Different Loving

Different Loving: A Complete Exploration of the World of Sexual Dominance and Submission by Gloria G. Brame, Jon Jacobs, and William D. Brame 

1996

Weight: 1.8 lbs

I collect books.  I am not trying to hoard them and am happy to give them up and rehome them after reading.  It is rare that I will read the same book twice.  There are too many books and, as they say, too little time.  It is a real possibility that I could die before completing my current collection, and THAT keeps me up at night.  It keeps me up and reading anyway.  I am on a mission.  

I remember when it started.  I knew the name of every book and every author I had ever read.  I realized that I was collecting knowledge and that, in a way, I could know at least a little bit about everything.  My adolescent mind did not yet comprehend what it would be like to hold too much information and to not be able to access it all completely.  I did not know what it would feel like to almost know so many things but to not know enough to explain anything.  That is where I am at now, but it is a compulsion and a need at this point.  I must read.  I must surround myself with all the things I hope to know.  I always have a few hard copies nearby, a couple on my Kindle App, all my shelves full, and boxes of books waiting for shelves to become available.  But, if you ask me if I want a book of yours, the answer is always yes.  100 times yes.  The less you are like me and making a recommendation the better.

I love the smell of both, old and new books.  If you bury your face in one, the smell is strong but, before I bring them close, I cannot smell them at all.  I love the feel of a good trade paperback--malleable but strong.  I prefer matte covers to shiny ones.  The shiny ones feel cheap and remind me of self-publishing.  Self publishing can be a wonderful thing, but it is mostly just scary.  It seems like the less money the publisher puts into the book the more of a gamble it will be.  How elitist of me.

I think about the people we have lost and the books they never read.  If they had advanced warning, which ones did they scramble to read before they would never read again?  Sometimes, when you are very sick, reading is one of the only things you can do until you can't.  Will I regret all the time I have spent reading or will I regret that I did not read enough?

I make plans.  If my eyesight gets worse, there is always large print, or you can change the font size on a tablet.  If that is no longer useful, there are audio books.  Is there anything in the world that has not already been written?  It seems like there is an endless resource, an endless combination of words, and some combinations just make my brain crackle and come back to life.  I live for that something new.  I hunt for it constantly.

Rick Bragg

2 x The Speckled Beauty and His People 

Where I Come From: Stories from the Deep South 

2021 

Weight: 20.13 oz

Method of Disposal: Giving two to dad and one to a friend

Two different people gifted me The Speckled Beauty within weeks of each other, and I felt loved.  I had just finished reading Where I Come From, which I purchased at Little Shop of Stories in Decatur, Ga.  Bragg has a couple essays where he mentions The Speckled Beauty and some other dogs, The Dancing Skinny and Pup McGraw.  I had already started naming dogs at the shelter after them.  We are still on the lookout for our Pup McGraw, but we had a Speck, a Speckled Beauty, and a Dancing Skinny.  I guess I should do a Bragg too.

Everyone seems to love Rick Bragg, and I like to buy at least one book anytime I go into an independent bookstore--or really any bookstore these days--so, when I saw his name on the new arrivals wall, I grabbed it right away.  It was a collection of essays, and it was good.  I did think I would have enjoyed them more by stumbling on them one by one in magazines or online but, realistically, that had not happened often so this was my best chance to read them.  I just could not resist reading them all at once, which might have taken away some of the power of them individually.  I thought about my dad several times, especially when he talked about fishing without the idea of catching anything.  My father often says he is going to feed the fish when he goes fishing.

The Speckled Beauty I enjoyed even more.  I liked the feel of reading it.  It was a slow meander and, though my bad dogs are indoors and I would never dream of doing some of the things with them that I read in the book, like his brother using motor oil to treat mange, I am not unfamiliar with this way of being with dogs.  I have met and talked with dog owners like these (Given, I have told them not to use motor oil). Bragg describes his dog, his brother's dogs, his mama's dogs.  They all have a different outlook on dogs and a way of being with them, and they all clearly love dogs very much.  Bragg and his mom take in only the most pitiful of strays and love them no matter how terrible they are, maybe love them because they are so terrible.

But, this book was not just about a dog or about dogs.  It was about people, about the South, about getting older, about loss.  It was beautiful and sad and funny and easy and hard.  At one point, Bragg caught me so off guard that I just burst into tears.  I was not expecting it at all and was shocked, as I laid in bed next to my sleeping wife, holding this book close to my chest, scaring my own dogs who woke with a start when they heard my sobbing.  And, it was not because the dog died, and it was not because of the dog at all.  In fact, the main dog lives in this one, folks.  That is a rarity in and of itself.  It was because Bragg has a way of letting you in so that you do not just read the words but feel them fully.  His indirect descriptions bring up powerful emotions.  He may be talking about a dog, but through that dog we learn so much about him and his family.  

It is good stuff.

The Seems: The Glitch in Sleep

The Seems: The Glitch in Sleep by John Hulme and Michael Wexler
2007
Weight: 1 lb
Method of Disposal: Donating

I received this book in 2007 and have finally read it, 8 years later.  It does not feel like eight years at all.  I struggle to believe it.  Maybe life speeds up once you finish college (or school in general depending on you as a person) because there is a less tangible timeline.  People may talk about marriage, kids, retirement as a timeline, but everyone does these things at a different time, if at all.  It is not like 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th grade where all of your peers seem to be doing it.  If they aren't, you probably wouldn't know about it because school is where you make friends.  There may be a few homeschoolers in the neighborhood, but they still have goals that are tied directly to the law.  Most people are the same age, even if they get held back a grade.  It all seems so far away.  Even thinking of "being held back a grade" is so alien to my current life that I almost do not know where that thought came from.

Anywho...

How many times do I wander down that road?

I finally read The Seems, and I was under-impressed.  I thought it had some unrealized potential, but the authors did not seem to know their audience.  The authors would reference music and artists their audience were likely never to have heard of.  I thought maybe they wanted to teach them/expose them to great art but that, in and of itself, felt cocky because they had not earned the right to introduce.  By mentioning great artists they immediately placed their own book alongside of them all and quite clearly came up short.

The story itself would often get bogged down in meaningless details and when the "fixers" fixed the world it was always anti-climatic.  Who am I to talk?  Either way, I do not recommend it.
 

Whole World Guide to Culture Learning

Whole World Guide to Culture Learning by J. Daniel Hess
1994
Weight: 1.2 lbs
Method of Disposal: Leaving somewhere in Decatur, GA

 

This is a book to help people adapt to living and/or working abroad and to encourage cultural learning.  I am assuming that it is dated now, at twenty years old.  How is it that 1994 happened 20 years ago?!  I don't believe it.  I won't believe it.

I am not certain when I will get the chance to travel again--much to my dismay--and I have never been anywhere but Georgia for over a month.  I know one day I will have the opportunity to live in England now, but will I get the chance to live anywhere else?  I still have so many dreams, but the years go by so quickly.
 

Emotional Problems in Later Life

Emotional Problems in Later Life: Intervention Strategies for Professional Caregivers
1990
Weight: 1.2 lbs
Method of Disposal: Donating

It is hard to believe how dated some of my books have become.  This is 23 years old.  When does that happen?  It even looks like an old book now.  I swear I so often think I am still in the 90's and am shocked it is over.  Aging is weird.