How to Live With a Neurotic Dog

 How to Live With a Neurotic Dog by Stephen Baker
1994
Weight: 16 oz
Method of Disposal: Lending Library               

                                                                                      

I spend an overwhelming amount of time with neurotic dogs, and I adopted the most neurotic dog I ever met.  I have met thousands of dogs during the most stressful times of their lives so that is no small statement.  The dog I adopted is on Prozac, Gabapentin, and Trazadone for his anxieties.  It is not surprising that someone saw this book and thought of me.  I enjoyed the simple jokes and light heartedness of it--much of my work with pets is far too heavy--but the pictures were the best part for sure.  

Chicago Ghosts

Chicago Ghosts by Rachel Brooks

2007

Weight: 16 oz

Method of Disposal: Lending Library

Halloween 2020 seems like a good time to give away any ghost books I can find.  A pandemic may keep some people inside, looking for things to do that are frightening and fun.  The up or downside to these Chicago books is that they take place in another state and so, as you read them, it does not always feel like the ghosts are hanging out right behind you, watching you, while you read about them.

This book was much more what I am looking for in a collection of ghost stories that the children's book I gave away the other day.  The stories were eerie and had just enough details that would wrench your gut.  I think I realized that, for me, a good ghost story needs to be tied enough to something real and tragic that is tangible.  I am not as into the mysterious ones where no one knows who or what is haunting a place.  I am scared when they are tied to a real history.  That being said, they make me sad.  I hate to think of people dying and families missing them.  If there are a lot of details and no real evidence of the person that lived, like an Urban Legend, that is the best for me because I can be creeped out, sad, attached, but not worried about the pain someone is being caused by the story if that makes sense.

It also seems like a lot of these stories came about from deaths in the 1930s.  I am interested to read a book now on what eras had the most ghost stories and why they had them.  Were they more common when the world was less violent and there was no internet for sharing?  Did horrible things stand out for years and years then and get cemented into frightening tales that were told over and over?  Now, we here so much horror that we just move on and forget.  Or, do we have more ghost stories now because any old person from any old town can go online and share a tale about their poltergeist or ghoul?

All in all, I am not actually someone who is typically into ghost stories.  Sometimes, I just buy these little local books when I am traveling because you can learn unique tidbits about the city, it is something a little different to look at while you are there, and it is always fun to learn a little about a local author.  They are generally easy to find, and I can usually convince someone I am traveling with to listen to one or two ghost stories, but I can never convince them to want to hear a short story, a historical essay, or a full fledged book on the city.  They will listen to a ghost story or a short magazine article, and I like to share what I read.

Find Me

 Find Me by Rosie O'Donnell
2002
Weight: 12 oz
Method of Disposal: Lending Library

I do not know what I was expecting when I picked up this book, but it was not this.  Not even a little.  Generally, with famous folks writing books, you get a memoir, but not always.  I guess, in some ways, this was part memoir, though mostly focused on one part of one year of Rosie's life where she gets overly involved with a pregnant child and rape survivor who ends up not being that at all.  I feel like you get a real insight into Rosie's mind, at least in that year, and she tries to let you see the good, bad, and the ugly.  She seems like she is being vulnerable.

I am healing from surgery and am about to go to work, light duty.  I have been working from home, on pain medication, feeling overwhelmed, depressed, and mentally unsound myself.  I have been reading book after book, when I can squeeze them in, and I feel like I have been existing on some third dimension where there is no safety net, and you just keep falling.  All of this is, who am I to make commentary on anyone's mental state or book right now?  I am just glad to have so many books from so many years to read when I cannot be in my own mind anymore.

The Total Money Makeover

 The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness
2009
Weight: 1. 74 lbs
Method of Disposal: Lending Library

This was a gift from my brother back, I'm guessing, in 2009.  He said it was a little cheesy, but that there was some good information in there.  I loved thinking about him as I read it and finding a sweet little note from him in it all these years later.  He definitely does a great job of putting himself on a budget and sticking to it.  I feel less good at that, but it is dawning on me more and more every day that I really need to plan better than I have been. I have reread the book before passing it on, and I have pulled out a lot that I have found useful.  I do struggle with the repetitive nature of the book and the tagline, "If you live like no one else, later you can live like no one else."  As you may know by now, if it feels like self-help, my body seems to recoil from it, but it does not mean someone else might not get even more from it.  I hope the right person finds it and does!

