Place of Birth

I haven't been able to read Precious Bane or any other book right now due to my class & also being on overload right now.

I don't know if anyone else out there ever gets to book burn out, but I've been in it for about a week now. I can't read anything. This happens to me about 4 times a year, & then it goes away as mysteriously as it came.

So until I get out of it, I thought I'd try something new.

I thought of some of the questions we have to answer all the time, like when we go to a new doctor for the first time, filling out a job application, things like that.

And then I thought I'd answer it in a way that they didn't intend to hear--completely.

So my first question is the title of this entry.

And the answer is:

The place I work.

Oddly enough, I work at the same hospital in St. Louis, MO where I was born. It sounds pretty cool, until you realize that St. John's is literally a baby factory. They had a billboard up a couple years ago on I-270 listing the thousands of babies born there that year. I guess that was supposed to make you want to have your baby there, but I would think it turned off about as many people as it turned on. I mean, everyone wants to think that their baby & their experience is utterly unique & incomparable to someone else's. The thought that 15 minutes after they swab down the delivery room they're going to have some other poor, screaming wretch in there doing the same thing you just did doesn't fit in with the *magic* that is your own birthing experience.

But all that aside, it is kind of neat to walk the hallways there & think about traveling back in time to when I was born. I'd like to sidle up to my parents & tell them that their newborn baby girl was going to be working at that very hospital in 27 years. Of course, they'd assume I was going to at least be a doctor there, if not director of the whole shebang. But there are great benefits to being a lowly pharmacy tech. Like learning all the secret passageways & staircases that seem to abound in every nook & cranny. For example, I was overjoyed (really!) to have found a new way to get out of the building the other day. Out the back door, up a poorly marked stairwell for 2 floors, take the door on the left & presto! you're in the courtyard by the fountain! I didn't even know a door was there! I felt like Marco Polo walking into the Forbidden City (except, was he forbidden there?). It was like a re birthing process--OK OK, that's going too far.

But it is interesting to see that no matter how far I think I've come, I'm still at the same place I started.

Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer ***

HA! Yeah, well, I...

Nevermind, I won't try to justify reading the next book. All I'm going to say is that it's better than the second book. And I'm sure I'll end up reading the 4th book, since I've sworn never to do so. So just wait awhile, it'll be up here soon.

Meanwhile I'm going to re-read a book from a couple years ago, Precious Bane. I've tried looking on here to see if I've reviewed it, but it doesn't seem to be here. So what the hay! It's become one of my all-time favorites, up there with Katherine by Anya Seton. It's the kind of book that, for some reason, I hold so close & personal that I don't want others to read it. I guess I get scared that someone else would make fun of it & blemish the smooth, round, wholeness of this beautiful story. It's a deeply personal journey, I find, to read Precious Bane. I hope some other people out there read it & it touches them too.

New Moon by Stephanie Meyer ***

Yes, I did it. I read the next book in the "Twilight" series. I'll say this for it--I'm not as gung-ho to read the next book in the series now. I got tired of the whole werewolf thing, & Edward annoyed the hell out of me.
But that doesn't mean I won't be reading the next book. I'm not a monument to fine literature. And for all I know, Stephanie Meyer will be worshipped a la Jane Austin in 200 years.
I guess we'll just have to wait & see!

A Brief Intermission...

I've been taking a psychology class (long story short, I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing career-wise before I turn 40. Time is running out!), so I haven't been reading as much as I'd like to be right now. I'm being one of those older, ultra-prepared students that reads all the text assignments before class discussion & studies diligently. I don't know how long I can sustain that since I'm lazy & easily diverted by nature, so I may have a new book on here very soon if I can't keep acting like a grownup.
Til then, I hope everyone has fun reading!

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch *****

I was first aware of Randy Pausch when Katie Couric announced his death on the evening news on July 25, 2008. I guess by that time the youtube film of his last lecture had made him famous, but I wasn't in tune to that as much as others & so had never heard of him. After seeing the news story, Dog went online & listened to his lecture. He told me it was great & I needed to watch it, but there's a lot I need to do that I don't get around to & that was one of them.

Then a few weeks later, the interview he did with Diane Sawyer aired & we watched it together. There were excerpts from his lecture included, but I still wasn't convinced. I guess I just get tired of having people held up as the ideal, either in the way they live their lives or how they die, & feeling like a very selfish, sub-human creature afterwards because I get upset about not getting what I want. I feel sometimes that's the set up the media gives us so we'll buy more stuff & try to become perfect.

But this Christmas, a friend of mine from work that I don't get to see very much anymore gave me the book. First Dog read it, then Dick read it. Then I finally gave in.

Here's the thing that's great--never does he make out that he's got the answers to all life's problems. The book is for his kids. It's all the things he wants them to know, that he wasn't going to be able to tell them himself. It's not for anyone else. We can read it, of course, but he didn't write it for us. And that's the beauty of the whole thing.

Twilight by Stephanie Meyer ***

I know, I know. I've jumped on the teenage-girl bandwagon & read the book that all females under 18 have read about 5 times & seen the movie about 6 times & talk about with their friends on a constant basis. And it's pretty good.

If you haven't heard of this series of teenage vampire books yet, you may need to look around you & see if your home is indeed under a large slab of granite. Geared toward teenage girls & all they crave, Twilight is one of those books you don't want to like, but you do. As a 38 year old woman who's been married for almost 15 years, some of the sappy romantic lines made me roll my eyes, but the tension between the 2 main characters is great. Edward is a vampire, & Bella isn't. So she's always running the risk of him getting a wild hair up his ass & eating her. Yep, it's a little different.

Reading this book was like time travel for me, not because my high school years were anything like what the characters experience (HA! Not only did I not date any vampires while in high school, I didn't date any humans either!), but because of reading vampire books. Interview with the Vampire was out in paperback, & my best friend loaned me hers after she finished it. Soon we were both on to The Vampire Lestat & then Queen of the Damned. That's as far as I got in the series, though my friend read every last one. But I so much remember talking with her about every little detail of those books, all those years ago: who should play Lestat if they made a movie? how could they actually get a child to play Claudia? was Lestat really so bad?

Those were the days!

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson *****

Every once in a while you come across a book out of nowhere--you don't know why you picked it up, but there it is in your hand & you're going to give it a chance. Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon was like that for me--I just found it laying on a shelf at the library & grabbed it. It was great, not just because it was well written, but because it was mine--I found it all by myself.

I can't claim that with this book, but I wish I could. I found it here, the same place I found the previous book. From the get go, this book is crazy. Get this--a porn star/producer wrecks his car while high on cocaine & booze & suffers horrible 3rd degree (maybe 4th degree) burns to his body, one burn being so bad he has to get a penisectomy (yep, it's what you think it is!). While in the burn unit at the local hospital, a beautiful female psych patient come into his room & tells him that they were lovers in 14th century Germany. Thinking her crazy, the narrator (who I just realized is never named) is not sure what to make of her, but after her repeated visits he starts to warm to her. She's the only visitor he gets, outside of his PT & a staff psychiatrist, & she seems to care for him deeply. On her visits she tells him stories, either about her own life & how they met or about other star-crossed lovers. Despite himself, the narrator is pulled into her life & a bond is formed.

You've got to admit, the premise sure grabs you. But what's wonderful is that it doesn't disappoint after the initial shock. It's a wonderful first novel, & I can tell it's a first novel for Andrew Davidson because it seems to be full of all the stories he's been pondering over the years as he got up the nerve to write. I hope he can continue on the road he's begun, because I for one would love to read more from him.