Privileged Class by Ellis Cose
34. the social theory of practices by Stephen turner
35. When She Was White: The True Story of a Family Divided by Race by Judith Stone
36. Bad Boys by Ann Ferguson
37. Garfield minus Garfield
38. Washington, D.C. Protests: Scenes from Home Rule to the Civil Rights Movement By Mark S. Greek
39. American Colonies by Alan Taylor
40. The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon Wood
41. Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson
42. Nature’s Metropolis by William Cronon
43. Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching by Paula J. Giddings
44. The End of Influence: What Happens When Other Countries Have the Money by Brad DeLong and Stephen Cohen
45. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
46. Weevils In The Wheat: Interviews With Virginia Ex-slaves
47. Lauren Sandler's Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement
48. The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
49. The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon
50. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon
51. Confederate Emancipation by Bruce Levine

Why this pisses me off....

I got two facebook emails today on the same subject. Here they are:

This was in my inbox and thought I'd pass it on...not sure in teh least how it is supposed to spread cancer awareness but I have gotten the idea it is annoying some of hte guys and who can resist that? *evil laugh*

"Some fun is going on... Just write the colour of ur bra in your status nothing else and send it on to only girls no men. It will spread the wings of cancer awareness. It will be fun to see how long it takes b4 the men will wonder why all the girls have colour in their statuses!"

and...

Something fun is going around! Update your status with the color of your bra, nothing else in the message, just the color. Then send this to all the gals on your friend list, but none of the guys. Let's see how far this goes to spread cancer awareness and how long it takes before the guys start wondering about the color updates!

I wrote this status update as a response:

Dear friends: if knowing the color of my underwear helped heal cancer, my husband wouldn't be lying in a hospital bed in the fucking emergency room right now. Feel free to spread all the bullshit forwards you want, but leave me the fuck out of it.

So here's a brief list of my issues with this message, mostly for the benefit of people who sent it to me, and then saw my status update:

1. Secret memes don't raise awareness of anything. It's a game, which is nice for people who remain untouched by this illness, but why send it to me? I don't PLAY cancer games. I live with cancer. I know that you know the difference.

2. If the only way to raise awareness about a serious health issue is to titillate friends and acquaintances with talk of your underwear, then there's something wrong with your friends and acquaintances, or there's something wrong with you. Using your tits to sell concern about cancer is crass, base, and is the sort of behavior that makes you complicit in your own objectification. Even if you don't consider yourself a feminist, you know that I DO. So again, why send this to me?

It didn't help that I was getting these emails while I'm trying to communicate with John's oncologist while in the ER. (He was admitted tonight, apparently he's got a nasty unidentifiable infection and he needs [another] series of blood transfusions.) I have ignored the other stupid facebook cancer meme, with the stupid heart shapes in the fucking status updates, but this one...is just fucking appalling.

What I'm reading

I’ve read two books and two Sandman volumes since Christmas. I’d like to comment on Sandman as a larger work when I’ve finished the whole series. Neil Gaiman is such an elegant and nuanced writer (and a pretty good blogger), that I don’t want to comment on what’s going on in his work until I get to see the whole picture. I love comic book ‘volumes.’ I don’t have the time to track individual comics (I have a hard enough time remembering which volume I’m due to read next if I wait too long), and the volumes are as meaty as a novella, and a great way to spend an afternoon for me. Sandman is a particular favorite, because my husband and I read them at about the same pace, (he’s a slower reader of other things) and we can share them and discuss them…usually at least. So, Sandman is great (and please, please, Neil Gaiman, write some more novels) but it’s not what I’m going to talk about today.

On to the books. I read The Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nehisi Coates, my favorite blogger. There’s not much I can say about this book without dissolving into fangirl gushing, so I’ll just say that I consider it required reading for everyone.

The other book I read (and the whole point of this post, finally, in the third paragraph, because I've become really undisciplined in my writing) was The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. This book was an anomaly for me for a few reasons. First, I compile a list throughout the year of books I want to read or sound interesting, and I try to pursue books on that list first (comic books not included, I go through too fast), this book was not on that list. Second, I’d convinced myself that Barbara Kingsolver was a romance novelist, and I don’t read romance novels (though, in the spirit of this blogger, I may reconsider). So, I heard Kingsolver speak about her new book on NPR, and I decided to check her out. My office has a small table devoted to book sharing, so I picked up The Poisonwood Bible.

