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Please go buy The Gay Road Less Traveled on Amazon!
23 Tuesday Jan 2018
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author, books, ebook, gay, good reads, john jernigan, LGBT, the gay road less traveled, writer
Please go buy The Gay Road Less Traveled on Amazon!
21 Wednesday Jun 2017
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authors, book reviews, books, children, dogs, good reads, Life, Nature, pets, social work, society, Thrift Store, writers
$5 for a Bag of Books at the Worcester Habitat for Humanity yo, inching Less Than Zero, Doctors and a childhood favorite Island of the Blue Dolphins. 8 years old I was Marana on that island, struggling to find food and trying to avoid being killed by the wild dogs (while doing everything I could to steal one of their puppies).
25 Sunday Jan 2015
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authors, autobiography, Beautiful Boy David Sheff, best gay blog, book reviews, books, crystal meth, drug addiction, gay, good reads, memoirs, writers
Beautiful Boy – a father’s journey through his son’s addiction to crystal meth
I found the most interesting parts of this story to be when the father described parenting his two younger children, second-guessing himself and constantly worrying that he was the primary caregiver of a child who became a meth addict.
“Through Nic’s drug addiction, I have learned that parents can bear almost anything….I shock myself with my ability to rationalize and tolerate things once unthinkable. The rationalizations escalate….It’s only marijuana. He gets high only on weekends. At least he’s not using hard drugs….At least it’s not heroin. He would never resort to needles. At least he’s alive.”
“An alcoholic will steal your wallet and lie to you. A drug addict will steal your wallet and then help you look for it.”
“Anyone who has lived through it, or those who are now living through it, knows that caring about an addict is as complex and fraught and debilitating as addiction itself.”
“Along with the joy of parenthood, with every child comes a piercing vulnerability. It is at once sublime and terrifying”
“But here’s the rub of addiction. By its nature, people afflicted are unable to do what, from the outside, appears to be a simple solution—don’t drink. Don’t use drugs. In exchange for that one small sacrifice, you will be given a gift that other terminally ill people would give anything for: life.”
“In his suicide note, Kurt Cobain wrote, “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.” He was quoting a Neil Young song about Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols. When I was twenty-four, I interviewed John Lennon. I asked him about this sentiment, one that pervades rock and roll. He took strong, outraged exception to it. “It’s better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out, ” he said. “I worship people who survive. I’ll take the living and the healthy.”
“I tried everything I could to prevent my son’s fall into meth addiction. It would have been no easier to have seen him strung out on heroin or cocaine, but as every parent of a meth addict comes to learn, this drug has a unique, horrific quality. In an interview, Stephan Jenkins, the singer in Third Eye Blind, said that meth makes you feel “bright and shiny.” It also makes you paranoid, delusional, destructive, and self-destructive. Then you will do unconscionable things in order to feel bright and shiny again.”
15 Tuesday Jan 2013
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authors, book reviews, books, culture, El-ahrairah, favorites, fiction, gay fort lauderdale, good reads, inspirational, john jernigan, point of view, richard adams, watership down
One of my all-time favorites…extremely enjoyable as a simple read for a 12 year-old. Decidedly more enjoyable to read again as an adult, understanding the allegories, the symbolism, the subtle nuances…an appreciation for the nobility and “animality” of our leader Hazel-rah and his warren.
“Animals don’t behave like men,’ he said. ‘If they have to fight, they fight; and if they have to kill they kill. But they don’t sit down and set their wits to work to devise ways of spoiling other creatures’ lives and hurting them. They have dignity and animality.”
“El-ahrairah, your people cannot rule the world, for I will not have it so. All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.”
“There’s terrible evil in the world.”
It comes from men,” said Holly. “All other elil do what they have to do and Frith moves them as he moves us. They live on the earth and they need food. Men will never rest till they’ve spoiled the earth and destroyed the animals.”
“With a kind of wry envy, Hazel realized that Bigwig was actually looking forward to meeting the Efrafan assault. He knew he could fight and he meant to show it. He was not thinking of anything else. The hopelessness of their chances had no important place in his thoughts. Even the sound of the digging, clearer already, only set him thinking of the best way to sell his life as dearly as he could.”
Posted by johnjernigan | Filed under Books Check 'Em Out