This month’s nonfiction read is a fascinating account of going undercover in the secretive and oppressive dictatorship of North Korea. Suki Kim is a Korean-American journalist who infiltrated a North Korean university as a teacher, during the reign of Kim Jong-il in 2011. Here is some info I found the most interesting in her book:
Several months ago I broached the topic of OCD with a nonfiction read about hoarding. Because OCD is such a personal subject to me, I decided to devote this month’s nonfiction more fully to the illness with a read of David Adam’s “The Man Who Couldn’t Stop: OCD and the True Story of a Life Lost in Thought.”
For the average, non-ill person, it’s normal to obsess now and then. It’s normal to have a senseless fear (clown in the closet?), a sudden and unsettling urge that does not fit with who we are (swerve into traffic, perhaps?) or a good-luck practice not founded on reality (certainly no one believes that knocking on wood actually works, but… just in case.) It’s normal to be picky about your books lining up straight or to lose sleep one night as a worry goes round and round in your head like a circling predator. This is not OCD.
It’s as ubiquitous as “Show, don’t tell.” You probably can’t even remember the first time you heard it, it’s touted so widely – in advice books, in classrooms, in movies about writers. Even the most non-writiest nonwriter who hasn’t held a pen since high school knows to write what we know.
But what does that actually mean?
After a rollicking good year of facts, figures, and (f)theories, my Let’s DEWEY This! challenge is at a close. Alas… But we’re not done quite yet! Today I’m adding a bonus round, section 92: memoirs and biographies. Technically this is part of the 900s since 92 is short for 920, but in my library, 92 splits off into its own cliquey area, too cool to sit with the other 900s at lunch.
For 92 I picked Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, by Cheryl Strayed. Wild is a deeply personal account of Strayed’s grief after the death of her mother and the downward spiral of her marriage, events that prompted her to tackle a solo hike on the Pacific Crest Trail. I absolutely adored this book. Here’s my review on Goodreads:
This Dewey post is breaking allllll the rules by showing up on the first Tuesday of the month instead of the last Tuesday of the previous. Imagine this post in a leather jacket and riding a motorcycle, because it’s bad to the bone.
(I just really wanted to keep those travel-themed posts together, because splitting them up felt wrong.)
Anyway, after ten awesomely educational months of nonfiction reading, we’re now in the final section of the Dewey Decimal system! (But not the final post of this series… Will explain at the end.) The 900s are all about history, and my pick to read was Thunder Dog: The True Story of a Blind Man, His Guide Dog, and the Triumph of Trust at Ground Zero, by Michael Hingson, DD# 974.71044. Since this was a personal account more than academic, my post will not list factoids but instead summarize Hingson’s experience of escaping the Twin Towers during the harrowing attacks of 9/11.
This month’s section for my Dewey Decimal Discovery project is all about my greatest love… The world’s most heaven-sent pursuit… The core of my life’s endeavors– Nay! My life itself… ! (You’ll understand why I’m being so ~theatrical~ in a minute…)
…… The arts!
(The 700s also include sports, but as any American school budget can attest, arts and sports are at WAR and I will not dignify those sweaty ball-throwers with an inclusion.)
((Kidding! I’m not opposed to athletics, I’m just being dramatic [pun!] because a good ol’ fashioned butting-of-heads makes for livelier blogging.))
(((Or should I say PUTTING-of-heads! Get it? Golf? Golf’s a sport? Kind of?)))
((((Okay enough parentheses.))))
I’m deeply attached to relics from my childhood. A ragged teddy bear with a lost leg, looking like it just got back from war. A bathrobe with embroidered stars and way-too-short sleeves for my now-adult arms. A ballerina music box that got damaged in a move, the dancer now bent sideways, musicless.
Those relics I kept a long time, and I still have many others, but eventually space demanded that I sever a few mementos. It was painful throwing them away. Like I was throwing away pieces of my life. All the years of owning them had imbued them with memory and feeling, and to see them in the garbage or give-away box hurt my heart.
This experience is common; many people can relate. Now imagine having that same depth of attachment towards every object in your home. Bubblegum wrappers. Broken appliances. Newspapers. Imagine if tossing an old take-out menu filled you with the same loss as tossing your teddy bear.
That’s how the people feel in Randy Frost’s and Gail Steketee’s compassionate book, “Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things,” DD# 616.85227 – this month’s Dewey Decimal Discovery pick from the section on health.
I don’t know about your pets, but my dog lives a rich and varied emotional life. Such feelings include:
See? Rich and varied.
Perhaps it comes with being a writer, but I’m a big fan of language. Learning a new word gives my brain a little hopskip of happy. Give me your nouns, your adjectives! Your portmanteaus, your puns! I want them all!
So I was glad to see that section 400 in my Dewey Decimal Discovery Project would be alllll about language. One of my most favorite things in the world (allow me to slip on my nerd hat – ahh, there) is unexpectedly discovering how one word relates to another word. Like, there’s a word you’ve barely thought about before, and suddenly you notice its obscure prefix is the same as another seemingly irrelevant term and OH MY CHOMSKY THOSE WORDS ARE LONG-LOST SIBLINGS AAAHHH. 😀
That is why, for this month’s nonfiction read, I chose Six Words You Never Knew Had Something to Do with Pigs, by Katherine Barber, DD# 422 – a collection of various assorted SUNDRY (oooh yeah that’s a good one) word origins. Here were the most fascinating:
Oh my Ganesha! Is it time for another one of these already?
March brings us to the 200’s in my Dewey Decimal Discovery Project, the section ~devoted~ to religion and mythology. (Did you catch my pun there?) While not a religious person myself, I do have an interest in folklore, so I decided to read Josepha Sherman’s “Mythology for Storytellers: Themes and Tales From Around the World,” Dewey Decimal #201.3.
Here were my favorite fables ~
Pointing Telescopes | S. Noel Brady 