Here are a few thoughts on the books I read in form of the often short and possibly not very substantial reviews on Storygraph. Even if I don’t rate book as such anymore, I’ll here share them in order of how much I enjoyed reading them. Favourite first, obviously.
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, Gabrielle Zevin, 2014 If I still rated books, this would have gotten 5 stars. Such a lovely story about real people and their lives, misfortunes and mistakes but also their joys and achievements. It’s also about books and why we love and need them. Sooooo good. This has been the 3rd book I read from Zevin and I enjoyed all of them. They’ve all been unique in their plot, which I also liked a lot because it shows how good a writer she is. I’ll definitely try to read more of her.
No Time Like The Past (The Chronicles of St Mary’s #05), Jodi Taylor, 2015 Another entertaining story from St. Mary’s. There is always so much going and again they are a whirl-wind through history, that I sometimes wish they’d slow down a bit. I mean they do in the plot, but it’s not noticeable in the storytelling as such. I just sometimes feel like I’m loosing track of who’s where/when and what’s happening to whom and all. But maybe that’s just me.
The Edge of Lost, Kristina McMorris, 2015 The summary mentioned “skillfully weaving these two stories” and I found that misleading, because it wasn’t really two stories, was it? I don’t know. I kind of enjoyed the story, but it was such a slow burn and sadly enough I didn’t manage to care about neither the main nor some of the side characters all that much. The end comes with a few surprises at least, but by that time I had already almost lost interest.
The Lighthouse Library, Rachael Lucas, 2024 I enjoyed most of the previous Applemore books, but didn’t know this would be a standalone in the series. It was nice enough, but to me it tried to hard to be educational about environment and poverty and all that stuff. It would have needed more substance for me to have any impact, to me this felt a bit performative.
The Wake-Up Call, Beth O’Leary, 2023 I enjoyed previous works from Beth O’Leary, but this just didn’t quite land with me. The writing was fine and the plot idea as such okay for me. I liked the competition angle and miscommunication as a trope often enough works for me, but at least halfway through the story I wanted to knock some sense into the female lead and force her to address what upset her last Christmas. Ugh! The actual reason for the not / wrongly delivered reason was so lame IMHO. All in all… just no cup of tea sadly.
The Guncle Abroad, Steven Rowley, 2024 I guess after how much I enjoyed “The Guncle” a sequel had a lot to live up to. For me this story sadly didn’t deliver as much as I had hoped. Parts of it felt too much like a travel advert for Europe, parts were just a bit silly. I didn’t understand either why Greg and Livia had to marry right now and neither why Patrick had ended things with Emory. I tore through it on a weekend, but if I’m honest a lot of that had to do with me wanting to get it over with.
American Panda, Gloria Chao, 2018 For some reason this book wasn’t for me. I found the writing a bit boring, didn’t find it in me to care all that much about the main character and all in all neither the plot.
and overwhelmed by perfectionism (and no ‘perfectionism’ actually is not a positive character trait). While I thought I should write a review of the whole album, because that’s what I did for all the previous ones. There were a few songs on that album I have lots to say about and others just very little. How on earth would I be able to reconcile those two aspects? So I didn’t even try. Until the penny dropped and I realized that I do not have to write a post about the whole album, just because I did that for all the previous 9. I do not have to write about all those songs in one go. Duh!
It needed a trip to the mall yesterday to finally sit down and start typing.
But I didn’t use to be this agoraphobic
I had to pick up something at a store at that mall and while I expected Saturday shoppers, I obviously underestimated the amount of people out and about. When I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by the sheer amount of people around me, I was reminded of how since March 2020 any kind of crowd made me quite anxious for a long time.
This might need some context: I’ve always been easily anxious and worried about things. Due to a chronic neurological illness (Multiple Sclerosis) I’ve also been and still am part of the high-risk group for a COVID infection. Anxiety prone and especially vulnerable to a potentially deadly disease? Of course that would affect my mental health! I didn’t realize that for a long time though.
Panic attacks in the dentist car park, Losing my temper in a Jersey sports bar – Safe to say the twenties have been weird.
There were so many moments in 2020 / 2021 where I got anxious about and also pissed off at people. Back in the very early days when we thought every close contact even outdoors could be dangerous and we didn’t have the “several minutes / indoors” risk assessment yet, I always got so angry at all the runners who passed me without a wide berth when I was out walking on the rail path. In hindsight I know I was overreacting, but in that moment, I felt vulnerable and I was angry about the lack of consideration from other people.
Leftovers of the pandemic years
I’ve got similar memories of trips to the supermarket, where I once got angry at a guy who I thought was pushing his cart to close into my path. Outrage when the pizza delivery staff didn’t just put the box on the stairwell as I had asked them to with my order, but rang the doorbell to hand the box over. In hindsight I know (again) that I was overcautious and not at any risk by that behaviour. But we didn’t know that in the early days, did we? And it made me so anxious and angry.
It’s not just you and it’s not just me That has pandemic PTSD.
Post traumatic stress disorder Is characterised by persistent trauma Caused by severe psychological shock or else physical injury.
