Showing posts with label Andy Weir. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Andy Weir. Show all posts

Friday, December 16, 2016

Levity, Science, and a How To for 2016

Have you ever had one of those weird prescient moments where someone recommends a book and you get it even while thinking, heck, none of this applies to me and then WHAM. So relevant it gives you migraines? That was the first of my most memorable books of 2016.

How to Care for Aging Parents by Virginia Morris

Not the kind of adventure I'd wish on anyone, much less recommend to anyone. However. We all end up here at one point or another if the parent(s) have survived into old age. I read this a good five months before Dad suffered his heart attacks. This book gave me very accessible, easy to understand and implement advice on dealing with my father's doctors, his nurses, my father and my mother. It's a great book for pointing out options you might not know exist (I didn't.) So while I hope no one needs it, I am eternally grateful I'd read it before Dad's health challenges. The coping skills suggested in this book gave me the fortitude to be Dad's live-in care giver for the first three weeks of his recovery without being a nag, and no matter how badly I wanted to, I didn't try to wrap the man in bubble wrap. Very valuable book. Hope y'all can wave it off for many years to come.



Do you read less than you used to? I do. Used to never be without my nose in a book. Then we moved aboard the boat and I had to convert my paper books to Kindle versions. Paper and water, you know. Not to mention storage space and that whole 'no sinking the boat' rule. I kidded myself that I'd just run out of time for reading, but a part of me called bullshit on that. I knew I'd stopped reading. I just didn't know why. Then someone loaned me a print book. And I inhaled it in a day. It's possible a tear was shed when I realized how much I'd missed reading. Turns out, I can't see the Kindle print very well. Yes. I need glasses. No. It doesn't seem to be a monetary priority. So they go unpurchased. But it means that the deterioration of my eyesight made reading on the Kindle harder and less enjoyable to the point that I just quit without realizing WHY I'd quit. Until the experiment with a paper book. When I can see the damned print, I adore reading. To celebrate finding this out, I bought myself scifi. Because scifi. And this turned out to be one of my fav reads this year: The Martian by Andy Weir. What's to say? Mars. Left behind. Certain death. Science!

My last book is a bit of a cheat because I haven't gotten to read it yet. But I am SO looking forward to reading it that I'm including it.
The Angel Wore Fangs by Sandra Hill

The hero is a Viking, Vampire Angel. An angel. Who's a vampire. And a Viking. Seriously. How could you not love this? I am counting on this book to be a complete send up of every romance trope available to the market. Counting on it. This is slated to be my guilty pleasure holiday read.

It was this or stock up on Chuck Tingle titles. That may yet happen. Either way. I'm looking forward to some levity.