@TheBookHippie @Amiable @ncsufoxes @Deblovestoread @GingerAntics

Thank you for all the book recommendations.

My Uncle: John Lassiter. He died in an Austin hospital in 1992. I know we would be good friends if he were alive today.

AIDS is not gone but those we love aren‘t either. They live on in us and the ongoing fight in the face of hate. We hold them in our hearts always.

This is a wild memoir! A terrifying month started with nightmares of bedbugs, but quickly turned to tingling, numbness, paranoia, hallucinations, seizures, memory loss, and more! Thankfully, a doctor was finally able to diagnose her, and it started with asking her to draw a clock. If this hadn‘t happened, she might have been permanently disabled, gone into an institution, or dead! She recounts it all here. (There is also a screen adaptation⬇️

The nun life isn‘t for me but I‘m very interested in reading this book! Listen to a conversation with the authors here:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nprs-book-of-the-day/id1587369865?i=100073...

You don‘t need a weight set at the gym, you can just use these🤣

I hated for the series to end! I didn‘t expect the new world that the author left us with, but I guess it wasn‘t a bad place to end it. The books and graphic novels have so many important lessons to remember. Many of us love dystopian, apocalyptic stories. Some of us even long for it. If such an ‘end‘ were to come, how would we respond? Would we retain our humanity in the face of such horror, building another world based on togetherness—or⬇️

I‘ve always wanted to read this book and thankfully my husband had an old copy. I knew it was dark, and right away I noticed similarities between it and the series Yellowjackets. This book is banned, but of course it shouldn‘t be. It‘s an important coming of age story with the real world horrors that can take place when young boys are left to their own devices (with a taste for violence). Too much testosterone on this island for me!

Author Thomas DeBaggio, (1942-2011).

Photos before and during/after Alzheimer‘s.

Diagnosis: 57 years old.
Death: 69 years old.
Over a decade of pure hell. 💔

I wanted to read this book quickly to get it out of my house, and donate it to a local little free library. These memoirs are all too personal to me—as a hospice volunteer I spend time with patients (and their families) who have this demon of a disease; my father has it too, and as of now, has been on hospice almost 3 months. The author was diagnosed with early onset at only 57 years old, and died at 69. Here, he shares his early experiences ⬇️

It may appear to be just another illness, especially of the elderly, but Alzheimer‘s is a unique and wrenching disease that destroys the mind, without which you lose your sense of being human. In its early stages, when you are most sensitively aware, you watch helplessly as you slowly lose yourself. Memory disappears. Language is gone. You forget who you are and become lost and dependent. Yet you continue on in silence, the body unsure ⬇️

I know it is difficult for them to watch me deteriorate and if I keep quiet they won‘t see what is really happening. I do not want to make them suffer with me but I also want them to understand the uncontrolled evil this disease represents. They must know, as others should, the destructive power of it. Although subtle in attack, Alzheimer‘s is the closest thing to being eaten alive slowly. I am losing my ability to wrote. I see the signs⬇️

I‘m 82 pages in, and this is a hard read. These kinds of memoirs always are.
You can see Thomas isn‘t there in this photo…he‘s far away somewhere. Link to listen: Tom' DeBaggio's Decade With Alzheimer's Disease

https://www.npr.org/2010/06/16/127857149/a-decade-of-alzheimers-devastating-impa...

There are hundreds of Holocaust memoirs, but it doesn‘t matter how many you read—each one is unique, and each one will tear your heart open. This is exactly why we should continue to keep these stories alive. Books like these are being banned at an alarming rate. A new American Gestapo is running rampant. Nazis are coming out and gaining momentum.
The author survived Auschwitz and Mittelsteine and recounts those experiences here. For each⬇️

This book is full of stories of extra sensory perception. ESP can take many forms—dreams, gut feelings, waking visions, etc. The author dives into these experiences and what the threads might be that connect us with them, and each other. ESP is a very common thing even if people don‘t talk about it. I‘ve had many of these experiences.

I don‘t think I‘ll ever travel to Hawaii, but this book definitely took me there. It is filled with beautiful art and stories of this volcanic goddess.

The $8500 house the author wanted so badly. What?!
The Historic McConnell House in Wurtland, Kentucky, in Greenup County, near the Ohio River.  Est. 1833.

Amanda and Brad have a chat🩵📚

Link to listen: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/straight-white-american-jesus/id1441649707...