The book details the life of a family (mother, father, and 4 daughters) that decides to travel to the Congo for a missionary post in 1959. The book covers the transition of Congo into Zaire, as well as the (mostly hamfisted) attempts of the missionary father to convert members of their small village to Christianity. Each chapter of the book is narrated by a different female member of the family (we never hear the father from his own perspective) and spans several decades.

At the core, this is a book about the failure of will and the futility of arrogance. The Price family moves to the Congo with hopefulness and surety. They’re confident that they have everything on their side: the right god, the right morals, the proper lessons. Rev. Price even travels with seedlings, since he intends to teach the villagers the proper way to harvest the proper food. The longer they stay, the more apparent it is that they have nothing to offer the villagers or themselves. For all they’re surety, they are completely unprepared. Each family member responds to this in a different way and as a result of different incidents. Eventually the Congo consumes them (in one case, literally) and they are forever changed.

The book had a profound effect on me. Aside from the careful examination of white privilege and its pitfalls (and it WAS careful, more careful than I was expecting), the theme of how life changes you more than you can change lives was powerful for me. I feel that I’ve been teetering on the edge of some sort of emotional growth spurt for months now. I seem to be becoming someone…more. I’ve not given my consent to these changes, and I don’t quite know what they are, but the fact remains that I’m being consumed by the raft of shit that has hit my family in recent months, and that some of these changes will be permanent. One of them seems to be a newfound lack of faith in the power of my will to change my world. That change rattles at the foundations of who I am and how I see myself, and I don’t really know what to do with it. It’s an arrogance that has kept me warm and safe for as long as I’ve felt warm and safe. But the fact remains that those seeds won’t grow in the soil that I’m in, and I somehow have to redefine what’s proper for me in this new context.

When I get a chance, I'll publish the book list, and I'll track how many I get through.

It's late... and I can't sleep...

My grandfather took a fall right before Christmas. He landed on his glasses case, and that managed to break two ribs and puncture a lung. They kept him for a few days, put a tube in his chest, and tried to regulate his blood pressure and blood sugar (I inherited those problems from him). They failed to regulate those things and released him anyway. He went back for a follow-up today. His lung has deflated 20% and his wounds aren't healing. They readmitted him for observation.

After years of struggle, I'm finally in a financial and professional position to be back home when they need me, and I can't leave. God help me, this life is so long...

And another thing...

I'm certainly making up for lost time today...

I hate that my husband has this thing sticking out of his chest.



I can't explain how horrifying it is to see him walking around with tubes sticking out of his chest. The chemo goes in them. they pull blood from them (which is icky and disturbing and makes me ill to even think about, much less witness). Occasionally they require 'flushing.'

Argh. Fuck cancer

Another end-of-year list

In an attempt to release some of this negative energy, here is a list (in no particular order) of things that piss me off.

1. Burkitt’s Lymphoma . Seriously, fuck you. My husband is one of 10 Americans in his age group with this disease right now. 10. Yes, he will be cured. Yes we will come through this 'stronger,' but we were already strong enough so fuck you cancer.

2. The phrase "you will come through this stronger." FUCK THAT.

3. Resting the starters in the middle of the 3rd quarter when you have a lead and it's a home game AND the other team needs to win to potentially play you in the playoffs. Fuck you Jim Caldwell.

4. Crash and Amelie. They just piss me off.

5. People that ask questions that they don't want to know the answers to.

6. People that ask questions they already know the answers to.

7. People that congregate in doorways, the tops of escalators or stairs, and anywhere else that impedes other people. I don't care if you're on vacation, stop being so fucking thoughtless.

8. The San Diego Chargers.

9. My insurance companies. Both of them. All you do is take my money and make my life harder. Fuck you.

10. Anyone who gets righteous about any of the following:
a. not owning a television
b. not drinking caffeine
c. not watching sports
d. not believing in God
e. not eating meat
f. not smoking
Memo to the world: The things you DON'T do, for whatever reason, don't make you special. The things you jump into in this life matter. The things you retreat from are largely personal, and the rest of us don't give a shit how unique you feel for discarding them.

11. Nurses who wear perfume on the cancer ward. Way to introduce a group of nauseous people to your whorish scent and selfish disposition. You're TOTALLY in the right line of work.

