books, books, books

“After 3 days without reading talk becomes flavorless.”
Chinese Proverb

I wouldn’t know about that. There is not an hour in my life, other than sleep, that I don’t read something.
I have tons of books of different subjects on my bookshelves that I am studying or I am interested in. One time a friend of mine stayed at my place when I was gone and thought she was doing me a favor by “tidying up” my books.
It took me months to sort them all back to where they belong.
I read 10+ books at a time.
I don’t sit down and read a book from cover to cover since
I don’t really read fiction – unless it is Alexander McCall Smith’s “The #1 Ladies Detective Agency” series.
I open a book somewhere and it often hits exactly where I want to forward my studies and gain understanding. A particular book often draws me to it and it hits the spot.
In the last 2 years I realized that I really need to understand what has led us to our current situation. I had always counted on the United States, my chosen country, to be a strong democracy based on the Constitution. It never crossed my mind before that we could lose our freedom and liberty. I am weaving past history with contemporary parallels and it is quite striking.
From “Typecasting” and “Spinfluence” to the “Making of a Body” I have a little bit of just about everything. I have taken on science books about the ways of the universe to electricity in cells that enable us to be alive. From Steven Hawkins’ “The Grand Design” to the “Crack in the Cosmic Egg” I am trying to comprehend the universe from macro to micro.
On those subjects I can only read paragraphs at a time for me to understand and process them. I was an English major, not a science major.
I have history books from Ed Asner’s “Grouchy Historian” to “Homo Sapiens” by Yuval Noah Harari. .
Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point” and all his other books are there of course.
Lots of quote books because I am in the process of putting my own quotebooks together for publication – my first try at getting a book published.
And what would my library be without self-motivation and health books. From the “Blue Zones” to “Do You Want To Be Normal or Happy”, these books are inspiration to me.
Then I have 2 shelves of journals I wrote. I have a diary I wrote when I was in my teens. Some of the issues I grappled with I am still studying to this day: philosophy, atheism and religion from every aspect and approach. But mostly that diary was about boys. Sometimes I read one of my journals with the distance of age and draw out the essence to use in a future book. I do see progress😊.
I have 2 shelves of books of comedians from Trevor Noah’s “Born a Crime” to Bob Newhardt’s “I Shouldn’t Even Be Doing This”. Those are from the time when I was an aspiring comedian. I am still working on being a public speaker but being a comedian is too hard of a dream. My default is not being funny. Punchlines consistently escaped me.
Then there are the usual marketing and real estate books like Seth Goodin’s “Purple Cow” and “What Would Google Do”.
And I have a few great photo books from my 2 hometowns San Francisco and Kaiserslautern.
Some books deal with the psychology of why people do what they do, good and evil and everything inbetween.
I have an extensive collection of books detailing how we have been controlled through sex drive manipulations and prohibitions, from Laura Kipins “Against Love” to Angela Davis’ “Women, Sex and Class. That will be one of the books I will be writing.
All in all, my books are there for me to make sense and understand why the world is the way it is. Good times are ahead for me.

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