Esmerelda's Book Thing

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

2012-01-29T17:17:00.000-08:00

Just finished this incredible book which has already been made into a movie with Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock. The movie is being mocked as too sappy, and it does indeed look like a real tear jerker, but I was drawn to the book and enjoyed this incredible post 9/11 tale of a boy who finds a key and goes in search of a lock.

The book was largely narrated by Oskar Schell, a young boy of about 10 or 12. He reminded me of the boy in the book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon. Both boys had peculiar ways of looking at the world and both set out to solve a mystery that was surrounded by sadness and tragedy. Those voices immediately draw you into the story, make you love them, empathize with them, root for them.

This book has a lot of fabulous and mysterious pictures that match the stories in the book. Pictures that will make you flip through the pages and bring you new understanding to the narrative. Foer has created several compelling voices that add to the various mysteries of the book, but ultimately, the best part about this story, is the fine fine writing. Foer has an amazing imagination and pulls the reader right into this post 9/11 fable. I gasped with delight in more than one place. I can't wait to read more by him.

Rumors of Water

2012-01-20T12:10:00.000-08:00

A friend wrote to ask if I had heard of or read this book. I had not, but I loved the title, and it was a slim little volume that I had to order from a small press. It felt like an important book to purchase: reading someone who did not have the backing of the large chains, but could come up with a title like this.

Each very short chapter was stories about her daughters who she has home educated. She writes metaphorically of their unconventional approach to education and a way to approach writing. It was sweet and simple and easy to read in an evening. I especially like her stories about Grandma and the recorder. Reminds me of why I write.

You probably won't find it at B & N or the library. Shout out if you would like to borrow it.

Thanks for the recommend my friend.

Like Family by Paula Mclain

2012-01-15T12:53:00.000-08:00

After reading and enjoying Paula Mclain's NYT best-seller The Paris Wife, I noted that she had published a memoir several year ago. Like Family is Mclain's account of 14 years as a ward of the State of California. Paula and her sisters moved from house to house while in foster care after their parents abandoned them.

I found this all well written and devastatingly sad. How can a mother just abandon her children, walk away and not look back? Paula and her sisters don't discuss this much, as they are so young when it all happens, but the writer reminds us that this very fact is at the center of her whole upbringing. This memoir calls to mind basic questions about what is home and why we call somewhere in particular home. The writing reminds me of Jeannette Walls classic memoir The Glass Castle. One keeps turning pages hoping that these kids turn out okay...wondering if these kids will turn out okay. They do, and the journey to find home and family is worth the read.

If you like memoir, this is one of the best. I am guessing that with The Paris Wife doing so well, people will want to reach back and give this true story another look. Available at the Public Library.

Uncompromised by Nada Prouty

2012-01-10T11:55:00.000-08:00

Uncompromised: The Rise and Fall and Redemption of an Arab American Patriot in the CIA is Nada Prouty's very personal story of her young life in war-torn Lebanon and her immigration to the US to begin a new life for herself. The rise of her life as a CIA agent is the first 225 pages of the book and the fall is the last 50. The redemption takes place only on the last ten or twenty pages. As of press time she is still waiting to have her US citizenship returned.

One can't help but love Nada and cheer for her as she begins to make her way out of her despicable home life and also find her footing and career in a very male industry. Nada's story will be fascinating to many as she writes of catching terrorists in foreign lands, interviewing suspects, and being on the forefront of most major investigations in the middle east over the past 10 years.

But the ugly underbelly to her interesting life is the fact that simply because she is a nationalized American citizen of Arab descent she becomes a suspect in this post 9-11 world. She was stripped of her citizenship, forced to deplete her savings on lawyers to defend herself, and forced to plead guilty to a crime she committed (and she did commit a crime) in which the statute of limitations had run out, and she fully confessed when she was first hired by the FBI. Nada is not innocent but she certainly did not deserve the treatment she got from the government and the country she sought to protect.

I loved this book and recommend it to you if you are interested in the war on terror and one woman's unique story of her love for America and how it was used against her. At times it felt like she was working too hard to convince me she was innocent, but then again, she has a lot riding on her ability to do just that.

This was an early review book and I would love to lend it to anyone interested.

Bill Cunningham's New York

2012-01-05T04:55:00.000-08:00

He who seeks beauty will find it. --Bill Cunningham

I read about this documentary last summer. I was not able to make a screening of it at the IU Cinema, so I put it on my netflix queue and finally had the opportunity to watch it over the holidays. Bill Cunningham is the long time fashion/style photographer for the New York Times. He has been taking pictures of life on the streets of New York for over 40 years. His life of photography, fashion, culture and ultimately kindness makes for a fascinating study.

I think in all places and in every line of work there is always someone who does what they do forever, and with a singular love and fascination. These people always become mini-icons in your work place or town. Bill Cunningham is this for fashion and New York City.

I am not particularly interested in fashion for myself and am always kind of amused by the idea of couture and fashion shows but I love this man. I especially love that he is really just an honest man trying to do what he loves best--introduce the world to the beauty of the people of New York. He has done it so well and so consistently and for so long that he has become a celebrity in his own right. He is incredibly modest about it and also very old fashioned--still using real film and having to scan his weekly photos to that the graphic designer can lay out his pages for the style section on Sunday. This documentary made a number of best lists for 2011.

It is a simple story of a life lived happily and very well. I guarantee if you see this you will fall in love with this man. It makes me want to do everything I do simply and well and with joy.

Next time I go to new York, I will certainly watch for him on his bicycle with his trademark working man's blue blazer.

The Paris Wife by Paula Mclain

2012-01-01T10:06:00.000-08:00

My oversized holiday led me away from reading, but I managed to sneak in this one extraordinary work of historical fiction: a bittersweet love story about the first wife of Ernest Hemingway, Hadley Richardson. Paula Mclain has envisioned Ernest and Hadley's early years together before he was so well known and famous. She used the many biographies of Ernest, historical accounts of Paris in the 20's, and letters between Hadley and Ernest as source material. She presents an accurate depiction of their lives in Paris during the twenties when all the important writers and artists of the time were hanging out at Salons and bookstores.

Hadley is probably the most famous unknown wife in history, and this story of hers was a compelling and important one to tell. Now, I am going to have to go back and pick up some of the Hemingway that I dismissed as a young reader, especially A Moveable Feast which was Hemingway's novel about his time in Paris with Hadley.

The ending and epilogue rates at least two hankies. Mclain makes the reader understand their early love, and subsequent pain at the end of their lives together. What times they were...

Holiday Gift Guide 2011

2011-12-13T03:26:00.000-08:00

What to get for the folks on your holiday list? Books of course! I always believe that your favorite book of the year makes a great gift for everyone. Here are some recommends from my family to yours:

Grayson loved City of Ember. He read it for the second time this year and especially loved the movie it inspired. This one has a strong female lead, perfect for the YA reader on your list.

Tessa, for some reason, calls all books Ga-Ga books. She says, "read me this ga ga book or read me ga ga (insert name of book)." Her favorites have been one based on an Edward Lear poem The Owl and the Pussycat and also a very frothy, syrupy, sweetie book called Pinkalicious. Both available on-line or at your favorite bookstore.

She likes the part about plenty of money

Tries to eat the cupcakes off the page

My husband Geoff reads only e-books now so I have no idea what he has been reading, but I took some time to ask him what he recommends from this past year. He suggested Routes of Man: How Roads are Changing the World and the Way we Live. Geoff says, it puts roads in their proper context and is a harrowing travel memoir.

He also recommends Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, Happier. This books focuses on the creativity and the people that come together to make a city. Urban Policy that focuses solely on infrastructure and not the humans that live there wind up as cities with empty buildings.

As for me I have recently dug out a copy of Staying Put: Making Home in a Restless World by Scott Russell Sanders and am writing and thinking about the value of home. I hope you and yours also are enjoying home and the simple pleasures of the season: music, lights, good food, laughter, and warm company.

I take a few weeks off from my blog at holiday time. I'll be back in the New Year with plenty of good book recommendations. Happy Holidays to all!

What are your best reads of the past year? Please recommend them below.

The Girl's Guide to Homelessness by Brianna Karp

2011-12-08T19:37:00.001-08:00

Top 10 Things Never to Say to a Homeless Person

10. You are living in a trailer in a Wal-mart parking lot, how can you call yourself homeless?

9. How can you be homeless, you have a job?

8. If you can afford a lap top and a cell phone...

7. Can't you just crash on someone's couch?

6. But you are clean and you have a business suit!

5. How dare you splurge on yourself!

4. Just call your parents.

3. Look at the bright side, no bills to worry about.

2. You shouldn't have a dog.

1. How can you be homeless, you don't do drugs, do you?

PS Girls Guide is a fresh original memoir which is either about being homeless while in a relationship gone awry, or the tale of a dysfunctional relationship between a couple who happens to be homeless. I found it to be quite a page turner and I highly recommend it. I do note--that the story seems sort of young. My frequent complaint about memoirs of late is they feel like they need to sit in people's minds and hearts for a few more years before they get written. This whole story happened two years ago. (But I guess when you get a book deal, you get a book deal.)

PPS I learned that things going viral is not necessarily an accident. Good to know.

PPPS Wal-mart had one redeeming quality for a few chapters.

The value of paper and a pencil

2011-12-04T02:59:00.001-08:00

About twice a month a few friends and I lead a writing circle for women at the Monroe County Jail. We take lined composition books, pencils, some poetry, and for purposes of a small ritual we do before we start writing, we take a flower. I have been participating in this service to our community for about 5 years now.

Last week, the commander of the jail got angry because he discovered someone snuck in some contraband (rumor has it that it was a lighter), and so he banned everything from coming in--except of course employees and volunteers. This meant we could hold the writing circle, but we could not bring in the tools that we needed to encourage women to write and tell their stories.

My co-facilitator brought a sheet of paper with our agenda on it and a poem about hope that we wanted to read to the women. The guard made us leave that behind. We went up to the activity room, hands empty. We did discover a loop hole in the rule: the commander said that if we already had materials in the jail, we could use those. When we arrived to conduct the circle, we found we did have some notebooks and at least 15 pencils. In addition someone gave us a sheaf of lined notebook paper. We still have kleenex and a little chime to ring and a small smooth stone to pass around the circle. Our liaison at the jail allowed us to get on her computer in her office so we could find the poem to read aloud to the women. Getting ready for the circle felt a little like a game.

Our circle yesterday was fine and full. We spent 90 minutes writing about hope and that is no small thing for the 13 woman in our group who sometimes feel hopeless.

As we wrapped up the circle, we asked them all to write for us, so that when we come back in two weeks, they'll have stories and poems to share. Of course, We realized right away they will have a hard time doing that...they won't have any paper or pencils. Normally, a writer in our circle would take a full 200 page composition book back to their cell, but if we want to come back again and this restriction has not been lifted, we would need to conserve what paper and pencil we had stored away for as long as we could.

We stared at the dwindling sheaf of paper and made a hasty decision to give each woman 2 or 3 sheets. We made her promise to write. "Use the margins if you have to," we said. We collected the pencils as they filed out in hope that they could scrounge something to write with on the cell block. If we let these precious few pencils go, we might not be able to have a writing circle.

Just as they were filing out, I spied a blue pencil box filled with the smallest of pencil stubs. I opened it up and showed it to the women. This is what hope looks like.

Hope

It hovers in dark corners
before the lights are turned on,
it shakes sleep from its eyes
and drops from mushroom gills,
it explodes in the starry heads
of dandelions turned sages,
it sticks to the wings of green angels
that sail from the tops of maples.

It sprouts in each occluded eye
of the many-eyed potato,
it lives in each earthworm segment
surviving cruelty,
it is the motion that runs the tail of a dog,
it is the mouth that inflates the lungs
of the child that has just been born.

It is the singular gift
we cannot destroy in ourselves,
the argument that refutes death,
the genius that invents the future,
all we know of God.

It is the serum which makes us swear
not to betray one another;
it is in this poem, trying to speak.

~ Lisel Mueller ~

Situations Matter by Sam Sommers

2011-11-27T13:42:00.001-08:00

Sam Sommers, Psychology Professor from Tufts University, has written an interesting book about context that compares to books written by journalist Malcolm Gladwell. If you liked Blink and The Tipping Point, you would enjoy Sommers' analysis of the importance of paying attention to the situational elements of life which can deeply affect how we understand ourselves, our relationships and our community.

Sommers' readable book combines personal anecdotes from his teaching life and family, stories from popular culture, and current psychological studies to illustrate interesting concepts about day to day problems. My favorite chapter was called "You're not the person you thought you were" and discusses how our own self-perceptions are shaped daily--perhaps hourly--by the context in which we find ourselves. He critiques the idea of the authentic self because the self we wish to be within our family might be different that the self we want to be at work and so on. The self is ever a work in progress, and no self-help book on earth tries to explain that to us.

He does a good chapter on gender which I also enjoyed, but found it overlapped with some reading I had done on current gender trends by Peggy Orenstein in Cinderella ate my Daughter. The chapter on race described a lot of training I had many years ago when I worked as a student affairs administrator. Those ideas were re-treads for me, but my own unique context might be different from another reader's. I loved the chapter on finding a mate and falling in love. I also loved the chapter on why often many people witnessing a crime or distressing event fail to act. We really aren't bad people. Perhaps lazy, but not malicious. He ends with several emails and anecdotes from former students who have taken his ideas and theories and used them in the wider world. All the information felt really useful and practical for understanding common situations.

Much of his storytelling and thinking seemed to me, fresh and original. I read several chapters of this book aloud to my husband as we drove to various destinations on the Thanksgiving holiday. The stories and ideas prompted thoughtful conversation with one of the most interesting people I know. (Wanted you to know my own context for enjoying this book.) I highly recommend Situations Matter and would love to lend this early review to anyone who is interested.

Roger Ebert: Life Itself

2011-11-22T03:05:00.000-08:00

The most useful advice I have ever received as a writer, "One, don't wait for inspiration, just start the damn thing. Two, once you begin keep on until the end. How do you know how the story should begin until you find out where it's going?" These rules saved me half a careers worth of time and gained me a reputation as the fastest writer in town. I'm not faster. I spend less time not writing.
--Roger Ebert

I fell in love with Roger Ebert the writer after reading this much talked about article in Esquire Magazine last year. I had always simply regarded him as that movie critic for the Sun-Times and on that TV show with the skinny guy, but Esquire made me consider him as a fine writer and an interesting man. When I heard of his memoir, released this year, I put myself on the list to check it out from the library. I had to wait a few months to get it.

Roger Ebert has had a life many of us would envy. One observation he made of his life early in the book is that none of what happened to him, happened by design, or because he had some sort of plan. All his major life turns were accidental. In 1967, he was suddenly told by his editor that he was the new film critic, and he began reviewing movies and made a life out of it. He was suddenly offered the gig reviewing movies for PBS which eventually was put on commercial TV, and thus he became a household name around the country when he sat down every week with Gene Siskel. In the last reinvention of himself, his editors at the Sun-Times requested he blog. He began to write on-line and discovered the wonder of having conversations with his fans and his movie community. It was a whole side to his career he never considered. I loved the idea that his fabulous life was entirely serendipitous.

Roger Ebert then takes us along on the journey of his life as he meets and greets famous movie makers, actors and other famous writers. He travels in London, South Africa, Venice and New York. At times his book is poignant: stories about his childhood dog or his father's death or the sad tale of his love life under the thumb of his judgmental mother. I was especially interested in his friendship with fellow critic Gene Siskel, I shed a tear over that chapter. Many chapters are great behind the scenes tales of his life among the stars and directors. If you want to know about Ingmar Bergman or Martin Scorsese and what they were like as directors and subjects, this is a great read. Toward the end his chapters are philosophical as he digests the last sad chapters of his life. He is unable to eat or talk due to his cancer and many surgeries, so his abilities to read and write become more and more important to him. He thinks of his own death and makes sense of God and religion. I loved the whole memoir, and think it can serve as a great primer on how to write a memoir--focusing not so much on the linear passage of time, but more on the themes of our lives as we look back on a life well spent.

The book was at its best when Ebert looked deep into this past in the early chapters as a boy in Urbana, Illinois. I did not care as much for the gossipy chapters on movie stars, and I hope to God I can write as beautifully and cogently about my life when and if illness begins to run its course as Roger Ebert can. If you are a movie fan or a fan of the memoir, this is a great choice. I give it a thumbs up!

Books and 9/11

2011-11-16T13:32:00.000-08:00

Shortly after 9/11, I began to wonder when the books about the disaster and the mentions of the day would begin to appear on bookshelves and in the movies. Ten years outside of the horrific time, I think we can safely assume there is now a 9/11 canon.

Like many, I am interested in reading about the time, wishing to get inside the minds of people who witnessed and experienced the horror first hand. When I read memoirs that take place over the span of time covering September 11, 2001, I eagerly read about what the author was doing. One amazing thing about that day is that virtually everyone can tie themselves to other people via those moments and days. We all know what we were doing simultaneously.

I heard Lauren Manning interviewed on NPR on September 11, 2011. Unmeasured Strength is her personal account of the horrible flames that engulfed her body in the lobby of the world trade center on the morning of 9/11, and the great strength and determination it took her to recover after the fire burned over 80 percent of her body.

Ms Manning had an insurmountable climb to make her way back to family and normalcy. Her face, back, legs, fingers and arms had to be grafted with new skin and devices and contraptions had to be constructed to keep her skin pliable so she would be able to move normally. She had surgery after surgery on her hands and arms. She had months and months of rehab and physical and occupational therapy.

When I think of this story, I think of her complete positive attitude. She had to focus on living and recovery and the hard work of healing all while ignoring the stares and disabilities in order to be able to climb out of the very deep dark place that she found herself after the attacks. Chapter after chapter focused on her unquenchable drive to heal and resume her life before the accident.

This is a fast read, easily available at the library, and if you are interested in the stories of the victims of 9/11, a satisfying read.

A book and a movie

2011-11-12T02:49:00.000-08:00

Several years ago I read a fabulous travel memoir by Tim Moore, humorist and traveler. He wrote Travels with My Donkey, an account of his trek with a donkey named Shinto along the pilgrimage path from St. Jean Pied de Port in France through the Spanish Pyrenees to Santiago do Compostela near the coast of Spain. I loved the tale and I became fascinated by the idea of pilgrimage. What do modern day pilgrims seek? Why do they walk 500 miles just to reach a church that is purported to hold the remains of one of Jesus's apostles? It has been awhile since I read this, so the details are cloudy but I know he met fellow travelers, ruminated about the history of the pilgrimage and wrote about Spain and being companionable with a donkey for a few months. I always wondered if it was something I could do.

Last week, I had the opportunity to see a fabulous new movie, The Way, that just came out which follows a man as he journeys on the camino to Santiago. A fictitious story about Tom Avery (played by Martin Sheen) who travels to St Jean Pied de Port to retrieve his only child's body after he is killed on the trail in a freak accident. Avery is filled with grief. He has an empty, lonely life and was far from understanding his now deceased son (played by Martin Sheen's real life son Emilio Estevez, who also made the movie).

In a bold move, Avery decides to pick up his son's backpack and gear and take the trek himself, in an attempt to honor his son and try to understand what he was trying to do with his life. He takes along his son's remains and begins to scatter them along the path. Of course Tom is sad, angry and alone, but he begins to meet other travelers, all who have their own path and their own reasons for trekking the camino.

Some might call it predictable and the movie might be a little long, but it was beautiful and gave me a chance to see what the pilgrimage might really look like. I did love watching crusty Tom Avery begin to melt away, dig through his layers of grief, and connect with his travel companions. I love how travel thrusts unlike people together. You never choose your travel companions; they choose you. All the shots are filmed in Spain along the trail with a musical score that made me want to sing: a gorgeous and thought provoking film.

I began to wonder, would I ever have the opportunity to walk this trail? I told my theater companion that when we retired we were going to take this walk together. Perhaps get our kids to come and carry our packs? Will you join me?

