Haha this is a stretch.

Welp. I had a good run. I had what I thought was going to be a pretty good backlog of books I'd read and that I could keep up. Then I went to my hometown's Main branch of the library and they have so many comic books, you guys. SO MANY.

Looking over my book list, I've basically got one book left to talk about before we get seriously into some Batman and the scattershot version of the newest X-Men story I've gleaned from reading them out of order and perusing Wikipedia. I'm pretty sure that Batman is sad about... something. And some of the good X-Mans are bad and some of the bad ones are good and one of them does magic but is still a mutant. Also there are two of some of them.

Alright, good talk so far.

Listen. If I have to write about comic books just so I can feel like I'm putting something into the world aside from general worries about my son going to Jr. High next year then I will. I'm not afraid to tell y'all about my crush on Rogue.

Do you guys remember Jr. High? I do. That's about when I decided that I didn't like being a nobody to everyone except for the ones who like to be scary to nobodies.

I tried to give him advice. About girls. He was pretty not on board with this. "It's not enough to be nice," I told him. "You need to offer something to the world. Also be nice though."

"Like a blog about X-Men?" his eyes seemed to say. "Bad jokes on Facebook?" his mouth seemed to say. "Occasionally wrong facts about birds?"

"Yes," I said. "Things like that. I guess."

Like, just be... interesting. Dumb teen boys (like I was) think that by not being jerks they deserve good stuff. Guess what? Not being a jerk is a good baseline, but it's not the only thing. And secretly hating people because they seem to know how to handle a decent social situation is kind of being a jerk.

"Why does she like that guy," teen me would say, fuming in my friend's basement while we played Goldeneye and got noticeably paler while "that guy" was getting good at skiing or winning another football game. "He's a jerk and I'm nice."

Big whoop, nice teen Matt. Work on being interesting, too.

I managed to go on some dates in high school. And found out too late that there were girls who even liked me. Like like me liked me. Not a lot. But some. You know why? I wrote funny stories for the local newspaper. I learned how to snowboard. I read a lot of books and would share quotes from them. I could get into movies for free at pretty much every theater in town.

I never got good at social situations. Not really. I still get intimidated by aggressive personalities. I can be very quiet in a new situation to the point where people think I'm very serious or stuck-up. I'm told that I'm terrible on the phone. I'm skinny and I have a big nose and I have very pretty eyes and now I'm losing my hair.

But there's enough to me that when people get to know me they like me more often than not. Least that's how it feels.

The storyline I'm reading in All New X-Men and Uncanny X-Men and X-Men vs. Avengers is partially about the young X-Men being pulled from the past into the present. Scott "Cyclops" Summers has gone kind of rogue, y'see. Beast thinks that if he shows him his past self, he'll see all of the idealism and boring good-guy appeal of the old Cyclops and see the error of his ways.

Young Cyclops annoys the old version and vice-versa. The world is simple in youth, and black and white sharply drawn. The war-weary older version, who has seen his wife die, has seen countless mutants killed and persecuted simply for being themselves, is tired of talk of "good" and "bad." He's interested in results. To his younger self he's just a sell-out. No better than his new pal Magneto.

One time I was wearing cowboy boots, and my sister said "Can you imagine what 15-year-old Matt would be saying about that?" And I could. He would be disgusted. But then he'd see my wife and say, "I can wear that."

Iron and whiskey

"She lives on the fumes of whiskey and the iron in the blood of her prey."

-Hilary Mantel, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher 

You guys sometimes I just ramble

Privilege is a difficult subject that I'm just starting to wrap my head around. It's hard to admit that part of the reason I have a great job that does stuff like send me to Moab to listen to people talk about cool stuff like lil' pygmy rabbits and rosy finches is because of privilege. I grew up in a place with good public schools, and I'm a tall white man. I was dealt a full house and then I act all smug when I manage to make fifty bucks.

I def deserve this

In the back of my mind I realize that someone smarter could have turned that hand into something much better, and there are people who were dealt worse who manage to make some serious bank anyway. I've had so many second, third, and fourth chances, you guys. I look at what my life would be like without the safety net of things like good health insurance, family, and just a general sense of society being on the side of my gender, race, and religion and guess what it ain't rosy.

Privilege is a complicated thing. In this episode of This American Life, there's a pretty good breakdown of what it takes to succeed when success is not expected of you. Spoiler: it takes someone pretty special. More special than me.

Here's the dumb thing about me. I'm sitting there with my metaphorical full house and just steaming because I didn't get the royal flush I see someone showing off down the street (hypothetically... not on OUR street). I'd like a car like that, I whine to myself from my own old little car that would literally be the difference between success or failure for many, many people in my own country yea even my own state yea even my very city. But I guess all of us can't be born to Mitt Romney.

Guys I don't want to be a Romney. I don't want to be anybody else or have anybody else's stuff. I don't know what else anyone is dealing with and don't want to find out. I like my little car and I sure like my wife, kids, and job. So I don't have an elevator just for my cars. I just have everything else anyone in the history of the world has ever desired.

