Reading List for 2018

2018 was a year of changes.  We moved in late 2017 which left me with establishing a new home and re-establishing all the services for my autistic son.  It took a lot of work but I got them all in place only to have some of them fall apart in the last weeks of 2018.  So here we go again!  But hey, I still have my great escape in reading!  I have an ever expanding personal library.  So much so that I’ve made a vow that if I don’t extremely love the book after reading it, if I don’t plan to read it again, then I have to let it go.  Now if I could just control myself at thrift stores, yard sales, and trips to Barnes and Nobles in the mall (I lie to myself that I’m only going in to look while my son is doing community days with Pokemon Go).  This year was also a big year for audio books with me as I’ve found I’m more productive when using them.  This came in handy while I was canning from the garden we planted this year and finishing the quilt for my great niece.  It will also come in handy as I start the “I’m going to exercise and eat healthier” new year’s resolution.   We’ll see how well an exercise routine fits into my life.

Stories Read in 2018

Leave the Window Open: A Wesley Ayers Story - Victoria Schwab
The Ordinary Woman and the Unquiet Emperor - Catherine M. Valente

Pocosin - Ursla Vernon/ T. Kingfisher - Apex Magazine
Laurie - Stephen King
The Scarlet Slippers - Joanne Harris - Faerie Magazine
The Makara and His Meal - Shveta Thakrar - Faerie Magazine

Books Read in 2018

Shakespeare's Champion - Charlaine Harris (re-read due to the Me Too Movement)

Shakespeare's Christmas - Charlaine Harris (re-read due to the Me Too Movement)

Shakespeare's Trollop - Charlaine Harris (re-read due to the Me Too Movement)

Shakespeare's Counselor - Charlaine Harris (re-read due to the Me Too Movement)

Feral - Holly Schindler

The Fortune Quilt - Lani Diane Rich

Truly Devious - Maureen Johnson

Miss Bunkle's Book - D. E. Stevenson

Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day - Seanan McGuire

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Presents: A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo - Jill Twiss, E.G. Keller (illustrated)

The Fate of Mercy Alban - Wendy Webb

A Head Full of Ghosts - Paul Tremblay

Black Orchid (graphic novel) - Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean

Best Loved Fairy Tales of Walter Crane (illustrated)

Norse Mythology - Neil Gaiman

Krampus the Yule Lord - Gerald Brom

This Savage Song - V.E. Schwab

Rolling in the Deep (novella) - Mira Grant

A Vintage Affair - Isabel Wolff

Life and Death - Stephanie Meyer

Gwendy's Button Box - Stephen King and Richard Chizmar

Into the Drowning Deep - Mira Grant

Sparrow Hill Road - Seanan McGuire

The Lady of the Rivers - Philippa Gregory

City of Ghosts - Victoria Schwab

The Reformed Vampire Support Group - Catherine Jinks

The War That Saved Me - Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

The War I Finally Won - Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Royals - Rachel Hawkins

Joe Hill's The Cape - Joe Hill, Jason Ciaramella, Zach Howard

World War Z - Max Brooks

The Things About Jellyfish - Ali Benjamin

An Easy Death - Charlaine Harris

Our Dark Duet - VE Schwab

By the Time You Read This I'll Be Dead - Julie Anne Peters

The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman

M is for Magic - Neil Gaiman

Audio Books in 2018

Agent to the Stars - John Scalzi - read by Wil Wheaton

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry - Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Artemis - Andy Weir - read by Rosario Dawson

Locked In - John Scalzi - read by Wil Wheaton

Lock and Key - Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodrigues - read by cast

The Android's Dream - John Scalzi - read by Wil Wheaton

Needful Things - Stephen King

Dead But Not Forgotten: Stories from the World of Sookie Stackhouse - Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner Editors - read by Johanna Parker

Fuzzy Nation - John Scalzi - read by Wil Wheaton

Strong Ending: From Combat to Comedy - narrated by Mary-Louise Parker

Elevation - Stephen King

Lullaby - Jonathan Maberry - read by Scott Brick

Feed the Dragon - Sharon Washington

Girls and Boys - Dennis Kelly - read by Carey Mulligan

Quilt for my great niece, Kaydense.

Tattoo

This year for my birthday I got a tattoo.  I've talked for years about getting one but could never settle on a design or a location for it.  Finally I had cobbled a design together that had real meaning for me: An infinity sign that included the names of my two children and the semicolon.

The semicolon has come into popularity as a symbol for those who have thought about or tried to take their life.  The explanation is as follows:  A semicolon is used when the author could have ended the sentence but decided to continue instead.