Soul to Soul by Deborah Masel

2011-11-08T04:41:00.000-08:00

The writer tells us in the first few sentences that her book is a sad one: a woman's story as she accepts diagnosis and struggles with stage 4 metatastic breast cancer and wends her way through and often unkind and mixed-up health care system (Australian). She requests that we not stop reading even though the journey is a hard one to bear, and it was this simple introduction which lured me in and kept me with it. I felt that I had been chosen to bear witness to the depths of suffering of the human soul.

The memoir was most interesting early in the book when she is clearly ill and waiting for the doctor's diagnosis. Her busy life barely lets her rest and it is hard for her to change gears and accept that she must stop and be sick for awhile. Also in the early chapters of the book she goes back through her life and recounts various adventures she had as a young student and a young wife. She recounts recent tales of being in Israel during the recent Lebanon war. I found her method of storytelling, going back and forth and introducing us to her rich and varied life, interesting. It kept me turning the pages.

The constant turning back to tell a story of and earlier version of herself made me hang in limbo about the Cancer story...so it unfolded painfully, but slowly.

It lost a little steam in the last half when it was simply chapter after chapter of pain and suffering. She had some epiphanies about accepting death and her journey with the Torah (she was an avid Torah scholar and teacher) always presented divine revelation, but the reading was not as compelling. I felt that the recent chapters were too close to her. Like she just had that treatment last month and was just now writing about it. A writer always needs distance between herself and her subject. But then, it was sad to realize, that Deborah might not have much time to reflect.

The story ends with a craniotomy to remove some tumors from her brain and as far as I know Deborah is still alive in Australia teaching Torah and enjoying her family and her precious life.

I would recommend this to anyone who is struggling with life or death issues or who wants to read about the ups and downs of the medical establishment.

Please ask me if you would like to borrow my copy. This was an early review.

Mockingjay

2011-11-03T02:42:00.000-07:00

It did not take me long to finish the third book in the trilogy. Yes, I will say everything that every other reviewer and blogger has stated: mesmerizing, riveting, horrifying, perfect ending, couldn't put it down and can't wait for that movie. If you have made it this far--reading the first two--I don't know how you can not finish and not want to know what happens to Katniss and Peeta and Gale and Haymitch and Prim and the Capitol with their beloved Hunger Games. I read this waiting in line, on breaks at work, and just about everywhere I could squeeze in a paragraph or two.

What is it about exceptional storytelling that leaves a reader so engrossed in a tale that she cannot forget it? All I want to do is thinking about these characters and this story and all the themes and symbols and implications. Moreover, I want to write a story as compelling and engrossing as this one. How did Suzanne Collins do it? When I read something like this I am humbled: always wanting more, wondering how to become this kind of supreme storyteller.

After a day or two it will fade. Other stories and life itself will take over. The tale will recede a bit, and eventually I will pick up other books to try and recreate this feeling. I guess this is why I read and why I write, to create this feeling of ecstasy over finding other people, other worlds, other ideas. I read to become absorbed in something other than myself, to learn about the world, to broaden my scope of understanding.

I really have to remind myself that I often stumble across inspiration and fabulous storytelling in the most unlikely of places. Several good friends and avid readers had recommended these stories to me, and I waved them all off. The topic sounded too grisly: children put in an arena to kill each other off! Not my cup of tea. That is what has made this reading experience doubly good. I did not expect to be so captivated by this tale.

Thanks Suzanne Collins. Looking forward to your next adventure.

Catching Fire (and a confession)

2011-10-27T04:26:00.000-07:00

If you caught my post of a few weeks ago you know that I am starting to read The Hunger Games trilogy with my son. We read it almost every night, chapter by chapter, and it really got so exciting that I was losing sleep. For my own sanity, I snuck off one morning (I can only read this in the morning.) and finished it. Of course like any captivating story, I find that I can't stop thinking about it and this drove me to pick up the second book and begin to read it right away.

Now here comes the confession: Rather than go to the bookstore or order it on-line, I picked up my husbands I-pad where he has already downloaded all three books and read, yes, I did it, I read Catching Fire almost entirely as an e-book.

Whew! That was a difficult confession. When I was done, I felt slimy, like I needed to take a hot shower and get the shame of e-book reading off me. Reader's know that I loathe e-books and have vowed never to get an e-book reader. A few months ago the Nook seller at Barnes and Nobles approached me to take a look at his little device, and I bit his head off. (I think he was a little surprised at my ferocity over the device.)

Anyway, now no one can see from my shelf that I have read this book, I can't loan it to you, and when I am reminiscing about favorite books, I'll need to stare at a tiny icon on a screen. The actual reading experience, however, was probably not any different from holding a book.

When I was three chapters from the end, my husband took his i-pad and went to work. I had the day off, so I went to Barnes and Nobles, planted myself in a comfy chair and read and sobbed my way through the last three chapters in the intimacy of the bookstore. Afterwards, I bought Mockingjay, the third book and happily began reading the real book version of that.

So if you began reading The Hunger Games after my last post, I think you will enjoy this sequel. It is storytelling at its finest including a gut wrenching love story.

A Tea Reader: Living Life One Cup at a Time

2011-10-22T04:25:00.000-07:00

Enjoying this sampler of writings about tea, given to me by dear friend and fellow blogger Steph who, along with Sweetcakes, introduced me to the beauty and mystery of the age old custom of a cup of tea.

The editor, Katrina Avila Munichiello, has compiled an incredible array of contemporary essays on tea and tea culture as well as pulling poems and stories from historical writings.

Its a perfect rainy day read, perfect with my own cup of tea, and made all the more special as my good friend has a piece included in the collection.

A great gift for lovers of tea everywhere. Pick it up at your favorite tea shop or of course, on Amazon.

Blowing my Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy by Lindsay Moran

2011-10-17T03:28:00.000-07:00

My reading life has me all over the place: a magazine article, chapters of the Hunger Games, a false start or two on some new books, reading manuscripts for writer friends. This is all to explain why so many days have come and gone between my last post and this.

I picked up this funny and fascinating memoir at the Red Cross Book Fair two weeks ago. I have always enjoyed non-fiction chronicling what people do for a living and there's always been a lot of question in my mind about the CIA and what it means to be a spy for the USA.

My husband asked me right away, how on earth can someone write about how and why spies do what they do, isn't it all a big secret? She never explains what sort of censors needed to read her book and approve of it, but my gut instinct tells me that why and how spies do what they do isn't really secret. In fact, many of the things she does, we have seen in the movies a million times over. What is secret, is who is doing those things. I feel fairly certain that she did not blow anyone's cover but her own, and now she is decidedly on the outside, it doesn't matter.

Lindsay Moran is a likable person who questions her motives and the CIA motives from the very first day. She presents an honest and often hilarious look at what she does. The places and the work while fascinating also lends itself to soul crushing loneliness. You really can't have too many friends when you can't tell people what you do for a living.

Roughly one half (probably more) of the memoir chronicles her process for getting in and the extensive training she is sent through in order to prepare her for what lay ahead in the field. Spending about 10 years of my own career in Residential Housing at a University, I remember how much we relied on role playing games to teach Resident Assistants how to do their jobs. Guess what? The CIA relies on the same sort of training techniques. Learning of all the extensive role playing games (including fake kidnappings, hostage takings and embassy cocktail parties) that go into training a spy was half the fun. No kidding.

You can probably pick this book up on Amazon or at your local library. Let me know if you would like to borrow mine.

The Hunger Games

2011-10-02T13:17:00.000-07:00

Now that Grayson and I have finally packed away Harry Potter, we searched for a new reading adventure that we could read together. It was hard to pick a Young Adult Book that would appeal to mother and son as much as HP did. Many, many friends have encouraged me to pick up the Hunger Games by Susanne Collins. So starting this past Monday night, the kid and I are getting to know Katniss Everdeen.

After three nights, all I can say is it will be hard to read this one chapter at a time (perhaps I'll have to borrow it and sneak ahead) and it is keeping me up. Did you all know there's a movie coming out in 2012? Imagine that a strong female protagonist! Thanks Suzanne.

The Pursuit of Happiness

2011-09-28T08:13:00.000-07:00

"I don't know many happy people. What are they like?" ~Meg Tilly as Chloe in The Big Chill

There is an interesting branch of social psychology that studies happiness and what makes people happy. Is it true that money can't by happiness? Children make us happy? Marriage makes us happy? Religion? I have been to several presentations on the origins and truth about what makes people happy. I find them infinitely fascinating as the topic of who is happy and why they are happy seems to come up frequently in my life. I am reminded that even our own Declaration of Independence bases itself squarely on the side of the pursuit of happiness.

This new book, The Happiness Equation: The Surprising Economics of our Most Valuable Asset by Nick Powdthavee, studies happiness now from an economic standpoint. The author is an economist by training and attempts to translate economic studies on happiness from economics journals to studies and stories that the rest of us can use and follow. Most of it asks and answers interesting economic questions about the pursuit of happiness.

In general, much of it reads like an economics primer and would be interesting if you followed economics news and had a head for the vagaries of the study of the economy. I was a C student in economics, and it often made my head swim, so I was perhaps not the best early reviewer for this book. Parts that piqued my interest most of all were the discussions on the happiness factor of parenthood (really none of us is very happy) and the fact that perhaps we have an overblown sense of the right to be happy. Some people prefer to pursue a more interesting life rather than a pleasurable one. The books asks, who makes us think that we have to be happy?

I was also pleasantly interested in the discussion about the ability of a government to coerce their people into doing things that will make them happy through the right kind of policies and legislation and marketing. Have you ever heard of libertarian paternalism?--now there's an oxymoron. And of course no book on the study of happiness would be complete without a look at the famous country of Bhutan whose monarch actually put into place the idea of GDH-Gross Domestic Happiness. Who cares about the product when what you really want is to make the people happy. Really?

I close this post with the fond memory of one of my favorite Peanuts cartoons. Charlie Brown and Linus are discussing the meaning of life. Linus says, I think we were put on this earth to make others happy. To which Charlie Brown turns to the skies, raises his fist and yells, "Someone is not doing their job!"

Girl Interrupted: The book vs the movie

2011-09-20T12:22:00.000-07:00

Had some fun this week reading the 1993 classic Girl Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen. Ms. Kaysen wrote a really thought provoking series of non-fiction pieces about her life in a mental institution over about 18 months in the late 60's. The essays are roughly chronological and in between chapters she shows artifacts from her patient file: doctors notes, official admitting papers and discharge papers. I liked that it was a very nuanced look about a teenagers life in a mental hospital: was she crazy or was she just a typical teenager? Sometimes I felt genuine madness was afoot and sometimes she seemed to be the only sane one on the ward. I liked that she played with my perceptions and that life in the hospital was neither all good or all bad.
This book came out early in the memoir writing craze and is probably one of the better ones to take a look at mental health.

Winona Ryder played Susanna Kaysen in the 1999 movie of the same name. Angelina Jolie won an Oscar for best supporting actress for her portrayal of Lisa, Susanna's crazy best friend in the asylum. What is most interesting about the book to movie is how much the producers had to add to Kaysen's fairly simple story in order to make it an interesting movie.

While Kaysen simply mentions the existence of underground tunnels in her memoir, in the movie they become part of illicit rituals in which the women on the ward participate in order to gain a little control over their lives. A woman who leaves the ward and goes to live on her own commits suicide. It is a sad mark in the book; in the movie it becomes a major plot point. And the most fantastic part is the homoerotic/lesbian overtones between Susanna and Lisa. This was so far from the book it was almost laughable, but it really works in the movie and in some ways makes a lot of sense.

The movie managed to portray the character's ambivalence about her situation fairly well. I loved seeing how the script writers wove together the author's voice and minor plot points to make an interesting narrative arc. It had a great cast including Elizabeth Moss (Peggy from Mad Men) and Whoopi Goldberg. I suddenly feel like I am stepping out of my comfort zone reviewing a movie here--but I did enjoy reading the book and seeing the movie together. It is easily a weekend project with time out for soup and a walk in the woods.

Dick Cheney Saves Paris: A personal and political madcap sci-fi meta-anti-novel by Ryan Forsythe

2011-09-15T05:00:00.000-07:00

For those of you who expected yet another memoir review of a sad lonely twenty something girl struggling with depression/eating disorders/drugs, look again. I got to read and enjoy a science fiction novel this week.

Full disclosure: An old friend wrote that he was publishing his first full length novel and did anyone with a blog want to read and review it? I do, I do! (To my long time readers, all 6 of you, you know I am kind of a book whore.)

So I really didn't know if I could expand my very limited idea of what a good novel is and enjoy something billed as a sci-fi meta novel. I am a pretty literal reader and don't like a lot of extraneous distractions from the plot, but I'm game, and in the name of supporting new writers and old friends, I put it on my stack.

First, let me say that this is a very funny book. If you are up on your current events (especially politics since the Nixon administration) you will probably laugh a lot. Many of the jokes pertain to the antics of Dick Cheney (time traveler and our hero), Donald Rumsfeld (an alien), Joe Lieberman (a robot), Ralph Nadar (time traveling spoil-sport) and of course, Al Gore (who?).

Dick Cheney travels back in time and while there decides to please his old man from the 27th century and make sure Al Gore never gets elected. Several nefarious agents and time travelers are in on the scheme for various reasons and they all come together on one madcap night in November of 2000 (remember that night?) so that good prevails over evil and time can be re-written so that Al Gore does not become president which will lead to the ultimate evil...which I cannot reveal, or it would spoil it for you, dear reader, and that is part of the fun.

I also loved the varying discussions about the ins and outs of time travel (fueled by yogurt) and the future history regarding the regulation of time travel and some of the problems that arise in the future because we are so able to change history. It makes just enough sense to be fun and thought provoking.

The meta novel part appealed to me as well. Ryan Forsythe, the author, chronicled what I assume is a semi-autobiographical tale of how he came to write and publish this time traveling caper novel on the same day that the real Dick Cheney published his memoirs. I really hope that John Stewart gets a hold of this because Ryan Forsythe would be an excellent guest on the Daily Show. There would be much hilarity.

So friends, you can find this lovely little time traveling sci-fi adventure novel on amazon or you can borrow it from me. Please support a young aspiring novelist, and I might be able to get you his autograph.

The Woman in the Fifth by Douglas Kennedy

2011-09-09T18:42:00.000-07:00

My mother recommended this one. She said it was written in an unusual way. Different. Not exactly a thriller but just different. Well, I am always looking for something different, so...it was an odd read, mostly plot driven about a man named Harry Ricks who runs away to Paris to escape a sex scandal he gets tangled up with in the US. The plot seemed driven only by dialogue. Every scene was plodding dialogue. It moved things a long but it felt painful and contrived.

Then, I got into it. It was a thriller and a kind of a crime novel and I was clipping along wondering how our fearless hero would get out of this jam and reunite with his daughter when wham, the author pulled the rug right out from under me. (spoiler!) I did not expect the twist into the supernatural at all. I really hated it after that. I kept thinking, how can he pull this off? I kept waiting for it to be a joke or explained, but no. It was just a weird kind of hell in which the main character found himself.

Anyway, like a thriller that's not really a thriller? Try this book. Or just wait for the movie which I understand is due out this fall.

Paranormality by Richard Wiseman

2011-09-04T03:52:00.000-07:00

I have said that I love science books written for people who don't understand science. It takes a very special academic to pause from the rigors of real scientific research and publishing, to write books meant to bring the rest of us in on the secret. Again and again, I find these writers to be fascinating and oftentimes poetic.

Richard Wiseman attracted my attention with some video on youtube. It led me to his books 59 Seconds (self-help in a minute or less) and Good Luck (the science of luck). He also publishes a quirky little blog where he introduces readers to interesting illusions, puzzles and the latest in the world of psychology research. Sometimes he invites readers to take part in psychological studies.

He recently published Paranormality: Why We See What Isn't There and asked American readers of his blog especially to order it. It seemed that no American publisher would pick it up since too many Americans believe in the paranormal phenomena that he discusses. American publishers would not distribute because they thought no one would buy it.

Wiseman uses psychology to explain and understand about every paranormal phenomenon that you can think of: ghosts, mind-reading, dream prognosticating, seances, table tipping and all kinds of other spooky stuff. He writes using short chapters, stories about mediums, psychics, and hauntings from history, and gives great lessons in how to have your own psychic readings or out of body experiences. There is a great appendix to the book called The Superhero Kit where he gives you all kinds of tricks for impressing people at parties. Think spoon bending and predicting the card you picked will turn up. Amazing.

You can get this book now off Amazon.

Following Josh by David Norman

2011-08-23T11:25:00.000-07:00

As a twenty something traveler I always dreamed of doing what Dave Norman and his friend Josh do: travel the world via the Trans-Siberian railroad. Dave flies to Seoul, Korea where he meets up with Josh and together they form a roving fraternity duo heading their way through China, Mongolia, Russia and Eastern Europe to the tune of booze and bad moods.

I have read a lot of very good travel memoirs. Most of them are extremely well written and full of witty observations and self-deprecating humor. I love a wry take on the theme of a stranger in a strange land. Dave Norman does not seem to understand the genre, rather he seems to have published his travel journal and included every whimsical thought and internal monologue that he had while trekking across the North Hemisphere. Each page was full of half thoughts and slang terms and fevered experiences and elipses. This book could have used a good editor. From the absense of any acknowledgements in the final pages (which I always love to read) I have to believe he forgot to run this by anyone.

This is why, strange to say, that in the parting pages of this book, when Dave Norman promises his next book will be about part two of this grand tour with another friend named Jake, I actually felt a little interested in it. Was it true that I stuck with the writer long enough, through enough eye rolling, angst ridden travel that I actually want to see how this turns out? Perhaps.

Also, once I waded between the awkward prose, I did enjoy seeing parts of the world to which sadly, I will probably not venture. My rugged, youth hostel, strange meat eating days are long past me. So Dave Norman, if you read this, I am one of those Saints who would sit with you at dinner and hear your whole travel story from first to last and ask you about all the crazy adventures you had and admonish you for having a perpetual bad mood all the way around the world.

This was an early review book and if anyone wants to journey on the Transiberian railroad please let me know and I will send it along.

Loud in the House of Myself by Stacy Pershall

2011-08-15T03:28:00.000-07:00

You may know Stacy Pershall from her prior work, as she was an early internet sensation when she became one of those web cam girls who lived her daily life on-line. She has written an interesting twist on the young woman/mental illness memoir in which the author recounts her years of struggling with both bi-polar disorder and undiagnosed borderline personality disorder. At the beginning of each chapter she recounts a story of how she got one of her multiple tattoos and what it means to her. She reveals early on in her life chronicle that tattooing, getting to choose her own skin, seemed to be one of the only ways she could reclaim her sanity. If you have ever stared at a woman who is covered with body tattoos and wondered how she could do that to her body, I think this might help shed some light on that phenomenon.

Stacy Pershall recounts her young life and her growth into a mature woman amidst the backdrop of self loathing so profound that it leads her to starve herself, treat the people who love her most very cruelly and eventually try to kill herself in a very public and humiliating way. Her mental illness does finally lead her to work with psychiatrists and mental health professionals to get the drugs and behavior therapy that she most needs. She writes about the life long and on-going struggle that she enters into daily.

I found Stacy's writing very tight and original. I had sympathy for the character, and I enjoyed watching her struggle and gain footing as she escaped from her small town. I really cheered for her as she began to find her way at the end. I like Stacy and found this to be a compelling personal narrative.

There is a thesis in here about how each of her mental illnesses is treated and one of them may be wrongly categorized, and one is also difficult to diagnose in the presence of the other. The medical terminology lost me, but I have no doubt that others who find themselves dealing with these psychiatric problems will find her comparison and comments interesting.

The title drew me into the book originally. If you enjoy memoir this is a fast and worthwhile read.

