There's no actual content here or Fish in Exile

I read one more chapter of Fletch. In it he has a call to the finance expert at his paper where we get a chapter long info dump of the rich guy's backstory and finances. Excuse me while I try to drum up some enthusiasm. Wait...wait...nope, no, not happening. I'm just not feeling it. I'm too tired for this nonsense. My mother got out of the hospital barely a month ago after her heart transplant and I just don't have the energy for this long-winded exposition.

Which is why it's weird that I read in entirety Vi Khi Nao's Fish in Exile. Because that was pretty ridiculous as well. Mythological callbacks and metaphors abound in this tale of a couple who lost their twins to the sea. So many metaphors, so many allusions. It's a serious story with serious grief and some of it is quite well portrayed and yet. Part of the way Ethos and Catholic Romulus (yes, those are their names) handle their grief is by buying pair after pair of fish (as a pair of proxy children, named Dogfish and Pistachio) and putting them in dresses and "walking" them until they die and then starting the process all over again. I understand what it's supposed to mean in regards to their grief and guilt but it's just too silly. And the metaphors. The entire book is metaphors and similes. "I watched the pluvial curtain let down her translucent laces."  She's saying it's raining. But she just said that in the previous sentence. "Snow was predicted, but rain comes heavily in sheets." It's repetitious for no real reason other than to use fancy words. It doesn't truly add anything. Tons of this. "And soon, like a child that blooms into a hand, I fall asleep."  "I sipped from the well of the Corona." (He's drinking a beer.) "I don't understand women or cameras. My thoughts are outnumbered by white diminutive dots." The entire first part of the book from the point of view of Ethos is so dream-like and metaphor heavy that it's almost impossible to figure out what is going on. He can't make love to his wife. She's turned cold. He puts daisies down his underwear. She's not thrilled by this. He eats the daisies. They taste like tobacco. He has a haversack he keeps putting bread and butter into. There's also the neighbor couple who were present at the tragedy and Ethos' mother.
At the core of the story is the loss of two children and everyone's guilt about what they could have done to prevent it's happening but you get the full story so late and before that no one's guilt makes sense.

One more thing to share. I have a Library of Health 1935 edition of the 1916 book, edited by B. Frank Scholl. Twenty books in one volume, it was a health library for housewives to use to care for their families. (No internet!)

From the section on Self-Care for Women, on exercise and nutrition and how you can't change your natural body type but you can take care of yourself.
"This individual perfection will be each person's own type of beauty, and if this is brought out as nature intended, will be most attractive and delightful." p. 1635.
You are an individual not made to be fit to someone else's mold of beauty; take care of yourself and let your God-given loveliness shine.

Chinese Letter by Svetislav Basara; textbook rant

I finished Chinese Letter by Svetislav Basara. Wha-huh. I'm not sure there's an actual plot and nothing really happens. Definitely not for everyone. Guy rambles on and on about existence and fearing death but wanting to kill himself. He has been ordered (probably by imaginary people) to write a statement of about 100 pages and he writes down whatever occurs to him. There's conversations with his mother, his sister's marital woes, the neighbor girl's shenanigans, his visits to his pathologist friend, and lots of introspection. The main character is obviously insane and this is the reason for his crisis. His very existence causes him pain but he cannot bring himself to end it. It's a little funny, a little obnoxious, and a little unnerving. I didn't not like the book. That's really all I can say for it.

Now for a small rant on textbooks. Textbook publishers are parasitic asshats who make a living feeding on the earnings of a captive audience. They are part of what's making it so hard for anyone not supported by well-off parents to get a higher education. They deserve to be pressed with their own product. Preferably an introductory medical-surgical nursing book; those things are huge.

I have 4 editions of Karch's introductory pharmacology text and I decided to look through the first chapter to see if the older editions would still be useful for the students and I made a (not so) shocking discovery. They are all the same. Oh, they changed the font and re-designed the diagrams and charts but the information is practically word-for-word. A few paragraphs were given a couple extra words or a new sentence but not in such a way as to add content. I then looked through Jarvis' physical examination pocket companion for 1997 and 2008. Again, identical. All of the paragraphs were identical except for maybe a few words every couple of chapters. Nothing that added content. If the nursing diagnoses (listed in a little box at the end of each chapter) hadn't changed in the intervening years there would be no need for a new book at all.

New editions every year or two also means that students can't easily go out and buy a used copy of the text assigned which is what I did as an undergraduate. (Of course I studied art history. Less new information really.) If the class the year before used edition 8 and this year they are assigned edition 9 there goes your opportunity to buy something cheaper.

Now, I understand the need for new texts, especially in fields where information is regularly updated, but the changes being made do not justify the amount by which they raise prices. These texts cost $100 - $150. How are poorer students supposed to afford this? When a student comes in looking for a book to study from I just give them an older (by maybe a year or two) edition with a warning. They don't care; many of them are working with families to care for and they're just glad to have something to help them in their studies. I don't care because I know all the relevant information they need to pass their class is there.

I'm going to do a comparison of some of the other texts. I have some that date back to the '80s. (No, they are not on the shelf for the students.) I'll look at them next to the newer editions, from the past 5 years, to see what's changed.