2013 Meme: Topic # 6 -- life prediction

Day 6: How is your life now different from what you expected as a child? How is it similar?

I guess it depends at which point(s) I look at my expectations. When I was little I could not really imagine an adult future at all. I think I've written here before that one of the clearer memories I have of such a projection was when I was five or so and imagined a future female commune. But that didn't include what kind of work I would do, or anything. At later ages, I imagined being a writer or an archaeologist or a professor of history or a French translator. I never really imagined being a teacher, especially a middle school teacher. I think if I'd imagined it at all as an outcome I would have thought of myself as a high school teacher, and that thought still recurs to me. Hey, I've got another fourteen years (not including this one) in the classroom, so maybe I'll graduate to high school and view that as a second career. I never imagined having a progressive disease -- who does? So diabetes was not in my future projection. To be honest, as a kid, I never fantasized about marriage or even about having kids myself. I sort of assumed I would, but didn't think about it much. At various points I imagined living permanently outside of the United States, but I didn't know then how important being near family would be to me. I think I would not be shocked as a five year old to see myself as a 46 year old, all told.

Not a meme entry, I guess

I have an embarrassment (finally learned to spell that word a few years ago) of riches to read on my iPad. I got SO MANY Amazon gift cards at Xmas and I spent them hella quickly. But that leaves me the following to read (some purchases were books I want to own and re-read, so they don't feature. Quite a few, in fact).

Up soon:

Thrones, Dominations a continuation of the Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane, now Lady Wimsey (kind of ew, to go back to the days when women changed their names on marriage; I feel like that's not so frequent -- almost nonexistent among friends of mine, and not all that common outside the Bay Area Bubble) -- but written (with a partially completed manuscript by Sayers) by Jill Paton Walsh, a YAF author whose work I like a lot, especially her plague novella about a real village which sacrificed itself, A Parcel of Patterns, okay, off topic.

The Attenbury Emeralds -- another new Wimsey/Vane mystery, this time entirely by Jill Paton Walsh, though it looks back to Wimsey's more-than-once referenced first case. How did Paton Walsh get this permission?

A Presumption of Death the third post-Sayers Wimsey/Vane novel by Paton Walsh, set during WWII. God, do I love a WWII on the (British) home front novel.

Navigating Early by Clare Vanderpool, which is a historical YAF novel, probably on the quirky side, as was the first one I read by her, Moon Over Manifest.

Will Sparrow's Road the new Karen Cushman YAF historical... not her usual Medieval setting (though she's also done orphan train in American West, Western homesteading girl, and (my favorite, in another subgenre I am extremely fond of: McCarthyism in the US) The Loud Silence of Francine Green.

Telegraph by Michael Chabon, which I have been avoiding a bit because I really like everything else I've read from him, but this is local and has local politics in Berkeley and ... I don't know.

also by Chabon:

Wonder Boys which is older.

Shipwreck and Beware This Boy both by Canadian author Maureen Jennings. The first is a prequel to her 1890s Toronto police procedural series, and the second is a follow-up historical mystery to Season of Darkness (I think that's the title)... both of them ALSO set on the home front in Britain -- WWII.

Garment of Shadows the latest Mary Russell/(Sherlock Holmes) novel by Laurie R. King.

Dark Places thriller by Gillian Flynn, whose bestseller Gone Girl I avoided for ages, and then, in a weak moment, read. It was strange but somewhat compelling -- kind of as if Sophie Kinsella was going to write a really dark murder mystery set in the midwest with loathable characters. The second of her midwest-based (Missouri bootheel, to be precise... though I have argued in the past that Missouri is more the South than the Midwest) thrillers is better, I think. Or else it was the first -- Sharp Objects, and Gone Girl is the third.

Diabetes: A Sugar-Coated Crisis -- Who Gets it, Who Profits, and How to Stop it by David Spero, RN. No idea whether it's good or not, but at least it is a political/social discussion.

Some Embarrassing Star Trek novels I Refuse to Name -- Mostly ones by Peter David, who is apparently really sick, and people have been FB announcing that sales would help the family. To be honest, I once bought these same novels in paperback.

Swim a new novella or short story by Jennifer Weiner with whose chick lit I have a like-hate relationship.

Breed to Come, The Jargoon Pard (how could anyone resist that BRILLIANT title?), The Crystal Gryphon, and Gryphon in Glory, all by Andre Norton, whom I adored in middle school and was reminded of while reviewing some of my re-reads by Octavia Butler. For some reason I thought Andre Norton was a black woman when I was growing up.

and

War Brides by Helen Bryan, about which I know nothing except that it is also WWII home front in Britain, and appears to be sort of historical chick lit.

A new Charles Todd post-WWI mystery is being released on Tuesday, and that will be flying to my iPad, too.

Yes, I don't read many serious books.