I have been dreaming a lot lately. I suppose it is the lack of most stimuli brought on by the pandemic cocooning. My routine at night is still the same: underwear, melatonin, Tempur-pedic, bi-pap, oxygen machine, night light, old time radio. I am aware I often work real-life experience into my dreams, like having to pee or being mildly panicked by my breathing machine. But more and more often I return to visit places, experience events, or meet with past acquaintances .. usually in some twisted or frustrating way.
Then, after sleeping, dozing, tossing around, listening to The Shadow, ten to twelve hours go by and I let the dog out, make breakfast in the microwave, down a few espressos, and settle into my desk to read a book or two on my iPad or iPhone. I use AirPods and computer features to feed the text into my ears at the same time I follow the narrative on the screen or occasionally in a text printed on a dead tree. Note: AirPods allow me to get up from my desk, make lunch, pee, etc. without having to stop reading.
The funny thing is, I spend hours reading, submerge myself in countless narratives, encounter thousands of fictional characters, and yet I can’t recall ever dreaming of Raskolnikov or Hans Castorp or even Molly Bloom.
Do your dreams ever evoke a fictional narrative?
Perhaps one of the suggested titles from April will stick in your mind. Interesting, my best read from the list is A Hazard of New Fortunes by William Dean Howells.
04-01-21 – If I Had Your Face — Frances Cha
04-02-21 – Far Tortuga — Peter Matthiessen
04-03-21 – My Year Abroad — Chang-Rae Lee
04-04-21 – Natural History: A Novel — Carlos Foneseca
04-05-21 – Topics of Conversation — Miranda Popkey
04-06-21 – The Celestial Hunter — Roberto Calasso
04-07-21 – A Long Petal of the Sea — Isabel Allende
04-08-21 – Real Life — Brandon Taylor
04-09-21 – Weather: A Novel — Jenny Offil
04-10-21 – Moonflower Murders — Anthony Horowitz
04-11-21 – The Lying Life of Adults — Elena Ferrante
04-12-21 – Interlibrary Loan — Gene Wolfe
04-13-21 – Peculiar Peril — Jeff VanderMeer
04-14-21 – Mexican Gothic — Silvia Morena-García
04-15-21 – Crossings: A Novel — Alex Landragin
04-16-21 – A Death in the Family: My Struggle Book 1 — Karl Ove Knausgârd
04-17-21 – Caveman Logic: The Persistence of Primitive Thinking in a Modern World — Hank Davies
04-18-21 – Making Sense — Sam Harris
04-19-21 – With Lawrence in Arabia — Lowell Thomas
04-20-21 – Little Scratch: A Novel — Rebecca Watson
04-21-21 – Pieces — Helen Oyeywmi
04-22-21 – Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre — Max Brooks
04-23-21 – The Octopus On My Head — Jim Nisbet
04-24-21 – A Hazard of New Fortunes — William Dean Howells
04-25-21 – Cooked — Michael Pollan
04-26-21 – The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life Without Illusions – Alex Rosenberg
04-27-21 – Homegoing — Yaa Gyasi
04-28-21 – Lust & Wonder — Augusten Burroughs
04-29-21 – Payback — Mary Gordon
04-30-21 – Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body — Neil Shubin
A Celebration of Reading 
Final follow-up. The Wagamese book was really good. It is very similar to the Nickel Boys, but from an indigenous people’s advantage point. The writing is very good. I would recommend it.
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You can delete this comment after you see it, but you might check the inadvertent typo on your Tool and the Butterfly comment. I don’t want you to catch flack for that one.
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Oh, but it’s funny. Actually it is an artifact of my poor eyesight, slap-dash typing, and vigorous spell checker. I have been finding more and more incomprehensible entries only to discover that I originally dropped a character or threw in an extra space which, rather than correcting my error, allowed spell check an imaginative free-rein to make my post incomprehensible. Here it was a typo but given the context, actually very apropos.
I suspect I was typing “women” and glitched a character or two allowing the correction to read “worm.” Thanks for pointing it out. Made my day.
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I don’t usually point out typos, but worm/women in 2021…
I am currently reading Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese, an indigenous writer from Canada. The book is very rich. You may want to add the author to your extensive list.
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