Better Late than Never

2011-08-10T08:02:00.000-07:00

Has this happened to you? You see a book that looks interesting at the bookstore, read the covers, and put it down because you think, not quite what I am looking for. You see that book many times over the years, right at the top of the pile: you note positive reviews, it's place on the best seller lists and its general omnipresence everywhere, but still you decide not to pick it up. You finally buy a copy at a used book sale for 50 cents, thinking, maybe someday I will read it, and after it gathers dust for a few more years, you recognize the author is coming to your town to speak and think, maybe now is the time. Once finished, you crack yourself on the head and think, why did I wait so long, that was amazing!!!

I just finished James McBride's memoir The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to his White Mother. It is the perfect example of why memoir can be better and more interesting than fiction. A white Jewish woman marries a black man and moves to Harlem where she has 8 kids and then when that man dies, marries a second black man and has 4 more kids. Her son James, always full of questions about his mother and her past which she refused to answer, tells the tale of his own upbringing and his feelings of love and shame for his unusual mother, a white woman in an African-American world. He tells his mother's story of growing up in an Orthodox Jewish household in the south, her leaving her home for New York, and her conversion to Christianity which went hand in hand with her marriage to a black minister. This was more than 25 years before Loving v Virginia made anti-micegenation laws illegal.

McBride told his own story of being number 8 in the 12 child family and intersperses his story and memories with his mother's story and memories: both well written and compelling. It seems that it does not matter what is the color of your skin, all you really need is love as Ruth McBride Jordan demonstrated over and over again.

My edition of the book was the 10th anniversary edition, which I recommend: an epilogue to the epilogue. All 12 of Mrs. McBride's children went to college and most to grad school. She raised 12 successful children on the motto all you need to education and God. Money doesn't mean anything.

Now that I have read this beautiful memoir, I am ready to meet James McBride. If you live here in town I hope you will join me. Perhaps it is true that when we are ready to read a book it appears before us.

Around the House and in the Garden by Dominque Browning

2011-08-05T03:01:00.000-07:00

I was racing out of the house for a weekend trip this summer and could not find my regular book. I glanced at one of the many stacks under my bed and grabbed the first thing I saw that looked interesting. The funny thing is I do not know where I got this book originally. I have no memory of buying it or borrowing it or finding it. So there it was--the fairy book.

Ms Browning is the editor of House and Garden magazine and at the publishing of this book (2002) was the divorced mother of teenage sons. The book was essentially a rough chronological collection of the essays and columns she wrote for her magazine. Each chapter read like an 800 word column. The chapters were short and pointed and sweet, and it really was the perfect summer read when my attention was busy slogging off into sun drenched beaches and amusement parks.

The general theme of almost every chapter was the healing she needed to go through as she was experiencing her first years as a divorced mother of two boys. Each chapter focused on some part of her house or garden that she needed to fix up or she let sit in disrepair. She wrote of her fireplace and her dining room and the need to curl up and wallow in her bed. She wrote of the love and care she put into her garden and into the raising of her boys and the sadness of having to part with them for half the week as they traveled to their father's house.

It was a book about grief and lonliness, and I found its lessons sweet and comforting. I liked it because I felt like it was something that I could write and that I could relate to. Although it hasn't rained a bit around here for days, it is the perfect rainy day read. It is gloomy, but there's plenty of hope, insight, and creativity to fill you up.

Since this was published in 2002 it might be a bit hard to find in bookstores. Try your library. I would be glad to lend this one if anyone wants it.

Do Nothing But Read Day

2011-07-31T04:44:00.000-07:00

I am reading all kinds of books but I have a summer attention span and can't get through any of them. A chapter here a page there. It feels all very profound, I assure you, but I don't usually post unless I finish a book. I hope to have a book or two in August.

In the meantime, I cam across this interesting activity in which some of you might want to participate: Do Nothing but Read Day.

This year's DNBRD is August 6th and in these dog days of summer it seems a great activity in which to indulge oneself. In fact, I think we could declare one of these every month or so. Let the laundry pile up, bills go unpaid and spend a day with a favorite book or two.

Falling for Me by Anna David

2011-07-20T10:39:00.000-07:00

I have written before about what I term the stunt memoir. The author, usually an already well established writer, comes up with some sort of stunt to try for a year, and then writes about it. I have read memoirs about giving up electricity, not buying things, not buying things from China, and making amends with all the people you have alienated. All these stunts generally take one year. After reading so many of them they start to feel really contrived. All you need is an agent to pitch it to, a publisher, and a great book advance and voila, paperback memoir and a big book tour. None of them has given me terribly great insights.

Enter a variation on the theme: established contemporary writer reads a long forgotten tome by some famous person and lives a life in response that work and writes about it. The best example of this is Julie and Julia about the woman who blogs her way to fame by cooking all of the dishes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, also made into a movie starring Amy Adams and Meryl Streep.

Falling for Me falls under this catagory as Anna David comes across a copy of Sex and the Single Girl by Helen Gurley Brown written in 1962. Ms. Brown is an early feminist who talks about having a career and attracting men. She posits the idea that you don't have to be dowdy to be powerful. It is okay to be sexy and wear make-up and be a modern woman.

Anna David is thiry something and sadly single and decides she will follow Gurley Brown's advice for-- guess what?--one year and see where that takes her. Perhaps a bit of the 1960's Cosmo editor's advice is all she needs to perk up her languishing love life. Ms David takes up new hobbies, redecorates her apartment, makes herself very available to dating all kinds of men through on-line sites, speed dating, volunteering and going to the beach. She redoes her wardrobe and her voice and in the last chapter spends a lovely summer in Spain.

She does fall in love, but in the end she falls in love with herself, and the last chapter is really the best written and most interesting as she details how she really has become a whole person because of her ability to re-do herself. The rest of the work feels a little tired and worn out, and she somes across as really pretty shallow. Most of the men she meets never pass her sexy meter or looks meter, so even though she vows to give more men a try, it really felt pretty low brow. The cover you see here on my blog is different from the one on my advanced copy. This cover actually makes it seem a lot more fun than it really was. Though I love the ending and the realization that one can love oneself, I also think that in many ways it felt like one 300 page singles ad.

Harry Potter Mania!!

2011-07-15T05:13:00.000-07:00

It is only right that today, on the opening day of the last film of the Harry Potter series that I dedicate my post to the boy who lived.

My son and I have been counting down the days until this last movie. We watch the trailers over and over again. We try to get ahold of sneak peaks and watch those, and we have re-watched many of the first 7 films. Of course we are also attempting to re-read the Deathly Hallows, and are not going to finish by opening night.

It took me a long time to get to reading the series. I dismissed it as kids stuff and decided to wait to read it until my kid asked me to. He never did ask me. I ended up reading them in reverse order and then reading the final one: 1, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 7. Then I begged him to let me read them to him.

Once I read them they stuck with me like no other. I re read the final battle scenes several times, tears streaming down my cheeks. Like many writers, I wish I could have thought of this. Not necessarily for the eternal fame and glory, but because it was so fun and interesting and made perfect perfect sense. All the pieces fell into place. I loved the words and terms and ideas she created: quidditch and muggles and squibs and Hogwarts. All named perfectly and creating this amazing world of whimsy and magic. I have wished so much I could go there and visit. This is the work of the writer. To create a world that others want to visit, characters we want to meet, or in this case things we want to do, like ride a broomstick or cast a spell to protect us from evil or how about that amazing handbag of Hermione's?

So I bought my tickets a week ago, hired a babysitter for the little one, and have already made a plan to be there for this first night of the last show. We will watch in 3-D, but I would enjoy it either way. It is not the effects for me, it is the hero's story that captivates me, I could hear it told over and over again.

The wee ones casting spells on each other

I told my son yesterday that after this comes out on DVD, and we watch it at home once or twice we need to put all of them on ice for a few years. Once the little one has reached a certain age, I need to read them to her and start introducing them to her. It would be nice to have them be brand new and magic to both of us.

Now there is nothing left to do but enjoy the show!

Wingardium Leviosa

Each Little Bird that Sings by Deborah WIles

2011-07-10T04:44:00.000-07:00

I spent the better part of my childhood curled up in a corner with a good book. Reading and books have always brought me a sense of comfort and security. My church and chapel are bookstores and libraries. When my husband and I went on one of our first dates, we spent it at a bookstore in the children's section reminiscing about favorite young adult books that we read and loved.

Since I have been reading to my son, I have picked up quite a bit of children's literature, but it is fairly indicative of my son's tastes in books: creepy tales, dragons and boy books about poop and farts. But I do note that there are lots of young adult and children's books out there that would have appealed to me when I was his age.

Alice Ozma brought me back to all that. In her memoir, she mentioned this book about a girl who grows up in a funeral parlor. I have always loved cemeteries and funeral parlors and obituaries, and I also hunger for more children's books with female protagonists, so I thought I would stray from my usual adult memoir reading list and see how I liked this book.

Deborah Wiles won a National Book Award finalist designation for this story of Comfort Snowberger, a young girl growing up surrounded by death and dying and grappling with death in her own family as she is loosing her best friend. There is an exciting climax and a bittersweet ending and a host of interesting characters who come together in Comfort's world in and around the funeral home. The author includes witty obituaries that Comfort writes for the local paper (her writing tendencies reminded me a lot of my very favorite female protagonist, Harriet the Spy), and notes she writes back and forth with her best friend, and also a great hand drawn map of the world that Comfort occupies. Deborah also has a knack for colorful character names and places. Comfort's siblings were Tidings and Merry and her dog was Dismay.

I loved this story and I loved Comfort and am putting it on my read aloud queue after I finish my current book with my son. It is a good good story, even if you don't have a child to read it to.

The Reading Promise by Alice Ozma

2011-07-05T04:08:00.000-07:00

My mother-in-law introduced this book to me, and I must confess I hesitated a bit before starting. (Two renewals from the public library!) She showed it to me because I still read to my son who is 13 years old. While my son and I don't have "The Streak" which the author and her father have, we do a pretty good job of settling down together every weeknight before bed.

I hesitated in beginning to read this because it did not seem there could be that much to say about two people reading together for over 3,000 nights. It seemed a very thin premise with which to hang a full length memoir. Really? I thought, what more can you say other than, "I have a great dad and he and I are committed to reading together every night until I go away to college. We have read hundreds of books together."

After seriously doubting what a young twenty-something girl could say about nightly reading with her father, I have to conclude it was a pretty interesting set of stories. A coming of age look at a girl/young woman who was smart and pretty normal. She wasn't on drugs or anorexic or a raging lunatic. She was a just a precocious girl who made it through her parents divorce and a life of relatively little money by reading. Yes, almost every chapter was at least tangentially related to sitting down and reading with her father: a funeral for a pet, a car accident, reading on prom night, reading the day her mother moved out, how reading interferes with puberty, the last time the pair read before leaving for college, and the sad fate of a public school librarian among many other witty and sometimes sad stories.

Alice Ozma writes from the point of view of each age she is at, slowly maturing through the 9 years spanning the book. At first it feels a little precious, syrupy, but as she grows and begins to tell of the darker side of her family life it becomes a richer and more interesting story. Alice is a young writer. She has just graduated from College and her stories did feel young in places. I wonder if this memoir would change if she wrote it at age 50? It will be interesting to see her grow and mature as a writer over the years.

I thank my MIL for pointing this book out for me and I look forward to more reader recommends. If you have a young person in your house try making them a reading promise. Though I don't don't think most people will need it spelled out for them, Alice Ozma includes contracts for parents to sign to agree to read with their kids. She also includes a bibliography of the books she and her dad read together.

Read-Aloud

2011-07-01T04:01:00.000-07:00

My theme for the month of July is reading aloud: to your kids, husband, friends, parents, anyone who will listen. When I was pregnant with my son, some friends of ours (librarians) threw us a baby shower in which the gifts were all children's books. It was a fun shower and we received some great books: both classics and new books.

One book stood out for me. The Read Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease was a book for adults, and for all of its 200 some pages, the author extolled the virtues of reading aloud to your children from birth to forever. His message loud and clear was read, read, read to your kids even when they are shaving and rolling their eyes at you.

I found the book fascinating and read it from cover to cover. Of course, he was preaching to the choir. My mother read to me, and I in turn knew I would read to my children, but there was something about this book that gave me vast interest in reading and listening as important skills to pass on to children and adults.

My son is now 13, and we still read together almost every night. I think that our reading time is more of an excuse for him to cuddle with his mom as he approaches the age when it is not cool to do that, but I still enjoying reading stories of dragons and wizards and creepy things to my son.

Of course, now I am also reading picture books to my daughter. She is already showing signs of the independence that I had. She'll pull a book away from me and say, "I read". As soon as I learned how to read in the first grade, reading time was all my own. My mother no longer read to me. I don't recall being sad about it. I was impatient and found I could read faster than I could listen. Mom and I parted reading ways.

How about you? Did you read to your kids? Get read to by your parents? Next week I will have a review of a book about a father who read to his daughter until she went to college.

Unfinished Business by Lee Kravitz

2011-06-24T04:13:00.000-07:00

A few years ago I did an early review on a memoir very similar to this one. Do-over was the author's take on 10 separate incidents in his life that he did poorly, and in the memoir he did his best to recreate the scene and do it all over. I found the narrative to be entertaining because it was a childhood memoir combined with a stunt memoir. It worked on both levels for me.

Unfinished Business follows a year in the life of Lee Kravitz, a work-a-holic editor who finds himself without a job. While he is trying to get his life together, he makes a list of 10 things that he should have done that he never did and sets about to right a bunch of (mostly social) wrongs from his past.

The book started off with a bang. The voice held my interest, the story seemed enough different from Do over, and I began reading quickly. Now that I am finally finished after two weeks, my honest reaction is that it was a very good effort, but it felt like it would have better filled 10 short essays for Sojourners magazine rather than one long memoir. Mr. Kravitz would introduce the piece of unfinished business, describe how he finished it, and then was philosophically about it for 20 pages. In a nutshell, taking care of all his unfinished business: writing a condolence card, eulogizing his grandmother, paying an old debt, finding a long lost friend, changed him for the better.

The two chapters I found most interesting were the first, where he sets out to find a favorite and long lost aunt who has been locked away in an institution for many years and the second to last where he uses his reporters research skills to corroborate a family story that involved Eliot Ness and bootleggers in his hometown of Cleveland.

This paperback version of the book comes complete with your own guide to unfinished business. How do you right some of the wrongs that you committed when you were young? Seems cheaper than therapy.

A major Award!

2011-06-15T17:52:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to announce that I have won a MAJOR AWARD! I came in third place in a local short story contest. It will be 6 months before my story appears in print, so I will wait till it comes out to post here and share the story and the publication.

Needless to say, I am very excited. I won a small gift certificate to a local restaurant. I plan to take out the lovely ladies who helped me workshop the story over several weeks. I couldn't have done it without them.

Also, a big shout out to Women Writing for (a) Change-Bloomington which also creates the venue for me to tell stories and revel in a marvelous community of women writers.

I must tell you that I enjoy summer so much it is hard to get to the reading I want to do. These posts may slow down a bit over the summer months.

Peace and hope you are enjoying some good reads! Post and let me know what they are.

On Finding things

2011-06-10T03:21:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I wrote about my newfound love of FOUND magazine which chronicles the flotsam and jetsam people find on the streets and in library books of life. Davy Rothbart, who has made a cottage industry out of finding things and writing about them, edited a book of short stories by writers and celebrities about things they have found.

Requiem for a Paper Bag is an eclectic assortment of short tales (some are true some are fiction) all about the things people find that have created stories and stuck with them over the years. The book itself is a tribute to storytelling of the most basic and most beautiful form: clever observations about finding a lucky rock or returning someone's wallet or reading an old store clerk's diary after she dies, or finding a photo of a stranger in an unusual place. These are the stories that surround us at the dinner table or cocktail parties. This is the bread and butter of our lives.

A few of the entries were ruminations on found objects that tried to tell the fictional tale of why the note was written or why the photo appeared where it did. These stories were also fun and clever twists on the theme.

As a writer and storyteller I am captivated by how we tell stories and how we find the stories we tell to begin with. This volume gives me more thoughts about good storytelling and how we find those stories and peer into them. I hope my writing friends out there will use this idea as a prompt...what have you found and how has it stayed with you over the years? Did it change your life? Or what story can you create behind the found object?

I am certainly going to begin watching for things and noticing more finds. What have you found?

The Story of Beautiful Girl by Rachel Simon

2011-06-05T03:56:00.000-07:00

Rachel Simon previously wrote a work of non-fiction called, Riding the Bus with my Sister. This story catalogs one year of Rachel spending time with her developmentally disabled sister Beth as she rides the city bus every day. Now Ms Simon captures the life of a developmentally disabled girl in a fictional institution that houses the "feebleminded".

The Story of Beautiful Girl was well written and engrossing. The stories haunted me. Partly, it is the history of the evolving views and treatment of the disabled in our community, but it is also a love story and a heart pounding quest and adventure tale.

Beautiful girl and her companion show up on the doorstep of the farm of an old widow one rainy day. They have with them a newborn baby. The widow gives them clothes and comfort, and before she can know their story the police arrive to arrest them and take them back to the institution from which they escaped. As beautiful girl is stuffed into the car to go back to her terrible life, and the companion escapes out the widow's window, Beautiful Girl whispers to the widow, "hide her." The widow understands she is to hide the newborn baby.

And so the story progresses: each of the four characters is living a horrible life, waiting to get back to the others. Will Beautiful girl and her companion ever see each other again? Ever meet their daughter? and what does the old widow do with her new responsibility?

It is a tad schmaltzy, especially toward the end, but it is a fascinating look at how the disabled are perceived in our society and how they also might perceive the world. It can be terribly sad throughout the book but also has a lovely, sweet ending. It is a fast, easy read especially if you like a thick coat of sugar.

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

2011-06-01T07:13:00.000-07:00

Someone recommended this book on Facebook, and I went immediately to the library website to request it: whoa, long waitlist, it must be good. So after waiting a few months, I finally got my hands on this book, and it took me awhile to get through it. While the characters were compelling and the situation interesting, the plot kind of dragged out and the whole thing felt sort of contrived in places. In other words, I am not sure it lives up to its hype.

The story is rooted in Shakespeare (which my husband figured out from the title. Brush up your Shakespeare for this read.) and tells the story of three sisters and their lives after they return home to care for their ailing mother. Sister Rose (Rosalind) is the responsible, motherly, accomplished never left home sister. Sister Bianca has fled from their home and developed a nasty NY lifestyle of lies, stealing, and cheap one night stands. Cordelia just runs and keeps the life of a vagabond, not really caring much about anyone or anything. One summer they all return home and begin to solve all of thier problems and heal their mother.

The one interesting twist on this novel was that it was told from a first person plural point of view. All the sisters are apparently telling this story from the point of view as a single sisterly unit. It was most unusual, and I have never read anything like this before. It is probably the single facter that kept me reading until it finally turned into a page turner for me.

As a general rule if a book does not compel me to keep reading within the first 10-20 pages of the book, I don't usually continue. The fact that I kept plowing through this, really says a lot for the hope I had that it would get better.

You will enjoy this if you know your Shakespeare and like a nice tidy ending for your fiction. Also, if you enjoy unique perspectives, this one is worthy of taking a look at. We might be able to learn a thing or two about writing. Maybe this was why there was such a long waitlist for it.

For those of you waiting, I am returning it today.

Winged Obsession

2011-05-25T03:48:00.000-07:00

Parts of this journalistic account of a Fish and Game undercover agent's exploits in the the world of insect smuggling are interesting but many parts are just down right dull.

Yoshi Kojima is an eccentric man who makes his living (and a pretty substantial one at that) dealing in endangered butterflies and insects. Agent Ed Newcomer is out to bring him down. Understanding the butterfly and insect trading world and the life of an undercover agent in the most unappreciated division of law enforcement held my attention. I think anyone would enjoy the general set up to the problems and the day to day life of the agent and also the nefarious world of illegal bug trading.

