Tag: marriage

#REVIEW: We Burned So Bright, by TJ Klune

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, ReviewsLeave a comment
It’s his best book.

It’s his best book. It’s not super close, either; The House on the Cerulean Sea, which is still a book I love immensely, is going to have to be demoted.(*) I sobbed at the end of this book. I am not a sobber. I do not sob, Goddammit.

This book got me.

The story is simple, and told quickly; Bright is a novella, clocking in at only 176 pages, and I read it in a single sitting. The world is about to end, and there is nothing we can do about it; a rogue black hole has been identified in deep space and it is heading directly toward Earth. At the beginning of the book there is about a month left until the planet and every living thing on it ceases to exist. This could have been a huge, doorstopper story, but Klune keeps the focus tight: a married couple, Don and Rodney, who are both in their seventies and have been together for over forty years, and have one last road trip that they have to undertake, one last task that they must complete together, before the end of the world.

I’m not going to tell you much more than that. Klune takes his time revealing the reason for the trip, focusing mostly on Don and Rodney’s relationship and the small number of other people they encounter along the way, including a young family who have not told their children what is coming, a roving community of hippies, and one unfortunate young woman whose mind has broken under the strain of waiting for the apocalypse. It’s clear that there is danger out there; there are references to some areas under martial law, and one panicked flight from a gunfight, but the focus of this book isn’t on a world gone mad or a perilous journey. There are some obstacles to overcome, but this is a quiet book about a quiet pair of men; Klune isn’t interested in telling an action story here.

My sole gripe is minor, and may actually be wrong: I’m pretty sure that a rogue black hole heading toward Earth would not have some of the effects that this black hole has. There’s some fuckery with gravity going on toward the end that I found kind of distracting (and there’s some interesting discussion about said fuckery in the author’s afterword, as apparently how much fuckery to include was a point of contention between author, editor, and early readers) and the black hole manages to eat several other planets on the way to Earth, implying they were all in a nice neat little row for it. This is possible but doesn’t happen very often. The gravity stuff is within artistic license. I’ll live, is what I’m saying, and the only reason it got to me is that I’m an astronomy nerd. The emotional core of the book does not care one whit about what that black hole should be doing, and the emotional core of the book is going to kick you in the ass.

Even if you’ve never read any of Klune’s books before, absolutely pick this one up. Read it on a day when it’s raining outside and you have a few hours to yourself and maybe you’re a little sad. It’ll be worth it.

(*) Third, The Bones Beneath My Skin; fourth, Somewhere Beyond the Sea, then everything else.

Eighteen years

On By Luther M. SilerIn life1 Comment

It’s official: my marriage is a legal adult. I continue to be amazed and surprised that she’s put up with me all this time.

Still good

On By Luther M. SilerIn life, Music1 Comment

It was eight years and some change ago the last time I posted this song, and it’s crossed my radar again due to an a capella group on TikTok popping up on my For You page. I had honestly completely forgotten it existed, but seeing the TikTok video led to me finding the song on my phone, and that led to finding the video on YouTube, which reminded me just how much I love the video to Andy Grammer’s “Honey I’m Good.” So you get to watch it again. If you’re like me, you’ll watch it a few times.

(Bek and I will hit sixteen years in February, by the way. I’d love to know how many of these couples are still together.)

(Also, my relationship goals couple is the pair in the car who are 26 years in, at 1:47.)

This isn’t normal

On By Luther M. SilerIn life3 Comments

Depending on how you count, since we were actually married on February 29, my wife and I will celebrate fifteen years of marriage … sometime this week. Or at least we should. We have no ideas, and no presents have been purchased. I tried to float the idea of going to Chicago and having dinner at Alinea and she was having none of it. That’s as good as I got. Right now I have Friday off, but I’m planning on playing Wo Long: Hidden Dynasty all freakin’ day. And the way I know I picked the right lady is she doesn’t mind.

That said, if y’all have any great ideas about what we could do with ourselves on either Tuesday or Wednesday night, feel free to air ’em out. Neither of us have any better ideas, after all.

