{"id":759,"date":"2020-11-06T02:00:27","date_gmt":"2020-11-06T10:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/?p=759"},"modified":"2020-11-05T21:40:10","modified_gmt":"2020-11-06T05:40:10","slug":"finding-comfort-in-chaotic-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/2020\/11\/06\/finding-comfort-in-chaotic-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding Comfort in Chaotic Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of weeks ago, Gillian Polack wrote <\/a>about what makes a book great comfort reading, one you want to read over and over, especially when things are difficult.<\/p>\n

Then Madeleine Robins wrote about \u201cfluffy bunnies<\/a>\u201d \u2013 books, television, and movies that provide balm to your soul.\u00a0 A story doesn\u2019t have to be \u201cnice\u201d to be fluffy this way.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve got some favorite comfort reads as well, and I\u2019ll get to them in a minute. But first I want to talk about something else I just did to improve my comfort levels: I signed up for an 18-day virtual meditation retreat.<\/p>\n

It started on Election Day. At 6 am. In fact, I have to get up for a 6 am one-hour session every day until November 20.<\/p>\n

Even though I spent 22 years of my life going to Aikido at 7 am, I never became a morning person. I hate alarm clocks. I hate getting out of bed. By the time morning rolls around, I\u2019m usually very comfortable and see no point in jumping up to meet the world.<\/p>\n

That I signed up for this retreat shows you just how desperate I am to get back on center. The pandemic and the election have done a number on me.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that I don\u2019t know how to meditate already. In fact, the retreat is led by Qigong Master Li Junfeng<\/a>, with whom I studied when I lived in Austin. I could easily meditate on my own.<\/p>\n

Except I haven\u2019t been. Part of the purpose of signing up was to get into a habit. The other part was to get some inspiration from Master Li. He\u2019s a joyful man and joy is good.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m meditating, and that\u2019s good. <\/p>\n

But I\u2019m also doing a lot of escaping these days, because there\u2019s just so much reality that I can handle. And since I was a very young child, reading has been my favorite form of escape.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been reading all kinds of things, including some new novels and some serious nonfiction. But I often save new fiction until I\u2019m sure I won\u2019t get interrupted should I get deep into the book.<\/p>\n

On those days when I can\u2019t face what\u2019s going on in the world and don\u2019t want to make a major commitment to what I\u2019m reading, I re-read.<\/p>\n

Actually, even when I\u2019m not stressed I re-read some books because I don\u2019t want to stop spending time in that world. I re-read the five books of Gwyneth Jones\u2019s Bold as Love<\/em> series multiple times because I wanted to be there even though it was dystopic.<\/p>\n

Those books didn\u2019t comfort me this time around, though. I tried, but I think they cut a little close to the bone.<\/p>\n

Early on in the pandemic, I dug out C.J. Cherryh\u2019s Chanur series \u2013 space opera at its finest, from the point of view of those we\u2019d call the aliens. It dates back to the 80s and I\u2019ve read it numerous times. This round I even got my sweetheart hooked on it.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>In recent weeks, I\u2019ve been toggling back and forth between two very different series of books: Madeleine Robins\u2019s Sarah Tolerance<\/a> books (Point of Honour<\/em>, Petty Treason<\/em>, and The Sleeping Partner<\/em>) and Martha Wells\u2019s Murderbot books, four novellas followed by the recently released novel Network Effect<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m pretty sure I\u2019ve read all three Sarah Tolerance books at least twice in the last couple of months. Likewise all four of the Murderbot novellas, plus when I got Network Effect <\/em>(which just came out), I read it straight through and then immediately read it again.<\/p>\n

Miss Tolerance, a fallen woman in an alternate history Regency England who wields a sword with great precision and works as an agent of inquiry, is a delight. One of the joys of these books are the bits that that make it clear to me that I would not want to live in that time and place.<\/p>\n

Those held in jail could improve their conditions by paying their guards. The streets were filthy. The \u201cnecessary house\u201d added to the other unpleasant odors.<\/p>\n

And while Madeleine has waxed creative in her depiction of fallen women, particularly those working as prostitutes, the books are all too accurate in their descriptions of the few options available to women in those times. As the first book, Point of Honour<\/em>, begins:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Fallen Woman of good family must, soon or late, descend to whoredom.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Miss Tolerance has found a way to avoid this fate, and her unusual role gives her great scope to observe and comment on the rest of society. While the mystery plots are great fun and bear up well on re-reading, it is the keen observation of the world that makes coming back to them such a comforting pleasure.<\/p>\n

The Murderbot books are about as different as you can get from Sarah Tolerance. Murderbot is a SecUnit, a \"Network<\/a>human\/bot construct designed to provide security in universe where corporates control all too many planets and the people who live on them.<\/p>\n

Murderbot would rather just watch media \u2013 it is fond of series about human settlements on various places \u2013 but it often has to hack systems and fight all out to protect its clients.<\/p>\n

It also has a secret: it has removed the governor module that put it under the control of whoever contracted for its services. But as the series starts, it is still doing its job, in part because it has no idea what it really wants.<\/p>\n

Except that it is very clear that it doesn\u2019t want to be human or a pet robot.<\/p>\n

The joy of re-reading these books comes from watching as Murderbot (a name known only to itself and a few others) starts to figure out what matters to it. These books are action-packed and on the first read I went fast because I was dying to know what happened next.<\/p>\n

The subsequent reads allowed me to go slow and see Murderbot\u2019s many emotional reactions to situations and how it starts to figure out its path. It was easier to see how that built over the books when I read more slowly since I already knew what was going to happen.<\/p>\n

The best books for re-reading are probably those that provide such pleasures when you are no longer on tenterhooks about what\u2019s going to happen.<\/p>\n

As I sit here pondering what\u2019s going to happen next in U.S. politics while trying to stop doomscrolling pandemic news, it occurs to me that I need to go through my bookcases and see if I can find anything else for a satisfying comfort read. Meditation\u2019s important, but never underestimate the value of a escaping into a comfort read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of weeks ago, Gillian Polack wrote about what makes a book great comfort reading, one you want to read over and over, especially when things are difficult. Then Madeleine Robins wrote about \u201cfluffy bunnies\u201d \u2013 books, television, and movies that provide balm to your soul.\u00a0 A story doesn\u2019t have to be \u201cnice\u201d to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8,7],"tags":[157,165],"class_list":["post-759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-fantasy","category-sciencefiction","tag-comfort-reading","tag-meditation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=759"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":760,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759\/revisions\/760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}