* Picture to come later (taking a break at work and it's at home) but I finished the hat for my mother for Christmas. I also started the cowl for my niece. Hoping to get some done on it tonight.
* Went out to my field site to get the next set of bags, found the area marked "CLOSED FOR CONTROLLED HUNT." There was a Texas-tagged van out there that COULD have been USACE workers, so I decided not to chance going in (I probably would not be anywhere near where hunting would be taking place) because I think they're empowered to at least ticket trespassers, which I would technically be. I'll make a note in my lab book and go back next week when it's open again; it'll just push the remaining samples back a bit.
* On the Too Many Books front, again: I received a catalog from "David R. Godine, Publisher"
I thought of tossing it but I looked at it - it had a couple books that intrigued me AND ALSO they were doing a big sale of "mystery boxes" of books (not mystery books, a box that is a random choice) for $7 for what normally cost $50 and I can't resist a thing like that even if several of the books won't interest me or are ones I have.
I ordered from their website, which is refreshingly old-school: really, it feels like some of the late 90s/early 00s websites I used to order from. Oh, maybe a little more graphically enabled, and you can pay with PayPal if you want, but it still feels old-school, and I like that. The simplicity is nice: it's not larded up with "reviews" of questionable trustworthiness from "users" of the site (AMAZON, I am looking at you) nor does it try to recommend marginally-related things to that which you have already ordered. It's cleaner, somehow, and more oriented to people who just want to scroll/browse.
I THINK - though I'm not sure - that the Godines were somehow related to the late, lamented catalog I used to get, I think it was called The Common Reader? Or at the very least, The Common Reader carried some of the same books, and same TYPE of books. It was a little, staple-bound, newsprint catalog, maybe about 5" by 8" or half-sheet sized? Very simple, printed in black and white (though the cover was often a solid color with a drawing from one of the books. I enjoyed the catalog immensely and again, the catalog blurbs were often a better guide to whether I'd like a book or not than "user reviews" on Amazon.
I was very sad when it ended (somewhere back around 2005) because it was always a pleasure to look at, and was often a source of books-as-gifts (or I often requested books from it at gift-giving times).
So yeah, I threw a little custom Godine's way. I would like to see them continue. And also Milkweed Editions, a publisher I ordered from a while back (My next novel-read is going to be one of theirs, called "If You Cross the River" (and yes, I am already bracing for it to be Sad, based on what I know about it) - it's about an illiterate Francophone boy who lives with his embittered father, but again, it sounds kind of poetic even if it's going to be sad.
I think maybe in the future I do try to order some from the small-press catalogs rather than the massiest of mass retailers, book wise? It's nice and kind of refreshing to see an 'expert" blurb about a book, or a short review written by someone who's read a lot/teaches literature/is themself a writer rather than the loud rabble of random people, some of whom may have valuable opinions but some of whom will not, and some of whom either have axes to grind or are trolling.
And yes, maybe.....maybe in a world out there that seems to increasingly shout down "experts" as part of an "elite" that is not to be trusted, maybe I turn away from the loud rabble and do listen to the thoughtful people even on things like my choice of reading material - the last few books I picked up because someone I know and whose opinion I value said "I enjoyed reading it," I enjoyed them too. (I have never been a fan, in general, of the big best sellers; I know my taste is idiosyncratic). I would rather find the small books, or the weird books, or the books that few people talk about, and read those. And that may mean ordering from small presses.
And Bas Bleu is similar, though it also feels like it leans a bit more "mainstream" than The Common Reader did (though I do have a couple volumes marked in there to ask my mom for for Christmas). And Bookshop is now my online go-to bookseller, though they don't really have a "catalog browsing" set up like Godine and the smaller booksellers do online, and that's what I really like - a smaller selection of volumes but it be possible to easily scroll through them and see some detail.
Another thing I remember about The Common Reader - all the books they sold - or at least all I bought - were nicely made. They were properly bound and didn't fall apart, and they were a pleasing size, with enough white space in the margins. They didn't feel "cheap" and I think I respond to that.
* I did start (last night, in fact) a book that I'm reading in tandem with Legends and Lattes, it's nonfiction/essays and is called Enchantment - Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age. (Katherine May). I am not very far in and I don't know if I will start rolling my eyes at it at some point (I sometimes do with the sort of extreme-introspection books like these, like, the first fifty pages will have me going "you know, I think this person understands exactly what I'm dealing with" and then it comes out that they are actually WILDLY wealthy and live in a beautiful place, and are surrounded by a loving family and maybe even have a couple hired helpers and I then feel like, "no, they actually have it much easier than I do, I don't know what their issue is") But right now she is talking about the effects of pandemic isolation (she has a son, and is apparently close to her mother, but she is also divorced/a single parent, so). And some of the things did resonate with me. So I'm going to keep going on it and hope I don't wind up rolling my eyes, and that I do gain some insight.
One comment she made that resonated - that it seems we deal with constant change now, and it's so fast that we don't have a chance to adapt to it, and I feel that hard. I don't deal well with change, even minor stuff like my plans changing (I quietly raged for a moment or two in my car when I saw the "CLOSED" sign on my field site) and .... well, she writes about being recently diagnosed as being neurodivergent and I frankly really wonder if I am, too, based on some things I've experienced. But anyway - do not like constant change and the feeling that things are getting worse.
* Though things are better now than they were even a few months ago. I don't feel the bouts of extreme "why do I even bother?" so much any more, and the whole thing with the gremlin sitting on my shoulder hissing "remember you are mortal" (and also, even more; "Remember everyone you love is mortal and will probably die before you") that took up residence there after my dad dies is silent for at least a day or two at a time now. And I've felt more like doing stuff; I've gotten better at taking a couple hours on a weekend morning and cleaning the place up again instead of just letting stuff lie where it is. Part of it may be having unusually engaged upper-division students this semester; it feels like I can teach again. A big part of it may just be time to let my brainmeat recover from the various shocks it's suffered since summer 2019. (I read recently that "depression CAN go into remission" and while I'm not sure I was ever exactly clinically depressed, it does feel like things have shifted and it's easier to look at the future and go, "well, maybe there WILL be something fun and cool, or I'll do something good." I suspect it may have been a prolonged *situational* depression, which started with all those closely-spaced deaths of people in my life, and then the little health scare, and then the pandemic - which dragged on for a while, and even into last semester teaching wasn't like it used to be, and the whole "spending my whole entire life savings on home renovations and just having to trust that if an emergency comes up, I can budget well enough to cover it" and yes, those emergencies did happen and though my mom DID help me out in a couple instances, I'm still afloat).
Of course, some of this feeling could be coming off a weekend where I
- got out of town and spent a couple hours walking around in nature and looking at stuff
- got to do a little gift-shopping for people
- saw a partial annular eclipse (I used a piece of tinfoil with a pinhole to project onto a white card, so I could see it without harming my eyes)
- got some knitting done
- have a mostly clean house now
- recovered from a surprisingly extended bout of stomach trouble following a GI virus (seriously, until Saturday morning I was asking myself, 'could your gall bladder actually be failing?' but now I'm fine)
And we'll see how I'm doing the end of the day Wednesday (typically my hardest day) but also after the hard days I need to remember there are days when I get up feeling good and ready to do things.
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