A review of an actual book

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, Reviews3 Comments

I’m a hundred percent certain I’ve talked about this before: my wife and I both love to read. I read a lot faster than she does, but we have fairly similar tastes in reading material for the most part, so she only very rarely actually buys books. Generally once she finishes something she’ll ask me what I’ve read recently that she’ll want to read, or just go looking through the bookshelves that are slowly taking over our entire house until something strikes her fancy, and then she’ll read that.

There is a critical difference between the two of us here, because while we are both readers, I am also a book collector and my wife very much is not. She has very gently suggested to me a couple of times that we might possibly have too many books. I do not recognize that as a legitimate state of existence. “Too many books” is, for me, quite simply not a thing.

Which brings me to a little dilemma I’m having with James Islington’s The Shadow of What Was Lost.

I don’t like the story. I am not enjoying reading this book. The reasons aren’t especially interesting and fall into my Don’t Shit on Books Unnecessarily policy; I’m just not enjoying it very much, 200 or so pages into its 700 or so page length, with two more volumes already concluding the trilogy that are available but I haven’t bought.

The problem is the actual book— not the story, not the part you’re supposed to, like, look at, but the actual physical object itself that you hold in your hands– is amazing, at least in the paperback edition. The pages and especially the cover just feel great, and the book is exactly the right size, and it even smells good, and I know from seeing them in bookstores that the entire trilogy looks great on a shelf. So much so, as a matter of fact, that I’m considering going ahead and ordering the rest of the series just so that I can touch them and so that they can be on my bookshelves together, effectively as art pieces and not as things that convey a story. I mean, would I ever read them? Will I even finish this one, or will I DNF it and move on to something I’ll enjoy reading more? Or will I just keep reading it so I can hold it for longer, because it’s so pleasant to have in the hand?

This is … not a thing my wife understands. As marital incompatibilities go, I’ll take it, believe me, but if I end up ordering the next couple of books I might have to find a way to put them somewhere she won’t find them. Not quite sure how that’s gonna work, but we’ll see what I can come up with.

Lights!

On By Luther M. SilerIn life1 Comment

This is as exciting as my day got– picking out the lighting for the bathroom remodel. That’s what they look like; bask in its room-lighty glory. Or not; we didn’t exactly go super-complicated on this particular decision. I suppose we also picked out a bathroom exhaust fan, but seeing as how the entire decision-making process for that was to authorize whatever our contractor had already suggested, and I couldn’t pick the one we chose out of a lineup if my life depended on it, it didn’t count for much.

My criteria for the lights: 1) brushed nickel, to match everything else in the room; 2) smoked glass so that I’m not staring at bare lightbulbs, and 3) facing downwards to make the bulbs easier to change. My wife argued with none of these determinations and I more or less went “Okay, whatever you want” beyond that. I think we’ve been surprising the people at these places with how quickly and easily we’ve been able to make decisions throughout this process, although I did horrify the saleslady at the fixtures place a couple of weeks ago by abruptly snarling at my wife about something or another; Bek knew exactly what I was doing and laughed about it, but the saleslady clearly thought I had decided to die on the hill of refusing to have oval-shaped pulls on the vanity or whatever it was that I’d complained about, and you could see her bracing herself to be an unwitting bystander in Marital Drama.

I suspect these people probably have a touch of PTSD, and I don’t blame them for it; we probably ought to just get along in public and not make jokes. I will do better in the future.

There’s not much more to report here, really; I planned for the first couple of days of summer break to be low-activity and I’ve successfully achieved that. Tomorrow we are heading to Illinois to finally meet my new nephew, so expect a hotel window picture tomorrow evening and maybe some baby pictures if my brother and sister-in-law will allow it. Maybe I’ll just put my hand over his face and post that; we’ll see. We’ll stay overnight– the boy is psyched about staying in a hotel for the first time in forever– and be back Sunday, and then Monday morning I start actually Preparing for Things. We’ll see how well I do.

Thirteen years and one year

On By Luther M. SilerIn life7 Comments

This is not, objectively speaking, that great of a picture. Bek has pretty clearly just emerged from the shower, I don’t even look like I have showered– my beard is an utter Goddamned abomination– and none of us are looking at the camera for some reason, which is odd because I seem to be holding it, so you’d think I’d know where to look. I like it anyway.

