Hiding in Books Lately.

My sorry schedule of updating this sorry little blog is even more sorry lately. Sorry.

I'm just...hiding from the world as much as I can right now. I am a politically active and involved American, and I'm just so disgusted I have to actively disengage for the sake of my blood pressure. I will of course contribute in every way I can to get Secretary Clinton elected, but I just can't take the immersion in the day to day insanity, hate and lies (and NO, it's not "both sides"). I've been thinking about writing about my encounters, and the realization that some people really are actively, willfully ignorant and like it that way, and it's frustrating as hell. BUT this is not about that.

This is about what I've been reading/listening to lately. (I count listening to an audiobook as reading and use the term interchangeably.) So does Amazon's Kindle Unlimited and it paid off big time for me this month. I had been thinking of dropping my subscription. It's around $10 a month for unlimited downloads of books identified as "KindleUnlimited" selections, and honestly, a lot of it is pure crap. I've stopped reading a lot of books and returned them to make room for other choices, thanking God I hadn't paid for that load of crap that somehow had rave reviews on Amazon (vanity Kindle author has a lot of friends, methinks).

So I was thinking it's not worth it, and then holy shit, a truly amazing trilogy by a real author was offered up for free! I have been burned many times, so tried the first one with my "Eh, it's free," attitude and have been devouring the rest of the series as fast as I can. Brilliance. It's alt history science fiction - our current time, but tweaked. Starting around 1980, a small number, maybe one in a hundred, children were born with extraordinary abilities - sometimes physical, sometimes mental, it could be math or spatial awareness or extraordinary memories or the ability to read body language down to the twitch of an eyelash - and the effect those children have, especially as they reach adulthood and start a second generation of "brilliants" is incredibly complex. I freaking LOVE these books so much, it's hard to put into words. The author doesn't fall into any cliches of Evil Government Forces vs. The Good Guys - the good guys are on both sides and are complicated as hell, and a lot of blood is shed as the "normal" and the "brilliant" are pitted against each other by members of their own kind, and at the end of the second book in the trilogy the country is in a new civil war. It's fast paced and very original, and I especially like how Marcus Sakey created ordinary woman "minor" wife-type characters who are smart and strong and step up when confronted with insane adversity. Apparently he's a prolific author I'd somehow never heard of, and now I want to read everything else.

I'm also working my way through Linda Castillo's Kate Burkholder series. They are addictive, though by halfway through the series I have started to think of tiny Painter's Mill as Cabot Cove, Maine, the fictional town where Jessica Fletcher solved murders on a weekly basis. (Never, ever, have tea with that woman, btw. I mean Jessica Fletcher, not Angela Lansbury. I'd give up a month's pay to have tea with her.) The Kate Burkholder series has a similar issue: though the crimes are all original, interesting and well-written, that charming rural Ohio county apparently has a murder rate to rival a major city. Still interesting brain candy with likeable characters and an interesting setting, and I like them enough to pay for them.

Otherwise, it's work and books and peeking out of my bunker now and then to check in with Facebook. And Disney. We went to the Magic Kingdom and I rode Splash Mountain for the first time in 20 years! I'd forgotten how long and fun that ride is! Everyone focuses on the big drop at the end, but the rest of it is adorable! We'd met up with my daughter's friend and her little girl, who was riding it for the first time. I rode in the front, and we got wet, but not soaked. I do wonder why I bother to style my hair before going to Disney, and wonder how some of the women in the ladies rooms look so groomed, standing at the mirror touching up their lipstick and running a brush through their hair. A few hours of sweat and sun and wind and roller coasters and I look like I've been shipwrecked for a month, and I don't care. I am cultivating not caring about a lot of things that would otherwise annoy me or piss me off. Yoga. Yoga is good.