Youth Sports

A local friend writes a parenting blog and does a weekly radio/podcast on the subject of empathic parenting, (Bonus points to Amy M. for the correct use of empathic!) She introduced me to Mark Hyman's book Until it Hurts: America's Obsession with Youth Sports and How it Hurts our Children. (A sidenote: I am not particularly interested in youth sports other than to sign my kid up for soccer every spring and fall. Truth be told, I love my kid, but I find going to those games dreadfully boring. No big danger in me turning into a psycho parent.)

Mr. Hyman has written a very short book (no more than 150 pages) that really packs a punch. Youth Sports has become a billion dollar industry fueled by parents and coaches and big business who have taken over the games, all games, in an effort to prepare their kids for the big time. Not many kids are having any fun playing games any more. Well meaning parents and coaches who are past their glory days turn sandlot ball into mini-adult training grounds. What is sad, is that when the games were corrupted 50 years ago it involved only boys...in the advent of Title IX..now we drive girls too hard as well. Mr Hyman has even talked about a new video series for babies to watch to encourage them to become athletes! (As young as 3 months old. The market is there!)

Until it Hurts is quite a page turner and a must read for anyone who has kids, or grandkids or nieces and nephews in youth sports programs. Let's give the games back to the kids.

Alaska!

I both enjoyed and disliked this book.

I enjoyed it because Janice Schofield Eaton has an interesting story to tell, and I felt like she was someone who I could sit next to at a dinner party and enjoy hearing tales of adventure living in Alaska for hours. At the end of the dinner party I would tell her, "You really should write this all down. This is a fascinating story with amazing characters." She lived an exciting life as Alaska was coming of age, and she had the thought to capture it and share it. I was interested in how neighborly everyone was and how Janice and Ed became environmental activists after the Exxon Valdez spill. I was interested in how they got along in the wilds, using outhouses and stocking up on provisions for months at a time. I loved that Janice began to know and catalog medicinal herbs. Its a lovely, captivating story. It felt much the same way that the Laura Ingalls Wilder books felt: deep description about how they do things out on the Alaskan frontier (as opposed to the Prairie).

My problems with the book mostly have to do with her narrative style. It reads almost like a play-by-play book from someone's journal. The dialogue feels unnatural, and there is little personal reflection, simply a catalog on what they did and when. There were no dates until the oil spill, so it felt a little dislocated in time. I kept wondering, when is this going on?

I would love to know how native Alaskans like this story. I will also continue to hope to run into Ms Schofield-Eaton at a dinner party someday. Perhaps I will travel to New Zealand...

This book was part of the ER program on Librarything. If anyone would like to read it, I would love to share it. Just leave a note for me on the blog.

Book Versus Movie?

I work for an academic department that studies film, so I am attuned to the prejudice that book readers have against the movie version of their favorite book. Woe be the director who changes any part of a beloved book when adapting it for the screen! Academics who study film denounce that prejudice and believe, as I have come to believe, that you must rate a film on its own merits. To compare the two texts is inevitable, but you begin to wonder if people who do these comparisons understand that films and books are different mediums and are capable of very different forms of expression. Better to rate all the Harry Potter films against one another, rather than compare them all to their respective books.

Since I have so many books to read on my bedside table, and it is hard to find a good novel, I tend to leave the big blockbuster novels like My Sisters Keeper for the big screen, and so last Wednesday, I went with three good friends to take in this summer "tear jerker".

Apparently, according to my companions, the book My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picault had a very different ending than the movie did. What's worse, they would not tell me the ending and said I had to read the book! Huh? Read the book.

I won't bother with a review of the book. Jodi Picault has written dozens of books which have sold a million copies, no one hardly cares what I think at this point, but I will say this, the movie is much much better and is a good case about why and how movies can be better that books.



A movie does not have to be 100 % loyal to its source material. A script writer, director, and producer can feel free to experiment with different endings and add and subtract different scenes. This is helpful, mostly because to adopt a 300 page novel to a feature film, out of necessity you will need to cut some parts. If you want to have a reasonable length for a book you need to cut some of the subplots. In this case, I found a few of the subplots of the book to be trite, and they happily did not appear in the movie.