Roughly thirteen years ago, I got married to that lady on the right there. Why roughly? Our anniversary is February 29, meaning that for three out of every four years I correctly celebrate our anniversary on the 28th of February and my wife incorrectly insists that our anniversary is March 1st. I finally won this argument free and clear this year, when she fucked up and accidentally advocated my position for a few minutes, forgetting that she has always been the March person. I will never, ever allow her to forget it, either.

At any rate, asking her to marry me remains the best decision I’ve ever made, as I Married Up in every conceivable fashion. The jury may still be out on her decision to marry me, but I’d like to think it’s worked out okay.

We aren’t doing anything for our anniversary this year. Last year we went to C2E2 on our anniversary. Covid-19 was a concern already, but at the time there were less than 60 cases nationwide and we figured it was as safe as it ever was. I tried my damnedest to keep my hands in my pockets as much as I possibly could and we washed our hands whenever we had a chance to. We had dinner with a friend at a Potbellies in Hyde Park and then came home.

And then I was sick for a month anyway, not quite “as sick as I’ve ever been” levels but I literally was trashed for the entire month of March, and by the time that was done we were in lockdown. That Potbellies dinner was the last time I had dinner in a restaurant. That dinner was the last time we made plans with anybody to do anything fun. And 500,000 people are dead in the United States alone, with another two million gone worldwide.

So, yeah, this year we’re staying home. We’re having Hamburger Helper for dinner. Why? Because Bek used to make it all the time and has stopped in the last couple of years for some reason, and I’m so Goddamn starved for novelty that having Hamburger Helper for the first time in probably seven or eight months seemed like something worth getting excited about. None of us have had shots yet; we’re too young to qualify yet, and Indiana is explicitly hoping at least a few more teachers die of this thing before they vaccinate any of us.

Maybe next year, if we’re able to, we’ll celebrate on the 28th and the 1st.

On what I want

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, life2 Comments

My wife and I, married thirteen years come next February, typically do not buy each other gifts. My wife is impossible to buy for, as she does not like things, and I am exceptionally easy to buy for but tend to spend money indiscriminately, so buying things from my Amazon wish list, for example, can be kind of a fraught proposition.

I fucked around and got myself into trouble last week, as I came up with a perfectly good Christmas present for my wife and managed to acquire it in a fraction of the time I would have expected it to take and at a fraction of the cost. In other words, not only was I breaking the rules by buying something in the first place, she was going to take one look at it and assume that I had spent way more than I actually spent on it– even though what I did spend for it would generally count as a relatively large amount for us to spend on each other, even in a world where we buy things for each other, which we really don’t.

I hope to hell that sentence makes sense because I’m not rewording it.

Anyway, I went through this brief crisis where I was trying to figure out what my duties were in terms of whether I was going to disclose the gift before Christmas or not, and if I was merely going to disclose its existence or also disclose how much I spent. I ended up, after discussing the matter with my brother and sister-in-law, deciding to tell her what had happened and that I’d spent what I spent on it, so that if she wants to get me something in return (which she isn’t required to do) she has a chance of achieving some sort of parity.

(She won’t. I win this Christmas. She can try again next year if she wants, but I win this one.)

Anyway, the trick to buying me (and a lot of people, really) is to come up with something that I want but would never buy myself, which is kind of a tricky needle to thread, and thinking about it tonight all I’ve been able to come up with are two items that I really don’t need and would just add to the clutter around the house. Guitar Center is going out of business, and part of me really wants to go buy a guitar once I can get them at discount prices. Can I play the guitar? No. I can’t play the ukulele either. I’m not gonna learn. I’m 44 and it is too late to learn a musical instrument. There is, therefore, no reason for me to want one.

It is kind of hilarious to me that the second thing that I came up with was a combat-grade lightsaber, which is also something that someone else should not buy me, because they come with literally a billion available options and are also expensive as hell and the whole idea is completely ridiculous. I do not need a lightsaber, much less a $250 one, and the idea that I’m fixated on a combat-grade one, which has a blade tough enough that they’re supposed to be good for full-contact sparring against someone else, is even more ridiculous.

I’m curious to see if anyone can guess what color blade I’d pick, by the way.

(Oh, and also I’m still fighting off the occasional urge to buy a lathe.)

It’s best to just let me waste my own money, I think.