Once the writer got to the daily and weekly machinations of the sting (which was easily half of the 300 page book) I lost complete interest. I had very hard time focusing on which butterflies were which, who told which lies, when agent Newcomer was supposed to call and Skype his prey and all the petty comings and goings of the the agent and the butterfly dealer.

The author, Jessica Speart, wrote this book without mention of herself at all. It was totally third person with no over arching voice of the narrator, how she got all her information and how she could tell the story so thoroughly from a third person perspective. The last chapter ended that voice and introduced us to a first person view of the author and how she went to get an interview with Kojima after he was released from prison and sent home to Japan. I found this an odd chapter and while in some ways it was the most interesting, it was also the most misleading.

The author is worried the Kojima will not talk to her, so she lies to him about being interested in his shop and she basically goes undercover and asks him all kinds of questions about the agent and about the illegal butterfly trade. Huh? Undercover journalist as well?

So while this was not my favorite Early Review book, and I personally did not enjoy it, someone may like the stories of butterfly smuggling and undercover work. Please let me know if you would like to borrow it.

On Finding Things

2011-05-20T03:31:00.000-07:00

Did you ever find a note or a scrap of paper on the street or in a library book that made you go hmmm? Over the years, whenever I would find something like this, I would pick it up and read it but almost always not know what to do with it. Found objects like this were clearly portals into other people's stories, but it was hard to know where to put them or what meaning to make out of small snips of life.

I was overjoyed to find that someone else (many other people really) have the same fascination I do with found objects. They have started a zine and a website called Found Magazine. Found Magazine is free of advertising and is easy to find in Independent bookstores or art shops. There are many editions featuring found notebooks, lists, recipes, photos, love notes, school reports, children's drawings, teacher evaluations, report cards, audio tapes, diaries, posters for lost dogs, dire warnings left on windshields. Some funny, some sad, some bittersweet, some WTF!!

So check out the website and make a mental note that if you find something interesting with handwriting or photos or drawings you are encouraged to mail it in to the good people at Found magazine who may feature it as the find of the day. If you are a story lover like I am these will all pique your curiosity. I wish I had thought of this first!

Blogs become Books

2011-05-15T04:41:00.000-07:00

These days many of my early review selections are books by bloggers. Someone starts a blog about a particlar topic, in this case diet and nutrition, and attracts a lot of followers and uses that poplarity to launch a book of the same name. I am impressed. This method of getting yourself published seems to level the playing field a bit and give me hope that its not just literary writers who get to have a piece of the publishing pie.

To be fair, there was a lot of useful advice in this book regarding how to approach dieting and weight loss with the many temptations that bombard us day after day. I also came across many good recipes that I will try: pumpkin muffins and tomato zuchini fritatta to name just two. So if you are looking for good low fat, high health recipes to try this is a good source (as her blog probably is too).

The only drawback to this book is that Ms Haupert's writing is not very interesting or engaging, and I had a hard time geting through each chapter. I am not sure it was possible to make it more lively. She spent a lot of time explaining her schedule each day and her calorie counts. Some people might find this fascinating, but I found it dry. (I am also a tad over weight so maybe she does have something!)

I do want to give her credit for inventing a life for herself that is interesting and varied and sings to exactly what she wants to do. This I envy and admire. I guess that is another good reason to read this book: she gives good advice on living a creative life and breaking the mold from the standard 8-5 drudgery.

I can offer this book to anyone who would like it.

Who is Professor X?

2011-05-10T04:03:00.000-07:00

Professor X wrote this article for the Atlantic Monthly in 2008. It caused a lot of controversy when it appeared. He excoriates our culture for demanding that College be a prerequisite for most jobs, even those that do not seem to need such preparation. From this article he wrote: In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: Confessions of an Accidental Academic.

It was hidden in a bottom shelf of a bookstore in the parenting section which was kind of odd, but of course I was attracted to it as I am part of the Ivory Tower and have learned to both love and hate it over the years.

This book is an interesting interplay of his own memoir, why he chose to adjunct and what it does for his finances and his marriage; a social critique of the culture that has elevated a college education way beyond it's possible worth, and a writing primer.

I have to say, that the combination really worked for me. I was fairly convinced about his argument that we are unnecessarily pushing college at the expense of huge amounts of debt and frustration, his own story was sweet and well written and who can't use advice on writing, even if from an anonymous author.

Professor X chose to remain anonymous because he loves his job and doesn't want to lose it. He no longer needs the money, his marriage is fine, but he truly enjoys teaching even if his students are woefully unprepared.

I would really like to write this man as I have a few critiques about some of his assumptions about college education. The easy avenue of email probably won't be open to me. I'll have to write his publisher. I have a copy of it if anyone would like to borrow it.

The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball

2011-05-05T06:55:00.000-07:00

The most compelling memoirs are not about movie stars or teenagers who combat abuse, alcoholism or anorexia. They are really the ones where ordinary people do unusual things with their lives. Things that we can picture doing ourselves.

Kristin Kimball lived life as a NYC writer. Lattes and Central Park and nice clothing. On a story assignment, she met a farmer who took her breath away and in a short amount of time she gave up her lease on her Manhattan apartment and joined the man she would later marry in starting an organic farm in Northern New York near Lake Champlain.

The work is back breaking and she has little time for sleep or any of the activities that normally occupy her. Her parents think she is a tad crazy, but by the last chapter she has agreed to have a wedding on the farm for 300 people and comes to a happy satisfaction with her crazy, dirty life.

Her partner is an optimist and always believes that people will come together to care for each other: that things will be given them and labor be donated. Their new community proves to be an oasis of faith and love and neighborliness of which they participate in as well. It is exciting to follow the story of how the farm and the CSA come together seed by seed, animal by animal. The climax of the story is a big grand wedding and a small glimpse into the future of a new baby born at home under the watchful eye of their pigs and cows.

If you are interested in this simple life, the farming life, a life transformed you will enjoy this book as much as I did.

In Honor of National Poetry Month

2011-04-30T06:36:00.000-07:00

I have been remiss this month in not mentioning that April is National Poetry Month. I spent some time reading and writing poetry this month and I participated in National Poem in your Pocket Day which was April 14th by passing out a poem by Pat Schneider which I will post at the end.

I also wrote a villanelle for a friend who has terminal cancer. I wrote the villanelle using lines from his caring bridge website where people expressed their love and heartbreak and memories. This site and the sentiments it generated created so many wonderful lines that it prompted me to create a found poem for my friend which I mailed to him. Here are a few stanzas:

From this day forward every morning

at some point between 7:00 - 8:00 a.m and 9:00 - 10:00 a.m.

I will hold you in my heart and thoughts.

Your openness to this most current process

The next stage in your life journey

Will take you from this day forward every morning

I don’t understand why the powers that be let nasty people walk this earth

and yet take away the beautiful people.

this thought I will hold in my heart and thoughts

I'd love to hear how you celebrated National Poetry Month? Did you read poetry? Write poetry? Share poetry? Find poetry? Here is the poem in your pocket that I promised. Pat Schneider is a favorite of mine.

The Patience of Ordinary Things
It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they're supposed to be.
I've been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

The Boy in the Moon by Ian Brown

2011-04-25T19:03:00.000-07:00

A sweet, sad and ultimately very thought provoking memoir written by the father of a severely disabled boy. Walker Brown has a genetic mutation resulting in a syndrome that only about 100 people on the planet have. Walker cannot speak, does not eat food and is fed through a G tube, wears diapers and must wear protective gear as he constantly hits himself and beats his head into the wall. He is very small for his age and cannot communicate through any discernible means.

Ian, his wife Johanna, and the older sister Hayley spend 13 years caring for Walker round the clock until the parents finally find a suitable group home for him. Ian then embarks on a journey to discover what, if anything, his son's life means to him, to the community and to humanity. Surely there must be some answer as to what his life means?

The author travels around Canada and the US meeting other families with children that have this syndrome. He travels to California to meet the geneticists who first confirmed this condition and understand how a mutation on a gene can occur to create the condition. He goes to France to meet advocates for the disabled, philosophers of disability studies, and to visit communities of severely disabled. He looks at his own heart and mind and reactions to people like Walker and he takes a cursory look at how the severely disabled have been treated in the Western world throughout history.

I was fascinated by the picture he painted of his life, his marriage and his unending love for his son. He thoroughly examines all the ethics at work in studying genes that produce disabled humans, the ethics of how we treat the least of all in our care and the philosophies behind how to treat these children. It was all wonderfully enlightening. A fascinating look at people who we don't like looking at or even being around.

I am humbled by the questions Mr. Brown raises and by his own love for a child who most of society will always see as lesser. I really understood the love he described for his son, and his own interest and passion for helping and understanding the disabled helped me understand a bit more about being a parent.

If you are interested in my copy of this book please let me know and I will pass it along.

A Secret Gift by Ted Gup

2011-04-21T11:43:00.000-07:00

I learned two important things while reading this interesting story of a suitcase full of letters discovered in the author's mother's attic after her death. The first thing is that we should all be careful not to throw away valuable letters, postcards, photos and newspaper clippings. Everything you save and hold is an entry into an amazing story like this one.

Ted Gup discovers a suitcase of letters written to a mysterious person named B. Virdot. B. Virdot was his grandfather who had promised the residents of Canton some Christmas cheer during the depression. The letters Mr. Gup found all asked for a small piece of that cheer. They open a fascinating portal to the ethos and history of that very sad era in American history.

The letters and story made me curious about how my own grandparents from Erie, Pennsylvania made it through the depression and led me to the secong thing I learned which was my grandparents story of survival during the depression. My mother told me that they bought their small plot of land and the material to build a small house. They added rooms to the house as they could afford them. They also planted fruit trees and a large garden. They had a chicken coop filled with chickens. So even in the years when my grandfather only worked one day a week, they owned their home and land and had food on the table. My mother noted that in addition to thier own kids (two) they also took care of two other family members.

What windows do you have on another era of time? What secrets do your suitcases hold? These are good questions to ask the people we love who lived through that time. Mr. Gup did a great job of tracing the letters writers and their stories through the ages and learning about and understanding his own grandfather's story.

Why do we read?

2011-04-16T13:42:00.000-07:00

Before I make a recommendation for a book these days, I ask first, are you a reader? I am always perplexed that there are so many non-readers out there. They don't display books in their homes, take books along for plane rides, refer to what they are reading, nor are they interested in my recommendations.

Reading for me is a hunger, knowing that there are stories I will never get to read makes me wildly uncomfortable, going to a bookstore and being inundated with hundreds of ideas which I can only skim makes me sad. I am constantly trying to figure out how to carve out more time to read.

Whenever I post about a book I have read here, it is because I have finished it, and if I finish it it is because I enjoyed it, and I feel like it taught me something about how to write or how to be a better person. It is unusual that I finish a book that I don't particularly care for.

I picked up Perfection from the bookstore after Christmas. Its prominent place on one of those must read tables caught my eye every time I walked by, and after three or four times I took the bait: a memoir about a woman whose husband dies and then she discovers he cheated on her big time. I really don't know what I was expecting. The writing was not really magical or thoughtful and I did not particularly care for the narrator that much. Yet, I felt compelled to read this long ghastly story of death and betrayal. Nothing new was revealed about life as a wronged widow, and I never did come to feel real compassion or warmth for the author.

So why did I finish it? Was I attracted to the lurid story? Was I waiting for some big reveal that never came? Perhaps the story is better than I give it credit for? Perhaps, as a writer, I read this to understand another way to tell a story? A different style, a different arc of the pen? How would I have told this story differently? What advice would I give her if I had been in writing group with her? I can't honestly say why I finished it. I can recommend it if you are going through something similar or are interested in all types of memoir: learning how someone else tells a story.

How about you? Do you finish all books you start? What happens if you are reading a book you no longer enjoy?

A Very Personal Story

2011-04-10T03:36:00.000-07:00

We're all pretty much able to deal even with the worst that life can fire at us, if we simply admit that it is very difficult. I think that's the whole of the answer. We make our way, and effort and time give us cushion and dignity. And as we age, we're riding higher in the saddle, seeing more terrain.

So it's an epiphany after all. You have it in your hand the whole time.

-- from Half a Life by Darin Strauss

This book has a plain dark cover with a gold embossed title on it. The pages are made of thick paper. It's heavier than regular books. Its subject matter is very somber, and it is all very sad. This book made a couple of must read lists from 2010, and I picked it up because every where I turned it seemed to be there.

This personal story (what he calls it, instead of a memoir) is about a man who looks back to age 18 when he accidentally hit and killed a girl, one of his peers, on her bicycle. This horrendous act haunts everything he does from that day forward until he has his own children and then he decides he must get help. He both finds a decent therapist and embarks on a mission to write his story, to share what happened to him 18 years, half a life, before.

I found the writing to be simply magnificent. I kept writing down sentences and phrases that seemed the very essence of what good writing is all about. He definitely gets what it means to tell a tale, turn a phrase, describe a crisis, and capture what torment he had been through for all these years. Forgiveness is nothing unless you can forgive yourself, it seems.

I highly recommend this readable, sad, cautionary tale as a decent lesson for anyone who has been haunted by a questionable action or wonders how to shake off the dead ghosts. It is a truly remarkable sharing.

Please read this book and tell me what you think!

2011-04-04T09:06:00.000-07:00

I just finished The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan and it was absolutely one of the most beautiful stories I have ever read/ideas I have even come across. Mr. Levithan doesn't present a chronological picture of a relationship, rather he presents an alphabetical list of definitions as if from a dictionary. Each word and idea is written like a short prose poem and all add up to create this marvelous kaleidoscope of a story about two people in love.

It reads as a kind of puzzle, and I guarantee you will fall in love with this couple and want them to stay together. She: wild and crazy and fun. He: stable, down to earth, and pragmatic. They fight and split over an affair? Or do they stay together? IS she an alcoholic? Pregnant? Does he stay or does he go? Please read this and let me know what you think. I guarantee it is an absolutely a breathtaking look at love and a perfectly fascinating relationship especially with the patchwork observations.

Here is one of my many favorites:

Juxtaposition, n.

It scares me how hard it is to remember life before you. I can't even make the comparisons anymore, because my memories of that time have all the depth of a photograph. It seems foolish to play games of better and worse. It is simply a matter of is and is no longer.

I have been interested for some time in interesting ways to organize thought and writing that are beyond the usual first to last chronology. This is a brilliant example of of a non-linear story. If you read it let me know what you think. Please.

Could you be a tiger mom?

2011-03-30T09:32:00.000-07:00

After reading tons of articles about Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and hearing all the pros and cons and rebuttals about Amy Chua's book on the Chinese way of parenting, I read it fully expecting to get her humor and fall in love with Amy Chua. Amy was quoted again and again saying that no one understood her and that the WSJ (the publication that first reported on her book) only pulled out the most salacious parts of her book and no one got that she was humbled in the end. In interviews she kept talking about how funny the book was meant to be.

But I must say I have never read a memoir where I so thoroughly detested the narrator and even when she got her comeuppance and realized the error of her ways she still contended that her way is better and the rest of us western parents are just stupid. So even after she was humbled she still acted like she was superior. There were, perhaps, two spots in the narrative where I thought I detected a bit of humorous hyperbole, but it was really overshadowed by her horrible personality.

That being said, this is a well written book with a completely different perspective on culture and parenting and is worth reading simply to have that perspective. I found Chua's tale to be incredibly riveting and her voice to be clear and compelling. I don't think I have ever read anything that so concisely summed up the differences between east and west. It was simply unusual to have such an unsympathetic narrator.

Sad to say, I could never, even in my wildest dreams be a tiger mother. Poor Miss T will really miss that part of her heritage (though I tend to doubt it). A better summation of this method of parenting is that it is the best parenting method for raising violin or piano prodigies. However, if you want your kids to have a sweet carefree child hood where kids can play and discover and create and make friends and learn to navigate the real world, Western parenting seems to be the better route--with some modifications perhaps.

The whole story kept me wondering about three things: 1) Not every kid can be number one. Pity the kids who have more than one tiger mom in the same town or small school. 2) How will her kids parent their kids one day? I may have to wait a few years for Sophia's and Lulu's memoirs. 3) How munch money will they have to spend on therapy to erase years of stress and psychological abuse heaped upon them by their mother?

There were also a couple of interesting stories within the memoir that were only hinted upon. Amy's sister makes an appearance at the end. She is very ill and perhaps dying of cancer. She is also the parent of two small children. Is she a tiger mom as well? And in one totally fascinating aspect of the tiger mom phenomenon, Amy's mother, the original tiger mom, manages to love and raise a Down's Syndrome child (in China disabled children are often killed or abandoned. It is very un-chinese to show any care or attention to a handicapped child.) The Down's Syndrome child plays piano! No doubt owed to the tireless efforts of this method and the mother. Perhaps in some weird way, this method does show love.

Though I guess I will continue to show my love by taking family hikes and trying my best not to be a yeller and letting my kids choose their hobbies and interests.

How about you? Love to hear from people who are Tiger Parents...

Cinderella ate My Daughter

2011-03-25T19:15:00.000-07:00

I don't particularly care for parenting how-to books. They always leave me feeling really inadequate. Amy Chua's Tiger Mother and Peggy Orenstein's Cinderella were both on the hot reads list this winter and surprise! Both were parenting books of sorts.

I'll save Amy Chua for another day, but I just managed to read Orenstein's new book about the princess and pink craze that is sweeping through girlhood these days. Of course I have an interest in this topic as I am raising a daughter myself and upon finding out that I would be raising a girl, I proclaimed that I would raise her to be a warrior princess.

I was thinking of the idea that it was okay to be a girlie-girl but that she would also be strong and tough and fight battles. You know, like princess Leia.

Orenstein does a great job of dissecting the new girlie-girl culture of princesses and pinkness and as these girls get older, the whole tween slut craze. Her book is a journalist's account of the troubles of consumer culture for girls. By the end, any parent raising a girl will be damned if they do and damned if they don't. Celebrate girl culture and you are reinforcing stereotypes like the mermaid who gives up her voice to be with the prince or the princess who waits around to be kissed and saved. Blah! But if we come down to hard against the feminine play, we tell our girls it's bad to be girls--reject what is feminine. That really isn't great either.

After a thorough examination of horrendous role models for girls, the pink toy craze, the disney princess phenomenon and the dearth of female superheroes, Ms Orenstein concludes it is basically best to turn off the TV and go outside and take a walk with your daughters.

I think Miss T and I will take our light sabers.

the memory palace by Mira Bartok

2011-03-20T11:38:00.000-07:00

At sixteen, I vow to hold onto beauty, no matter what--to sitting in a rich carpet of grass, a concert hall, a museum full of art--in a place that has nothing to do with the unbearable glare of grief. --Mira Bartok

Mira Bartok struggles with her memory after a car accident so she tells her story using a series of memories about paintings. Each painting hangs in a different room of her memory palace and represents a different time from the author's childhood and adult life.

Ms Bartok's life has centered around her schizophrenic mother, and the actions she and her sister must take to preserve their own sanity and lives. The memories she shares range from a childhood in Cleveland, to escaping the craziness for college, and eventually abandoning their mother in order to have normal lives and careers. Their mother Norma will call them non-stop or come to their door steps screaming about rape or pregnancy. There is no way to have a calm, sane existence if Norma knows where they are. Throughout this memoir the author takes us through each room in her palace--every room tied to a memory of her life with or without her mother.

I loved the unique concept for drawing us into her life story. The story is sad but because the author was able to escape her mother it felt hopeful. While at the same time I never doubted her love for her mother, and I always understood her guilt but the need for complete separation. Imagine corresponding with your mother through a series of PO Boxes never really knowing where the other is.