Horses With a Mission

 Horses With a Mission: Extraordinary True Stories of Equine Service by Allen and Linda Anderson
2009
Weight: 10 oz
Method of Disposal: Mailing to my niece 

Animal rescue has ruined me for books like these.  I get judgmental when people make stupid mistakes or see what they want to see with an animal, while missing what is clearly, actually happening.  I cannot suspend my rescue brain long enough to just enjoy the read!  Apparently, even with horses.

That being said, I enjoyed hearing about so many horses being rescued, loved, and cared for, especially for the length of their natural lives.  I hate how so many horses are given up or euthanized once they are no longer seen as useful.  

I am hoping my niece will enjoy this book.  I know she is not all that keen on reading yet, but she loves all things horse.  I love all things rescue.  It seemed like a perfect combination and so I have mailed it to her.   

Premarital Counseling for Gays and Lesbians

 Premarital Counseling for Gays and Lesbians: Case Studies and Helpful Questions by Pamela Milam, LPC
2012
Weight: 5 oz
Method of Disposal: Donating

This seems like a great place to start for anyone in a serious relationship if they are looking to get married, be together for a long time unmarried, move in together.  It is small, easy to read, and just simple good, advice.  It is inclusive of polyamorous relationships.  Unfortunately, it no longer seems to be readily available many places.  I would love to get this book to someone that needs it or wants it.  If you have any suggestions in the near future or would like me to mail it to you, let me know!

Caste

 Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
2020
Weight: 1. 7 lbs
Method of Disposal: Mailing to my Mom

I am grateful this heavy, painful, difficult, and powerful book was passed on to me by a friend.  Books like these,  I always think that I want everyone to read them, but then I think, do I?  I want those with the appropriate mental strength and fortitude to read them.  But who should be excused if they do not have that?  Who should read it?  Will this book find the people that will get the most from it?  Or is it more about doing the most with it?  I could see that for some it would be so painful to live treated as a bottom caste member, surrounded by others in the dominant caste, and then to pick up a book like this and read horror upon horror.  I briefly read some of the reviews of this book on Amazon, written by people who seem to be the people I most think would benefit from reading this book, people I want to read it the most, and I am horrified by how quickly they dismiss this book as liberal trash.  Did they really read it?  All the way through?  Or is it best to focus on the MUCH larger number of people who rated it 5 stars?

Here are some snippets from this book that I hope are enough to make you want to read more.  I am still processing and, really, I would rather you read Isabel Wilkerson than read my words trying to express hers anyway.

"None of us chose the circumstances of our birth.  We had nothing to do with having been born into privilege or under stigma.  We have everything to do with what we do with our God-given talents and how we treat others in our species from this day forward.  

We are not personally responsible for what people who look like us did centuries ago.  But we are responsible for what good or ill we do to people alive with us today.  We are each of us responsible for every decision we make that hurts or harms another human being."

I guess the above is not so surprising, but I believe I pulled it out because I am so tired of hearing that argument from white people.  I was not there.  I did not own slaves.  I have no responsibility.  Just stop trying to defend yourself and start trying to be the best person you can possibly be.  We all owe that to each other.

"The fact is that the bottom caste, though it bears much of the burden of the hierarchy, did not create the caste system, and the bottom caste alone cannot fix it.  The challenge had long been that many in the dominant caste, who are in a better position to fix caste inquality, have often been the least likely to want to.

Caste is a disease, and none of us is immune.  It is as if alcoholism is encoded in the country's DNA, and can never be declared fully cured.  It is like a cancer that goes into remission only to return when the immune system of the body politic is weakened.

Thus, regardless of who prevails in any given election, the country still labors under the divisions that a caste system creates, and the fears and resentments of the dominant caste that is too often in opposition to the yearnings of those deemed beneath them."

I think what speaks to me here is that there was Obama and then there was Trump, and it is is easy to want to shout WHAT? HOW? WHO LET THIS HAPPEN?  It is more difficult to know in your heart that Trump did not just happen and is not an anomaly.  That one man or administration is not THE problem.  None of us, no matter our caste, can ignore the caste system.  It is sickening our individual mental and physical health, it is sickening our communities, it is sickening our nations.

"Germany bears witness to an uncomfortable truth--that evil is not one person but can be easily activated in more people than we would like to believe when the right conditions congeal.  It is easy to say, If we could just root out the despots before they took power or intercept their rise.  If we could just wait until the bigots die away...It is much harder to look into the darkness in the hearts of ordinary people with unquiet minds, needing someone to feel better than, whose cheers and votes allow despots anywhere in the world to rise to power in the first place.  It is harder to focus on the danger of the common will, the weaknesses of the human immune system, the ease with which toxins can infect succeeding generations.  Because it means the enemy, the threat, is not one man, it is us, all of us, lurking in humanity itself."

