My thinky thoughts include sadness at the dissolution of my granny, who, candidly, ain’t getting better, and why should she, being 98, and what I’m going to plant when I have a garden next year, and how I need to get going on my projects because I won’t have much time soon because I suspect I’ll be working full time, and how well the bagels went over yesterday (I took homemade bagels, plus butter and cream cheese, in to my assignment), and how I’m a bad puppy for leaving the passenger side door unlocked the last time I borrowed Jeff’s vehicle, and how not taking glucosamine for three days makes my back hurt scandalously, and how Jeff is working on getting a somewhat more modern furnace filter installed (you should see the old one – it is disgusting), and how I wouldn’t mind learning how to do different things to my hair as opposed what I do now which is wash, comb, leave it be, and how hilarious it was that Robert Wagner and Michael Weatherly got to play opposite each other on NCIS when Michael Weatherly looks so much like Robert Wagner he played him in The Mystery of Natalie Wood. By all accounts a ludicrously bad miniseries. This all represents a tiny fraction of what I am currently processing.
Bedside reading – Worship that Works, The Artist’s Way at Work, and a Latin English dictionary. I should probably find something fictional. It’s just, as I get older, I realize that the odds of me reading any fiction that will be as good as Dunnett or O’Brian is freaking small, so I’m a lot happier with non-fiction.
And now for something incredibly cheerful, and sexist (all the way ’round). The person who forwarded it to me (the Luddite) called it “East Germany’s answer to West Side Story” but I suspect it’s actually West German. I don’t know how they got all the women to dance like penguins, and all the men to scowl in such an ineffectual way, but full points for goofiness, folks!
I recommend Diana Gabaldon’s books which are historical fiction. The characters come into play and are built upon from one book to the next. Therefore, it is easier if they are read in order. I am currently reading her latest book “An Echo in the Bone. These books are a nice balance between fact and fiction.
I’ve tried Gabaldon, but the great thing about Dunnett is that she’s so cerebral. It’s like you have to have a doctororate in Medieval French history just to get half the jokes. Yea, I know, that makes me an elitist swine.
I really, REALLY tried to”get” Dunnett. Repeatedly. She was overwhelmingly recommended by my three favourite women – Allegra, Sue and Elizabeth. Failed. What does that make me? I liked the first couple of Gabaldon books – liked the idea of exploring what a nurse could bring to health care in another era with only what was in her head, but that didn’t carry me past the second book.
Perhaps there something about fiction generally as we age – perhaps the ability to fall into the world of a novel declines? But I have been trying Dunnett for four decades…
You need to have it read to you.
Nautilus3, the aspect of historical fiction in Gabaldon’s books is what sparked my initial interest in history, archeology and non-fiction in general. BTW, in one of her books, Gabaldon has the character Claire Fraser return to the present and, in those 20 years, Claire obtains the education and experience to become a skilled doctor and surgeon. Her latest book provides a look into the state of medical and surgical proficiency (such as it is) in the 1700s. Also, maybe it’s the realization that my years on this earth are numbered, but I’m more and more interested in books that will teach me something rather than just entertain me.
As much as I love fiction, I’m only reading non fiction these days.