Bleeeaaahhh!
Lots of lovely tattooing this last week. Thinking seriously about doing a show. It’d be my first tattoo show, if I do it. I’d need to share a space with someone. I can’t really afford it otherwise. I’m pretty sure I could at least break even (which would be fine for the advertising it would be), if not actually make a few bucks.
Anyway, life interrupted blog this week, and as much as I love to write, I’d love to be a bit busier making money. I’ve also just begun a course of study to improve my tattoo technique and refresh my memory on general art techniques like perspective, light and shadow and such. I’m pretty pleased and having a great time with it, as I love to draw and play and learn…
Today being a random sort of Monday I’ve decided to do the two memes I’ve been tagged with. (I’m so excited!!) BallsandWalnuts
got my meme cherry with the following:
The Little-Known Favorites Meme. Rules: List and describe three of your favorite books that other people might not be familiar with. Then tag five people. See, easy!
I’m tagging:
Dez
Betmo at Life’s Journey
Coyote Lil
Diva Jood, and
Christ Crucified Again.
My 3 are perhaps not as obscure as they could be. I have nearly 1000 books in my library that I consider “keepers” for one reason or another, but sadly they are uncatalogued and still in our on site storage container because a) The humongous bookshelves I put them on are about 8 inches too tall for these ceilings, and b) I’m not sure where I’d put them anyway until the studio is built.
So I’m trying to go by memory which is hard because there are so many books that have shaped my life in many ways, and they are like old friends to me so I’ll think of one and be lost for a few moments just remembering the first time I read them and then I’ll come back to the meme and realize that most of them are not “Little Known”.
So, here goes.
1)The Chrysalids (republished in US as “Rebirth”) by John Wyndham
I first read this novella in a compilation of sci fi stories, but I’ll be damned if I can remember the edition. This one led me on a merry chase, as I first couldn’t remember the author’s name, so I set my subconscious to work on it (there is alot of validity in the cponcept of “sleeping on it”) and awakened yesterday am with the name my forst conscious thought. Then I googled it and finally discovered that the title by which I knew the story was a retitle for american publishings.
I think I read it in the early 70′s, so I’d have been pre-teen; 10 or 11, I think. It touched me deeply. In a societal attempt to do some rudimentary selective breeding in order to limit birth defects, babies are inspected and certified or decried as mutant or deviant and subsequently exposed and left to die. Deviations which come to light in later life are hunted down and sterilized and banished to “the fringes”. The story is told from the perspective of David, a 10 year old boy whose father is a leader of the community. David begins questioning the fundamentalist ideas when he meets and makes friends with a little “fringes” girl, Sophie who appears, acts and is, in fact, “normal” but for the tiny scars where an extra toe was removed from each foot. When his younger sister begins to exhibit a powerful telepathy as she grows David decides to turn his back on his father and community in hopes of protecting her. John Wyndham writes of a post nuclear apocalypse era wherein religious fundamentalism, bigotry, intolerance rule the day. I swear this story spoke to my soul, and like all good fiction, left me wanting to know more… to follow David far beyond the end of the book.
2) Johnny Got His Gun, by Dalton Trumbo
This isn’t really “Little Known”, but I don’t really hear it mentioned much these days and it should be. It’s a timeless anti war statement that is both heart wrenching and eloquent. I read this book when I was 13. I was waking up to politics and war and life. I’d done a bit of WW II reading and lots of Holocaust stuff and was horrified. When I read Johnny Got His Gun, I thought it was about Vietnam. I remember how surprised I was that it was written after WW I. I still remember my youthful outrage at the hypocrisy of Johnny being decorated with a purple heart or some such nonsense. There has since been a movie made of it, which although intense, carried none of the punch for me that my first reading of this masterful work did.
3) The third that is often on my mind these days is Earth, by David Brin.
This author seems to be fairly widely read, but much more famous for his Uplift Saga series than this particular work. At least, I still haven’t come across anyone else who has read it. In it, David creates what he terms as, “the best possible future [he] can imagine” our world to have. It’s pretty grim and quite wonderful all at the same time. DB is an astrophysicist, and probably the worst part of this book for me was the quantity of “hard science”. Still, it was necessary to the story and I made it through it with enough comprehension to get that and was intrigued and interested enough by the story to wade through it. I can’t even write about all the reasons this book affected me and is haunting me daily to the point where I’m going to read it again this summer. I would love to share this book with others who aren’t “SF Geeks” or DB groupies.
A couple of the concepts in place in the speculative future that David creates for us in his book can be gleaned from these articles: Three cheers for the Surveillance Society!
An Interview about Science Fiction and the Environment, and Disputation Arenas: Harnessing Conflict and Competitiveness for Society’s Benefit
My final comment to this book (and you’ll have to read it to “get” it) is;
I wanna be Jen Wolling when I grow up!
I know that this is a kinda “heavy” lil list, or appears to be so at first glance, but that’s where my head is these days whqat with america being run by the religious right corporations, war and man’s inhumanity to man. Maybe soon I’ll make up a “feel good read” meme for a little balance. Hmmmm…
And then dear betmo tagged me with this:
>Players start with 8 random facts about themselves.
Those who are tagged should post these rules and their 8 random facts.
* Players should tag 8 other people and notify them that they have been tagged.
I don’t wanna double tag anyone, and I don’t really know enough other bloggers well enough to tag them, so I’m gonna return tag BallsandWalnuts, and just to get to know these two gals a bit better, Behind Closed Doors and Lara Croft, but that’s all I’ve got. If you wanna do this one, please help yourself!!! Leave me a comment so I can stop by and read it if you do.
8 random facts about Thorne
1) I cry alot. I’m just one of those weepy gals, I guess. Menopause has made it a bit worse, but the fact is, I cry. I cry when I’m happy and when I’m sad. I leak when I’m extremely angry. I weep in frustration, sympathy, empathy and outrage. I bawl at poignancy, devastation, humanity. I sob in the throes of incredible intense orgasms, and sometimes if I’m too busy screaming during them, I cry after instead. When I was young I literally couldn’t discuss things I felt passionately about, because my tears insisted on flowing, which added uncomfortable elements to the discussion.
2) I am a recovering alcoholic and addict. I celebrated my 19th anniversary on Feb. 22.
3) I can be more insecure than I will ever admit.
4) I have a higher IQ than I will usually admit.
5) I was supposed to have been born with naturally curly red hair, but the Goddess fucked up.
6) I had adult orthodontics at 35 for 3 years and sometimes I still miss my “fangs”. (They gave my upper lip a sexy fullness and interesting curve).
7) I have been widowed.
8) As openminded as I am sexually, I don’t care for porn. I have seen a total of 3 xxx movies in my life. Boring and fake and never as good as the stories and images in my head. Even soft porn is too full of fake people and unimaginative situations for me. I prefer to read my erotica.
That’s it for me for today!!!!
