Jailbird

Jailbird by Kurt Vonnegut
1999
Weight: 9.6 oz
Method of Disposal: Giving to Mom

There is nothing better than reading Kurt Vonnegut when you are disappointed in people and the state of the world.  He makes the deplorable sound lighthearted and funny, in a dark, poignant way, of course.  I was reading this book and thinking, "I wish I had a Kurt Vonnegut book about life in a pandemic.  That would bring me some joy right now."  I guess Galapagos is the closest I can think of to that, but it is not what my hopes and dreams are made of.  Instead, I have moved on to Happy Birthday, Wanda June. I have never even considered a Vonnegut play.  I am a little unsure about how that will go.

I have received word that there is one named Slapstick!  Or, Lonesome No More that I need to check out.  I am excited about the idea of that because I do not own it, nor have I read it.  He was so prolific that, even when I think I have read them all, another can be found by going down the Google search rabbit hole of "Kurt Vonnegut, Jr."

At one point, while reading Jailbird, Harry asked me what it was about.  I read her the back cover, and her eyes glazed over.  She just began laughing.  Once she was through with her fit, she said it sounded like the most boring book around and thought it was funny that I was reading it of my own free will.

So, here we go.  It is a history of America!  It includes Sacco and Vanzetti, Watergate, McCarthy's hunt for Communists, the Cleveland Massacre.  You briefly meet immigrant laborers and coal miners, labor union organizers and women who work and die due to their work in factories.  Even a of those women!  There is so much packed into one novel, as is common for Vonnegut.

It is not that this is my number 1 top favorite Vonnegut of all time, but he has a way.  Whether I love his books a little, a medium, or a lot, they still have me laughing and just feeling connected in some way to someone else.  I am not sure who so do not ask.  He is the master of witty and one line can just pop up and stick with you forever.  Truly.  I have one tattooed on my back, maybe not forever, but for a lifetime.

This book was about greed, capitalism, America, politics, and power told through the life of a poor man raised as a wealthy man--a Harvard man--named Walter Starbuck.  Who would think that could be a "fun" read?  Thank God, for Kurt Vonnegut.  That is all I know for sure.

Frankissstein

Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson 2019
Use This Book: The Only Book You'll Ever Need! by Melissa Hecksher 2006
Adult Doodle Book
Very Hungry Caterpillar Coloring Book by Eric Carl 2003
Weight: 3.5 lbs
Method of Disposal: Sterilizing/Sending to a friend

I have a compulsive need to read everything that Jeanette Winterson publishes and have ever since I was 16 years old, working at Waldenbooks, and my coworker/dear friend introduced me to Written on the Body.  When I saw it was called Frankissstein in bright pink lettering with a triple x on the cover I did get concerned about if I would enjoy it, but even that title could not put me off reading it.

In true Winterson form, she was fluid about time and gender.  Her characters were extreme representations and the writing would sometimes get extra lyrical.  I ended up enjoying this book much more than I thought I would, and it made me want to revisit the original Frankenstein and read up on Mary Shelly and her crew.  I felt that if I could remember more it might mean more, but I suppose it is possible that it might also take away.  I appreciated frankenstein's many reincarnations.

I was surprised by some reviewers outrage at Winterson for the book being transphobic.  I am not transgendered, unfortunately, and cannot say that this book should not or could not be offensive to someone else.  I am just reading more and grappling with it.  I am about to do that here so please feel free to stop reading if you need to.

The number one reason I saw for it was that being transgendered was represented as a choice the trans character made.  One person was emphatic that it was no more a choice than being a lesbian woman is a choice.  I have always wondered about the choice argument though.  Why should I not choose to be a lesbian?  Why would I not choose to do so?  Isn't it a heightened form of freedom if I could live in a society that allowed me to CHOOSE my sexuality?  Now, that being said, I do not feel like I ever did choose it.  As young as I can remember (and my mother too, for that point), I have been fascinated with women and have never felt drawn to a boy or a man.  I do think many people are "born that way," and I am one of them.  Other women I have dated, though, have fallen on a spectrum of sexuality, and the woman I have loved for the last 7 years only recounts being attracted to boys/men, but she was attracted to me and fell in love with me.  If there is more than one fish in the sea and if "the one" is not just one person then did she not sort of make a choice?  And is that not ok?  Many people are born trans and maybe some "would not choose it."  If given the choice nowadays, where I live, I would absolutely choose to be queer and not heterosexual.

Given that Winterson seems drawn to the middle, the grey, the ever-changing area no matter what her subject area is, makes me feel this was not an offensive representation of someone choosing their gender.  The trans character also describes feeling both masculine and feminine all their life and making different choices at different times given both those gender identities where embodied within them in different capacities.  Winterson writes, "I'm a woman. And I'm a man.  That's how it is for me.  I am in a body that I prefer.  But the past, my past, is not subject to surgery.  I didn't do it to distance myself from myself.  I did it to get nearer to myself."  Now, other characters do react in a transphobic way to them.  That happens and is representative of the transphobia we see in life.

I also read that the transgender character was overly sexualized, but the transgender character did not come across to me that way.  The most hyper-sexualized and potentially offensive character was Ron, the heterosexual male.  There was a lot of graphic description about sex bots, but sex bots are real and often advertised much like they were in the book.  It may be because I am hyper-sexualized myself, but I just did not see that.  There were some seriously grotesque and unappealing descriptions, but they were not geared towards being transgendered.