Doesn't hurt to step back and think about that a minute. Let's do it through literature since that's what we do here. Sip your metaphorical hot beverage while we sit around a cozy metaphorical living room here in Howie's Book Club. Don't you spill though we just cleaned the carpets.

Back here I titled the post the Spanish word for "bones" because I was going to write about two books that had bone in the title. Then I got mad and ended up writing just one. This is the kind of crazy unpredictability you get here. The other book, which has to do with the theme of that first post, is Daniel Woodrell's Winters Bone.

“Ree, brunette and sixteen, with milk skin and abrupt green eyes, stood bare-armed in a fluttering yellowed dress, face to the wind, her cheeks reddening as if smacked and smacked again.”

In Winter's Bone we read about Ree, who you might be picturing as Jennifer Lawrence from the movie. The "smacked and smacked again" could be just as much about the wind as it is her life. Her mom is a shadow of herself due to mental illness. “Long, dark, and lovely she had been, in those days before her mind broke and the parts scattered and she let them go.” Her two younger brothers are hungry and there's no food. And it's very cold out. Oh, and her meth-selling father has skipped his bond. He leveraged the house against the bond, so it's kind of a problem.

Ree joins a growing list of tough girls who embark on a scary journey to find a family member. Ree's just 16 and maybe the toughest one yet. Her dream is to join the army, where people are forced to clean up for themselves. She just wants to get her brothers self-sufficient first. In between looking for her dad, she teaches them how to shoot and gut squirrels. How to make stew from the venison her cousins give her.

Woodrell's as good with language as anyone I've read.

“Ree followed a path made by prey uphill through scrub, across a bald knob and downhill into a section of pine trees and pine scent and that pious shade and silence pines create. Pine trees in low limbs spread over fresh snow made a stronger vault for the spirit than pews and pulpits ever could.”

The writing is spare and brutal, I've never been to the Ozarks but having read this I feel like I kinda have. And that I probably need a shower afterwards.

I also read Woodrell's Tomato Red. I'm more ambivalent on the story, but man, the writing. Here's how it begins:

“YOU’RE NO ANGEL, you know how this stuff comes to happen: Friday is payday and it’s been a gray day sogged by a slow ugly rain and you seek company in your gloom, and since you’re fresh to West Table, Mo., and a new hand at the dog-food factory, your choices for company are narrow but you find some finally in a trailer court on East Main, and the coed circle of bums gathered there spot you a beer, then a jug of tequila starts to rotate and the rain keeps comin’ down with a miserable bluesy beat and there’s two girls millin’ about that probably can be had but they seem to like certain things and crank is one of those certain things, and a fistful of party straws tumble from a woven handbag somebody brung, the crank gets cut into lines, and the next time you notice the time it’s three or four Sunday mornin’ and you ain’t slept since Thursday night and one of the girl voices, the one you want most and ain’t had yet though her teeth are the size of shoe-peg corn and look like maybe they’d taste sort of sour, suggests something to do, ’cause with crank you want something, anything, to do, and this cajoling voice suggests we all rob this certain house on this certain street in that rich area where folks can afford to wallow in their vices and likely have a bunch of recreational dope stashed around the mansion and goin’ to waste since an article in The Scroll said the rich people whisked off to France or some such on a noteworthy vacation.
That’s how it happens.

Can’t none of this be new to you.”

Tomato Red made me think, a lot. About people growing up in a situation in which they think they have no chance, but they try anyway. Sonny Barlow isn't ambitious. He just wants to find someone who will accept him. He meets Jamalee and Jason, who have set their sights higher. Brother and sister, they're both in their late teens/early twenties, and they've got a scheme.

Jamalee knows she's meant for better things, but she knows her work is cut out for her, too.

“Sammy, wouldn’t you like to add up to something? In the future? Amount to something?”

“Naw. I just figure to roll on, stackin’ days, you know, till the day I mess up big enough the future gets canceled. Or else all planned out for me, maybe. There’s a somewhat likely chance of that.”

“Man, Sammy, I can’t live thinking that way"

"Well, I don't think about it.”

Sammy's not as dumb as he sounds. He just sees things the way they are to him. The rich get better results when they let the poor fight among themselves.

So. Books, huh?

Heavy reading

When you find a new cache at a different branch of the library.

and he watched his children's heart break

"It was fall and his children fought on the sidewalk in front of Mrs. Dubose's. The boy helped his sister to her feet and they made their way home. Fall, and his children trotted to and fro around the corner, the day's woe's and triumph's on their face. They stopped at an oak tree, delighted, puzzled, apprehensive.
Winter, and his children shivered at the front gate, silhouetted against a blazing house. Winter and a man walked into the street, dropped his glasses, and shot a dog. 
Summer, and he watched his children's heart break. 
Autumn again, and Boo's children needed him.”

-Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird