Book Corner 2023.64 & Roundup

64 books read in 2023. Up from 58 in 2022 and 61 in 2021 and 59 in 2020. I am counting a few “Charlie Brown Cyclopedias” but why shouldn’t they count! 

Best book and best fiction was The Greengage Summer.

Best non-fiction was What’s Our Problem.

#64 for the year:

You Are Not Expected to Understand This

by Torie Bosch (editor)

It’s nice to read about coding. Usually in the world of books it’s like we don’t exist.

May 2007

5-12-07 (age nearly 38)

“dear k,

so when was the last time someone wrote you a real letter huh? ha. waiting for a 9-hour train ride to begin gives you a lot of time to think things over. i guess a normal person would call you on her cell phone or text or email you from a laptop or some other gadget. anyway listen, everyone’s a therapist right? everyone’s just full of good advice. well take it or leave it.”

As I recall, I did transcribe my wonderful advice into an email to him when I got home, and he sincerely thanked me for it. However, my next entry states that I “succeeded in making him feel like crap”. I prefer to remember myself as being helpful.

August 2002

8-20-02 (age 33)

“you like to say people can’t be separated from their behavior. it goes for you too. don’t think that the true you is some idealized form behind the behavior. your behavior is all you are too.”

Thankfully with this book I stopped writing backwards.

Book Corner 2023.61

The Big Fail

by Joe Nocera & Bethany McLean

It needed to do a better job sticking to the topic. I strove and failed to be interested in how private equity took over all the nursing homes. I wanted to hear more about the science of lockdowns and masking, and was it ever possible we could have kept it all from becoming politicized?

Interesting to hear about the lack of science behind boosters. Pfizer and Moderna wanted to keep selling shots – is this why we were encouraged to boost ourselves so frequently? I have lost count of how many shots I’ve had by now. Were ANY boosters really necessary? Something about long-lived T cells being more important than short-lived antibodies.

On that topic, they didn’t explicitly mention “First Shots First” – which some were wisely calling for, while instead we boosted people who were first in line for the first shots. We should have been getting as many shots into arms, as they say, as possible, period. This is me talking now. We did need some order and prioritization, but doses going to waste, that was a crime.

Maybe the worst way we screwed up, in hindsight, was closing the schools for so long. But I worried about the teachers.

March 2000

3/12/00 (age 30 1/2)

“i did it! now if i take one time [sic, seems it should have been ‘item’] per year i’ve got projects to last the rest of my life. i think i should work top down. this year i could do fitness. 2000 will be different from the preceding years by virtue of fitness. i’ll lighten my meals & exercise everyday. i’ll lose weight & shape up.”

Nooooooooooooooo it’s a trap!!!

January 1998

I find myself inside of a lengthy “clip show” walk down memory lane for a January 1998 New Year post.

1/19/98 (age 28 1/2)

“1996 – i was starting to feel a distinct & strange change of heart on the subject of living together. xopher & i spent plenty of nights together, probably most. between that & occasionally spending the night on pita’s couch – i think i was still doing at this time – it was rare that i’d wake up alone in my own bed. i did relish those alone times & still miss them sometimes – but overall, i wanted to be spending my time with him (or I wouldn’t have been doing it so often).”

I only vaguely remember sleeping on Pita’s couch.

Ah youth.