In between chapters and memories, the author includes excerpts from her mother's journals which she kept throughout the years. These excerpts of her mother's life were probably the most original part of this story, especially since for many of the years the diaries were written, the author had no idea where her mother was. She could only guess based on examining diaries years later. The treasure trove of artifacts and art that her mother left behind really drew me into the work in a very tangible way.

Of the many memoirs of growing up in a household with mental illness this rates as one of the most original. I loved the author and respected and understood her choices.

On writing to writers

2011-03-15T11:29:00.000-07:00

I frequently track down authors of books that I enjoy reading and email them and let them know what I enjoyed. Often my emails will ask follow up questions of the author, things I wish I knew but weren't included in the book. I have been doing this for years, even before the advent of email. I did not really know how to find a writer then, so I sent a letter to the author's publisher, figuring someone at the publishing company would know how to reach the author. I did not hear back from too many writer's in the era of snail mail. (I did get a nice letter from Gloria Steinem once. Very cool.) Email responses are a different ball game. I would guess I hear back from 90% of the people I write.

Once a Muslim writer I complimented, wrote me and asked me if I would invite him to my Unitarian Church while he was on book tour, (I did even though I was on spring break and could not go myself.), I get put on writer's mailing lists, get my questions answered and feel like I learn something new every time. My biggest disappointment was Malcolm Gladwell, whose writing I adore. He wrote me back after about 6 months and then just thanked me. He did not answer my questions or even address anything I said. Just, "Thanks for writing."

Last month when reading an early review book called Sometimes I feel Like a Nut by Jill Kargman, I was confronted with the need to write the author. She wrote about a character in a TV series that she did not like and I had just finished a memoir by the very actress who played that character. The actress's memoir reminded me a lot of Jill (both funny women) and it seemed uncanny that Jill would write about the actress at about the same moment that I was reading her memoir. So I wrote Jill (we are on a first name basis now, best buds.) and mentioned this book and this actress and suggested she might like it.

Jill wrote me back within a few hours and thanked me and was amazed that I had her book already. (I surmise that the publisher is trying to get her more of a midwestern following and thus we early reviewers from the heartland got first dibs on her funny funny book.)

Kudos to Ms. Kargman for writing me back quickly and maybe even taking the time to pick up the book that I recommended. I have a secret fantasy now that the actress and Jill will become BFF's based on my reading suggestions. They will reminisce that their friendship got started by this weirdo from Indiana who send them emails. They won't remember my name though but they will laugh every time.

Check out this funny funny book.

A week at the Airport by Alain be Botton

2011-03-10T03:27:00.000-08:00

"The stock market could never put an accurate price on thousands of moments of beauty and interest that occurred around the world every day under an airline's banner: it could not describe the site of Nova Scotia from the air, it had no room in its optics for the camaraderie enjoyed by employees in the Hong Kong ticket office, it had no means of quantifying the adrenalin thrill of take-off." from A Week at the Airport by Alain be Botton.

Veteran writer Alain de Botton, who has written prolifically on questions of home, life, travel and friendship, was asked to be the writer-in-residence at Heathrow International Airport for one week. The airport paid to put him up and put no restrictions on what he could write. They only asked that he spend the whole week within the confines of the airport. They even gave him a desk in a public space near terminal 5 where he could sit and write and talk to people.

He produced a really fabulous essay, almost a work of prose poetry, on all aspects of the airport: departure, arrival, food (from the elite lounges to the food courts), baggage claim, ticket desk, shopping. He met pilots and employees and baggage handlers and many many travelers and stopped to ask them their stories.

This little book was filled with pictures of the variety of scenes one encounters at the airport like the beauty of the engineering of the airport terminal, the airplanes lined up on the tarmac in the breaking morning sun, meals bring prepared en masse by hairnetted Filipino women, businessmen working in the airport lounge and bags rolling off the conveyer belt.

His stay at the airport produced a love letter to Heathrow, a wide-eyed wondering of the marvels of modern day travel and the people that live the stories under the fabric of the terminal. It made me wonder about possible companion positions like writer-in-residence at the mall, Disney or the hospital. It is not a learn-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-inner-workings-of-the-airport piece, it was just a lazy stroll and a week of ideas about how the terminal--much hated, little noticed is a profound place in our modern age. Less than 100 pages and chock full of pictures, it reads like a long poem. Think Virgil for the airport.

A Walk in the Woods: Bill Bryson Love Part II

2011-03-05T10:22:00.000-08:00

A lovely stroll along the Appalachian trail: wit, middle-aged men doing the mid-life thing, history, friendship, sadness, environment, botany, biology and some southern states all in one easy to read travel memoir. I can't believe it took me this long to discover this author.

I requested this book from my local library, waited at least 6 weeks to get it, and was delighted to get to read a very dog eared and much loved copy. Has there been a waitlist for this book since its publication date of 1998?

I commented to my husband that the book seemed eerily pre-9/11. Travel memoirs read with more suspicion and more snark in this era of travel. No pat-downs or criminal background checks to get on the trail in 1998.

The book is dedicated to Katz. I must say, I loved his travel companion Katz more than I can possibly say. I breathed a heavy sigh when I finished the book and went back and read the dedication. If you haven't already read this one it is worth an afternoon.

Reading this made me know, deep down in my heart, that I will never ever aspire to hike the Appalachian Trail. Not even in my wildest fantasies. I am glad Bill Bryson did.

Waiting for Daisy and other Writings of Infertility

2011-03-01T03:36:00.000-08:00

Perhaps it is my age or my station in life, but suddenly everyone seems to be talking about infertility. This past monthI was mesmerized both by this memoir of infertility and this account of an alternative family formed by surrogacy and donor eggs in the NY times magazine. A good friend of mine has been undergoing fertility treatments for sometime and I had the opportunity to be in her company for a few days last summer. When she talked with another friend on the phone about the procedures it felt to me like she was speaking a foreign language.

This book was fascinating in the "I can't look away" way. I really am tired of knowing and hearing all about the intricacies and worries of mechanized baby making, but at the same time, I waited around to hear the good news at the end. Ms Orenstein's story touches on all aspects of the quest to start a family late in life: adoption, new age techniques, cancer treatment getting in the way, and good old fashioned IVF. I could never picture myself headed down this particular road of infertility treatment and all its heartache, but understand that everyone pictures their life differently than how it actually turns out. This is why we read stories.

Before I read this, I did now know how little regulated the infertility treatment industry is. There are a lot of substandard practices out there. Also, there is a Japanese infant adoption program. I had not realized that the Japanese had babies to adopt but this family was offered not one but two different Japanese babies. Who knew?! Also there are great chapters on the Hiroshima Maidens and an orthodox Jewish family who has...fifteen children. Good Stuff!

The comments at the end of the NY times article are a must read. People have a wide variety of very strong opinions about going to great extent to have babies. I was a little taken aback at how many people thought the NY times couple was just plain wrong. The world would be a less interesting place without the varied and intriguing ways we choose to live our lives.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie: A Flavia de Luce Mystery

2011-02-24T14:43:00.000-08:00

Flavia de Luce, the heroine of this mystery, is an 11 year old chemistry genius who lives at Buckshaw in the village of Bishop's Lacey. She stumbles upon a dying man in her family garden and races about the village on her trusty bicycle, Gladys, searching for the answers to the various riddles posed by the death soon deemed a murder. Most importantly, did her father do it? What did the dead bird on the doorstep mean? What about all those postage stamps?

I don't generally enjoy mysteries. They are too formulaic to hold my attention. The reader knows that every interaction, every character, every chance meeting is somehow crucial to the plot and in many cases the reader figures it out before the sleuth does. Not to mention that a mystery, by its very nature, is totally plot driven and the plot often feels contrived. I think I got my cynicism about mysteries from reading every Nancy Drew book ever published when I was about Flavia's age.

So as far as mysteries go this one wasn't bad and a satisfying end to Fiction February. Flavia is a memorable and vividly drawn detective: a smart, resourceful, strong girl. Bishop's Lacey and its denizens are the perfect English town for a mystery and the whole de Luce family is both compelling and sweet. All set me up for a really enjoyable story--even if it was a conventional mystery. I found myself really drawn into the plot...especially the history of Flavia's father and his passion for stamp collecting. Who knew stamps could be so interesting?

This novel is Alan Bradley's first book and hey, guess what? He is 71 years old! I guess there is still hope that I will get my novel done after all. We haven't heard the last of Flavia de Luce either. There are a couple more mysteries in the work with her as the star.

So how about you, dear reader, can you recommend a mystery?

What exactly is a novella?

2011-02-20T02:49:00.000-08:00

I must confess to being averse to the literary form called the novella. What is it? Apparently it is longer than a novelette (never heard of that till just now when I looked it up on wikipedia) and shorter than a novel. I've never been quite sure why we need this distinction. Different people give different lengths for a novella. Some say as few as 10,000 words, some say 70,000 words is the upper limit which is quite a long book in my opinion. To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, The Old Man and the Sea...all of these are considered by some to be novellas

Some would say a novella does not try to accomplish as much: one plot, one major character. They tend to be bundled in books with short stories. A friend recently recommended and loaned me a book by Jim Harrison called Farmer's Daughter. I was anxious to get to it and had a space saved for it for fiction February. Guess what? That's right: three novellas! The first was titled Farmer's Daughter and it was short and dealt with one story line and one subject and reflected Jim Harrison's characteristic love of Montana and Arizona and the rural life.

The Farmer's Daughter was about Sarah the daughter of a transplanted Montana Farmer. She has a horse and befriends an old ranch hand who is dying after her mother abandons her and her father. She learns to shoot. She is raped by a traveling musician and plots to shoot him in the head. She hunts, and she falls in love with a man three times her age. She leaves Montana for Arizona. While I enjoyed the story and will probably read the other two novellas...I have to put my finger on something that bothers me about Harrison and other male writers about the way they portray women.

They always seem mystified by how women behave. They paint them as these foreign beings being stymied by their lives. It almost seemed as though Mr. Harrison put himself into the body of Sarah and kept questioning what she would do. It was as if he couldn't understand her. It might be that the reader is to figue out that Sarah was going through difficult times and she was confused, but it only felt like Jim Harrison was confused. As a reader, it was hard to separate the male writer from the young woman. Quick, I would love to know of a male writer who has a knack for portraying women? Not as mysterious beings who can't make decisions, but as whole characters who may not make the right decisions but seem to know what they are doing. Ideas please?

The Hunchback of Neiman Marcus: Coming in April 2011

2011-02-15T03:28:00.000-08:00

This truly unique collection of poems is arranged to form an interesting, bittersweet and really fun novel. I had not read anything quite like this before (okay Canterbury tales and the ancient Greeks). When I first opened it, I was surprised: the description never mentioned poetry. It was an early reviewer book that I bid on and sad to say I probably would not have bid on it if I knew it was all poetry.

Hunchback read very quickly. In about 400 pages there were about 200 prose poems with a smattering of meter and rhyme--and even a picture poem or two. They were generally sad, funny and thoughtful looks at a 50 year old woman's mid-life crisis which included a daughter leaving home, a mother in the hospital and a marriage that was alternately on the rocks and the best marriage in the world. There were some real points of tension and sadness that built up even through the prolonged use of poetry. I could hardly believe poems could produce this heightened state of interest in the characters.

The author, Sonya Sones, is better known for her young adult novels. In fact, it appears as though they might be constructing a marketing campaign for young adults with this book so perhaps they hope the book to have a crossover audience. I think this is a fun little book and you will enjoy it especially if you are interested in seeing what poetry can do for a narrative. This was a clever way to play with words.

I found myself reading each poem and asking myself if it could stand alone as a poem. If you saw it reprinted in the New Yorker by itself would you enjoy it as a poem or would you miss everything since it is really part of a longer narrative? I decided that most of them could. I leave you with one of my favorites:

I AM TIRED OF BEING A POET

Worn out by this business
of always having to see things
with "fresh new eyes."

Just once I'd like to sit by the fire
without trying to figure out how to describe it
in a way that no one else ever has before.

I'm tired of meter, tired of form,
tired of rhyme, tired of off-rhyme,
tired of repetition, tired of metaphors--

Those wild...somethings
that never fail to fly south for the winter j
ust when I need them the most.

I am rife with,
no...overrun with,
no...bursting with

the boredom,
the monotony,
the tedium

of constantly
having to look up words
in my thesaurus.

I'm fed up with allusion,
alienated by allegory,
allergic to alliteration.

But I am especially tired of similes--
those sneaky figures of speech
that ceaselessly elude me,

just as
they're eluding me
right now

on this cloudy morning
that's like...
a cloudy morning.

I've had it up to here
with trying to invent another original way
to say "I'm really sad."

I'm not as melancholy as the song
of the mateless mockingbird,
I'm just plain miserable--

miserable
and sick and tired
of being a poet.

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

2011-02-10T11:10:00.000-08:00

Spied an end of the year review of this on NPR, waited for it at the library, got tired of waiting and picked it up at B & N, read it in two days. This totally absorbing tale of an internationnal newspaper based out of Rome is a love letter to newspapers and the people that work at them. It is a sad tale of one person's love and how he manifested his love in a business...the newspaper business. The owner's love unfolds as you learn more about the history of the paper and we understand the complete story gradually by looking at it from the point of view of a dozen different employees that are related to the paper in some way. We hear the tales of the copy editors, the news editors, the stringers and the publisher. Each man or woman is flawed and made whole by their work at the newspaper or in the journalism business. Each character adds to the tale of the newspaper.

Each of the stories stands alone and the reader sees the threads of the paper and the other characters appear and disappear in each chapter. No character gets more than one chapter: you won't get terribly attached to one story even though they all feel compelling and meaningful. Almost all the characters are well drawn and sympathetic: the copy editor who loves his life and job, the Egypt stringer who has no idea how to be a journalist, the reader who keeps up with the news as best she can, the owner who doesn't really care about the paper and so on. All these points of view draw you into the real story about the rise and fall of a small newspaper: who started it and what's to become of it in the era of all things on-line and all the struggles in between.

This is the kind of book that turns a traditional narrative on its head, but works oh so very well. I have been thinking a lot lately about different ways of presenting a narrative: how to organize story by thoughts or by point of view or by alternate chronology. This novel was so interesting and so thrilling because it was told in a completely different and very interesting manner. The telling of these tales collectively left some mysteries that the reader solves but the characters never do. The whole thing felt sweet and sad and achingly true.

The Imperfectionists is a stunning and accessible story, and I hope everyone takes an evening or two to read it. You will be enchanted.

Happy Year of the Rabbit!!!

2011-02-05T03:30:00.000-08:00

In the Chinese lunar calendar the year of the rabbit began on February 3rd. Celebrating Chinese New Year will be a new tradition in our family, and we will celebrate this weekend with other families of adopted Chinese children.

I have read another Chinese American novelist in honor of Chinese New Year (and fiction February), I am sorry to say it took me so long to read her work, as many people have recommended this author to me. Lisa See has written an amazing book about Chinese women from the Hunan province who developed a secret language to communicate with each other. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan swept me into another world for four days. I could hardly sleep last night thinking of these two women laotong, or old sames. Sworn sisters, who lived their lives in particular cultural ways that are completely unknown to me. They had bound feet, were married off to strange families, endured war and famine and sought out that which many women seek, true and unyielding friendships to last throughout their lives. These sworn friendships were love relationships which often meant more to them than husbands or children.

The narrator and main character Lily and her laotong Snow Flower communicated using a now almost dead written language called nu shu, the woman's language. It lasted for hundreds of years and men knew nothing of it. It was almost killed during the cultural revolution and has recently been resurrected in the manner of folk dances or art.

Ms. See did an amazing job of creating the world of 19th century China. Even though I thought I knew a lot about ancient Chinese customs and traditions, I was amazed at how much I learned about this other place and time. The writing is rich and detailed and the story is riviting. I felt I understood well why a mother would choose the painful exercise of binding a daughter's feet. (Maybe a 19c. equivalent of being a Tiger Mother?) Lisa See's novel helped me make sense of a very foreign set of cultural practices. If you pick up this paperback version don't miss her post script about doing the research for the book and her own family life as part Chinese and part American. As always, I am in awe of the creative process that can produce such magnificent tales. Are there other Lisa See recommendations out there?

I have put this in the mail to my friend Catherine who should enjoy this tale of women and friendship and 19th century China.

Girl in Translation: by Jean Kwok (Hey It's Fiction February again!)

2011-02-01T10:02:00.000-08:00

Welcome readers to my second annual tribute to fiction offered for the month of February. As last year, if you comment about a recent favorite novel or work of fiction on this blog, I will enter you into a drawing to win a free book!!! That's right, from my very own library.

This book was recommended to me by a fellow reader who knows I am very interested in Chinese American literature. I put it on my library list and renewed it a few times but am pleased to have read it.

Kimberly Chang and her mother arrive in the US from China owing a huge debt to their benefactors (Aunt Paula and Uncle Bob) who keep them in an unheated rodent infested apartment in Brooklyn and force mother to work in their sweatshop to pay them back. Kimberly goes to school but must rush to the factory after school to help her mother finish the shipment of clothing. It is a grim life which is slowly redeemed for Kimberly by her prowess in school. In spite of her many hardships and the inevitable language barriers, she begins to distinguish herself in school, specifically math and science and is able to earn a scholarship to a prestigious prep school.

The novel follows Kim and her mother through school until she graduates when Kimberly faces a very grim and unhappy choice which we don't really get to see her make except in an epilogue of sorts which takes place 12 years after the end of school.

A reader will immediately be drawn into this book. Kimberly's voice is plain and true and very compelling. The author has a great way of helping the reader try to understand how hard it is for Kimberly to understand what is happening to her by translating some of the English dialogue into the chopped up strange speech that Kimberly might hear.

The descriptions of her hard life in the sweatshop, struggles in school and in the horrible apartment are well done. I am glad to have read this for that reason alone. If you read this and then understand from the book flap that Jean Kwok was also an immigrant from Hong Kong and worked in the sweatshops and went to Harvard then you will also want to visit her website and read her own story which is equally compelling.

My one gripe with the story was the ending I which felt very trite and unfitting. If you read this let me know what you think.

When Katie Wakes by Connie May Fowler

2011-01-25T18:17:00.000-08:00

This book (a memoir) was a Christmas gift from my in-laws who saw Connie May Fowler speak and stopped to get a signed copy for me. The lovely autograph and well wishes make the book all the more special. I began reading it right away and was immediately drawn in. Fowler is a superb writer and has a knack for creating suspense. I especially loved how she used present tense and second person to create this voice that put me right in the middle of every scene.

Since the book is a memoir and by the pictures on the cover we know that the writer is fine and happy, we guess that this memoir, as terrible and grim as it gets must have a happy ending. The suspense becomes how will she finally develop some self esteem and extricate herself from this horrible abusive relationship? How will she transform herself into the writer that she is today? I loved reading her story and understanding how it happened. She painted the picture so vividly and perfectly that I can hear the surf on the beach in Florida and smell the exhaust from the Audi as it drives away. I cry over her inability to leave and get help and rejoice when she finally does. Painful but uplifting. Certainly hard to read, but such a great voice and beautiful story that it was worth it.

Ms Fowler's book Before Women had Wings was chosen as an Oprah selection a few years ago and from the acknowledgements in Fowler's memoir it seems Oprah may have had some influence over her writing this memoir. Oprah has a knack for spotting talent.

I am going to find Before Women had Wings which I am pretty sure I own but never read before. Watch for a review.

Confessions of a Prairie Bitch by Alison Arngrim

2011-01-20T20:19:00.000-08:00

This unusual read about the life of Alison Arngrim who played Nellie Oleson on the TV series Little House on the Prairie, came to me by way of good friend and fellow reader Steph. Neither of us is particularly the celebrity tell-all type of reader, but I think that her recommendation based on her love of the Little House on the Prairie books and TV series spurred me on to read as well. I waited on the library list for a few months before it came to me.

