Reading in Progress
I tend to have a few books going at the same time. This page is just what I'm reading right now.
The Hitch
A woman picks up a hitchhiker and becomes convinced the hitchiker is inhabited by the soul of her dead dog, which sends her into a quiet spiral of fixation and meaning-making, about grief, projection, and how we invent stories to survive loss. This is the kind of zany read ive been attracted to lately to keep my wits delighted in weird times.
The Atavists
An atavist is someone (or something) that reverts to earlier, more primitive traits, biologically, psychologically, or socially, a kind of regression where instincts resurface and old patterns break through the veneer of modern life (I looked it up!). Its the idea that civilization is thin and the animal, ancestral self is never that far away. This is a book of short stories about people having these experiences.
Service
A grumpy writer suffers daily having to deal with, ugh, books, in an ugh, bookstore, where ugh, readers, ugh, want to talk to him, ugh. Then other successful writers come in to the bookstore in this hip Los Angeles neighborhood, and triple ugh. Life is insufferable, and reading about this particular instance of it is pretty funny but also, ugh, a little cringe.
Girl Warrior: On Coming of Age
Joy Harjo, the 23rd Poet Laureate of the US, is truly the wise auntie we are all lucky to share. This is a memoir / way to be in the world kind of book. See the poem that opens the book [For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet](https://poets.org/poem/calling-spirit-back-wandering-earth-its-human-feet)
When You Are Engulfed in Flames
My autographed copy from the neighborhood book box is sure to cause guffaws. Annotations to follow.