Tag: Night

#6

My review of Sylvia Engdahl’s Stewards of the Flame has been published on Blogcritics. I’ve had it on my pending review list for far too long, but most of that was because the length intimidated me. I still haven’t broken my pattern of reading a book cover to cover in one sitting, so I wasn’t particularly eager to jump into the 450+ page tome. However, since I still don’t have teh internets at home, I was able to put off my usual evening routine for a couple of nights and finally get this book read.

Stewards of the Flame is a thought provoking novel that may make you question the authority and direction of modern Western medical practices. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading genre fiction with some substance to it.

sleep patterns

On Friday night, I stayed up much later than I usually do. I’m not sure why — I wasn’t feeling well all evening and had decided to stay home rather than going out as planned. Somehow I managed to find things to entertain myself until 2am, although aside from the crossword puzzle, I can’t remember … Continue reading “sleep patterns”

On Friday night, I stayed up much later than I usually do. I’m not sure why — I wasn’t feeling well all evening and had decided to stay home rather than going out as planned. Somehow I managed to find things to entertain myself until 2am, although aside from the crossword puzzle, I can’t remember what those things were.

My cats — specifically Alex — woke me up at 7am. I was not happy, but I was just rested enough that by the time I fed them, I knew I wasn’t going back to sleep. In any case, the live feed of two of my favorite podcasts would be coming on around 9:30 or 10, and I didn’t want to miss the start. I knew that if I went back to sleep then, it would be for at least three more hours.

I was pretty sluggish for the rest of the day, but I kept on going. I figured I’d get to bed early that night and be back on my regular sleep schedule. However, by 6:30pm my body informed me that a nap was in order. So, I took a nap. A refreshing, four hour nap. So refreshing, in fact, that I could not make myself go back to sleep for the night.

Three hours later I was finally tired enough to go to bed. Again. The cats woke me up at 7am. this morning. Again.

I think they’re trying to get me on their sleep cycle, but until I’m allowed a siesta at work, it isn’t going to happen.

we have a life

Last night, I saw New York Times writer William Grimes’ essay in the Critic’s Notebook column on the phenomenon of the memoir pop up in my NYT feed. He writes, “The memoir has been on the march for more than a decade now. … But the genre has become so inclusive that it’s almost impossible … Continue reading “we have a life”

Last night, I saw New York Times writer William Grimes’ essay in the Critic’s Notebook column on the phenomenon of the memoir pop up in my NYT feed. He writes, “The memoir has been on the march for more than a decade now. … But the genre has become so inclusive that it’s almost impossible to imagine which life experiences do not qualify as memoir material.”

As a blogger, I understand the attraction to writing memoirs. If given the chance, I could wax on about myself, my memories, and my revelations for quite some time. The nice thing about memoirs is that they don’t require much research or imagination. You were there – you know what happened. Of course, this means that it would be very easy to assume that anyone could write a memoir. While this is true, it does not also equate that anyone can write a good memoir, which goes for bloggers, as well. Grimes does not come out and explicitly state this in his essay, but the tone could imply it.

Grimes concludes with the thought that this propensity for penning memoirs might be a part of our humanity. He writes,

“John Eakin, an emeritus professor of English at Indiana University, has argued that human beings continuously engage in a process of self-creation and self-discovery by constructing autobiographical narratives. In a sense, we are the stories – multiple, shifting and constantly evolving – that we weave about ourselves, and this storytelling urge may even be hard-wired.”

Perhaps it is our super-ego and id fighting to dominate that causes us to want to share our life stories in a public setting? Ah, I never cared much for Freud, anyway.

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