I wasn't prepared to finish it or even like it, but I found myself really drawn into Alison's story and her life as a child actress before, during and after Little House. I loved the observations about her fellow actors. She is very candid and these were people I felt like I knew well. She writes about the kind of work ethic Michael Landon pushed on the show, her friendship with Melissa Gilbert and observations about all the various characters and actors she came to know over her 7 years on the show. She also talks about what playing Nellie Oleson did for her personally and professionally. She enjoyed playing the bitch and will be forever grateful to Nellie for teaching her how be a strong, resourceful and assertive woman.

Warning: The main story in this book is not the behind the scenes look at the Little House production and actors and sets. The main story is about the horrors of childhood sexual abuse and how she eventually confronted her own tragic past and began to fight for the rights of other children. Her story is painful to read but also important and triumphant.

Alison's a decent writer and also has another life as an activist and comedian. If you watched Little House as a kid (as Steph and I did) and don't mind being caught reading a celeb tell-all, I highly recommend this story.

My Family, A Symphony: A memoir of global adoption by Aaron Eske

2011-01-15T02:51:00.000-08:00

Here's one more entry in my never ending fascination with adoption memoir. I spied this one on the table at my local bookstore just before Christmas and lo and behold, Santa brought it for me. Thanks Santa!

Mr. Eske writes this memoir at age 25. Although his story is compelling, it felt like it could have gelled a few more years. I never thought I would say this but 25 is far too young to write a memoir. The book tries to do too much in a relatively short space. My family, A Symphony is part adoption history (interesting), part global economic theory that leads to a the phenomenon of orphans in developing countries, Eske's own story of being the biological child of parents who went on to adopt 4 orphans from India and Korea, and a travel memoir as he sets about traveling the globe to visit his siblings' origins. Got all that?

Although it is an interesting entry in the adoption memoir canon, and does have some really lovely moments, it felt largely thin and in need of so much extra story. I really wanted to read so much more about his family as it was forming. What were his siblings thinking and feeling as they came of age in that household? His older siblings must have registered some immediate response to being moved from a life of poverty to a life of family and the riches of America, I would like to know more about those moments? I felt that his own story, while interesting, was missing many angles and details. It was like being invited to a sumptuous buffet and being offered only some cheese and crackers. Good cheese and crackers, but I knew there was so much more out there.

As someone who has been part of an international adoption myself, I was particularly interested in the works of Holt International and how they began the modern international adoption movement. His stories of Grandma Holt and her eight Korean adoptions has lead me wanting to read her biography. Also, his own travel memoir felt slightly abbreviated as well. Again, I felt like it was just skimming the surface of what could be a fascinating travel story.

I will look forward to reading Aaron's next book and perhaps each of his siblings' books as well.

When Wanderers Cease to Roam: A Traveler's Journal of Staying Put by Vivian Swift

2011-01-10T04:49:00.000-08:00

So here's this little gem of a memoir that I stumbled upon at a sale at my local bookstore. It turns the concept of the traditional chronological memoir on its head by offering a kind of kaleidoscope of memories from the writer's past traveling life and her present staying put life.

She observes the seasons of her life month my month and each month she offers a wide array of watercolor paintings of her world plus observations about her town and her present life but then she writes what she calls micro-memoirs about her years of travel: birthday memories, husbands and fiances, adventures in exotic locations, danger while traveling.

Each month is loosely thematic like March is tea month and November is good-bye month. The whole book read like a poem. It was peppered with quotes and ticket stubs and cats and odd people she met. I loved the drawing of the dozens of odd lost mittens that she had found in her town.

It conveyed warmth and sentimentality and a life really well lived. It is possible to write an interesting memoir if you have a regular life and don't star in a movie or have some terrible disease.

This book reads quickly and it becomes a kind of almanac: a book I could leave on my bed table and refer to again and again. For this reason it is not a great book to check out of the library. It is charming and worthy of an afternoon and a cup of tea especially if you are looking for ideas and inspiration and another way of telling a true story.

Bill Bryson Love!

2011-01-05T03:02:00.000-08:00

I had heard great things about Bill Bryson but he seemed like one of those writers that looked good but was always second or third on my list. I heard him interviewed on NPR a few months ago about his latest book At Home: A Short History of Private Life, and I decided it was time to tune in to Bill.

Bill Bryson is probably most well known for his travel memoirs like In a Sunburned Country and A Walk in the Woods which I have meant to read but never had the time. Over my winter holiday I made time for this most recent book and enjoyed all of it. He contends that we write history books over monumental wars, elections and discoveries but really everything settles to what happens in the home. He answers the questions behind the big question: how did our modern homes become the way they are? Why do we sleep on beds? Why do we put salt and pepper on our tables? What are buildings made of and why? What is the history of bathing? He explores critters that live in homes, the history of childhood, gardening, servants and historic preservation. It all comes together beautifully and is really very interesting and oh so readable. I am sorry I put him off for so long.

I have put two more of his books on my list and would be interested to know if you have any favorite Bill Bryson books? Which one should I read next?

Being Grateful for a New Year

2011-01-01T04:01:00.000-08:00

I received the book 365 Thank Yous: The Year a Simple Act of Daily Gratitude Changed My Life by John Kralik just a week or so after Thanksgiving. In this year in which I have been counting my blessings daily, it seemed a very apt and profound memoir. Mr. Kralik writes a very earnest account of his life which was sinking to new lows every day: two marriages gone, rocky relationships with his kids, girlfriend left him, failing business and a pending lawsuit. In the midst of his despair one New Years day he makes a commitment to be grateful for what he has and resolves to write a thank you note (a real hand written note put in and envelope with a stamp and an address) to someone every day. Thus 2008 unfolds for Kralik as a drama of turning your life around by the simple act of of being thankful.

I loved some of the simple observations he made. For example, when Kralik traveled he took the time to learn people's names so he could thank them later. He observed that he couldn't change the behavior of his clients who did not pay their bills but he could thank the ones who did and be grateful. Even though it is an easy lesson, I am still amazed by what a hard time most of us have learning it. It took Kralik the physical act of writing a note every day to help him remember all that is good in his life.

There is nothing earth shattering here, and all the lessons are applicable to all of us. It should inspire people to consider their many blessings even in the bleak midwinter. What do you have to be thankful for and how can you show that during this year? Maybe we could all write about about how gratefulness can turn our lives around.

Happy 2011 to my readers near and far. I'll look forward to hearing about your next 365 days of blessings. Keep in touch.

A Reader's Holiday Gift Guide

2010-12-10T13:19:00.000-08:00

I don't have specific books to recommend this year (other that the ones I have blogged about in 2010) but I wanted to give some thought to gifts that you might give to a reader or that a reader might like to get. Your favorite book is always a thoughtful gift--I think it is even okay to re-gift a book or read a book you are giving first. Here are a few favorite things and websites to give you other ideas.

My favorite reading related charity is called Room to Read. These people take schools and books and libraries to developing countries. Consider a donation to these amazing people in someone else's name.
My writing group is called Women Writing for (a) Change-Bloomington. If you know of someone who would benefit from writing in a conscious community consider getting her a gift certificate to one of these classes. The group runs programs for girls and teens and could always use scholarship money for young women who would like to attend but can't afford it. We also do outreach to women in the local jail so a donation to WWf(a)C would help offset the expenses of this program. WWfaC has programs in Birmingham, Ala., Burlington, VT, Grand Junction, Colo., Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Louisville.
Ever heard of NANOWRIMO? I've been excusing myself for the past few years. Lots of good reasons why, but I still love the program and love how they encourage writing. Consider a gift from their way cool on-line gift store.
How about a poem? For your friend that has everything or if you yourself are looking for many gifts and can afford few try giving the perfect poem. There is one for every person and every occasion. Try the Poetry Foundation's way cool poetry tool and check out this audio site of emerging poets.
Or how about the gift of poetry to students?
I've not read this book but am enjoying the website that launched the book. Is someone you know interested in awesome things? Better yet, make a list of your own awesome things and give the list as a gift.
Consider a gift or purchase from Half the Sky Foundation: an organization dedicated to helping orphans in China.
Organize a group (or go solo) to a Messiah Sing in your community. I just googled those words and trust me when I say there is one about everywhere in the country. The chance to sing (or just listen) to beautiful music is one of the rare non-commercial opportunities of the holiday season. In Bloomington the price of admission is canned food for our food bank. Take someone who could use a lift.
Buy local! Craft fairs, tickets to sports or theatre, gift cards to small local shops and restaurants, memberships to local museums and history centers.

Okay readers, what are your favorite gifts for readers? Writers? Anyone? I would love to hear from you.

Happy Holidays from Esmerelda's Bookthing. I'll be back after the New Year with more reading and writing fun!

It Gets Better

2010-12-05T03:18:00.000-08:00

You've probably seen at least one video from the series, It Gets Better, that is being promoted by Dan Savage (syndicated advice columnist) to help gay youth realize that life gets better after high school. His videos are a response to the recent well publicized gay teen suicides which largely came as a result of bullying. I have watched many of these with fascination and even shed a few tears.

I began reading a great memoir this week called Where's my Wand? by Eric Poole. He writes a great coming of age story about a young boy beginning to understand his own sexual identity. The writer recounts scenes from his life that are quite funny and full of heartache. The thread that begins to tie them all together and becomes more and more prominent as the stories continue is the role of magic in his life. He conjures images which are solutions to his troubles which may or may not work. He puzzles over what works and what doesn't. His magic becomes his line to God and he begins to question God when the magic ceases to work. The end of this memoir is quite worth the whole book. The magic and the understanding of his life and his parents love for him all come together at the end in a very magical and important scene. It got a lot better for Eric Poole and this book prompted me to think of other similarly themed memoirs I have read.

One of the most riveting tales I ever read was by Paul Monette who won The National Book Award for Becoming a Man. It has been more than 15 years since I read this book, so all I have left are my impressions. I remember that getting a glimpse into one person's grappling with these issues was so interesting that it prompted me to steal the book from the Bed and Breakfast in which I was staying. This book was full of Monette's early sexual adventures and is incredibly painful to read. Monette's anger is palpable. Becoming a Man was the memoir that set the stage for all future coming of age tales. Sadly, Mr. Monette died in 1995 of complications related to AIDS.

Two prominent gay artists have written books about adding children to their families. BD Wong wrote Following Foo the story of how he and his partner hired a surrogate who gave birth to a child who was biologically his and his partners. Wong adopted a series of emails he had written to friends and family following the birth of their child into this beautiful memoir. (A subtle reminder that everything we write counts!)

I first became acquainted with Dan Savage when I read The Kid, his story of his and his partner's adoption of DJ through the open adoption laws of the state of Oregon. In his own It Gets Better video, Dan shows pictures of a growing DJ and tells stories about their family life. The Kid tells the beginning of the story. Again, I read it many years ago, but I remember the book as being cute, sweet, and compelling reading. The two gay fathers have just as much worry and parental angst as any straight parents would have.

Memoir of a Beautiful Boy, by Robert LeLeux charmed me. LeLeux recounts the antics of his mother who is out to become beautiful again in time to snag another man after Le Leux's father leaves the family. I remember it all seemed very antic and very full of Texas wit and a memorable mother and son relationship. LeLeux comes out late in the book and the reader rejoices with him as he finds his true love. This was a funny fast read, and when Robert meets his true love and settles into what his life is supposed to be about, you know it got a lot better.

Last, but not least, one of my favorite memoirs is Travels with Lizbeth. The story of Lars Eighner as he finds himself homeless and doesn't want to part with his beloved dog Lizbeth. I'm not really fond of animal stories so I stared at it on the shelf for years until a friend prompted me to read it. For Lars and Lizbeth, life was bittersweet but they had each other. The writing was lovely and I fell in love with both writer and dog and cheered for them at the end.

Please consider this my personal contribution to the It Gets Better campaign. If you are out there, check out these funny, interesting, haunting and candid books about parenthood, coming of age, homelessness, and coming to understand your own identity. These true stories are proof also that it gets better. Much better. All are available at the public library.

I would love to hear other reader recommendations on this topic.

Motherland by Fern Schumer Chapman

2010-11-30T02:45:00.000-08:00

At it's heart, this book by a Holocaust survivor's daughter, is a love letter from daughter to mother. In 1990 Fern and her mother Edith, make a trip back to Edith's hometown in Germany. The time has come for Edith to visit the past from which she was cut off 50 years before when her Jewish parents sent her to live with relatives in Chicago. The horrors being heaped upon Jewish citizens were growing every day.

The bulk of this memoir is the story of this trip and the memories that Edith relives by setting foot in her village. This book is a powerful testament to memory and how we care for and shape our memories as we age. Edith visits her family home and picks up dirt off the basement floor as she is overcome with thoughts of her past. She visits an odd museum where she swears she sees some of her family's possessions including her school satchel. These scenes filled me with sadness for Edith, long parted from her family.

Daughter Fern spent her life never really knowing her mother Edith. Edith could never share with Fern her sorrows and her regrets. Fern never knew any of her mother's childhood or memories of life in Germany.

So there they were togther, building bonds about the past. Edith and Fern learned about all that had happened to Edith's parents after she was shipped from Germany to the USA. Everything they see and do in Germany feels meaningful and filled with great sorrow. Toward the end of their trip they hear a confession of a man who treated her family poorly. They meet an old family friend who was filled with vitriol and unhappiness of the time during the war. Where Edith had shut off the past totally, Mina had lived in the past constantly. The contrast between the two old friends couldn't have been more stark.

I loved this story. Every situation pulsed with meaning and reader's will have a richer understanding of the role that memories can play in all our lives. It felt like Fern and Edith were solving a real life mystery that involved cemeteries and old photographs and haunting times. Without spoiling too much, as a reader will want to let this interesting trip unfold to them without knowing much in advance, there is a conversation between Fern and her mother on the last night of the trip which changes the way Fern sees her mother after all these years. It involves Edith's description of being placed on the boat to America and saying good-bye to her parents forvever. It broke my heart.

The writing was excellent and the story sweet and sad. I highly recommend it.

Extraordinary Ordinary People by Condoleezza Rice

2010-11-25T17:27:00.000-08:00

Throughout reading Condoleezza Rice's memoir, I kept wondering why Republicans don't have more women like her campaigning and running for office. Rice is bright, articulate and humane, and even though she is a prominent Republican she has always fascinated me. How did she get to be National Security Advisor then Secretary of State and most importantly, how does a black woman get to be a Republican?

Rice's voice throughout this book was simple and clear. I felt like she was sitting across from me having tea and telling me the story of her life. It was all written in very plain language and yet so compelling. What a life she has led!

But this is really only her own story vis a vis the two extraordinary people she really wants to write about: her parents John and Angelena Rice who raised her as part of a middle class black enclave in Birmingham, Alabama during the waning days of Jim Crow. These two people are the glue that ties Rice's life together. They are the people that made her who she is. She ends the book after her father dies just after George HW Bush is elected to office and before he is sworn in. She hints at events to come and notes with sadness that her father never lived to see her as Secretary of State, but he did know she would be Bush's National Security Advisor. (I needed a hankie for the last chapter. Her love for her parents is palpable and important to the story.)

I found the story to be most interesting when she writes of her early days in the south and what was like to bear witness to the changing times during the civil rights era. I also thought her involvement in the end of the USSR was equally as fascinating. She really has seen and done a lot thanks to the values and education she received from her remarkable parents.

I will say that the only part I had trouble reading was the second to the last chapter titled Florida. I'll allow the reader to figure out what that means. Of course she was rejoicing, but I remember crying a little that day.

Condoleeza has seen the world, met many many important people, lived through tumultuous events and had a hand in governing the country in a very troubled time. She is also an accomplished pianist, a figure skater and was Provost at Stanford. Her remarkable life is worthy of reading about, even if you have to skip the chapter on Florida.

Fat Girl by Judith Moore

2010-11-20T07:46:00.000-08:00

"Even sad stories are company. And perhaps that's why one might read such a chronicle, to look into a companionable darkness that isn't yours." --Mark Doty, Firebird.

It took me less that 24 hours to read this tragic coming-of-age tale. Fat Girl is by far one of the most well written contemporary memoirs I have come across in these past few years. The writing is immediate and very very raw; it will tear your heart out as it draws you in.

Judith Moore's ability to weave a rich haunting tale about her girlhood in a loveless home leaves me wanting so much more from this writer. She uses every sense to evoke the feeling and the anguish of the girl at the center of the story. I tasted food and felt repulsion at smells and empathized in every way with this honest account of growing up and being fat. I could not put this down. I simply loved this story she wrote.

This is not a happy story. The writer warns the reader at the start that there will be no happy endings. She gets no repreive, no prince in a white horse comes riding in, she doesn't magically loose a lot of weight. But the truth is, in spite of the tragedy of this young girl's life, you know that the very act of writing this has brought the author to truth and healing. Writing can cure our deepest wounds and somehow nurture us in a way that no one else can.

In fact, Moore concludes with this: I never turned suicidal, and I never jumped up happy. As I recounted those boys in my second grade class or my terror on weigh-in days or the beatings with the belt when my mother hissed, "I'm going to cut the blood out of you," I felt relief. Among reasons people keep sad stories to themselves is that they do not want anyone to feel sorry for them. I don't, I don't want you to feel sorry for me. I do not feel sorry for myself. I am what I am. I am glad I wrote this, and I am grateful--very grateful--that you kept me company while I did.

This book--and anything by Judith Moore--gets five stars. Read this to learn about memoir and really amazing, immediate writing.

Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett

2010-11-14T02:49:00.000-08:00

I've had a great few weeks reading with my son. Usually he picks a fantasy novel where I have to keep track of various characters names Tryvar and Elred and who have magical characteristics or swords that keep them adventuring. This time he chose a novel about kids involved in an art caper and it was a lot of fun.

The novel takes place on the south side of Chicago and follows the adventures of Petra and Calder as they try to figure out who stole a priceless painting by Vermeer and track it down. The book is filled with coincidences and odd circumstances which lead the kids into mysterious mansions and in the basements of old schools. There is code to decipher (Grayson loved that!) and pictures with clues drawn into them. We spent several evenings playing with a set of pentominoes in an effort to understand one of the props with which Calder, the boy in the story, spent a lot of time playing.

Sometimes it was hard to keep track of all the details and coincidences. At first we would leaf back and forth through the chapters and try to remember where we saw a name or what the clue was referring to, after awhile we just kept reading.

There were a few breathtaking observations about art, and what it could mean to our world if we actually started paying attention to art and gave it glory. I loved the characters and setting and would love to see Petra and Calder involved in another great caper together. This is a great gift for a young adult, a mystery lover or an art lover. You also might get a kick out of it if you grew up on the South Side of Chicago.

Attention Please!

2010-11-07T02:48:00.000-08:00

This early review book caught my attention because of the topic: a mother’s year of paying attention to her distracted son. Paying attention and focusing has been on my mind a lot these days because I feel I do everything at once. I am the champion of multi-tasking. Or rather, I do nothing well because I am distracted by everything else. What does it take to focus?

Katherine Ellison wants to specifically spend a year focusing on her son because he is diagnosed with ADD—Attention Deficit Disorder. He is chronically misbehaving in school and fighting with his parents and brother. Ms. Ellison realizes that she shares a lot of these problems with her son and thinks a year of learning to focus can be good for them both.

Each chapter is devoted to a different kind of practice and learning about ADD and the therapies that have arisen to teach people to focus in spite of ADD. In the chapters we see a very interesting story of a mother and her real struggles with husband and children culminating in an emotional but successful Bar Mitzvah for the boy who is subject of this story.

The thread that ties most of the chapters together and the most interesting debate and argument that runs through the book is whether or not to medicate one’s ADD child. It is a rancorous debate and one which I will need to stop pontificating on myself. The author suggests that you can not really know what you will do unless you have a child with these problems.

