Stuff - Meme - Intersections between Readings and Your Life

This meme was inspired by a recent BookGirl post. Her thoughts about being In Sync caused me to think about this topic:

Explain how your reading and your life are intersecting.

1. Cloning/Genetics

My book group recently finished discussing Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. The section that interested at least three of us was the description of life in future. It described a society in Korea that was human but becoming increasingly dependent on cloning and genetics research. But, despite all the advances in science, there was still a very slummy place where some humans still resided.

I noted that this portion reminded me of some parts of Margaret Atwood’s Onyx and Crake, (a b-day gift from BookGirl, btw) in terms of the genetics components and the poverty of some humans. Cloning was also a big theme of her novel.

A few days later, on NPR, I heard spoke about a piece about a artist wrote in 2000 about cloning. He said the Dolly the Sheep had been cloned, and the news caused him to think about the future of humans.

Both books were also written about the same time. I was wondering why this theme came up in both of these authors and now I had my answer.

Too much intersecting, don’t you agree?

2. Historical Weather

For the past few months, the History Channel has been showing programs about how history is being reexamined to account for weather. For example, Napoleon’s retreat from Russian happened during one of the worst winters on record. If he had chosen his campaign for another year, maybe the history of Russia would have been different. The historians are now teaming with meteorologists to find out what was happening weather-wise that caused the winter to be so cold in 1811.

And that the volcanic explosions at Tambora and Karatoa also affected weather for many years. Mary Shelly went to Lake Geneva to spend a nice summer away from England; however it was so cold and rainy, that she stayed indoors and the vacationers told each other stories. From this entertainment, came Frankenstein.

Her cold summer was caused from Tambora dust particles preventing the sun reaching the Earth.

All of these TV shows prepared me for reading my new friend’s article about an unusually warm winter and the extremely cold winter next year in the eastern portions of the U.S. CM and his team made several interesting comments about this research.

So, what intersections are you finding between what you are reading and your life?

I sent this meme to three bloggers. If they respond, I will update this entry with their links.