Books -2, -1, 0, 1

 Firing up the old typewriter because I Finished A Book Today! But first, some of the books I finished in the last few weeks before the official start of Project Read Some Books (I should come up with a name...)

Book #-2, The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath

I read this on my phone, which normally would be supremely uncomfortable, but the book was so good that I didn't really feel it to be so. For context, about a year ago I was at a personal crossroads regarding my marriage and life in general; one day, sitting at my desk at work, I read some of S. Plath's poetry (the beekeeping series) and it resonated clearly with how I felt about myself. The image of the feeble queen bee ("Is she dead, is she sleeping?") suddenly reborn into a powerful figure, I felt I was reading about myself and my future. Sappy, maybe, but this is kind of expected of impactful moments like this one.

Anyway, a few months later I started The Bell Jar and loved it. It is heavily dated in its context (it has 1953 written all over –through?– it), but the inner struggle of the character is timeless. The process of sinking into depression was perfectly captured. I suppose it might feel a little different for different people, but when I was in my late teens, the growing feeling of unease, of disconnectedness, of knowing something is wrong but thinking it must be something external, that if you could just find out what it is and fix it– I remember feeling all of that.

And then to boot, I was reading this book when I found out that my friend Mike died. Myself and three other friends decided to go to a cabin a few hours away from the city, eat some mushrooms, and hopefully have a cool time. We arrived on Friday, settled in, and planned to eat the shrooms on Saturday. Come Saturday morning, I woke up before anyone else but because the floors of the cabin were stupid and creaky, I stayed in bed reading The Bell Jar. While I was at the part where she's doing her internship, I got a text from my (ex)husband informing me that Mike (by then a mutual friend) was gone.

Against my better judgement, I had some shrooms anyway and had an awful time; after a few hours one of my friends (S.) noticed I was spiraling. He took me to a river and I was finally able to laugh and laugh and laugh for the rest of the day. All four of us walked in a meadow and saw cows, rock, plants, the sky, and just laughed and laughed at everything. Then on Sunday, two of us (A. and I, the two who were friends with Mike) left early to go to a church service in his memory.

The next Monday, I "worked" from home but really just stayed in bed and finished reading The Bell Jar.

My friend M. later sent me pictures from when we were in the meadow and said "It was nice to see you so happy".

I didn't realize I had so much to say about Sylvia Plath, but there it is.

Oh, I later read her short story "Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom" and found it trite. The Bell Jar, though, was fantastic.

Book # -1, Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut

This book is obviously excellent and there's not much I can say about it that hasn't been said already, except my own experience with it. This was a re-read; I think I must have read it in 2018 or 2019. This time around I read it in Puebla, on a weekend trip with friends in which (among other things) we went to a paleontological site.

Anyway, I was sitting by the pool in the bizarrely architected house we rented, reading this book. (Actually, this was also before anyone else had got up; a disturbing pattern as I never considered myself a morning person, but I guess I have aged into being one.). When I first read it years ago, what jumped out at me was the idea of small chemical imbalances (or other tiny processes) affecting behavior; but what got me thinking this time was that the book dwells a lot on how ideas (or lack of ideas) determine what is even possible for people to do. And as I mentioned in my previous post, I decided to be more intentional with what ideas I let into my mind. So this book contributed quite a bit to the Read Some Books project.

Book #0: K2, Triumph and Tragedy, by Jim Curran

This book was written not long after the "Black Summer" of 1982 on K2, where a fuckton of expeditions were made to the mountain, and a whole lot of people died. After a bit of a slow start, I actually found this book very interesting and informative, not just about the Black Summer in general but also about K2 and mountaineering expeditions in general. Or at least, about how traditional mountaineering expeditions were in the 80s.

It did grate me the wrong way that he consistently referred to adult, accomplished women climbers as "the girls", and to members of the Korean expeditions simply as "the Koreans", whereas every white man is called by name. If I summit K2 I would like to be called by my name also, please.

After reading the book, I watched "The Last First: Winter K2" (highly interesting), and having read the book, I was able to understand and appreciate the documentary much more.

Book #1: The Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut

This took me a while to get through (a couple months or so) because it was the book I kept in my work backpack, and I only read it at the office. But I finally finished it today.

This is maybe the fourth or fifth Vonnegut novel I've read. It might be the one I've enjoyed the least, but it is still fascinating and worth a read. The central idea about the meaning(lessness) of life, free will, and destiny are obviously never going to get old.

I did find it to be a bit of a slow start, but easy to read and pretty interesting.