What you should read next – April 2019 – didn’t you know there could be shelves upon shelves upon shelves of books written about your strength?

The Mist

by Stephen King

This is an old Stephen King book about one misty afternoon when giant octopi, spiders, bugs and birds appear out of…the mist. We start with a town full of people and end with only a car-full of people, driving down the eastern seaboard of the United States trying to stay alive and to see if anyone else is also still alive. I spoiled it for you, but you’re not going to read this, are you? If you like Stephen King, you’ve probably already read it.

No cell phones and ten cent pay phones make the story feel dated. I don’t remember ten cent pay phones. I remember twenty-five cent pay phones.

Stephen King is the king of horror. He’s vivid and descriptive and you’re never sure where he’s going to go, only certain that something bad will befall the world he created.

Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

by Matthew Walker PhD

Apparently sleep is the cure for everything. It strengthens your immune system, your memories, your digestion, and your everything else.

You’re preaching to the choir, author. I retired because I love to sleep.

No other species demonstrates this unnatural act of prematurely and artificially terminating sleep, and for good reason.

Translation: alarm clocks are killing you. Maybe I should stop setting it to just to shut it off with glee.

The author and I cannot emphasize enough how good life can be if you get enough sleep. Let your body recharge properly.

Based on epidemiological studies of average sleep time, millions of individuals unwittingly spend years of their life in a sub-optimal state of psychological and physiological functioning, never maximizing their potential of mind or body due to their blind persistence in sleeping too little.

Sleep is good. I fall asleep pretty quickly and wake up whenever I wake up, refreshed. Mostly. It’s the best thing in life.

Do you ever worry that your takeaways from what you learn is just you reaffirming your own beliefs? I do.

13 Reasons Why

by Jay Asher

This book started out weakly, but it quickly got interesting and I finished it in one sitting while on the tenth floor of a cruise ship. It’s narrated by a 17-year-old girl who kills herself and explains why in cassette tapes and her acquaintance (almost friend/boyfriend) is listening to the tapes and inserting commentary.

Because every time something bad happened, I thought about it. It? Okay, I’ll say it. I thought about suicide.

The anger, the blame, it’s all gone. Her mind is made up. The word is not a struggle for her anymore.

After everything I’ve talked about on these tapes, everything that occurred, I thought about suicide. Usually, it was just a passing thought. I wish I would die. I’ve thought those words many times.

It’s the toxic, repetitive thinking that characterizes depression.

the witch doesn’t burn in this one

by Amanda Lovelace

A long poem about women’s empowerment.

i didn’t come here
to be civil

I didn’t come here
to sit you down

with a mug of tea
& a blueberry muffin

to coddle you as
I try to convince you

that respecting
my existence is essential.

you’ve had plenty
of chances

& you took a
hard pass every time,

so I came here
to watch your anger overtake

until you finally
c o m b u s t .

– i’ll use your light to read

One more quote that’s a little less confrontational

didn’t
you know
there
could be

shelves
upon
shelves
upon
shelves
of books

written
about
your
strength?

– as always, the women save themselves in this one.

Outer Order, Inner Calm: Declutter and Organize to Make More Room for Happiness

by Gretchen Rubin

I’ve read almost everything from this author, but I learned nothing new from this book. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and Spark Joy are better books on clearing clutter. I know it’s highly idiosyncratic, but Marie Kondo speaks to me.

If you’ve never read anything by Gretchen Rubin, this one is a fast and good introduction with lots of advice for every sort of person, but if you’ve read her other stuff, you get the idea.

Uncanny X-Force: Final Execution – Book 1

by Rick Remender and illustrated by Jerome Opena

Perusing the shelves at the library, I came across this X-Men comic book. I used to love the X-Men as a kid. The trouble with comic books is that there are so many and unless you make a serious effort to read them in chronological order, you’re dropped in the middle of a story you only understand bits of. This is book one of the series, but there’s still back story I’m missing.

Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment

by Robert Wright

I could be a Buddhist. A Buddhist and a writer. It sounds better than an atheist and a retired lawyer.

I’ve been meditating daily for more than seven months now and I recommend it. I recommend it as much as I recommend working out every day and as much as I recommend retiring young and living your best life. Meditating is up there with the best of them.

It is the study of how the human brain was designed–by natural selection–to mislead us, even enslave us.

We are not our brains.

The object of the game isn’t to reach Liberation and Enlightenment…on some distant day, but rather to become a bit more liberated and a bit more enlightened on a not-so-distant day. Like today! Or failing that, tomorrow. Or the next day. Or whatever. The main thing is to make net progress over time, inevitable backsliding notwithstanding.

This book is good, discussing the various whys of meditation and bringing in science and the default mode network.

My mother used to say, “We wouldn’t spend so much time worrying about what other people think of us if we realized how seldom they do.”

I spend a lot of time wondering if people think about me. So much wasted time.