I’ve been reading, and also recovering.
I finished off Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, which left me much less emotionally wrung out and miserable than I expected. Rather, I felt relieved. All of these thoughts I’ve had, the narrative I’ve believed about my foster mother, her illness and her dying with an outside perspective.
Sometimes I think I should go or should have gone into therapy over all of this palaver, but I probably wouldn’t believe anyone else anyway. I’m the only one who knows my story.
In between the wonderful lurgy and the lurking smell of tea tree oil on everything (damn all nits - which we seem to be slowly winning the war of attrition on), I haven’t been able to speak properly for days. While I’m a fan of silence (when I’m concentrating), my own silences are not much chop.
I talk to myself all the time when I’m alone. Usually, anyway. It passes the time. But being unable to hold down conversations with the lads (husbandly and small) seems to have silenced me completely. I still think, but it isn’t the same, and I’m not much of an artist: drawing the shorthand for words in my head is beyond my sad sad sad skills. I should practise them, because I used to be reasonable back in the days where it was standard operating procedure to be drawing diagrams of plants and animals. Ahh, biology, I remember ye well.
And today I visited a bookshop. Actually, I wasn’t holding out much hope of anything. We used to have a Borders and few smaller ones around, but now not so much. And I think I’ve whinged about not being able to touch the books I’d like to buy and read the first page at least. It just isn’t the same. I have a Goodreads account, but reading what other people think of a book is a bit crap when what I really want to know is what I think of it.
I took The Hunger Games home with that first page unread. If I’d read that first page in the bookshop, I’d have grabbed Catching Fire and Mockingjay straight away. I’d have regretted it - since the first one is the strongest in the trilogy - but the agony of suspense was, well, annoying.
As a method of picking a book, it doesn’t always work: Perdido Street Station was a purchase due to repeated exposure. Every time I went into a bookshop, there it was and eventually I caved. Which is a little weird, given that now I own a lot of China Mieville’s books. The Scar is my favourite, and set in that complicated universe that includes New Crobuzon, Remaking, avancs and Uther Doul.
Today’s purchases weren’t picked that way, either. I picked up one by Kim Stanley Robinson, 2312, which I have absolutely no idea about yet (ask me tomorrow, or Sunday) because I wanted to take a punt on something. The other was Without Warning by John Birmingham. Follow the link, he’s a ripping read. It’s roughly twelve hours later, and give or take an hour or four being a responsible adult cooking tea and washing dishes (and the interminable nit comb-though) and less responsibly watching James Bond, I’ve read my way through the whole thing, wide-eyed in parts. Many parts.
It surprised me a little, since I’m not a big fan of alternate history stories (clearly, I am high maintenance and difficult), nor military fiction, but wowsers this is good stuff. I’ll bypass the story, because I hate giving spoilers, but the fun of the technical arts of the story and character interactions, and (yay!) pop culture references I will mention. See, I just did. I don’t mean the technical side of the McGuffin (damn, I do have to say it now, the Wave that takes out North America and a few more bits besides), but the way in which it all hangs together, and the depth of characters.
In one way, it’s a comfortable read, especially for one that isn’t simplistic or dumb (I had my hand on a Patricia Cornwall book today as well - I couldn’t do it to myself in the finish), which sounds like a huge back-handed compliment, but isn’t. While thrillers aren’t my scene, the ones I have read often head for the break-the-action-in-the-middle as a way of ratcheting up the tension, when I would prefer that-the-author-simply-finished-the-effing-sentence. The tension In Without Warning uses the cliffhanger a couple of times, but it isn’t gratuitous and is therefore satisfying. In terms of comfort, it may be that I’m familiar with Birmingham’s style, but I don’t think it is that; it feels very Australian to me in its tone, while encompassing all us chickens under the sun. And then, there are the (yay!) pop culture references, which are so natural as to be invisible. Oh the relief. So often it feels like there are neon signs plastered all over the damn things, and we’re supposed to get all excited. Blerk. If you have to shout about it, it wasn’t worth including.
And oh boy, this post will come back and bite me on the arse one day. Ne’er mind. Where I was headed was about the weight of other people’s words when I have none of my own, but clearly I have at least a few, so I’ll keep burbling on.
From the sublime to the less so, we saw Guardians of the Galaxy last night. Now here’s a film with lots of fun and waaaay cool stuff in it. But I have to wonder what is going to happen when the Marvel catalogue runs dry (and again, here I am clearly high maintenance and difficult). Will it all get rebooted? If so, why should I invest in it now? If ephemera are to be made more ephemeral by repetition (and therefore reduction?), will they be valueless?
I dunno. But I’m thinking about it.