There is so much that I want to pull out and share, like the above quote, but you should just read the book because these beautiful, thoughtful snippets do not have the same power when they stand alone as they do when they are encapsulated with the author's personal experiences, stories from other individuals, people you read about in the news.  Just remember, if it starts to feel like it is too much or that it is overwhelming it is because what you are reading about is too much and is overwhelming.  We cannot fix what we refuse to see and recognize.  If it feels too painful that is because it is too painful, and it has been for a long time.  Ignoring the pain not only does not make it go away, but it makes more pain. If comparing slavery to Nazi Germany rubs you the wrong way, can you at least ask yourself why? Can you, at least, keep reading?  I do not want to be wiping the ash of human beings off a child's jacket and pretending not to see the cruelty around me.  I do not want to hold the burden of having been that person in my lifetime and beyond.  I do not want to be the ash on that child's jacket.  I do not want to miss out on all the great things humanity can achieve if we all take care of each other and allow each other to live and thrive.  

Read this book.  Tell me what you think.  Let's start there.

The Templeton Plan

 The Templeton Plan: 21 Steps to Personal Success and Real Happiness by Sir John Templeton with James Ellison
2013
Weight: 10 oz
Method of Disposal: Giving Away

I just cannot get into these small, easy to read, life guides.  I keep trying to like them or feel inspired to change even the smallest part of my life because of them, but I cannot be moved.  I think they would be most helpful to someone without a moral compass, but would someone without a moral compass be changed by them at all?  Maybe someone with a moral compass but someone whose compass is not the most important part of who they are to themselves?

That cannot be the answer because the people that give them to me tend to be good-hearted people.  What is it that speaks to them?  How does it impact them?  What does that feel like?  Well, either way, I am passing it on.  If someone can improve their life even a little by reading a little guide then who am I to stop that or judge that?

Wringer

 Wringer by Jerry Spinelli
2018
Weight: 6 oz
Method of Disposal: Mailing to Mom

I loved this book.  I read it in a day and then just laid there thinking, "wow."  Jerry Spinelli really has an incredible talent, and his children's literature is top notch.  This book dealt with layers of concerns that have an impact on children without you, as the reader, feeling like you were dealing with anything.  I was fully immersed in the world of a young boy named Palmer and learning about gender role expectations, peer pressure, animal welfare, fitting in, growing up, bullying.  What I was learning was valuable and non-partisan.  This book added to my knowledge and understanding.  It did not feel like the author sought to answer the questions that came up so much as he just lived in them and let us live in them.  Both the children and the parents were the real deal.  I felt the problems of a child just as they felt them.  They were huge and important, just like they would have been to me when I was10 years old.  Sometimes, I struggle to relate to children as an adult, despite having been one, like everyone else.  It can be hard to remember what it was like to think when what seems small now felt so big.  When you truly believed your friends turning on you would be the end of the world, that they might actually kill you.  Holding Spinelli's hand, I did not struggle at all. I was full of feeling and it moved me from page to page.  I could not put this book down.  I was full of passion and hope and anxiety and curiosity.  It was a beautiful feeling.  It was an incredible experience.  It is why I read, for moments like last night.

Creepy Chicago

 Creepy Chicago: A Ghosthunter's Tales of the City's Scariest Sites by Ursula Bielski
2003
Weight: 7 oz
Method of Disposal: Giving Away

This book did not have much creative flair.  It was written in the form of one brief report after another.  A whirlwind tour of Chicago's paranormal.  I would have loved more, but I am not sure what more to expect from a young adult's collection of ghost stories.  Ursuala seems to dominate the market on writing about ghosts in Chicago, for better or worse.  I think I have another book by her that is directed at adults that I may look into.  

The Wall Street Journal Guide to Understanding Money and Investing

 The Wall Street Journal Guide to Understanding Money and Investing 
1999
Weight: 16 oz
Method of Disposal: Throw Away (not sure it can be recycled)

This was an easy to read and helpful little book in the 90s when my father gave it to me in hopes he could help me figure out how to be a more responsible adult.  Unfortunately for me and him, I had no interest in learning about stocks, bonds, mutual funds, money markets.  I wanted to help people, create art, be involved in the community.  This book was perfect for a teenager.  Pictures, definitions, easy explanations.    I picked it up as an adult and thought, why not?  I read it, but it was so dated.  It is interesting to read about the way things used to be done before the internet changed the world and to see the origin of things we do now.  It is interesting to see how much the world is the same and different after 21 years.  I cannot believe how much I am the same but different 21 years later.