I know in general PTSD is more used for “Big T traumas” like having been in a war, accident, abuse of any kind. And I probably wouldn’t call my experience of the pandemic years PTSD as such. But the pandemic sure did a number on me to some degree. Many experiences but also the strangeness of these past years are still somehow seared into my brain and still pop up quite often when I return to some locations. Up until late 2022 / early 2023 those flashbacks to previous experiences were accompanied with the visceral reaction of feeling anxious. The latter lessened over time by now, but the memories as such still pop up from time to time even now another year later. Often just little things like being in this one particular mega store, where the checkout queue at one point went all the way to the back of the shop (40 metres or so). The checkout in another supermarket I regularly frequent is next to the entrance to the pharmacy where I had to get my first vaccination registered in my vaccination card in spring 2021. Returning to department stores which you were only allowed to enter when you had current proof of a negative COVID test. So many snapshots, which have quite faded by now but have not disappeared from my memory yet. I sometimes wonder if they ever will. And will I mind if they don’t?
Until it’s OK to admit that I don’t know how to feel About the shit that we just lived through – it was kind of a big deal.
And one day it seemed like everybody decided They were tired of trying and bored of hiding it, Ready for the next adventure, next news cycle, next catastrophe. [….]
As you can gather from what I wrote so far it definitely was a big deal for me! It didn’t help my mental health that there was other negative stuff going on in my life in 2021. But I also was baffled and disappointed and pissed off how so many people wanted to move on from this very traumatic experience too soon for my taste. Moving on in the quite practical sense of not wearing masks and not keeping a distance anymore right away when any rules about it were lifted. Of not being considerate to take a test / stay home when they feel sick. Not to mention the blatant disregard of potential long term risk of repeated infections or the many, many people already suffering from Long COVID. I just recently read a magazine feature about two women (early 30s and early 40s) whose lives shut down because of that and about their struggle to get any kind of decent care and support. It’s horrific!
And we stood in the wreckage trying not to claim That we had more than our fair share of the pain,
Part of the wreckage I stood in obviously was my anxiety gone through the roof due to my own personal health situation. The other part was, how I lost quite a bit of faith in my fellow human beings. Faith that most people in general are decent and have some common sense and empathy for others. My outlook on society might have been a bit naive / optimistic before that, but something definitely broke for me in 2020/2021. I’m aware that society has started to be more divisive even before that (culture wars and all), but I didn’t expect it to go as far as it has been during the pandemic years and since. I was baffled / shocked how people with a university degree (in science!) and especially health professionals decided to blatantly ignore science and instead shared misinformation and conspiracy theories. How toxic and violent the whole debate quickly turned online and offline. How ordinary people ignored rules and advice, because they either didn’t believe COVID was serious or because they just didn’t care. How our government and we as society so easily brushed over what 2 years of distant learning and contact restriction did to a huge part of children, teenagers, young adults.
I don’t have a solution for any of those things, which have been broken. I still struggle with the mental health side of it sometimes. But at least now I’ve got a song I can scream along to when my frustration with it all gets too overwhelming. And at any other time as well, because it’s a great song in general!
another informative, well balanced “A Muslim & A Jew Go There” (from last week, I still need to catch up with this week’s)
A bit out of left field among the fangirling, self-care and current politics issues podcasts, is the DLF “Hörsaal” podcast (in German), which I try to listen to from time to time to broaden my horizon. The podcast basically is audio recording of a science lecture, usually not from a regular uni class or curriculum, but often from special lecture series or conferences. Either way, I always learn a lot. This episode was about the problems arising nowadays from the Allies Forces decisions to disarm Germany after WW II by dumping all stashes of Nazi war munitions into the North and Baltic Sea. Nerdy topic? Absolutely, but fascinating:
This week’s podcasts highlight today was a long Talkhouse Podcast chat of Billy Bragg with Frank Turner. (fangirling – see above). I sort of knew Billy Bragg of course. I mean who with an interest in rock music and/or progressive politics hasn’t heard or sung along to “A New England” at some point in the last four decades ?!?!? And I was well aware of Frank relationship with / connection to Billy, but it was still super interesting to learn more about it. Learn more about Billy as well, because while I know off him and what kind of troubadour he is, I didn’t really know a lot about him. I shall rectify that by listening to more of his music on the weekend. Highlight of this chat was the common thread of how making music and listening to music and going to gigs and finding your people in the process shapes you and your view of the world and how much it all can mean to people. Or not just can, but does mean to people. Case in point those two guys who have been standing “on raised platforms in rooms” for 40 / 20 years. And also myself, who has learned and changed so much since I started listening to Frank’s music and going to his (and other) gigs and meeting people and all that.
I downloaded another new podcast interview with Frank today. Yes, I know, I’ve heard all the stories and anecdotes by now, but in most chats there are still tidbits of information I haven’t heard before. In the “Listen Carefully” one Frank mentions literal references to a song, which I never knew about and to be fair, I still don’t see / haven’t found the line he has drawn there. But I jotted it down to look into it at some point and if I find the reference and source material and all I might include it in the “Lyrical History”. In due time…
