So, in late 1988, I resigned from the King County Police and was a "trailing spouse" when my then-wife Lisa transferred to her company's home office in Charlotte. For a year and half or so, I was un- or under-employed, being a housekeeper (first in my own home and then for some friends) and doing some temp work. I had two years to re-up with the department; it would have been a prudent financial move and some folks suggested it in that context, but I never seriously considered it. Why? Because I hadn't realized until I stopped doing it just how much physical and mental toll the job was taking on me and I sure didn't want to go back to that.
I gotta tell ya, I kinda feel the same way now. And to put it in positive way, I find that I have the kind of headspace for projects and activities that I didn't even realize I was missing. Not only has my art practice really matured, but I have the mental bandwidth for other activities - like reading. To wit:
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow. Although cleverly written, this is pretty academic tome, and I slogged through about 75% of it before setting it aside for a bit. Through archeological and anthropological evidence and inference, the Davids cast doubt on the
Great Hunter-gather to Agriculture Theory of the development of cities and civilizations. Fascinating insights into human life at its very beginnings, and I will finish it. (Promise.)
Falling from Grace by Beverly Conner. I suppose this novel would fall into the category of literary fiction, but only if you define such as narrative that does not fall into a genre such as Mystery, Thriller, Horror, Romance, Western, Fantasy, Science Fiction, etc. But it is not "literary" in the sense of arty or pretentious; it is a riveting story of real people facing real problems - physical and emotional - with real consequences. And it has a hella good sex scene. (Full disclosure: Bev is a family friend and I adore her.)
Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, Jason Stanford. Three apostate Texas journalists commit the grand heresy not only of questioning the strategic decision by revolutionary Texians to defend the Alamo and the supposed heroics that ensued, but also of casting new light on the the political motivations of some of the main players in the story-now-legend. It's about a yard wide but a mile deep, and it's apparently pissing of a lot of Texans, so that may be reason enough to read it.
The Hail Mary Project by Andy Weir. If you liked
The Martian, you'll love this - another intrepid hero sciencing the shit out of problems, this time in deep space instead of our own solar system. I might be seeing a little more depth to some characters, and it did make me laugh out loud more than once, but it's pretty much the same song, only louder. But if this keeps up, the next book should be even better.
The New Breed: What Our History with Animals Reveals about Our Future with Robots by Kate Darling. What if instead of making robots in our own image to do the things we already do, we took a cue from our relationship with working animals and had them do things they they were better at than us and built them in whatever shape worked best for what they needed to do - run, crawl, slither, lift, or just be cute? Kate Darling takes us through a long but never labored analogy between machines and animals and offers some great suggestions for rethinking the future of automation - and our automated future.
That's all for now--more to come for sure!
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