So, say what you will about the movie version of the book, they ain't all bad. I would love to hear reader comments on this topic. And your favorite book to movie adaptation...

Well said...

Mary Pierce Brosmer at Women Writing for (a) Change sent me this commencement address:

Well said, Mr. Hawken. These words were a gift.

Au Revoir To All That: Food, Wine and the End of France

Remember back a few years ago when Americans all hated France? What was that about? We renamed french fries freedom fries and we wouldn't drink french wines. I think it had something to do with the French government's stance on the Iraq war. The French are just a little too superior to Americans, and we don't like that so we won't drink your wine. So there.

Michael Steinberger is an American who loves France. More importantly he loves eating and French Food and wine and has written a lovely memoir--almost an elegy--about the decline of French gastronomy. Fine french wines and restaurants and cheeses are all is various states of decline and ruin. And are being eclipsed by the English, the Americans and *gasp* Spain.

I approached this book feeling like it was something I needed to get through, but I came away very taken with the beauty of these timeless french industries and the history and culture behind them. The author really led me in to the French restaurant industry -- the three start restaurants and how they were earned and what they said about a man (no women here) and his love for fine cooking.

The book tries to explain what has happened to French restaurants and does so with loving care. While I lost interest during the long parade of french chef's and how they were inter connected, I loved the chapter called "The Last Gentleman of Europe" where Steinberger profiles the last of the big three star Parisian Restaurants to loose its star. This chapter alone is worth the price of the book. I also loved the chapter about McDonald's role in France. Contrary to popular belief, the french love their McDo.

Steinberger points his finger at France itself for the demise of some of its most cherished industries (not at crass Americans or
stupid Spaniards.) He discusses French policy and politics towards industry and regulations, and calls to France for some basic reforms to save its own products and culture. One chapter is all about the Michelin guide and how it serves to encourage tourism, but is also filled with hypocrisy. After all, Michelin really just wants to sell tires.

I was surprised that I enjoyed this book as much as I did. The real story here is not that long parade of French chef's who cook and influence French culture, but the farmers and cheese makers and restauranteurs who are trying valiantly to remain French and carry on their long standing traditions. Each chapter surprised me a lot and taught me something new about France. Although this may not be your best summer beach read, it is a great story about France and its people. It will make you feel a little bad about all that French wine you do not drink.

The Luck Factor

Several friends have been blogging about luck in the past few days. Steph writes of a formula to partially explain her luck. (Luck=opportunity + preparedness) Quite serendipitously, I was reading a book about luck. Richard Wiseman, a scholar from the UK, has spent his career studying the luck phenomenon and all things paranormal. In his work, he takes a hard look at serendipity, and one of the many conclusions that he reaches, that I love, is that serendipity is really not so serendipitous--it is really quite ordinary. We may not recognize it, but luck/karma/serendipity happens all the time. He teaches us to attune ourselves to it.

He asks readers to write down the memory of how they met their partner or spouse, how they found their current career, and how they met their closest friend. Was there some chance encounter at play in founding that relationship or causing the spark that made that decision for you? Most people begin to realize how lucky they are when they imagine how they met their best friend and realize that they wouldn't know this person if they had taken a different class or their car hadn't broken down in front of that store. When you take the long view of luck, you begin to see how lucky you really are.

Wiseman concludes that improving your luck is a factor of several things: 1) Opening yourself up to as many experiences as possible. Doing things, going places, meeting people, trying new foods. 2) Following your instincts and hunches. 3) Knowing what you want and going after it. 4) (My number one) Learning to recognize and appreciate how lucky you are. Becoming a glass half full kind of person goes a long way in making yourself feel more lucky.

So Steph and Dr. Wiseman and the Lucky girl seemed to have stumbled upon some great wisdom. I wish you all much luck and the wisdom to know when you have it. Please let me know about your lucky encounters. Or better yet, open up your journal and write about them.

This just in...

The local author I mentioned a few weeks ago has just had her book selected as one of the top 25 best reads of the summer by Oprah! She's number 14!