Why I read fiction
Murder mysteries. Science fiction. Fantasy. The occasional cozy.
Kathy Reichs. James H. Schmitz. C.J. Cherryh. Kim Harrison. Stephen King.
I read to escape reality. Why? Because reality makes me sad. Sometimes it scares the holy living bajeebies out of me, too. Books do, as well, but I KNOW they are a fantasy and that makes all the difference.
Here are the programs I had on in the background Sunday as I did laundry and other fun mundanity. They all…ALL…sent me running back to my safe, escapist books:
The Universe: Beyond the Big Bang - The formation of galaxies, the creation of elements and the formation of Earth itself. Very cool! Except the part where we are all going to fly apart and disintegrate into nothingness. Never mind that isn’t going to happen for five billion years. It is still going to happen and I don’t want to die and this program reminded me I am going to. Some day. Dammit.
Incredible Islands: Dubai - The Middle Eastern emirate of Dubai is creating 300 man-made islands off it's coast in an effort to become the number one tourist destination in the world. Creating: as in sucking up sand from the ocean floor elsewhere and spitting it out off the coast of Dubai to make a bunch of islands that range in price from 15 to 50 million dollars each just for the sand. The islands are done now and it is on to land and building development. I am just appalled.
Dark Secret of Hendrik Schon – The TV listing blurb says, “The German physicist's work in nanotechnology is surrounded by controversy.” They should have just titled it “Hendrik Schon is a big fat fraud” and been done with it. Of interest to me was the discussion in the scientific community about whether their peer review process should be required to detect deliberate fraud, something the CPA community started talking about around the same time.
Killer Stress: A National Geographic Special - Neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky (“Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers”) explores the corrosive effects that stress can have on health. Did you know baboons are remarkably similar to humans in social structure and thus make great research subjects? Yeah, that depressed me, too. But I loved the part where a pack that suffered a devastating loss of all of its alpha males about 20 years ago remains to this day a kinder and gentler pack where females outnumber the males, who are good guys that do not display annoying alpha tendencies like beating up on anything that moves. Yay for baboon enlightenment.
THS Investigates: Cults, Religion & Mind Control – The Children of God; Feroze Godwalla’s Baruch HaShem cult (he wore a kooky, long-tailed pom-pommed ski cap in many of the video clips – most odd;) FLDS and Warren Jeffs, who married a 14 year old girl against her will to her 19 year old first cousin; The Body, where a mother watched her infant son starve to death for 51 days of screaming excruciation but was found not guilty due to the “I was brainwashed” defense; and on and on for another 45 minutes. It was sickening. It was horrifying. It made me want to buy a gun.
BOOKS! Give me books full of fun and adventure and frivolity. Even Stephen King’s horror takes me away to a fun place for a while. Speaking of which, have you read:
Duma Key: A NovelI listened to in once on audio book and am currently listening to it again, for the sheer joy of his writing. He is so damn good. He wrote this book after he almost died when he was hit by a van while walking along a road near his home. The main character is recovering from an equally devastating accident. Fascinating. Check it out!
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