I have in fact attempted suicide.  This first time I was 14 and I had been removed from my abusive home (where I was later returned).  I realized that i would never be "normal"; that I would never be able to live and experience life like everyone else.  I was damaged.  I could not see how I would ever heal or be able to have a relationship that wasn't extremely dysfunctional.  I wanted to die.  In my mind it was like wiping the slate clean.  [Although I had been raised as a Christian, I had serious doubts about how it all worked.  It has always felt unbalanced.]   I want to be clean again, without baggage, without scars.  One of the workers in the facility found me about to hang myself in a closet with a belt.  I was stopped and had additional counseling for a while.  I decided to try to life again though it wasn't really a conscience thought.

Over the years, I have thought about it several other times.  Early in my marriage I was again having trouble with this "normal" thing.  It was very difficult keeping everything together and juggle all my responsibilities.  I often suffered from depression and anxiety (I've had severe bouts with both since I can remember - social anxiety is a serious problem for me) and when I become overwhelmed with too many crisis or too many thoughts/feelings (PTSD), I just shut down.  It's then that the thoughts of "ending things" enters.

What has stopped me on these occasions is my children.  Having grown up as a child who lost a parent from suicide, I know how it feels.  There's a blank space and many complicated emotions associated with that person.  I didn't want to damage my children like that.  My children have kept me alive through these dangerous thoughts.  For them I put down the gun whose weight felt so right in my hands.  For them I put the cap back on the pill bottle.  For them I pulled the car back into the correct lane at the last minute.  I want to be there for them through their difficulties (when I can) both physically and emotionally.  I'm not a perfect mother.  There have been times when I dropped the ball due to my anxieties and emotional/mental turbulence, but I've been in their lives.

EVERY SINGLE DAY I work to be present in my children's lives. The tattoo is a reminder: When thoughts of suicide enter your mind and you can't see going on for yourself, be there for them.  Get help when/if you need it.  Keep going.

All the RAGE for Stephen King

When I was fifteen I found a book on my sister's bookshelf and read it while I stayed with her.  It had a black cover and a brooding young man sitting on a teacher's desk looking like a bad boy instead of a madman.  On the bottom right of the cover is a woman's pair of legs lying on the floor, her dress slid above the knees; the rest of the body is just out of sight off the cover. The cover itself held a quiet seduction without showing any outward violence.  I felt a certain electricity holding it. Like a forbidden text. I had to read it.

The book was RAGE by Richard Bachman.  It's the story of Charlie Decker, a young man in the 1970's pushed to the edge by circumstances in his home life and at school.  After being expelled for assaulting a teacher, he takes a gun to school and decides to, as he puts it, "get it on".  When I was fifteen, in the mid 1980's, school shootings were unheard of and deeply shocking. Today they have become so common place that people are almost numb to them until it happens to them or someone they know.

I somewhat identified with the pressures that Charlie Decker felt.  I understood that compulsion to lash out at those who you feel/know keep you down or abuse you; of being tired of being fucked with. At the time I read the book, I'd been fucked with all my life.  I was physically, sexually, and emotionally/mentally abused at home.  At school I was severely bullied and isolated with few friends that I could trust.  I knew Charlie Decker, identified with that quiver of insanity, and almost loved him for it. I had found someone (the character, the author?) who somehow understood me. However, instead of inspiring me to violence, reading the book inspired me to write my emotions out into stories instead of acting them out.  It was an easy way for a 5'2", 85 lb girl to vent her emotions without too serious a repercussion. It was a good outlet for me and led to my working on the high school newspaper.

Years later I learned that Richard Bachman was a pen name Stephen King used during the late 1970's.  I had read a couple of King's books at this point and enjoyed his work.  It struck me that I hadn't made the connection.  Rage is not all that different from CARRIE (minus the supernatural).  Both Carrie and Charlie had been abused/neglected by a parent.  Both had bad experiences at school. Both had at least some trouble connecting with their peers.  It's almost like two sides of a coin. [While I hadn't read CARRIE at fifteen, I had seen the movie with Sissy Spacek and really identified strongly with that character - downtrodden, abused, long red hair, and gray-blue eyes always averted unless told to make eye contact.]

Sissy Spacek from CARRIE

In the 1990's, there was a sudden sharp increase in school shootings (unfortunately they only continue to rise).  When a copy of RAGE was connected to several of the shooters, Stephen King had his publisher pull the book from print.  (See articles about it here and here.)  He also had RAGE pulled from further printings of the Bachman books collection. Secondhand copies of the Bachman collection with RAGE in it can still be found for sale online at places like found for sale online at places like eBay, Etsy, and Amazon. However, copies of an original print of RAGE are few and far between and priced outrageously.

Because I felt a strong positive connection with the book, I do still try to find it.  My sister no longer has her copy.  It appears to have been lost long ago.  So I look for it in thrift stores, used book stores, yard sales, and estate sales.  I found an original copy of CARRIE that way.  Maybe one day I'll find RAGE without having to spend $100's or $1,000's for it.  I just want a copy as a reminder: This is where you truly started, dig deeper into your stories and characters; let this be an outlet for your pain and working through your confusions in life's day to day struggle.  Wish me luck finding it!