Friday Reads: Lots to Discuss

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I finished three books this week and am halfway through another.

Further Viewing 🎥

Titles Mentioned 📚
Our Colors, Gengoroh Tagame (translated by Anne Ishii)
Deaf Utopia: A Memoir and a Love Letter to a Way of Life, Nyle DiMarco
The Hawk’s Way: Encounters With Fierce Beauty, Sy Montgomery
Elena Knows, Claudia Piñeiro (translated by Frances Riddle)
The Candy House, Jennifer Egan

My husband made a cookbook! Check it out here:

But wait, there's more!

[ArvaDavis]

Thank you so much for your videos and your love of reading. It gives me something to look forward to and a great distraction. I have been in a reading slump. I am trying to to be gentle on myself and take of myself. Keep doing what you do. Wishing and Joel a great weekend!

[steelcutoaths]

Man. The grief process is such an interesting thing. Some days we're totally fine; other days we're unimaginably sad.
I'm sending some positivity and peace your way today ❤️

[myreadinglife]

Definitely want to read that Sy Montgomery book. Elena Knows is everywhere lately and it sounds really good!

[Nina_DP]

Sending you a virtual hug. Your loss is so fresh still. You will never not miss Guinness but in time the memories will bring more smiles than tears.

Maybe put Elena down for now. I can tell you the sadness just builds and ends with a real gut punch. I was stunned by that book. Couldn't read or concentrate on another for several days after finishing it. You really should read it, it is remarkable, but wait until you are in a better head space.

Another commenter mentioned Helen Macdonald's H is for Hawk which is wonderful (and way more substantial than Montgomery's). It does deal with grief (her father dies very young, very suddenly) and she sort of processes the loss through her experiences attempting to train the notoriously difficult-to-train goshawk. Also included is a mini-biography of TH White (author of The Once and Future King) who wrote an account of his experiences with goshawks, which Macdonald read as a child. It sounds a bit all over the place (H is for Hodgepodge?) but works beautifully. Highly recommend.

For now, maybe take some time away from reading, or try a romance. Something you can coast along on while you ride out this wave.

Wishing you a good weekend, and some peace. xo

[bookofdust]

A stunning book that goes in-depth and intensive about training hawks is Helen MacDonald’s H is for Hawk, their memoir about grief over losing their father and throwing themselves into this consuming “hobby” that really took over and structured their life as a way to move on from the overwhelming feelings they were dealing with. It’s probably the second best meditation on grief after The Year of Magical Thinking. Helen came out as non-binary last year and I highly recommend the audio book as they have an wonderful British lilt to their speech and hearing them in their own words adds another layer of emotional punch to the narrative. There is also some dives into others who worked with hawks, mainly author T.H. White who wrote the Arthurian books. They talk about his failed project to write book about goshawk training like them and his complicated sexuality.


Synesthesia is fascinating, Nabokov had it and was one of the first prominent people to talk about it as far back as the 1960s. The American painter Joan Mitchell did as well, and her magnificent paintings of abstract color, to me, come closest to conveying some of what she must have experienced. An intriguing book that really explore its sensitively and with depth is the YA novel A Mango-Shaped Space.

[kiranreader]

elena knows is a really tough book to get through, but very powerful. hope you have a restorative weekend greg!! 💖

[fatimamuhammad]

I'm so glad last week I finished four books three in Arabic and one in English, in spite of We were in the days of Eid.
I hope the rest of the month your mood became better (والحزن يفارقك)💙
التيشيرت رهيييب عليك تلبسو بالعافية
وشكر كتير ليك على فيديوهاتك الممتعة والمفيدة

[CestKevvie]

I'm curious about Candy House, looking forward to your thoughts on it

[leesawarshauer]

Micheal J. Fox had written 3 books about his Parkinson disease. I have enjoyed all of them. His positive outlook and his life with Parkinson was a really good read for me.

[johncrwarner]

As I continue my #1962project,
this week I have read
an Erle Stanley Gardner novel
this time as a physical book
and have ordered an audiobook
of a third Perry Mason novel.
So I will sample one writer in
three formats: eBook, physical book and soon audiobook.
I have to say they are all written
to a successful template
and I suspect they are either novelizations of scripts
or the TV show scripts
are derived from the novels.
But they are very clearly exploring
the same world as the TV show.
I have just started
Alan W. Watts exploration of the chemistry of consciousness
The Joyous Cosmology
and am teaching myself
the Shaw Alphabet - developed in 1962.
It is a way of writing English
not using the Roman letters
but having one character per sound.
I am using flashcards to build up
my reading speed as I will be
tackling Pride and Prejudice
in this script.
I have also received an eight volume
translation of Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji,
the sacred text of the Sikhs,
this translation was first published in 1962

[michele]

Did she discuss other hawks or just the falcon? My husband loves watching red-shouldered hawks and I was thinking this might be a nice gift for him.

[-ParisTexas-]

You just made aware of something I did not know was 'different'. I apparently have synesthesia . It is mainly letter-colour. I never knew that that had a name and I always assumed everyone experienced that. Never too old to learn.

[mradcaqbdb]

Oh, Greg. I know you said you weren’t looking for sympathy, but you’ve got it here. There will come a time when seeing his pictures and videos will bring more smiles than tears, but that is going to take a lot of time. There is a lot of love for you in this community. I hope you feel it. 😢 🤗

[jacquelinemcmenamin]

Grief comes in waves. Sometimes you’re ok. Then bam! you’re hit with a punch of sorrow out of left field,
I got through my depressive episode by reading lots of romance, m/m & m/f. The best of them were
The Love Hypothesis
The Enemy Benefit ( comedic)
Try Me ( enemies to lovers)
I’ve also managed to finish
Take My Hand.
Set in Alabama in 1973 & based on real events.
☘️👋🍀📖📚☕️📕

[ameliareads]

Germany is also always looking fo the great German novel and it usually ends up with Thomas Mann The Magic Mountain. Such a boring discussion.

[loriroemer]

Elena Knows is a tough book to get through, but I hope it is worth it for you in the end.

[eralonuva]

Re: Deaf Utopia- Anyone can write a note- no one at hospital gave them anything in writing?