My wife was 8 years old.  I was 14.  It is so hard to imagine two life trajectories, even when they have been lived.

The Sweet Smell of Psychosis

 The Sweet Smell of Psychosis: A Novella by Will Self
1999
Weight: 4 oz
Method of Disposal: Giving Away

This short novella was not an easy read!  I think I have picked it up and not been able to get into it several times over the years.  This time, I was on post-surgery drugs and so think I was better able to suspend reality and try to delve into it.  It was a real struggle though.  I think there was a certain timeframe where men could write anything they wanted about sex, aggression, force, drugs, alcohol and the more "disgusting" or "disturbing" they could be the better.  I went through that stage in college too, but it does not work for women.  It is much more desirable for men to be forceful, ejaculate, fuck, and blur the lines of reality.  Women exist to conquer and to cum all over.  I am not turned off by dirty sex or risque behavior.  I love good, consensual fun, but I do not think being graphic for no reason makes you an artist.  Obviously, a lot of other people feel quite different, so to each their own!  I did appreciate the drawings dotted throughout the books.  They really added to the dreamlike, alternate and fluid reality that I was suspended in as the reader.  Also, excellent title!

Extreme Encounters

 Extreme Encounters: How it Feels to be Drowned in Quicksand, Shredded by Piranhas, Swept up in a Tornado, and Dozens of Other Unpleasant Experiences... by Greg Emmanuel
2002
Weight: 16 oz
Method of Disposal: Giving Away

There was some interesting information in this book, but overall it is not my cup of tea.  It is a collection of short, firsthand accounts of what it feels like to die in a variety of ways.  Sometimes, every once in a blue moon, the person lives, which is nice.  The jokes are terrible, and the author clearly intends them to be.  I think it is just a matter of taste.  I am sure the younger you are and the further away from death you think you are, the more you are likely to enjoy this book.

Yolanda's Genius

 Yolanda's Genius by Carol Fenner
1997
Weight: 6 oz
Method of Disposal: Lending Library

This was a surprising book.  I did not expect anything in particular going in, but I have not read a young adult book quite like it before.  The lead character is a large girl whose body takes up space, provides security, and glides through crowds.  She admires her Aunt in many ways but often describes her big, beautiful body too.  She is always eating and enjoying food, even as her mom periodically tells her she needs to eat less.  We, as readers, do not see her fatness as a negative but as a source of strength.  

She also wraps a self-protective attitude around herself and her brother and can, sometimes, come across as a bully but, what is most obvious, is that her and her brother are real children, with positives and negatives and strengths and weaknesses.  Only Yolanda can see that her brother is a musical genius and not just a tiny boy with a learning disability.  Only her little brother seems to be able to see his sister as a Queen, warrior, and protector and not just as a tough girl, always looking for a fight.  She looks like trouble, but she has learned how to construct and control life.  They have both grown up in the shadow of the grief of losing their father.

There is a strong mother, a magical aunt, a scrawny young girl with the potential to be a true friend, a teacher with a stutter.  There is so much going on in this book because of how it is written.  It just sort of whisks you away, and you just have to give in and follow its current.  If you don't, you may not appreciate it, but I just let it take me away and enjoyed it.

Day of the Dead

 Day of the Dead by Gina Hyams
2001
Weight: 12 oz
Method of Disposal: Lending Library

We are fast approaching Dia de los Muertos, which I love learning about, even as I worry about cultural appropriation, the more and more you find skulls and skeletons lining the big box stores.  This book was given to me as part of a Day of the Dead box with an altar and skeleton back when I was in high school...so, exactly what I am talking about, potentially.  

The way I was raised to think of death was as an eternal goodbye, a devastating blow, an open casket, people sharing stories of the dead at a funeral, whether they knew them or not.  There are spreads of Southern Comfort food--potato salad, mashed potatoes, macaroni, cakes--once the funeral is over.  After that day of mourning, we do not do much more as a family.  In private, you can grieve.  I think, maybe once, as a family, we visited the grave of a loved one some years after their funeral, briefly, on the way to some other family event.  People are separated by heaven and hell or there is nothing after death, depending on who you are with.  Since I came out at 13, I have been assured that hell is where my soul will be by some and others have given no thought to it at all.

