I am a chronic re-reader. I am also a pretty big Robert Heinlein fan, and yes, the mood I am in effects which book I might currently be re-reading. After 12 years of marriage, my wife has figured out which books match which mood, and it’s not unusual for her to walk into a room and have her say, ‘Oh, you’re reading that one again. What's wrong now?'
Most often this happens when I am reading Time Enough for Love, the sequel to Methuselah’s Children, and what is supposed to be the memoirs of Lazarus Long, oldest member of the human race. She knows if I reading this book, I am probably going to be spending the next week or so in a funk. It’s not because of the book…it’s just that so often, Heinlein is able to express in writing things I am not able to put into words myself, or even fully form in my mind. When reading so many of his books, you realize that this someone who understood. He got it…not just the highs, but the lows. Much of Time Enough for Love is about how we all might have different life expectancies, but we live in the Eternal Now, and that is a part of life I have a hard time grasping. Back when I worked in the Shipyard, I was in serious danger of getting swallowed up by my job. It wasn’t just the 900-1000 hours of OT I worked a year, or the off station travel…there were times I made decisions that put the job ahead of my family, or worse, brought my frustrations home with me.
Things are different at Hanford, there is less frustration to bring home, but there is less satisfaction also. Here the problem isn’t bringing stuff home with me, it’s dreading ‘The Next Day’. Many is a Sunday afternoon I have sat on the couch, moping because I need to go to work in 16 hours. Never mind the fact that I still have 6-hours of a Sunday left to spend with my family…instead of enjoying that Now, I’m dreading the future. Time Enough for Love can help snap me out of that, even if it sometimes makes me want to sell everything we own just to go start all over again someplace else.
As I write this, I just got finished re-reading To Sail Beyond the Sunset(for about the 634th time), the last book Mr. Heinlein published. It’s kind of a sequel to Time Enough for Love, and wraps up Heinlein’s World as Myth collection of books. There are some folks who don’t like Heinlein’s later books, calling them ‘self-indulgent’ and pointing out ‘wow, there is a lot of incest in those books. I can see both of those things being true…but I still get a lot out of the stories.(By the way, neither of these two books are ones I would recommend for the first time Heinlein reader…those would be either Starship Troopers or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress) What I get out of To Sail Beyond the Sunset is that it doesn’t need to be an adventure to be satisfying. Subtitled ‘Being the Memoirs of a Somewhat Irregular Lady’, Sunset is the story of Maureen Johnson, mother of Lazarus Long, and the reason my younger daughter is named Maureen.
Maureen Johnson is not a war hero, or a super spy or a pilot. She is a house wife and mom, and later a business woman(and a bit of a sex-fiend)…but the overwhelming point of the story is how happy and satisfied she is with her life. Quoting one of her husbands ‘Happiness lies in being privileged to work hard for long hours in doing whatever you think is worth doing.’ Hence, I am often not happy at work, but going home and doing my fair share of laundry, and dishes, and gardening, and cleaning the chicks brooder box to get a smile from my wife DOES make me happy.
Now…
There are other books for other moods and needs. Hell...Stranger in a Strange Land covers so much ground, it fills a couple of niches all by itself. There is the religious side, the political side, and just...the nature of being what you are. I read Stranger whenever I need to know there is a reason behind everything I do. Not necessarily THE reason, just that there IS a reason to keep getting up every day.
Beyond the smiling faces of my wife and kids.
I've become to ill to be sure of reading or perhaps I might have gone that way. I used to read and reread a great deal if I never quite got to your station of mood reading, not consciously anyway. Instead I use music. It can set the pace, on the very short run. But more likely what I play either gets to the point of what I am feeling, or want to feel, or expresses what I feel about a topic. Music videos these days make it much easier. Between words and near movie like stories, sometimes offering different things, or even colluding into a major hit on a topic... that's my gig.
ReplyDeleteWell, at least I'm not crazy. Different method, similar game. It reminds me of one of the first two Conan movies, where his friends cries for him when he loses his woman, because he knows Conan won't or can't cry? *grins* Close enough anyway.