writing on my mind

I've been doing some hard reading this week. Green Book and Brown Book may be dull as wonder bread, but there's little within them to keep me up nights. Not only are they effective sleep aids, but even if written with a more dramatic & narrative eye, they would still not be all that upsetting.

Alas, I also needed to read some essays (many of them collected into one volume, thankfully) that survey the history of familial violence, murder and other such happy topics. This is much harder going and I notice that the authors cope with the emotional element by either adopting a very clinical tone (one akin to Green Book) or by really capturing the balance between trying to understand larger trends (how did familial murder rates vary over 300 years and what are some possible explanations for these shifts) leavened with pieces of truly tragic stories. Though aware of the horror, they don't shy away from commincating its depths, while struggling with teh impact upon the survivors and upon modern readers. I am in awe of the latter group, but understand the struggles of the former, too.

An older friend often asserts that domestic violence and abuse were far less common before 1950. Would that it were so.

Words Written: six hundred pages read in six days
Lessons Graded: three