What I do know for sure is that death makes me worried, upset, confused, overwhelmed easily and fast.  I guess we celebrate lives and living in our own ways, but I love the idea of this holiday.  A day when the lives of those who have died are celebrated and the distance between the living and the dead is not so far away.  The strong family ties and the history all spun up into a colorful, fun, rich, sugary celebration.  From the outside, it looks so beautiful and seems so healthy.  

The more Dia de los Muertos becomes more common place in the US, the more I keep my distance and observe.  Uncomfortable with the conflation of it with Halloween, and the mass production of products made to sell for profit.  Costumes, barbies, action figures, movies, on and on.  I do feel like, from afar, it still has much to teach me though, and I appreciate it.

The Stranger in the Woods

 The Stranger in the Woods:  The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel
2017
Weight:15 oz
Method of Disposal: Giving Away

This is a hard one.  The story itself is very interesting, a young man goes off into the woods to survive by way of minor theft, staying hidden, and building a rudimentary encampment in Maine.  He spoke one word to one hiker in 25 years and survived some brutal winters.  He claims he did this without even lighting a fire.  Some people consider him a simple thief, others a convicted felon who made them feel unsafe for years, and others think of him as a wise man who has done the unthinkable and potentially knows some great truths that the rest of us may struggle to obtain or may never obtain.

I am of the train of thought that he is not just a simple thief or felon, and that there is no reason to resent him for being "lazy," as many have, and also that he is not a magical, wise man with all sorts of insight. I do feel for the families that lived in fear and were scared someone would break in with their children in the home, though I do agree with those who think prison time and a life sentence would make no sense in this case. To me, he is just a man with mental health concerns that are unlike most of the population and, because of how his mind works and who he is, he managed to do something extraordinary that many of us could not even begin to conceive of doing.

As for the author, I struggle.  I am excited with him when Mr. Knight (the "hermit") writes him back after he sends him a letter, but things get uncomfortable towards the end when Mr. Knight and his family plead with the author to leave him alone.  On the one hand, I do think he found a special connection with Mr. Knight and that there was something about him that Mr. Knight was somewhat drawn to and, on the other hand, CONSENT.  It is hard though.  Things are not black and white when Mr. Knight says that he will likely kill himself and asks the author to turn away and leave him to it.  Mr. Knight also tells him, at one point, to write whatever he wants and that he is not concerned about it at all.

Some people really think the author is exploiting Mr. Knight, and I really believe the author is genuinely enthralled with him and cares about him.  I think this book was likely a labor of love and enchantment but, when a man tells you to leave him alone enough, you do need to leave him alone, of course, which he ultimately does.  So, I clearly do not know anything and have no answers, but there is no way around the fact that this is a unique and interesting story.

Laughable Loves

 Laughable Loves by Milan Kundera
1999
Weight: 9.1 oz
Method of Disposal: Leaving in Lending Library

How is it that Milan Kundara was one of my favorite authors at some point?  I really did not enjoy this book at all.  I do think he is an excellent writer, but he treats women like trash and there is never a believable woman character.  They are all just receptacles for toxic masculinity and potentially ejaculate, depending on how successful the deplorable, inhumane male characters are.  I hated it.

Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man

 Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man
2020
Weight: 18 oz
Method of Disposal: Giving Away

What can I say about this book that has not already been said?  Likely, nothing.  I can tell you that I read it before falling asleep, and I had nightmares all night about the Trump family.  I kept waking up in the night, in a stupor, frustrated with Robert Trump, who was trying to surrender a dog.  I cannot tell you how many times I woke up gritting my teeth saying, "We will take it.  We will take it.  I can't leave that dog with you.  I told you.  Just let me deal with it in the morning."  I was so tired the next day.  I said something in passing to my Dad in a text, and he wrote back, "You made me laugh out loud about a politician's dead brother coming to you in a dream requesting he surrender his dog to you.  I know exactly what that means.  It means you work too much, and you need to see less news."  He might be right about that!

Also, the other thing that is evident is that if Trump is elected again in November, we are in HUGE (YUGE!) trouble.

Superfudge

 Superfudge by Judie Blume
2003
Weight: 6 oz
Method of Disposal: Lending Library

I have been catching up on all of my children's literature I collected from working in the Children's Department at Barnes and Noble many years ago.  I remember reading Fudge and Superfudge even before that and, of course, Judy Blume.  She has made quite a legend of herself.  I was in my car just the other day when Amanda Palmer came on, belting out a song about Judy Blume.  It was fun to read Superfudge again and now I hope to pass this book on to someone it was really intended for, a child.