Abigail Thomas' Three Dog Life

This is a beautiful memoir of Abigail's life after her husband is in a terrible accident and is left with severe brain damage.

Abigail's husband Rich is out walking the dog one night in NYC and the dog takes off into the street. Rich goes after the dog and gets hit by a car. He is left with severe brain damage. He is in and out of the hospital to institutions and one very unsuccessful stint back at home where he is convinced that Abigail has moved and somehow recreated their previous apartment almost perfectly. He has lost all short term memory, anything that has happened after the accident doesn't seem to stick. He speaks in riddles, "has difficulty completing tasks," goes through phases of good and very bad moods.

Abigail eloquently tells her tale of strife and heartache. She comes out a wonderfully independent person that learns to let go of all life's nonsense that is handed to her. Her dogs are her comfort and she is Rich's. She moves out of her longtime New York City apartment to a small town to be closer to her husband in his new permanent home. She prescribes to "nap therapy" both with Rich and with the dogs. She has to separate the Rich before the accident from the Rich after.

Three Dog Life was an incredible read. I'll be passing this one on to my mother, who will sarcastically thank me while choking on her tears.

VPR, NPR, Podcasts... Music, News, Stories

Every weekday morning Josh and I wake up to Vermont Public Radio. He gets up instantly. I tend to hit the snooze a few more times before slowly lying in bed, waking up to the news or weather forecast. It's a routine I really enjoy. Sometimes we'll turn it off and move out to the rest of the house continuing our morning routine with music off his iPod, or decide that we want to continue to listen to the broadcast and then I'll plug my iPod in and stream VPR through our stereo system.

NPR stations have always been part of my life. Everywhere I've lived I've sought out the local station and been sure to at least tune my clock radio in. I've always enjoyed the programing brought to the local stations from NPR. Like Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me or  This American Life hosted by Ira Glass. But mostly I had just happened upon them when they were being broadcast.

A few years ago Josh and I had a short stint of hosting a music radio show through out local community radio station (not Public Radio). It was really the remainders of a show Josh had started with a good friend of his (and mine), Carson, that I started helping him with after Carson had stopped co-hosting, for reasons I have never known or understood. It had been a really great show when the two of them had hosted it together. Afterword, I think Josh just felt like he had to carry the torch, and I was game to accompany him, although very hesitant to speak on air.

Soon, Josh's lust in introducing new music started to falter. I was inspired to pick up some of the slack. I started to do online searches for anything that seemed interesting and would make playlists for Josh to include in the show. Somehow my sister started listening and would email me or call me from time to time to let me know that she had heard the last episode online. At one point I expressed to her that I was having difficulty finding new music. Well, like any great "big" sis would do, she gave me a few new resources to find more new music. Amongst them was a Kansas City radio station that I have since forgotten the name of and NPR's All Song Considered hosted by Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton.

Well, it's been a long time since Josh and I hosted that show... maybe 4 years. And it didn't last long. I had since stopped listening to the podcast of All Songs Considered, but recently, in a very uncharacteristic way, I opened my iTunes and perused through my old podcasts that haven't been updated in over a year and decided to start listening to all those shows again: All Songs Considered, This American Life, as well as other shows such as the NPR Pop Culture podcast.

I really love listening to these shows. I love being able to select the episodes I want to listen to and then, as if an addiction, I have to listen to the next and then the next until I run out of unheard episodes and move on to the next show.

A Dance With Dragons

I definitely hyped this one up way too much for myself. All Ice and Fire fans simply waited too long for this one. When an author gives that much time in between books it's just too late. We've all already developed the plots and characters ourselves. There's just no winning that game.

I will say that I am looking forward to not only the next in the series, but also rereading Dance again in the future.

I felt that Martin was too easy on the characters this time, seemingly uncharacteristic. As a reader and a fan, you don't want your favorite characters to die or suffer too much. However that is exactly what made Martin such a strong writer in the previous books, his ability to kill someone off so easily and sometimes so unfairly - that is what made it so easy to get sucked in and what made the story so believable. His writing style feels so much more like a historical novel. However Dance didn't carry that atmosphere as much as the others. Maybe Martin has just gone soft in his old age.

I did have moments with the story this time that can only be described as nostalgic relief. For example, there's a clear point in the book where Martin has moved on from the sequel to Crows to continue the story where the characters that have been excluded start up again. At that point I had to stop and take a sweet moment to reminisce over the histories of the characters I've grown to love so much.

Over all I would say that Dance is the weakest part of the series thus far. I hope that it doesn't continue on his route but it won't stop me from continuing to follow the tale.