I did find this memoir to be very interesting especially if you are a parent who is struggling with these issues or thinking about medicating your child. It got a bit dry at times—mostly when discussing various therapies and how they work or don’t work. The real interest for me was in her sweet relationship with her son and her own realizations about how to be a better parent. The chapter when she went to the mediation retreat was funny. I really related to her struggles with silence.

To be sure there are lessons for all of us in here about being a better parent, focusing on your life and what is important to you, loving your children in spite of who they are and a great discourse about the place of big pharma in all our lives.

How about you? What do you pay attention to? Ever been to a meditation retreat?

Book Groupie!

2010-10-21T12:03:00.000-07:00

Finally after all these years, I can finally say I have a book group. Actually, I probably had a book group for a few years, but I never went so it was hard to say they were my book group. Standing invitation, all are welcome, but I never could quite read the book that they had on the table. Today marked the second month in a row I read the chosen book and attended the discussion, and I was hugely excited to be able to talk about a book I read (and enjoyed) with a group of thoughtful interesting readers.

We read and discussed this biography of Paul Farmer, a Christ-like character who has set about to provide health care for the world starting with the most impoverished of nations, Haiti. Pulitzer Prize winning author Tracy Kidder wrote this in 2003 after spending many months traveling with Farmer and interviewing his friends and colleagues.

Paul has almost literally given himself over to the lifetime pursuit of patient care of the world's poorest people and advocating for treatment and prevention of large scale epidemic class diseases like TB and AIDS at the expense of normal family life, comfort, safety, and general ease of living. Paul Farmer sets his own rules and plays by a set of standards that treats the poorest of the poor as though they were entitled to all the medical care that middle class white people are. He does not apologize, take no for an answer, or apparently sleep. He writes individual thank you notes to donors of even $25. He hikes for 7 hours to bring a patient medication. He understands that the cultures and traditions of a country help you treat their sick people.

This story is a remarkable tale about a very unique and inspiring man. I encourage you to read it in your book group.

"As you did it to the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it to me" (Matthew 25:40).

The Phone Book

2010-10-12T12:29:00.000-07:00

"This is a volume of wishes, lies and dreams, each and every

page containing the makings of a story untrammeled

by anything except your willingness to invest in it."

Ammon Shea has written a quirky homage to the book that everyone uses but no one reads. I heard him interviewed on NPR last week and I picked The Phone Book up at the library as it sounded well..quirky and fun.

The first 50 pages or so are dedicated almost exclusively to the history of the telephone and communication systems as we began to enter the 20th century. Questions of how people started to acquire phones have always fascinated me. Why should I get a phone? Who would I call? No one else has one. Of course once people started to subscribe to this new device called the telephone, people began publishing lists of who subscribed. This seemed funny to me. Picking up your phone directory list, lets see, who can I call? Who else has a phone? But this is probably precisely what happened.

After an early history of the book itself, Shea discusses all manner of odd tidbits about the phonebook, and its uses in our lives. He meets phone book collectors and investigates whether or not Strom Thurmond really read the phone book as part of a filibuster on civil rights legislation. He investigates the phenomenon of phone book ripping and has a marvelous anecdote about John Dewey and the phone book. He clearly is fascinated by this odd book. Shea's love of the white pages and endearing words about the place of the phone books in our culture made me a little wistful. Could I too, sit down and read the phone book?

But it does not matter. All sorts of plans are afoot to rid our planet of this scourge called the phone directory. It is really highly unnecessary in this day and age. Will it or won't it dissappear? We shall see Mr. Shea concludes.

"I'm not dead yet!" says our friend the phone book.

red cross book fair

2010-10-04T07:26:00.000-07:00

Fun book I found

This past weekend was the Monroe County Red Cross Book Fair. I used to turn up my nose at used books, but several years ago I discovered that you can really find some fabulous treasures in the vast tables filled with books. The trick is to come with a few hours to spare, don't bring your kids unless they are book nuts too, and just tune out the madness and focus. I found some books by Chinese authors for Catherine, a book that is about to be read by my book club (I returned the library copy so that someone else could read it), several copies of books I have loved and loaned and never gotten back, and several books that I might like to give out as well.

Perfect copy

I am always amazed by how many pristine copies of books ones finds on the tables. Did someone buy the book and never get a chance to read it. Was it a gift that the receiver was never interested in? I love also getting a book that has been inscribed by someone else or has notes in it. It adds to the story and mystery of the book. I am always interested in what there seems to be an abundance of. This year there were a lot of copies of Eat, Pray, Love and Anita Shreve books. I wanted to find some Alexander McCall Smith books as my mother is always raving about them, but I could not find a single one. I also wanted to find some books on writing to help me generate ideas for some writing workshops that I am running this fall. I also found some interesting little gems and fiction that I might get to someday.

Inscribed by the giver. Remember to Laugh!

I tend to stick mostly to fiction, biography, poetry and reference sections. The friend I brought came away with some treasures from the travel and language sections. Another friend I ran into loves the old books that show women in aprons cooking entire meals from scratch and another likes cookbooks and cooking magazines. There are a fair number of children's books, puzzles and games which I stay away from. We have plenty of our own which would make a good donation for next years book fair.

Remember diagramming sentences?

Another interesting thing I noted was that I saw several books that I own and thought to myself, "oh, I can part with that." I made a note to start emptying some of my own bookshelves. I will make an unwritten rule that I must get rid of (donate to next years book fair) at least as many books that I took in this year. Shouldn't be too hard. If you missed this years book fair, you can always head to the Friends of Library book sale which takes place every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. You can find lots of gems there as well. In general I try to stay away. I am pretty overwhelemd with book as it is. Find any treasures? I'd love to hear about them.

Barefoot in Baghdad by Manal M. Omar

2010-09-28T05:57:00.000-07:00

Books like this become must reads for Westerners because all of us need to put a face on Iraqis and Muslims. We need to understand that in so many ways they and especially women are the victims of war.

Manal Omar has worked tirelessly for the rights of women around the world but she clearly has left her heart in Baghdad. She wrote this memoir to document her time spent in Iraq. It is part harrowing adventure in a war torn country, part how-to manual on responding to women's needs in times of destruction, and part Islamic love story.

The writing is at its most compelling when she tells individual stories of women she meets, their often horrifying problems, and the struggles she has to help each one.

The memoir turned into a page turner at the end as she fled Iraq and realized her love for a man with whom she had been working. Seeing how two Muslims would manage to find love and pursue a life together in Islamic culture was also fascinating.

This is an early review book so I have a copy if anyone would like to borrow it.

Breaking Night by Liz Murray

2010-09-20T08:33:00.000-07:00

Breaking Night:

Urban slang for staying up

through the night until the sun rises.

Breaking Night by Liz Murray is rightly being compared to Jeannette Walls gripping account of her rise out of poverty in The Glass Castle. Both memoirs feature a harrowing tale of a childhood in hell, and how each woman manages to pull herself up out of despair and create a life for themselves.

Even though these tales are similar, Breaking Night does feel new and fresh and original as Liz Murray does a great job of telling her own very authentic tale.

Recently, I read a memoir writing book that cautioned the writer never to paint oneself as a victim. It is more important to tell your story with regard to your own truth, but never let it devolve into self-pity. Liz Murray has painted herself as an authentic believable human who has overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles in rising from living on the streets and rejecting all formal schooling, to finishing school and being accepted at Harvard. One of the most touching scenes I have ever read comes after a newspaper story of her is printed, men and women from all over the country come to her and offer to help. A wall she had built for herself between us and them came toppling down. She could not believe the generosity of people who she had never even met.

Equally as touching are the scenes she paints with her mother. Even though her mother was an addict and refused to care for her children in any of the ways that we have come to regard as normal parenting, Liz loves her mother. Liz's mom, in her own screwed up way, loves her right back. I loved that I always understood that. As a reader, I never hated her parents, even though plenty of people probably should.

Just as The Glass Castle kept me turning pages so did Breaking Night. Don't be fooled into thinking this is the same story though. It is very different and very much worth the read. Liz Murray has gone on to become a motivational speaker and owns a company which encourages people to be all they can be. An important message for any of us.

Hoarding and Stuff

2010-09-10T03:52:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking a lot lately about stuff. My stuff, your stuff and all the stuff we have together. I think we can all agree that we humans have created a lot of stuff. There has been a lot of press lately about this guy named Dave and his 100 thing challenge. Dave writes about paring the things of his life down to 100 and even lists them on his website. (I love lists, so it was kind of fun to see what he deemed necessary.) He set up his challenge, so of course he gets to set the rules which included all his books counting as 1 thing (library=300 plus books) and all his underwear counting as 1 thing ( for sanitary reasons).

I am not sure what it was about his challenge or about the many articles generated because of the challenge, but I immediately began to defend my ownership of things. It is not bad to have things...as long as they don't get in the way of life or loving your family or take precedence over the important stuff. But hey, I like my books and the art on my walls and the cool old card catalog I bought at the surplus store. My closet is not as full as some, but I clean it out about once a year and send stuff to charity. I like saving mementoes for posterity: report cards and child's handprints made into turkeys, birthday cards and little scribbles on napkins that remind you of a fun time you had bowling. It all seems to be part of a time capsule and someday someone will piece together the story of you by what you leave behind.

Whenever I hear about someone getting rid of their things and living a simpler life, I feel a little sad inside. Who will speak up for the stuff? Surely you can be simple and still have some teapots and linen napkins and a junk drawer filled with treasures. I have an antique desk that I no longer use and I opened it this afternoon to see what was there. It was a perfect collection of who I was 16 years ago when I used the desk last: a party favor from a wedding, a picture of my dear Aunt, directions for how to write a manuscript for Harlequin romance novels, some stationary and pens, a little doll and a book mark. This desk is a preserved piece of me. I cherish it and I close the desk...happy to know it will always be there.

Anyway, as I am thinking about stuff and this seeming war on my stuff and how I might pare down even a little, I picked up this fascinating book on people who are exactly the opposite of the 100 things man. The book is aptly titled Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things. It turns out, according to this book, there are legions of people who have so much stuff it has become a pathology. It seems I am the last to know that there is an entire A & E series devoted to people who hoard stuff and the vermin who live in their homes because there is so much stuff that it becomes a natural haven for critters. Wow. I had no idea.

The unsettling part is that although I don't think anyone could classify me as a hoarder -- my house is neat there are no pathways through the stuff. I have only one pile and it is on my desk--I do relate to a lot of the characteristics of stuff. I assign meaning to things that couldn't possibly have meaning. I hang onto things for longer than most people would. When I catch my husband throwing things away without my permission, I often retrieve it from the trash and wait to give it my own blessing. Although on the hoarding scale of 1-10, I am barely a 1, it still feels a little awkward, my attatchement to things. I guess I'll need to watch out for hoarding tendancies as I age. I do want my kids to come and visit me.

Anyway, this book is written by a pair of scientists, writing about this odd psychological disorder. It is fascinating for all the reasons you might suspect. I did try to watch an episode of Hoarders last week and it turned my stomach. I couldn't watch.

How about you? Do you tend toward the hoarding behavior or the 100 things lifestyle?

Dreaming in Chinese by Deborah Fallows

2010-09-05T06:36:00.000-07:00

"Chinese may be the most difficult language for a Westerner to learn," Deborah Fallows writes in a clever book of essays about how Chinese culture is reflected through its language. Fallows loves languages and linguistics, and when she and her husband are sent to live in China for three years, she uses her time there to study Mandarin.

The way she deals with this subject is not only fascinating, but it really does allow us great insights into China and her people. She writes about what seems to westerners to be Chinese rudeness but is really thier way of being polite. She spends generous time with the subject of the difficulty of understanding the tones of Chinese language, and how her inability to articulate tones would often lead her into humorous situations. She discusses gendered pronouns and how Chinese have difficulty with that concept. She writes of the multitude of Chinese languages and how they are all tied together by the characters: people who cannot understand each other's language across China can read the same characters. She has another essay on the development and complexity of Chinese characters.

I marvel at the brilliant discoveries one can make about a culture when examining the intricacies of language. I feel like this primer would have served me well just before I went to China this past spring. My husband, who is a language maven, is next in line to read this. Anyone who is interested in language and how it is revelatory would love this collection. Has anyone who studied Arabic written the same book? If you know of one I would like to hear of it.

I close with this quote from the end of the book which is how I felt about my small time in China and my new commitment to embracining Chinese Culture.

"I did inch away from being overwhlemed at such a massive,intense, overwhelming country, toward touching a few people one by one, and getting a little closer to thier lives, however small the increment. This reward gave me at least the illusion that I belonged, if just for a little bit in this extraordinary country at this moment in history".

Well said, Ms. Fallows. I hope you continue your lifelong journey of understanding China.

Baby We Were Meant for Each Other by Scott Simon

2010-08-31T08:26:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to the friends and family who heard the myriad of interviews that Scott Simon did for NPR and alerted me to his new book. Memoir reader and adoptive parent that I am, I had the book ordered before it was even available for purchase. I have read so many stories about adoption from China that I was eager to note how he could put a different spin on the story than had already been done.

Jiangxi Province

Simon simply told his own story as a backdrop to tell other adoption stories and make a case for the importance and naturalness of adoption. He gives a short history of adoption and then interviews and tells stories of friends who were either adopted themselves or adopted children as adults. Although all the stories were compelling, none were as weepy and lovely as his own. Perhaps I am a bit biased since we share a very similar story. His daughters both came from the same province as our lovely girl and we both spent a rainy morning traipsing to the Chinese Bureau for Adoption Affairs in Nanchang, China.

The most interesting part of the book is the discussion of the ultimate contradiction in my life: how do I celebrate the culture of my lovely Chinese daugher, but also recognize that it is her culture, because of thier policies and beliefs, that left her on the doorstep of the Yiyang Social Welfare Institute one morning in May? Simon discusses this part with such passion that I was left breathless. One day, when she is old enough to understand, I will read her from this book. By then, we can only hope, the the world's attitudes towards girls will have changed and the orphanges in China are only a footnote in history books. If you are interested in the issue of gendercide, Scott Simon does not reveal anything new, but he states his truth quite eloquently.

So dear readers, the book was wonderful. I have written to Mr. Simon and asked him questions about how I can know what is true or not in the vast army of things I hear and am told about China and my daughter. Since he is a journalist, I hope he has a good sense of the trustworthiness of sources. I'll let you know if I hear from him.

If you are interested in this topic, the book is a worthwhile Sunday afternoon read.

Why I don't like e-books

2010-08-28T03:56:00.000-07:00

Pretty!

When you accidentally leave your e-book on the plane, you loose a $200 device and your entire library.
All e-books look the same. I do judge books by their cover and the glossy picture on the front of the screen doesn’t do it for me.
You can’t lend or borrow an e-book.
You don’t know what others are reading, which means you can’t start conversations about a book, or find commonalities with other humans over books. All our reading is suddenly done anonymously. One of the pleasures of reading is sharing what you read. I bought my husband a book for his birthday only to find out he had already downloaded it and was reading it.
Books look great lined up on shelves. They have a feel and a smell and a place. E-books are just pixels on screens.
Curling up with a good e-book doesn’t even sound like fun.
When e-books take over we will loose the most important public gathering place: the public library.
When I drop my books, I pick them up. If I drop a book reader, I have a pile of glass.
Academics have a harder time citing passages from e-books since page numbers in e-books are all relative.
What will happen to book fairs and book sales and book stores?
E-books don’t have a smell or a feel or carry nostalgia. When my books are lined up on the shelves I can peruse them and remember where I was and who I was with at each one. When I was 24 I backpacked through Europe and carried one book: a volume of women's travel adventures. It lasted me most of the trip and started up several conversations with fellow female travelers. I still have the book and I think of my adventure often when I see the book on my shelf.
What about children's books like pop-ups and touchy-feely books and board books? I'm not letting my toddler run around with a reading device in her hands.

Everyone talks about the environment. Does an e-book reader recycle?

(I’ll grant you e-books are great for travelers, and for people with eyesight problems who can’t read small print, or people with small spaces who can’t have a huge library. Sometimes I feel like one of those musty old writers who still write on typewriters and can’t see the benefit of a word processor.)

Please comment and tell me about your vision of our book future. Are they destined to end up only in resale shops like LPs? Why do you like or not like the e-book reader?

Some reading from the NY Times

2010-08-18T18:06:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers,

The heat has officially worn me down and I haven't been able to focus too much on the reading life. I am expecting a new book from the ER program, and I have started reading about a dozen books which are laying around my house collecting dust and overdue fines. I have read two very good (and long articles) in the NY Times that I'd like to share. These are by a writer named Daphne Merkin. The first was out last year and was about depression. A friend who suffers sent it to me to help me understand. The other I stumbled across a few weeks ago and found fascinating. I do know people who have been seeing therapists for many years, and I wonder how they can function living so closely under the mirror.

Enjoy!

Esmerelda

The Artistic Crime of the Century

2010-08-07T12:54:00.000-07:00

Man on Wire won an Academy Award in 2007 for best documentary. The subject was Philippe Petit who stretched a cable from World Trade Center building one to World Trade Center building two and did a high wire act--110 stories up in the air. I can't comment on the artistic merits of the movie. I am sure it was fine. But I can never stop thinking about this extraordinary crime (Petit was arrested afterwards!) and feat of daring. I find it difficult to describe with superlatives because it seems impossible. On the morning of August 7, 1974 Petit and his accomplices strung a cable from building to building and Petit danced and hopped and laid down on the cable. For 45 minutes he performed for the crowd below. This was before CNN and videocameras on cell phones and well before 9/11. When I think about what it must have taken to perform so high in the air, I absolutely shiver. I do not believe anyone else could ever do this.

It is against this amazing story that Colum McCann sets his fabulous novel Let the Great World Spin. Philippe Petit is a minor character performing high in the air and 9 other characters tales are woven into this historic high wire walk in strange and beautiful ways. What is even more magical about the story telling is that all the stories finally weave together into a heartbreaking, jaw dropping, yet redemptive tale set on a hot summer August day in 1974.

In addition to some great characters and fabulous stories (McCann can really get into the hearts and minds of many different types of people.) he evokes the 70's and makes it feel more magical than I remember it being. I felt nostalgia for 1974.

One critic I read wrote that this is the only good novel written in tribute to the World Trade Centers and 9/11. When I read that I realized that this was the true beauty of this novel: it never lets you forget these stunning buildings that are no longer dotting the NYC skyline.

After you have read the book, check out the documentary. Let me know how you would describe this man's walk on the wire.

A letter to Mei-Ling Hopgood

2010-08-01T18:53:00.000-07:00

Dear Ms. Hopgood,

I was at a party recently and a guest, who was admiring my recently adopted daughter from China, asked if I hoped to find her birth family someday. I told the guest I did not think that would ever be possible given the situation for girls in the People's Republic of China. "Oh yes," she replied. "I just read this great book about that. It's called Lucky GIrl."

Because of my recent trip and adoption I have a huge interest in memoir and China adoption story, and so I did not hesitate to pick up a copy. I loved it all, and I wept copiously over many parts. Specifically the part where you met your biological family for the first time in Taiwan, the part where you forgave your family for their attitudes rather then dwell on them, and when you imagined the boy baby brother, starving as he lay alone. Last, the birth of your own daughter felt like a miracle.

As the mother of a girl from China, I marvel every day at the seemingly random circumstances that brought us together. I think about the birth mother every day and imagine that somehow she has gotten word that Xiaojian is okay and healthy and happy and will have this amazing life in America. I especially loved the part where you discussed some women's obsession with birth mothers.

You really gave me a wonderful gift. Although I know my daughter will have her own set of feelings and emotions about her country of origin, it gave me great solace to know your story.

People frequently call her a lucky girl. I always respond that I feel like the luck is all mine.

My best to you,

Amy Cornell

Bermuda Shorts by James J Patterson

2010-07-28T12:02:00.000-07:00

When Bermuda Shorts arrived in my box from the ER program, I had to study it a minute. I thought this was a new book by the famous author who is known for thrillers and detective novels. The one who has all those books on the best seller list. Why does he need an early review? I wondered.

