Thoughts in Random Patterns

Books Read in Bora Bora

I spent most of November reading:  in bed, at meals, on our deck overlooking the ocean, on the beach and by the pool with SPF 50 sunscreen slathered on any exposed skin.  Although I've gone back to reading "real" hardback books at home, the Kindle is still an absolute treasure trove for travel.  I'm increasingly appreciative of the option to increase the font size, so I can continue to push back the date when I have to wear reading glasses.

I had been reading Living with a Wild God:  A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything by Barbara Ehrenreich before we flew away to Bora Bora, so I finished that first.  It's worth reading for people who are interested in mystical / spiritual / transcendent experiences, although it wasn't as penetrating as I hoped it would be.  William James' The Varieties of Religous Experience (1901) is still my favorite book in this area.  Sam Harris' Waking Up:  A Guide to Spirituality without Religion is next on my list to read.    

 Then I started in with my true love - literary fiction:

• A Gate at the Stairs, and Bark:  Stories by Lorrie  Moore, 
• Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout,
• Where the God of Love Hangs Out by Amy Bloom, 
• The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow,
• Ajax Penumbra 1969 by Robin Sloan  
• The Newlyweds by Nell Freudenberger,
• By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham (whose short story, White Angel (1989) is absolutely on my Top Ten All Time list),
• The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
• Netherland, and The Dog by Joseph O'Neill  

All of these were lovely in their own way, but I'm afraid I have to join the bandwagon and say that the best book of the month (and therefore the year) was All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.  My dear friend, Clarissa, had suggested we both read it for discussion during an upcoming trip we're taking together.  I'm glad she did.  It is beautifully written, complex, and well worth the accolades it's receiving.

One of the many habits I have that baffles Brad is to re-read books I've already read.  After reading a plethora of new novels and short stories, I revisted a tome, Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, which I first read in Alaska in 2005.  My blog review of my first reading is here.  It has the same number of pages and footnotes the second time, and was just as funny and sad and all that, maybe heightened by DFW's suicide in 2008.

Then I re-read some other wonderful fiction:  

• Three Junes by Julia Glass
• The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
• Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg
• The Art of Fielding, which is in the same league as All the Light We Cannot See.  I loved this book when I read it for the first time in 2012, and imagine I'll be re-reading it throughout my reading life.  It's one of those first novels that I can't believe is a first novel, like The Kite Runner and The Lovely Bones.  

  After all that literary fiction, it was time for some palate-cleansing science fiction.  I read William Gibson's new book, The Peripheral, and re-read old favorites Neuromancer and Pattern Recognition.  Gibson is far and away my favorite science fiction writer, although I did also re-read Dune by Frank Herbert on this trip, which I've read maybe a dozen times.

In preparation for the New Year, I read and re-read several business / organizing / writing / inspiration books.  (Asterisks indicate re-reading.)

• *The Power of Habit:  Why We Do What We Do by Charles Duhigg
• *The Power of Less:  The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential ... in Business and Life by Leo Babauta
• *Zen to Done:  The Ultimate Simple Productivity System by Leo Babauta
• *The Joy Diet:  Ten Daily Practices for a Happier Life by Martha Beck
• *Making a Literary Life:  Advice for Writers and Other Dreamers by Carolyn See
• The Willpower Instinct:  How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What you Can Do to Get More of It by Kelly McGonigal
• Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
• Essentialism:  The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg Mckeown 

Somewhere in there I also re-read a couple of favorite action adventure spy conspiracy thriller books:  The Color of Night, and An Absense of Light, both by David Lindsey.

And that was about it.  I'm looking forward to a 2015 full of reading and writing, and maybe some more Pacific Ocean sunsets. 

 

 

First and Last Post of 2014

This year almost past was not a year of writing for me, which is definitely something I'm planning to do differently in 2015!  We moved into our new house at the beginning of January.  The photo below was taken on our first day.  Remodeling the kitchen, furnishing the entire empty place, installing geothermal HVAC for the carriage house, and looking at 14,483 fabric and tile samples and light fixtures with my amazing interior designer took up all of my creative energy, plus some. 

 

 

I didn't realize how tired I was until we arrived in Bora Bora for a month and I slept 10+ hours a night and took afternoon naps for about 10 days.  I slept more than Brad, who is a championship level sleeper.  I had read a startlingly small amount in the previous ten months of the year, which was also a sign that my brain was a little too busy making house project decisions.  I think I read less up to November than I had since I learned how to read before kindergarten.  

Then I made up for lost time, reading about 30 books in the month we were away.  I'll do a post tomorrow (New Year!  New writing focus and energy!) with a list of the books I read, and at least a comment or two on them.

Here's a view of Bora Bora / Paradise, which is nice to see when it was 18 degrees below zero at our house in Colorado last night.  I'll post some more photos, too.

Happy New Year to my readers, family, and friends, and a toast to more writing in 2015!