Reading and nursing

I've been ignoring the blog lately, if you couldn't tell. Having a brand-new baby is great for having plenty of time to read, with all the breastfeeding down time and all the hours in the middle of the night waiting to be filled, but writing anything down about what I've been reading has been a near impossibility. I'm barely getting a shower in every day, people, but I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here. A big drawback of all this postpartum reading is that I am crazy emotional and every single stinkin' book has made me cry. All of them. Even the stupid science fiction ones. I am not a crier. If a movie gets sad, I tilt my head and say, "Jeepers, that was sad." On occasion, a book will make me tear up, but gasping sobs and running nose? Nope. Shall I enumerate? Yes, I shall.

For some reason I've been reading a bunch of Orson Scott Card books but that's mostly because I have some at my house and extra trips to the library are not happening. I read Hidden Empire, which is the sequel to his Tom Clancy-esque book Empire. It's about a worldwide plague, government corruption and conspiracies. Card revisits characters who lost so much in the first book, but I don't remember being all that attached the first time around. So why would it make me cry? Not only did it make me cry, but it made me tear up later just thinking about it. Apparently I needed more punishment, because then I re-read the Ender's Shadow series of books by Orson Scott Card and cried through half of those too. My husband was starting to worry as I hiccuped my way through those stupid books.

I am a great admirer of David Small's illustrations. If I know a book is illustrated by him, I'm more likely to read it and seek it out. He published a memoir of sorts called Stitches. I say "of sorts" because it is written as a graphic novel. But this is no kids' story. David Small grew up in a seriously screwed up family who verbally and emotionally abused each other. His grandmother was a nutcase and his father gave him radiation treatments that led to David getting cancer, which they kept a secret from David until he was an adult. Oh man, it was a sad and horrible tale, but written in a riveting way that had me flipping pages almost faster than I could read. The true savior of this tale is a therapist that David eventually sees who tells him that he is worthy and good and a valuable person. Thank heavens for that therapist! David Small was able to make something wonderful of his life despite his parents' efforts to tear him down. Stitches was a fast read, but a tearjerker, mostly because of the stupid hormones. Stupid evil hormones.

Still not being adventurous enough to read anything too challenging, I started re-reading Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. Again, a book I own so I didn't have to venture out of the house to get something different from the library. I like to wait years between re-reads of favorite books because I want it to feel fresh again, but weighing my options of said library venture versus re-reading something I knew I liked, I went with Mistborn. My heavens, that's a good book and it's definitely been enough time for me to forget how it all goes down. I'm really looking forward to re-reading the other two books.

That's the sum total of reading I've done since my baby boy was born. Caren and I are doing a co-review of Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte in February and I'm dragging my feet a little bit. I've never read it and I'm afraid it will trigger those stupid tear ducts again. Somebody reassure me that it's not that sad because honestly, I can't handle any more crying. Surely my system has worked all the post-pregnancy hormones out of my system by now, but you never know.