12. People that start shit with you and are then surprised when you fight back. If you don't want a fight, then don't fuck with me. It's not complicated, and there are plenty of people in the world who are willing to be doormats for a bully. I'm not your girl. Ass.

13. Those fucking Swiffer commercials that imply that women have romantic relationships with their cleaning implements. (cuz apparently only women clean) That's just so fucking off that I don't even know how to respond. If you looked at our society through the lens of our commercials, would it be even remotely familiar?

14. People that think Obama is Jesus incarnate. He's not.

15. People that think Obama betrayed progressives. You don't listen well.

16. People that think Obama wasn't born here. You're fucking paranoid, and likely a complete fucking racist.

17. People that think Obama is a socialist. You're fucking stupid.

18. UPDATE. I hate that I got an email from these guys because an 11-year-old is pregnant and too scared to finger her abuser. The state won't fund the termination of her pregnancy without a police report. I hate this ugly scary world.
There, now I feel a little better.

I am, in fact, an angry girl

I know it’s been a long time since I’ve posted. Most of the stuff that’s going on in our lives revolves around people I won’t reference here. It’s not fair to invite certain people into this public forum without their permission, and I don’t want them reading this, so I’ve mostly been quiet.

Too quiet it seems. I’m sensing a few themes in my life right now. One is that everyone else seems just as hypersensitive to things as I am, so I find myself wishing I’d held my tongue, even (especially) when I don’t mean any harm. The other thing I’m finding is that more than a few people think that I’m closed off. There are lots of people fighting to offer me a hand in the things that I’ve been going through, and they think that I’m not open to receiving help, or letting my guard down. They’re right, of course, but people seem to be taking it personally.

I am private (ironic to say this in a blog post, I know). I am guarded, even with people I love. I don’t share easily, I don’t open up easily. These are things that are hard for me. I’ve been hurt before, too many times to count. Even when I tear down my own walls and just express what I’m feeling, I typically don’t like what I get back. It’s a hard, cruel world out there, and turtles have shells for a reason. I like my shell. It suits me. I’m comfortable there. There’s room for my husband, my dog, the occasional friend, and not much else. It doesn’t mean I don’t love all of these people (and I acknowledge that this is a nice problem to have), it just means that I can’t lay myself bare for them or anyone else. Not without significant emotional turmoil. I don’t have the luxury of having that kind of turmoil right now. My job is to be a pillar to my husband and my home. I need to hold them up. I can be a fucking mess later. I can work on my relationships later. Right now everything in my life is on hold. This is an expensive choice I’m making here, I realize that. I’m going to lose people. I’m going to hurt some feelings. There are people who aren’t going to understand. I don’t see another way though. I can’t talk too much about how I feel right now, or what I’m going through, because I just keep feeling it. It’s brand new every time I say something to someone. Doing that feels like skinning myself raw just so people know I trust them. I can’t afford to be that kind of mess. My family can’t afford that kind of mess.

So here’s the status update for all concerned parties:

1. Life is shit right now. We’re skating on the razor’s edge financially (a tree fell in the backyard, across three yards, and crushed a neighbor’s car. Insurance refused to pay to haul it away. Don’t know if they paid for the cars, but I had to dip into my retirement to get the tree out of there, as it was in a precarious position and could have caused more damage.
2. Hubby’s treatment is progressing, and we’ve had no real nasty surprises, but being poisoned once every few weeks is wearing on his mood, and it’s a fight to get him to check in to the hospital anymore.
3. I am just completely drained. If it’s not the tree or the cancer, it’s the job (which I have very little investment in right now, given the circumstances) or illnesses in my family. I feel like I’m being pulled apart. I can’t be anywhere I want to be for any amount of time that’s worthwhile, and even if I could, I can’t marshal the focus to be a worthwhile addition to any of these circumstances.
4. Christmas was fine, if you like that sort of thing, and I generally don’t.
5. I’m getting sick. This is a natural response to all this stress, I know. However, my husband can’t get (another) infection, so I’m banished to sleeping in my tv room until I’m better. So even when he comes home (tonight), I’m isolated. It’s really fucking lonely, and the loneliness is compounded by the fact that I can’t reach out to anyone on my own fucking terms because I’m not doing enough weeping and wailing.