Since i’ve procrastinated and am now left with three posts to write today, i’m going to keep my books post rather short. I’ve already written about every book i read this year, so you know what my opinions of them are. I only finished nine books this year (and re-read two) but i started several others, and for me this is a pretty significant increase in reading. I haven’t read this many books cover-to-cover since high school. Reading has finally gripped me, and i think my mother must be proud.
(Mom has become a recurring theme in my end-of-year posts. Maybe i should continue referring to what i think she thinks of me in the two to follow.)
Early this year i became sort of fascinated with pregnancy. Since my latter two years of college, i’ve had quite a few dreams in which i am pregnant or have a very tiny baby, so that’s probably what got me interested. That and reading dooce and subsequently watching videos on momversation, and also just being at that age where a lot of people i know are starting their adventures in procreation.
So i read a couple of tales of pregnancy; Accidentally On Purpose and It Sucked and then I Cried (dooce’s book). I learned all kinds of things, like what an episiotomy is and what post-partum depression is like and how very, very little sleep new parents get – and good stuff, like that giving birth can be an almost spiritual experience that may make you feel even more deeply connected to your husband. And guess what? I’m never, ever having a baby. EVER. I got really tired of hearing about the whole thing, especially what’s coming out of either end of a baby at any given moment. I’m definitely over it.
The other topic that my reading this year covered was, of course, atheism. For a while there i was really passionate about it and i enjoyed writing about it until my writings garnered what i maintain were some really unfair accusations. And i noticed that i was really pissing off some of my close friends and relatives, and i was forced to realize that i don’t have the power to change the way people think about things. I decided that it just isn’t worth damaging personal relationships to keep trying. Religion is a topic i really wish people could discuss and talk freely about, but the world isn’t ready yet. I’ve given up on being passionate about this, just like i gave up on being passionate about liberalism and vegetarianism and environmentalism in the past because i realized that it was not making me happy, it was making me miserable. Wanting to change the world is a miserable thing, so this year i want to focus on what i love about it, and read more on that.
Thursday, December 31st, 2009 3:11 pm • books, religion
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January 8th, 2010 at 9:07 pm
Kudos!
February 19th, 2010 at 11:25 am
Geez, I know what you mean. People get so bent out of shape when they find out I’m an atheist, it’s like I said I’m a child molester or something. I made the same decision: To stop talking about it to friends or anyone I know personally, because they just get too upset. It’s almost like they’re afraid that their beliefs are wrong, so… they don’t want to hear about evidence and nonsense like that.