At some point this year I saw a series of tweets. I cannot recall exactly when they were, or how far apart, but they led to me ordering Marcie Rendon’s “Murder on the Red River” from Birchbark Books in Minneapolis.
At some point this year I saw a series of tweets. I cannot recall exactly when they were, or how far apart, but they led to me ordering Marcie Rendon’s “Murder on the Red River” from Birchbark Books in Minneapolis.
I’ve spent the past hour and a half trying to get my nephew to let go of the absurdity he claims he saw while walking to school this morning. It’s not going well at all.
I always have a hard time talking on the phone. The other person can’t quite understand me, or I mishear something they say. The other side waits for a second to see if their brain will review the words and come up with some kind of conclusion only to eventually shrug its shoulders and send the command to say something like, “Yeah, yeah,” or laugh in the hopes what was said was supposed to funny.
Something I find myself thinking about a lot in these times is what rather mundane tasks now would look like to us a year ago. Take, for example, my reading of Celeste Ng’s “Little Fires Everywhere.”
Unlike my last read where I jumped into book 2 of a series without reading the first, I came fully prepared to Suzanne Collins’ “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.” I started the “Hunger Games” prequel with full knowledge of its existing world having read the original trilogy twice and having seen all of the movies.
Choosing a new book to read can be a process that takes different forms. One might have heard an interview with an author, written down the title and thus be laser-focused on that particular book. Alternatively, it could be a more random process of wandering a book store and letting some aspect of a book call out for attention. The latter can lead to interesting consequences.
In normal times, we would have baseball right now. It would be fun, a nice relaxing way to spend an afternoon or evening and not worry about the rest of the world for a while. For now, the best we have is the Washington Nationals replaying broadcasts of their playoff games and posting clips from big moments on their social media accounts.
Some books and their characters grab you in a way that makes you say, “Hey, that’s me! That’s my life! My experiences!” Others are a reminder that whatever proximity you may have to certain life experiences, whatever knowledge you already possess about underlying history, culture and issues, your job is to sit back and listen.
I’ve spent a lot of my professional life during the past six or seven years with a responsibility for keeping an eye on what is going on day-to-day in a few regions of the world, including the Middle East. That has meant sometimes a hyper focus on things like the Iran nuclear deal negotiations and tangentially related things such as the arrest and prolonged, unjustified detention of Washington Post Tehran Bureau Chief Jason Rezaian.
When times here on Earth are particularly stressful or weird, I often find some solace in the escapism of a good science fiction read. It’s an opportunity to escape reality by suspending some disbelief and letting the author paint an often futuristic world that at least someone thinks will turn out great.
