It's Monday 11/11! What Are You Reading?

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Life

 The bad news is that I have been feeling awful, stuck in a bad flare-up of my chronic illness for the past three weeks. My body’s been wracked with constant flu-like aches, which tells me that something has triggered my immune system into overdrive (again). The most likely culprit is my chronic yeast overgrowth, which was well-controlled earlier this year with medications, probiotics, supplements, and a strict diet. My only guess is that my diet had slipped a little bit and maybe my prescription antifungals aren’t as effective anymore. I saw my doctor this morning, and she put me on a stronger antifungal, and I’ve been back to a strict 97% carnivore diet (a few bites of certain veggies with lunch and dinner) for the past few days, so I hope that helps. 

I left the office and burst into tears because a) I felt so bad after being there for an hour and b) my intelligent, compassionate primary care doctor of the past 22 years is retiring! She was close to tears herself. It’s not hyperbole to say she saved my life 22 years ago when she accurately diagnosed me after a year of having doctors say, “I have no idea what’s wrong with you,” and she immediately offered me treatments for a disease in which most doctors still say there’s nothing they can do. She’s trying to figure out who she can pass me (and a few other similar patients) onto who can continue to provide this kind of care. I’ve been so fortunate to have her. OK, I’m starting to cry again, so how about …

Some good news! My husband and I squeezed in one more fabulous three days of camping (he’s winterizing the camper now, as I type this). We went to Trap Pond State Park in southern Delaware, one of our favorite spots for late fall. It’s home to the northernmost stand of cypress trees in the US, and they turn a brilliant orange color in fall. It was a very low-key visit, since I wasn’t feeling well, though we did manage an hour in the kayaks, floating around and enjoying nature. Otherwise, I spent much of the time in my lounge chair reading, with gorgeous views all around me. Here are a few highlights. I’ll be posting my vlog of the trip to my YouTube channel tomorrow.

Sunset from the shore on our first night

Morning view from the dock, a few steps from our campsite

Gorgeous fall foliage

Beautiful reflections

Turtle on a log

See the teeny-tiny turtle at the highest point on that log?

Cypress trees in the water

Ahhh … reading about the natural world in this beautiful place

Our campsite

Happy campers!

Some cypress “knees” that look like a hand reaching out of the ground!

Sunset lights up the cypress trees

Savoring my last moments

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Middle-Grade Review: Not Quite a Ghost by Anne Ursu – I broke my new resolve not to write full-length reviews because I so loved this wonderful new book from one of my favorite authors!

If you’re in the need of some laughter, check out my new post on my chronic illness blog, Books, TV, and Movies to Tickle Your Funny Bone

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Nonfiction November 2024: My Plans – my pile of possibilities for this annual challenge that I look forward to every year (with some interruptions from our Halloween decorations!)

Friday Reads 11-1-24 Halloween edition! - my update of the 5 books I read/finished at the end of October for the R.I.P. Challenge

Kayaking in Trap Pond, Delaware – a quick 45-sec video of the natural beauty

#CurrentlyReading – a 1-minute short about my current read, from the park

Friday Reads 11-8-24 – Nonfiction November – my weekly update

I squeezed in one last print book and one last audio for the R.I.P. season, then jumped into Nonfiction November.

I ended my spooky season reading with a classic: The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, one of the early authors of detective noir fiction and the first appearance of P.I. Philip Marlowe. I gave this to my husband for his birthday and enjoyed reading it myself. Here, Marlowe takes a case for a dying man whose two young adult daughters (and his heirs) are both wild and out of control. Someone is blackmailing the man (based on his daughters’ gambling and sexual escapades), and he wants Marlowe to find out who’s behind it. This was a very twisty mystery that was far more complex than first appeared (for the reader and for Marlowe), and soon the bodies begin to pile up. We both enjoyed reading this classic (and now will never get the Jeopardy questions on Chandler and Marlowe wrong again!).

And my last audio book for spooky season was the middle-grade horror/thriller, Nightmare Island by Shakirah Bourne. Twelve-year-old Serenity has recurring nightmares of silver butterflies, absolute silence, and other strange, frightening images. She’s heard the phrase “face your fears,” so she pours herself wholeheartedly into making her own stop-action horror movies. Her little brother, Peace, whom her parents call “the perfect child,” often helps her by creating paper figures of the monsters she describes. But Serenity feels out of place in her family, where everyone is always telling her to quiet down and that she’s too noisy. When her parents announce they’re taking Peace away to a silent retreat on an island, Serenity doesn’t go to her grandmother’s as planned but stows away on the ferry to the island where her family is headed. What she finds there is more strange–and terrifying–than anything Serenity could dream up in her movies. This unique, twisty, action-packed story draws its inspiration from traditional Caribbean mythology. I enjoyed it–middle-grade horror is about my speed.

My first book for Nonfiction November is Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia-to-Zion Journey Through Every National Park by Conor Knighton, and I am loving it! After his fiance left him and he was at loose ends, the author, a freelance contractor for CBS Sunday Morning, decided to visit every one of the 63 U.S. National Parks in one year. He created some pieces for the show throughout that year, but the journey was also a personal one. This isn’t a travel guide. While Knighton does sometimes focus on interesting geography, flora, or fauna, he also digs into history and focuses heavily on people: those who lived in the areas before the parks, those who created the parks, and those currently live, work, or visit them. He tackles subjects like borders, diversity, God, and love. It’s a fascinating, engrossing set of stories, made even better by the author’s wonderful sense of humor. It’s kept me riveted–and often reaching for my iPad to look for pictures and more information.

My first nonfiction audio book is Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times by Azar Nafisi, the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran. It’s structured as a series of letters to her father in Iran from her home in Washington, DC. It was written in 2019-21 and reflects on the “post-Trump” era (I know) and the parallels between the reign of the Ayatollah Khomeni in Iran and what she sees happening in her adopted country more recently. As she writes to her father, she discusses many classic and modern works of literature, as they were accustomed to doing together in earlier years, and how these books relate to events in both Iran and the U.S.: The Satanic Verses, Fahrenheit 451, The Bluest Eye, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and more. It’s thoughtful, thought-provoking, and powerful, and this seems like exactly the right time to be reading it.

My husband, Ken, finished reading Dracula by Bram Stoker and is now reading his first book for Nonfiction November, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann, a gift from me. He’s enjoying it so far, though he said it was pretty gruesome at the beginning, as people on the ship began dying of scurvy (apparently, not a good way to go).