Fellow book nerds! Who among you has read any of these books? The Murdaugh murders happened not too far from where I currently live. I saw the property from the road last year with a friend; my husband and I have watched the Hulu series, the Netflix documentary, and the 2-part movie. I‘m not sure if I want to read the books yet. Should I? If you read them, what did you think?

I started reading about NDE years ago. I watch documentaries and listen to podcasts about it. Atwater took a deep dive into studying it after having had her own NDE, and has written several books on the subject; her NDE is told in detail in her book ‘Coming Back to Life‘. This new book has got to be one of the best I‘ve ever read on the subject as she goes into a lot of detail about culture, science, metaphysics, and more. Fascinating!

I like reading medium memoirs, but not all of them. The ones that feel more personal, that share what it‘s really like—not the televised performances. I really felt like I could relate to this one.

Shown: snowberries at Snoqualmie Falls, WA.

I enjoy haunting memoirs. The author‘s story appears on the tv series Paranormal Witness, Season 2, Episode 2…but her book is much better. For years, she lived in fear in the old Brooklyn house she and her family lived in, until finding out what happened to the restless spirits occupying her home, and why they were there. Fascinating, personal. Books like this help open up the conversation for what many experience but fear to talk about.

When I started reading this book, it reminded me a lot of Poltergeist (film). Here is a memoir from the 1980s in Crosby, TX: when a family unknowingly moves into a new subdivision that was built over a historical Black cemetery, they quickly find themselves in an unreal situation. I couldn‘t help but be reminded of how many Black communities have been destroyed and covered up (Central Park, Lake Lanier, etc).

In a dystopian setting, people are controlled by the government. Emotions are illegal, and faces are masked; it is a dehumanized society. When a young boy dares to defy the authorities, he is sent back to the distant past in an attempt to tame him. But will he come back the same?
An YA novel but important lessons for everyone in our times.

Link to listen:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/front-burner/id1439621628?i=1000735691270

We now know the truth. Diversity results not in universal good but in evil. We know that music, art, dance, poetry—all these ancient and deviant activities—only inflame the emotions. They must be rooted out. We discovered long ago that there is but one road to Universal Good, and that road begins with Conformity. Conformity begets Harmony begets Tranquility begets Peace begets Universal Good. ⬇️

I will read anything Thich Nhat Hanh writes. I‘m not Buddhist, but he is a wonderful teacher. His words are ever a balm in a world where there is so much pain. This book is about our relationship with the living worlds around us, and how to get that connection back in order to heal ourselves and the other beings around us.

This book looks at the old matriarchal societies, differing greatly from the ones we live in today. Once, women ruled. They had many rights and were not only respected but looked to for guidance on the deepest matters of life. They played every role in a community. Today, we have fallen far from the relationship we once had with nature, the living worlds around us. The book examines the demonization of women and its parallels to the⬇️

I enjoyed this intimate memoir of one woman finding friends, herself, and witchcraft in 1990s NYC. She learns about history, mythology, the old ways, how to tap into various forgotten but ever present energies. She also learns how the misogyny still playing itself out today has ancient origins.

I‘ve always been a medieval nerd, so I enjoyed this memoir. The author decides to take a pilgrimage on foot to Canterbury, just like the peasants of older days did. Filled with history, this is an educational memoir with healthy dollops of Chaucer thrown in. Folks who enjoy Renn fairs will enjoy this book.

I‘ve had this book for years and finally read it so I could give it to a friend. It was a roller coaster. A bit of a slow burn at first, the pace picked up towards the end. The antisemitism was a bit much at times but I understand the point the author was desperately trying to make. Takeaways for me: we never know when our most vulnerable moments might come, and we don‘t know the story of someone else unless they decide to tell us; is the⬇️

The best way to overcome [the fear of death]—so it seems to me— is to make your interest gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river— small at first, nearly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past boulders and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks ⬇️

Still one of my favorites!
Link to listen: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nprs-book-of-the-day/id1587369865?i=100073...

Marcus Aurelius was among those who offered another way to come to grips with a prospective of nonbeing: the period after death, he pointed out, is like the period before birth. You didn‘t spend the billions of years before you were born in a state of anxiety and apprehension, because there was no “you” to be aware of anything. Looking back now, it doesn‘t seem frightening that there was once a time when you were not conscious. Why then ⬇️

If death marks a permanent end of your consciousness, then from your point of view when you die, the entire future of the universe (running into tens of billions of years or more) must telescope down not just into a night, as Socrates described, but into a fleeting instant. Even if the universe were to go through other cycles of expansion and contraction, then all of these cycles as far as you are concerned would happen in zero time. What ⬇️

Oh, to hear Anne‘s voice again. Link to listen: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nprs-book-of-the-day/id1587369865?i=100073...

One of my favorite books🎙️🩸🪦

Link to listen: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nprs-book-of-the-day/id1587369865?i=100073...

In these stories of the apocalypse, happy endings are possible. That doesn‘t mean that people haven‘t died, or that horrible things haven‘t been done. But what it does mean is that those humans who populate the world and maybe the world itself are different, better, even, because of what has been endured. It means that in the great battle between life and death, the only war that matters, we continue to choose life, life in all its ⬇️

Someone recommended this book to me years ago. Reading it now, it saddened me when the different chapters presented an imagined circle of women surrounding me, to help me through each new stage of my life. (Growing up within a fundamentalist household, I didn‘t have this). What if? My life might have turned out very different. Maybe someday, we will finally break free from patriarchal hold. Until then, (and always), love the women⬇️

This was a scary and depressing book. Every moment, our bodies are at risk of something else we cannot see claiming it as its own, whether in becoming badly disabled, very ill, or dead. I couldn‘t help but think of Mr. Brainworm himself, RFK Jr, while reading this book. Frightening times.

I used to have more of an interest in hearing about spiritual and religious journeys than I do now. Maybe it‘s got something to do with the United States becoming a theocracy…
This memoir has a little humor. The author has a moment when he thinks about death, and is inappropriately asked about his spiritual state; he then goes in search of something but not knowing what, and meets many interesting people on different paths along the way. ⬇️

I really liked this book. The author has died but his words are ever significant. The book isn‘t just First Nations spirituality and teachings. It goes deep into examining the harmful systems we live in today that are destroying us and our planet. Recommend.

I came to know of The Lady Chablis thanks to the southern scandel in Savannah, GA (‘Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil‘). In this memoir, I got to know her a little better. She had quite a life and was never afraid to live her truth.

‘Maus and the Power of Images‘, via Borrowed and Returned‘ Podcast. Link to listen: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/borrowed-returned/id1453877748?i=100072806...

Mama got the name Chablis off a wine bottle. She didn‘t think it up for me though. It was supposed to be for my sister. Mama got pregnant when I was sixteen, and she wanted a little girl. She was gonna name her La Quinta Chablis. But then she had a miscarriage, and I said, ‘Oooh Chablis. That‘s nice. I like that name.‘ And mama said, ‘Then take it, baby. Call yourself Chablis from now on.‘ So ever since then, I‘ve been Chablis.

Another wonderful book in the peculiar series. The adventures are more dangerous and more enlightening. Ancient time loops, more magic, and the origin of the hollowgasts! You don‘t want to miss this!

I was in ninth grade when the Columbine massacre happened in 1999. Since then, many more have occurred, and the violence is only increasing. In this memoir, Dylan‘s mother shares her grief and tries to make sense of the actions her son and his friend Eric made on that fateful day. Heartbreaking.

I love the peculiar series but haven‘t finished it yet—I still have to read 4-6. This short collection is full of more folks from the peculiar universe…and there are some strange ones, with moral lessons in each story. My favorite? The Splendid Cannibals. It has to be one of the strangest stories I‘ve ever read, but I love it!

I love food, cooking, and ghosts, so I knew I wanted to read this as soon as I saw it in BookPage magazine. The main character has a unique ability (clairgustance) to taste a dead person‘s favorite thing, down to the last detail. He makes the dishes, and briefly, the person appears. I was picturing Carmy from The Bear the entire time.

I loved this book. We have gotten away from community death care but it is making a comeback. The author shares her experiences with this, and her own experience after her mother died. The book is written beautifully and has many resources for green burials and beyond. I found it fascinating when she spoke about the mysterious storm that came on immediately within minutes of her mother‘s passing, and again, exactly one year later. Recommend!

Like mothers all over Littleton, I had been praying for my son‘s safety. But when I heard the newscaster pronounce twenty-five people dead, my prayers changed. If Dylan was involved in hurting or killing other people, he had to be stopped. As a mother, this was the most difficult prayer I had ever spoken in the silence of my thoughts, but in that instant, I knew the greatest mercy I could pray for was not my son‘s safety, but for his death.

💔

Sit down, Vance.

Link: https://bittersoutherner.com/hillbillies-need-no-elegy-appalachian-reckoning