I had to reword this once already because my wife pointed out that “killing or imprisoning people is a crime, so the statement simply isn’t true.” Her objection misses the point, but i didn’t know how to get around it, and she won’t tolerate me floundering.  So I’ve turned to you, my friends.  Now, speak up!

I shall submit:  Timothy Findley (the book about the Ark, but I can’t remember the name of it ... “Not Wanted on the Voyage”?)
and Margaret Atwood (just pick something and dislike it, if you like.  I had a boyfriend once who used to call her “Margaret Catfood").

They’re both Canadian, but then, so is William Shatner.

I read James Joyce, “Ulysses”, once, with commentaries.  It’s cool if you have time.  I ain’t doin’ it again.  Anyone out there got time to read “Remembrance of Things Past”???

Favorite Stephen King novels (pick two):  Mine:  Salem’s Lot.  The Stand. 

Right at the moment I am not reading anything, but I just finished reading some good animal books by someone named Vicki Hearne, eg. “Animal Happiness”.  Sadly, she’s dead of cancer, just recently, but lives in her books.

It would be cool to see what other people are reading, have read, or recommend.

...people who make simple mistakes that create terrible circumstances and how they deal with the guilt brought on by the simple mistake.  I tried writing about this once - it was in second person.  You were a babysitter who left the back slider open a crack and the two-year old you were watching got out and drowned in the pool while you were peeing.  I wanted to imagine that situation well enough to develop some way of dealing with it.  This is perhaps because what I rely on as a guide for my behavior is my reasoning more often than how everyone else does something , so I’m in danger of making a simple logical error, doing something differently, and having it wreak havoc in my life… So I was preparing myself for that.

But maybe I gave up because I recognized that being prepared for a terrible situation has a slight negative effect on the motivation (and therefore efforts) to avoid it.  Maybe I stopped writing that story because I decided that being prepared to deal with having let a two-year-old drown is worse than not being prepared.  I guess concentrating on strategies that protect us from making mistakes is better than preparing for the fallout if we do make them.  Anyway, it was just an idea…

Maybe we could do something similar here? I’ve attached an image to this post that I found online. I take no credit for it. See what it does for your imagination.