Home from work today, lying as still as I can in bed, trying to calm a pain in my neck and head with the heat from a heating pad. It’s not easy, the lying still part. I started making lists of things I can see like a list of the things on the bed with me, a list of the kinds of cars in the parking lot next door, and a list of the books on the top shelf of my small bedside book shelf:
- Harvest for Hope, Jane Goodall
- In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan
- The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James
- The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers
- The Top Ten: Writers Pick their Favorite Books, J. Peder Zane, ed.
- Crow Planet, Lyanda Lynn Haupt
- The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be, Farley Mowat
- The Reader, Bernhard Schlink
- Firmin, Sam Savage
- Holy the Firm, Annie Dillard
- U is for Undertow, Sue Grafton
- Stones into Schools, Greg Mortenson
- The Case for God, Karen Armstrong
- Conceptual Art, Daniel Marzona
- Pop Art, Klaus Honnef
And then squished in flat on top of these:
- Hate that Cat, Sharon Creech
- Journal of a Prairie Year, Paul Gruchow
- The Color of Water, James McBride
- Scout, Atticus & Boo, Mary McDonagh Murphy
- Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi
- The Best Science Writing of 2010, Jerome Groopman, ed.
- The Assignation, Stories by Joyce Carol Oates
- Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
And yes, I have read every one. Some of them more than once, some many times, hence their place so close to my head at night.
On the bed with me at the moment:
- Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand
- Spiritual Envy, Michael Krasny
blahg, blahg, blahg... 