Fortuitous Reading Trails
Rainbow With Hint of Double“Hot with chance that rain will tease you with a drizzle” pretty much describes the weather forecast here in my part of New Mexico over this last week. There was one shower that was so light we didn’t even bother to go inside. Instead, we stood outside in the rain, enjoying a magnificent double rainbow.
In the picture above, you might not be able to see the second bow, but you can see where the raindrops hit Jim’s camera lens.
Fortuitous rainbows remind me of how my reading lately has been shaped less by plan than by a sort of fortuitous trail. Years ago, I bought a book by Con Slobodchifoff titled Chasing Doctor Dolittle. The book examines the question of whether or not animals use language, and includes a discussion of what makes a language. This turned out to be really fascinating, and led me to read Temple Grandin’s Animals in Translation, which in turn led me to read The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks, which in turn led me to read Temple Grandin’s Thinking in Pictures. (Note: all of the books in this paragraph are non-fiction.)
Another reading trail started when a friend loaned me a copy of Robert Heinlein’s Grumbles From the Grave, an assortment of Heinlein’s letters on various topics spanning several decades. This led me to listen to audiobooks of some of Heinlein’s novels. Orphan of the Stars held up well for me. I’d never read The Star Beast, but found it okay. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress didn’t hold up well for me, but that might have owed more to the audiobook reader’s peculiar choice of accents, especially for the Manny, the story’s narrator.
Other fortuitous reading came from ordering several books from a catalog including The Wisdom of Wolves by Jim and Jaimie Dutcher (of Sawtooth Wolfpack fame) and A Field Gide to Demons, Vampires, Fallen Angels, and other Subversive Spirits by Carol K. Mack and Dinah Mack. This last, in turn caused me to cross reference to various sources in my extensive collection of folklore and mythology, up to and including reading a large parts of a book about the Talmud.
Just to reassure you, this was my reading over several weeks. I do hope to return to my Friday Fragments listing of my weekly reading, but right now just one blog a week is about all I can manage between PT sets and routine chores.
Take care. Stay cool!
