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On the latest episode of Galactic Suburbia I mentioned I’m about to start working through a Stephen King reading list, given to me by Kirstyn from the Writer and the Critic. Tansy thought others might want to follow along. So here it is:

  1. Carrie
  2. Salem’s Lot
  3. The Shining
  4. Different Seasons – but only The Body and Shawshank therein. Do NOT read Apt Pupil, Alisa!
  5. Thinner (published under Richard Bachman)
  6. IT
  7. Eyes of the Dragon
  8. Misery
  9. Bag of Bones
  10. Duma Key
  11. The Dark Tower

 



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Well they say that moving house is on the top 5 most stressful things you can do in life but ah … yeah, I’m finding moving to be deeply stressful, anxiety-filled and so on. A good friend of mine called Bullshit on my blog of late, and he’s right. I’m only talking surface feelings and whilst they are true and honest, they’re not all of it. Not by a long shot. I got a lot going on. And I still feel quite self conscious [1] about expressing that all to the fullness that I used to do.

So moving house is stressful. It’s a hoarder’s nightmare really. And now the truth about why I was mainlining so many episodes of those shows is out! I promised myself after the last time I moved house, which was so deeply traumatic and stressful that I haven’t been able to even contemplate it til now, that I would slowly go through all my possessions and declutter. So that next time I moved, it would be less stressful. And for periods of time, I did do that. But I had the luxury of space and as long as I couldn’t see things cause they were packed away, I was happy.

But now… now I am moving again and I have to look at things. And I am upset as to why I have so much stuff; why I need to hold onto so much stuff; and why I can’t seem to just part with it now. The other thing is, when you’re living in a place, you have the luxury of not having to deal with something if you don’t want to. You can just put it away for later. And later, you know, you’ll look at it and deal with it. When you move, that “later” becomes “right now”, whether you like it or not.

I imagine this experience is on some spectrum of what it would be like to go into a diagnosed hoarder’s house – the degree of hoarding such that they sleep on the floor by the front door because they physically cannot get further inside their house due to “stuff” – and telling them they have to move. Now! How I feel seems somewhat akin to  the anxiety they experienced at having to face up to what is in their home and make decisions about what they can trash, donate or giveaway. But I’m a typical Pisces – always swimming in opposite directions at the same time. I want to both keep things and be ruthless and throw it all away and have clear spaces, no clutter. And so, my “later” is “now”. And if I had less stuff, this moving would be less prolonged.

Two examples of stressful situations for me this weekend.

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So, I’m moving house and complaining about how much stuff I have and asking why I have so much stuff. I didn’t think I had that many books (been feeling down about how many books I have) and yet, in moving them – I have a lot of books. So we spent the morning working on culling, packing and moving and then headed past the Planet Books sale. We needed some books on puppy training.

My haul (for a mere $37 – ridiculous!)

Enchanted Glass by Diana Wynne Jones

Villette by Charlotte Bronte

Passage by Connie Willis

Wizard Squared by K E Mills

The Margarets by Sheri S Tepper

 

Now, I’d been starting to think, since I HAVE been reading, that I could justify some book accumulation. Probably not 5 new books though. So am blogging here to remind myself to either finish 5 books and/or remove 5 books from my current collection/to read shelves.

 

 



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A couple of days ago, Charles Tan was asking for suggestions and then he pulled together a Short Story Collection Meme for those of us who read or want to read a lot of great short stories!

I’m going to post it here not because I can bold a lot as read, but because I can italicise a lot being in my to read shelves and because by the end of this year, I want to reflect and see how I’ve done!

He says:

I love the short story format and the problem with a lot of the book memes circulating is that they exclusively focus on novels. I’ve done some crowd sourcing (and some personal recommendations of course–this list isn’t meant to be objective) and I’ve come up with a list of 166 short story collections.

The usual rules apply: bold those that you’ve read and italicize those that you own but haven’t read.

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