The sexual assault came out of nowhere, and I was not sure it really added to the book except that it is something that happens and the character it happens to fights there way out with a lot of luck, strength, and fight or flight mode kicking in.  If we are supposed to be making a comparison between humans, monsters, robots, time travellers. emotionally wounded and patched up people then the assault does show that the character is not a monster, nor a robot.  In my life, sexual assault has felt jarring and contrary to my experience, and I am jarred by depictions of it regularly.  I am okay with that.  I do not want it to ever feel normal or ordinary.

What did pull me really far out of the book was one word that I believe was maybe used twice to describe the character, Claire.  She was a "black" woman.  The only character given a racial identity, and I could not find the reason.  I do not think we have to ignore race, but it is problematic to only identify one person and no one else.  Does that mean I just assume everyone else is....white? Why?

The things that really drew me in were the fluidity of time and humanity repeating and existing in a multitude of forms and environments.  The past foreshadowing the present and the future.  The present fight to know the future.  Broken people being a patchwork piece--regular Frakenstein's monsters.  The obsession with mortality taking away life.  What is it that scares us about Artificial Intelligence and what should scare us?  What does it say about who we are when we say what we really, honestly want about our robots, our relationships with others, our monsters?

I guess there is a lot to think about and unpack here, and I do enjoy thinking and unpacking.

947 books, 668.13 lbs

It has been awhile since I did a round-up!  I see there are some places I need to clean up at some point, where I typed lbs instead of oz, but I got it all added up.  Since this blog started in 2010, I have recorded and let go of 947 books (668.13 lbs).  I have so many more to go!  I know I have let many go without recording them, unintentionally.  I just thought one day I would get around to it and then I forgot--but, mostly, I write about them when they are physical books I have read and held onto.

 I am just hoping I have enough life left to record and let the rest go!

Where the Action Was

Where the Action Was: Women War Correspondents in World War II by Penny Colman
2002
Weight: 1.3 lbs
Method of Disposal:  Giving Away

This book was fantastic.  The women featured were absolutely incredible, and their life stories were fascinating.  It is just a taste of the world of women correspondents in the time of WWII, and it makes me crave more fiercely.  Wow.

Lee Carson wrote of life during war that it, "narrows down to an existence divided between fighting to stay alive and sweating out being killed.  The longer in the combat world the more improbable that other world--of sweethearts, mothers, baths, beds--becomes.  Death, dirt, and fatigue are the familiar.  All else fades into a dream.  Even such strong emotions as fear and hate are eventually wiped out by battle."

Martha Gelhorn says, "War is a malignant disease, an idiocy, a prison, and the pain it causes is beyond our telling or imagining; but war was our condition and our history, the place we had to live."

Check out this book.  The women are amazing, as our their stories and photos.

The Shepherd's Life

The Shepherd's Life: A Tale of the Lake District by James Rebanks

2015

Weight: 12 oz

Method of Disposal: Giving Away

I bought this book while visiting Harriet's home, friends, and family this past November.  I am always wanting to understand more about the place she grew up.  Harriet was definitely not from a family of shepherds, but there are shepherds and sheep all around that she has told me so much about.  She always grew up close to animals and helping other people with their horses, ponies, and other critters.  I found this book in a Waterstones and just started reading it this month.  I absolutely loved it.

The author's confidence in who is, his place, and his connection to time is powerful.  I cannot remember the last time I met someone who felt so connected to their home and ancestry.  I think that, in my life, it is only something that can be read about but, sometimes, a glimmer will shine through the fog of city life, a college education, and a family of people who all have different careers.  

I know physical labor at the animal shelter makes me so much more happy than all the meetings, computer work, and whatnot that make up much of my days now.  In kennels, you are aware of the changing temperature, the weather and what is to come, how the animals are feeling day to day.  There are clear tasks and a clear timeline.  The work is hard physically, though nowhere near as hard as a shepherd's work, but it is extremely rewarding.

This book had nothing to do with me and my life though.  It was about a family raising sheep in Northern England, and their place in an ever changing world.  The author particularly focused in on his grandfather, his father, and himself, though he also speaks about his mother, wife, and children.  I love how traditions have been passed down for so long that there are some things that are still done that no one really even knows why they are done, though they can speculate, such as "redding."  I also love how the sheep's genetic code ties the past to the present, sometimes over centuries.  That the effects of a decision made today may not be able to be seen for years.  That those effects may even show up after the person who made them is passed and gone.

Northern England is absolutely gorgeous from a visitor's perspective.  I remember the first walks we took around Harriet's village on my first visit.  I thought, now I understand why people have dreamed of magic and fantasy for so many years.  I had never understood before.  I remember the smells, the rain, the animals that were everywhere.  The little rules that everyone just knew about what to do with certain gates, with their dogs, with the grazing animals, even with driving on the narrow roads.  I was shocked to think of all the walls being handmade and to know that her grandfather had built so many--that she had helped.

This man though.  His connection to the land is from someone who is completely and always connected to it.  Not as a tourist.  It is not magic so much as it is a consistent, though evolving relationship, that is at once predictable and also completely unpredictable.  There are viruses, weather changes during lambing season, dogs to be training, outsiders coming onto the land, family crisis that shape the days and weeks, but everyone knows what needs to be done and there are all sorts of learned tactics to tackle problems that arise.  Verbal communication is not always so important, but hard work always is. 

This book is powerful and insightful.  I know more about sheep now after one book than I have learned in 34 years, and I still only know .00089 of what James Rebanks knows.  I see and respect the pride that comes from knowing where you belong and who you are, the value in doing many things the way they have always been done for centuries.  That is not something that I have spent much of my life recognizing.  As a lesbian identified woman in the Dirty South, I have always seen value in changing the status quo.  It would appear that, at least sometimes and for many people, that is not the answer.  I think I still have a lot to learn about from James as I think and dwell on this amazing book he wrote.