My dreams were vibrant and bizarre last night. Itâs no surprise since I finished two books yesterday â The Bright Hour and The Migration. These followed a three-day binge of The Expanse Season 4, which had echoes of BSG Season 3.
I have a recurring nightmare about accounting. Iâm running a business, but I canât get the monthly financials produced. We are many months behind and my partner (sometimes Dave, sometimes my Dad) keeps coming up with reasons we canât close the books. I continue to hear âwe have cash in the bank so donât worry.â I wander down the endless hallways of my office trying to find the CFO (sometimes Stephanie, sometimes Amy, sometimes someone I donât know) but I can never find her (itâs always a woman.) There is no resolution to this dream, just a feeling of fear, emptiness, and impending loss.
Yeah, itâs an anxiety dream about company mortality. And both books were about human mortality.
The Bright Hour is a Nina Riggs memoir of her battle with metastatic breast cancer. Itâs the gender bookend to Paul Kalanithiâs book When Breath Becomes Air. Equally magnificent, powerful, beautiful, sad, and humbling, all at the same time. I didnât want the book to end, as I knew that when it did, Iâd have to accept that Nina didnât survive. I knew that before starting the book, but somehow I was able to suspend disbelief of the inevitable while I still had some pages left to read.
The Migration is Helen Marshallâs first novel and it A+++. Itâs also about death, with the backdrop of a mysterious plague-like disease that creates hormonal changes in teenagers. Of course, thatâs not really what is happening, but thatâs part of the power of the story. There are elements of YA here, with teenage protagonists, but itâs not a YA book.
My 2019 reading has been wide and varied but the infinite pile of books to read has grown higher. Iâve got lots of physical books to read for some reason, so thatâs what Iâm chewing on now. Kindle when Iâm traveling; physical when Iâm home. Weâll see how that goes for a while.