My newest read these days

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Ahab's Wife, blogging, books, Captain Ahab, postaday2013, Reading, writing

The latest book that I am reading was a gift from my cousin Nancy, she passed it along to me when we went to see her on Mother’s Day weekend. It’s written by Sena Jeter Naslund who also authored Four Spirits, the title of her latest book is Ahab’s Wife or, The Star Gazer.

I just started it and I really like the writing style, I love the concept of exploring the wife’s story, the character off the pages of Moby Dick, who stayed on shore tending the home fires while the husband is traipsing throughout the seas on a crazy quest. The book’s first chapter is called Extracts and it is a few pages of extract after extract from Herman Melville’s classic showing the existence of Captain Ahab’s wife.

Once the fact that Captain Ahab did indeed have a wife is well established, we then get to meet her and follow her through her own story. I am curious to see how getting to know Captain Ahab’s wife, her name is Una by the way, will impact my appreciation of Moby Dick after all these years.

So far I have learned that Una is very close to her mother and has a difficult time of it with her father. This in and of itself isn’t so uncommon, girls and their fathers can often clash but I am waiting to see if this will affect her later in life when men enter her life.

I am very intrigued as to what type of woman would be attracted to a personality such as Captain Ahab’s and I suspect that I will see how huge the transformation of Ahab’s psyche must have been after his encounter with the beast and the impact on their relationship. Quite interesting if you ask me.

Daily Prompt: Dulled

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blogging, postaday2013, senses, writing

You meet a mystery man who offers you a sip of a magic potion which will enhance one of your senses (sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch) while dulling the others. Would you take the sip? And which sense would you choose?

I think that I answered this prompt but you want to know the funny part? I can’t remember what I said or how I answered it. Did I answer in the affirmative or in the negative?

Well today I will answer as the mood strikes me and the mood says no thank you to the mystery potion. I know that my senses are getting dull due to getting older, I know that my days of being eyeglass free are getting numbered, my hearing is still pretty keen as is my sense of touch; my sense of smell and taste could definitely stand improvement. That being said, I will keep everything as it is, I can figure out the cooking thing very well and I am very happy with the way everything is in a crazy state of imbalance. If it got tweaked, it would throw me off my game and that would be too much to relearn.

I would always rather be happy with what I have and who I am, than always being on the lookout for the next best thing or to spend time getting worked on to super size one piece of me and letting other parts decline.

I do believe that I am always a work in progress but I think that the work should happen organically and naturally, by trial and error, those lessons mean more because it isn’t simply a sip of magic juice.