I realized after glancing at the back that this was a different James and a different kind of book: a collection of thoughtful, humorous, bittersweet essays about love, growing up, sports, politics and telephones. There was also a short story thrown in at the end as a kind of bonus.

The personal essay is not an easy form to master, but it is also the most compelling reading, and I found myself thinking of people who would like to read certain essays. My father-in-law would love his essay on the Washington Redskins (in fact there was a whole series of sports essays that for some would be quite compelling.) The ministers at my church would have loved an essay titled God, Gordo and Gandhi. Anyone who has been in love would like The Conjecture Chamber. There is something here for everyone.

I hope more than a few people notice this small book. I enjoyed every essay and found them all to be clear and intelligent and worthwhile. He manages to tell stories and be thoughtful. He draws almost always from his rich and interesting life as a sports fan and a musician and son. James J Patterson is a good writer and you will spend an enjoyable afternoon with this collection.

If you saw my last post you know I also love the publishing house that put out this collection. I am more than willing to lend this to anyone local, but would also like to encourage you to buy it or to request it from your local library. Support small presses!

Alan Squire Publishing

2010-07-24T18:13:00.000-07:00

I recently received an ER copy of a collection of personal essays put out by a small publishing company called Alan Squire Publishing. I'll be reviewing this book in a few days, but before I get to that I want to share a bonus story that was included as part of the package.

Included with the book and the obligatory letter from the publisher was a 6 page photocopy of a newspaper story. I blew it off at first. One night as I was drifting off, it caught my eye and I became caught up in the story of the man behind this small press. The newspaper article was from a 2008 edition of The Washington Post Magazine and was by an incredible feature writer by the name of Laura Wexler.

It seems Andrew Gifford the founder of Alan Squire Publishing was heir to the famous Gifford Ice Cream stores which all went out of business when Gifford's father left town with all the money. Andrew was 10 years old at the time and never saw his father again.

Gifford was left with nothing and eventually found his way to a routine day job trouble shooting for the APA. In the meantime, he always had this dream to publish books, and so using his own credit card he began to publish. He has published three books now and has teamed up with the Santa Fe Writers Project to start offering a literature prize.

Thirtysomething Gifford also suffered from a horrible disease called Trigeminal Neuralgia. For 14 years he had a searing pain in his face. Apparently this disease is also nicknamed the suicide disease because the pain is so horrific and apparently very difficult to treat.

So Gifford labors away at his day job, heir to a scandal that rocked the Baltimore ice cream world, and by night labors to produce good books and deals with searing and enduring pain.

The article I read recounted how finally he met a doctor who offered him a risky procedure to end the pain (brain surgery) and after all the years of the most painful existence you could imagine, he woke up after surgery to find his pain was gone. Andrew Gifford went through a period of time after the surgery where he actually missed his pain. He fingered the pills he used to take. He mourned his missing pain like one might mourn a missing lover.

I reread that last page several times. How could you miss your pain? Is it true that we can become so attached to even the most horrifying life set backs that we actually miss them when they are gone? I was amazed at Andrew's story and kept turning that idea over and over in my head. How could someone miss a pain so awful that you feared breeze on your face or the feel of the shower on your skin?

The newspaper story did exactly what it intended to do. My heart is very big for this young sweet man, and I hope that his business does well, and I intend to go out and buy and read all his books. I am telling you to do the same.

Readers, this is the kind of guy we want to succeed. So take a look at these books and ask yourself if you wouldn't like to read one or two of them. I don't mean to say buy these books cause you feel sorry for a guy who has had a rough life and is trying to do something to make himself a little piece of happy. I am saying, the books are pretty good and we should patronize this guy because he is a good guy and he is trying to make for himself a little piece of happy.

At least request it at your public library so they will buy a copy of these good, good words.

Banned in China

2010-07-18T03:59:00.000-07:00

At the end of Pearl of China the author, Anchee Min, writes a short note to the reader about her inspiration for writing this book, a fictionalized account of the life of Pearl Buck in China, as seen through the eyes of her (fictional) life long best friend Willow Yee.

Min writes that she had never read The Good Earth (Buck's most famous work) and in fact during Buck's bid to return to China with Nixon in 1972, Min (along with other school children) was forced to denounce her. While Min was giving a reading of her memoir Red Azalea at a book store, a woman stepped up to her and asked if she had ever read The Good Earth. Min replied no and the woman handed her a copy of the book as a gift. While doing so she told Min that The Good Earth taught her to love China.

Min took the book and read it on the flight home, and when she was done she wept. She never imagined that a Western writer could capture the essence of China, especially the peasant class, so beautifully. And then there was that whole denunciation thing. Min resolved to write this novel at that time.

Min tapped exactly on why I have become fascinated with Pearl Buck. She really understood China and its people and was able to write to tell the world and begin to bridge gaps. We underestimate her importance on East West relations. Remember that Nobel prize.

This novel was filled with moments like the one Min experienced herself: regret and longing and friendship and deep abiding love, especially toward the latter half of the book when we see Willow struggling to keep her faith and her dignity in spite of all the horror heaped upon her by the Chinese government. The narrator foreshadows saying good-bye to Pearl for the last time. She kneels at her grave in the US heartbroken that she did not see her friend for the last 37 years of her life. She meets Nixon who brings her greetings from Buck (true?) in the US and you can feel the whole town tense and then admit that they know and love Pearl. All these moments had me reaching for my box of tissues. I loved this fictional story for that reason.

I was struck by how much Min's style of writing copied Buck's style. They write in short sentences that move the plot forward quickly. There are heros and there are villains and there exists no subtlety in any of the characters. I was surprised to note that in Min's story the missionary work of Pearl's father, Absolom Sydenstrecker, was regarded as heroic. In fact, all the characters who converted to Christianity were heroic. The Christian conversion narrative was so thick and annoying that it could easily be mistaken for a Christian tract. While I find reading about missionaries in China interesting, I think there are always downsides and upsides and Min seems to really push a Christian agenda.

This small part aside, I loved Pearl of China. Because so much of the plot revolved around historical evidence, I am eager to turn now to some history books and biographies to see what of this volume happened and what was an invention of the author.

By the way, as my title indicates, I don't think I can send this one to Catherine. It is not very nice about Chairman Mao and Anchee Min's books all appear on the banned list.

For all you e book readers out there

2010-07-13T10:04:00.000-07:00

We have an on-going debate in our household over portable e-reading devices. I say bad. Husband says, good for the environment. (He has managed to loose two of them on airplanes at this point.)

I stumbled across this fabulous series of youtube films pitting one of those devices against the book in a series of 10 films. Guess what? The book wins every time.

This is my favorite of the 10 films. Go to youtube to enjoy the other nine.

Early Review Angst

2010-07-09T13:26:00.000-07:00

What was I thinking when I put a bid on Little Big World by Jeffrey Hammond? I think I was misled by the genre tag which read "memoir". You know I am nuts about a good memoir. I also have a weird interest in reading about people who collect things and this one was about collecting toys. Boom. This slim little book (116 pages) arrived in the mail, and has been torturing me for weeks. I couldn't read anything else until this one was done. The problem was the book was just was not that interesting. I have never not finished an ER book. It is my duty to read and review all the books I get for free, but I just could not get excited about this man's collection of toys.

It wasn't really a memoir either, it was more a rumination on collecting particular types of toys from e-bay that the author used to play with in the 1950's. To some, I am sure it was infinitely interesting, but to me it was simply 116 pages of heady prose about what a miniature Dale Evans figurine means to the wider world.

The second chapter went into the history of the man who made these toys: Louis Marx who made his fortune on toys in the great depression. This was more interesting that the rest of the pages which dealt primarily with lining up plastic figurines on his desk and contemplating what play means to 50's kids. It reminded me of the sad toys of the Toy Story movie franchise that are getting packed away when Andy goes off to college. Only Toy Story is way more enjoyable.

Also, this quirky tidbit: Louis Marx had a daughter named Barbara Marx Hubbard who rejected her father's cult of capitalism and became a new age speaker/guru. Interestingly enough, I have seen one of her films. I never knew she was heir to a toy empire!

Anyway, the moral of this story is to think really hard before bidding on a book. This blasted 116 pager kept me way down for far too long. I finally finished the review this morning and I feel free.

On-line reading

2010-07-08T04:07:00.000-07:00

My attention span and time to read are getting shorter and shorter during these summer days and nights. Please excuse me as I recommend an interesting series of articles from Slate.com that was published last January. Sarah Wildman has written Paper Love: Inside the Holocaust Archives, a fascinating series on the huge post war archives established by 11 countries at Bad Arolsen in Germany. They were closed to the public for many years and only since 2008 have their myriad contents been open to researchers. If you are an historian this is a treasure trove beyond imagination of source documents. It is, of course, treasure documenting one of the worst crimes against humanity, but Sarah Wildman shares an interesting tale of her excursion to examine them and solve a small family mystery. Pictures too!

After you read them, you will be certain this should be made into a full length book. There are so many questions to be answered and so many stories to tell. I love to read about old mysteries solved through archives and talking to elderly people who remember and reading old diaries. This probably stems from being the daughter of a genealogist and tracking my mother all over towns looking through courthouse records and cemeteries.

In any case, this series is fascinating, and I will be the first in line to read her book, if she writes one.

A classic!

2010-06-30T04:17:00.000-07:00

It seems funny to review a classic. After all, many many people before me clearly thought pretty highly of this book or it would not be a classic. Instead, I will tell you about a favorite character and a scene that made me cry, and tell you why you might want to read the tale of life in pre-revolutionary China called The Good Earth.

Pearl S. Buck, who was raised in China and spoke English and Chinese, tells an epic story of the rise and fall and rise of the family of Wang Lung. It felt a little like The Grapes of Wrath meets Dynasty. When it was published in 1931 it made every best seller list and won every award. Eventually Pearl Buck won the Nobel Prize in literature--the first woman to do so--for her body of work which increased understanding and awareness between East and West. One of the notable things about the book, reports Oprah Winfrey's book club website, is that it was the first English language book to portray childbirth so realistically. No one had read about birthin' babies before The Good Earth.

Buck was unsentimental about the fact that day to day life in China simply saw women as objects to be bought and sold. They were either sold as slaves so that families could have money or they were sent away at young ages to live in their future husband's homes rarely to be seen again. All of it was sad and heartbreaking to me, but part of normal life in China which Buck portrays elegantly and simply.

One of the main characters is O-lan who was sold into slavery when she was 10 so her parents could eat. Wang Lung the farmer wants a wife, but is poor so he makes a deal with the House of Hwang and for a few pieces of silver takes home O-lan as his bride. O-lan turns out to be a rock star. She cooks and cleans and stands by him and works the land and most importantly bears him sons. Not just one son, but three sons. She does not speak much and Wang Lung speaks a lot about her lack of beauty and her BIG FEET, but she is very smart and of course there are those sons.

O-lan saves the day many times. She always knows what to do, and she is faithful and loyal and understands her place. The only thing she ever asks for is a pair of pearls from a cache of treasure that she finds in a rich person's house. The rest of the treasure she gives to her husband so that he can buy more land. She takes those pearls and she wraps them up and keeps them in her bosom. They represent a lot to O-lan. They represent her freedom (she is not a slave any more). They are a thing of beauty and value and the remind her of her value. Those pearls, tucked away in her bosom, give her much hope and as a reader, you really can picture those perfect pearls and how special they are.

As Wang Lung's fortunes increase, he is not very content with his plain wife anymore so he goes in search of a perfect petite woman who he can have as his second wife. The more he woos the second wife the more he grows unhappy with O-lan and even though he feels bad, he can't help himself but to be rude and callous toward the woman who helped him build his empire. The final act of cruelty toward the wise and faithful O-lan was to demand her pearls and give them to his new concubine. O-lan protests because she would like to give them to her daughter on her wedding day, but that just makes Wang Lung mad and he takes them anyway. Those pearls. Traveling from the quiet nest of O-lans breasts to the earlobes of his concubine make quite a picture.

As time goes on, O-lan becomes very ill and dies and after all the years and all the sons and all the duty Wang Lung is forced to recognize what a fabulous wife he had:

But when the Earth was covered over and the graves smoothed, he turned away silently and he sent away the chair and he walked home alone with himself. And out of his heaviness there stood out strangely but one clear thought and it was a pain to him, and it was this, that he wished he had not taken the two pearls from O-lan that day when she was washing his clothes at the pool, and he would never bear to see Lotus put them in her ears again.

Thus thinking heavily, he went on alone and said to himself, "There in that land of mine is buried the first good half of my life and more. It is as though half of me were buried there and now it is a different life in my house."

And suddenly he wept a little, and he dried his eyes with the back of his hand as a child does.

--From The Good Earth by Pearl Buck

I found this passage to be so beautiful and so poignant and exactly why this book has existed for so long. Buck made her main character to be perfectly reflecting of the times, but he was a dynamic character and the reader weeps along with him as he realizes how he failed. Those pearls come out of hiding and they represent so much that was Wang Lung and O-lan's relationship.

The first few chapters of this book also reminded me a lot of the Little House on the Prairie books I read as a girl. (Well maybe a PG version.) Buck goes into a lot of detail about what life is like in the earthen house for a poor farmer and his wife which I found interesting in the same way Little House was interesting. This saga of pre-revolutionary China was very readable and enjoyable.

So this summer at the beach go ahead and skip over the latest from Jody Picoult and pick up this heartbreaking story of a place from long ago and far away.

Also, I am interested in the new book by Anchee Min who writes a work of historical fiction based on the childhood of Pearl Buck. If you have it out from the library, please hurry and finish it so I can read it. I am next on the list.

Ever been to her birthplace in West Virginia? I would be interested in knowing if that is worth visiting as well.

Happy reading!

Waiting by Ha Jin

2010-06-24T18:44:00.000-07:00

Catherine introduced me to Waiting by Ha Jin, and I was embarrassed that I had never heard of this award winning poet and novelist. Chinese-American Xuěfēi Jin, who writes under the name Ha Jin, came to Brandeis University to study English and decided to emigrate here when he watched the Tienanmen Square massacre on TV. He writes all his books about China in English in order to preserve their integrity. Interestingly, his name does not appear on a list of banned authors in China.

When we arrived home from China, Waiting was the first book I put on my library reserve list. I received it the next day and was eager to begin reading the book my new reader friend had found so enjoyable. Unfortunately, it took me awhile to become engaged. I dragged out reading the book so long that I could no longer renew it at the library. I had to return it and check it out again. I am pleased to say I finally finished it and enjoyed it tremendously.

Waiting is a love story set in a fictional city in China in the late 60's and sets about to explore many kinds of love. Lin Kong is a doctor who was arranged to marry Shuyu as a young man. Lin's parents needed someone to care for them and decided Shuyu would do the trick. (In China it is common for sons to care for their elderly parents.) Lin is stationed at an army outpost in the city and his bride remains in the country where he only sees her for a week every summer. In his role as a doctor at the hospital he meets Manna Wu, a nurse, with whom he begins a friendship and falls in love. He wants to marry her but cannot get a divorce from Shuyu. Marriage and divorce is regarded much differently in China than it is here. Manna and Lin are in love, remain celibate, and year after year wait for the divorce so that they can marry and be open about their love. The story spans 20 years time.

The story felt fresh and original. The Chinese view of marriage seems so different than my Western view. This new understanding of love and commitment is what keeps the reader riveted to the story. Also, we wait to know will Lin and Manna wed? and what will become of Shuyu who truly loves Lin even though they have spent scant time together? And who does Lin really love? Or does he love anyone? (A word of warning, there is a graphic rape scene that I had a hard time reading.) Mr Jin has received numerous awards for this book. He seems to have perfectly captured the Chinese worldview and presented it so that we westerners can understand and empathize.

I am looking forward to writing Catherine to let her know I have read the book and hearing what she thinks of it all. By the way, she did receive my copy of The Joy Luck Club so I will look forward to hearing what she thinks of it. I'll post her reactions with her permission. Any recommends out there for love stories?

Point of View

2010-06-09T09:45:00.000-07:00

A friend gave me a hand me down copy of Against Medical Advice by Hal Friedman and James Patterson and told me I would enjoy it because it was readable, and it would remind me of some similar struggles I have had with doctors while trying to understand and treat my son's epilepsy. I avoided the book for weeks because, as many readers know, I often judge books by their covers and this one smacked of the "disease of the month club" genre.

Finally, I needed some light easy to read plane fare, and I decided to swallow my fear of the genre and picked it up. It was compelling because the whole story, save the prologue and epilogue, were written from the point of view of the boy who was experiencing the illness. The reader goes inside Cory Friedman's head to begin to understand what is going on as he struggles to understand his own complex case of Tourette's Syndrome and OCD.

It is a very quick read and Cory makes for an interesting narrator and tour guide through his hellish childhood. I could relate to the feeling of hopelessness that parents feel when all doctors seem to offer is drugs, and I shed a tear or two when he finally seemed to overcome this horror that had beset him for his whole life. Tourette's really stole his childhood.

The only complaint I had was that the POV perhaps got a bit too sympathetic toward Cory, and I really wanted to hear from the mom and dad or the teachers in his school or the doctor who treated him. Toward the end the POV started to work against Cory. He seemed whiny and entitled and even though I knew he had been through a lot, I suddenly stopped feeling sorry for him. Then again, this was supposed to be a disease of the month club book and not necessarily great literature.

Anyway, I am interested if hearing reader's comments on point of view. What works and what doesn't work? Who is your favorite trustworthy narrator? For an excellent novel that is all about POV check out this favorite of mine and let me know if you would like to borrow Against Medical Advice.

For the adoptive mother in your life

2010-06-06T04:33:00.000-07:00

My recent adoption has brought several very good books on the adoption journey for children my way. Since I have been traveling and have had a hard time getting any serious reading done, I thought I would share a few titles.

The first, The White Swan Express, is specifically directed at the crowd headed to the White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou, China to meet and adopt a Chinese daughter. This was an especially beautiful story for me. I loved that they portrayed the experience of a diverse group of families and the special day they had when they met their new daughters.

I Love you Like Crazy Cakes is a single mother's journey to adopt a baby girl from China and is also very appropriate for people on the Chinese adoption path. The pictures are gorgeous and it also an apt way to explain a Chinese adoption to a little girl.

Motherbridge of Love explains to girls or boys (note: the illustrations are all of girls but the text can be for either gender) the importance of both their mothers: their birth mother and their adoptive mother. Although the woman who published the book, did so specifically with Chinese and Western mothers in mind, it is really appropriate for any adoptee and their adoptive mother. The poem was sent anonymously to the not-for-profit organization Motherbridge of Love which exists to promote Chinese culture between the West and China and specifically to educate adopted Chinese girls on the place of their heritage. It seems to me a very good way to explain my child's birth mother to her when she begins asking those questions. It is a lovely lovely book. Be. sure to check out the website too. Its based out of the UK but is helpful for ideas and contacts.

Any other adoption children's books to recommend? I would love to hear about them

The Book You want to Savor

2010-05-23T04:05:00.000-07:00

Do you ever buy a book that you are so looking forward to reading that you put off reading it? It seems like the perfect book with the perfect cover and you are sure that all the answers you need for whatever questions are haunting you will be found in the covers of this book. OR you know the story will be exactly what you need and will leave your heart beating fast, and so you read the book as slowly as you can? All you want to do is savor the book so you put off picking it up and reading it?

And so it is with my latest purchase from Amazon.com.uk an English translation of a Chinese book by radio reporter Xinran called Message from an Unknown Chinese mother.

These days I am interested in China and in books that I might share and send to my friend Catherine in China, and in looking for stories from China I stumbled across this collection of stories and interviews that help to explain why so many girls are abandoned in China from the point of view of a Chinese journalist who is now living and writing in the UK.

Xue Xinran's radio program involved the host telling stories of Chinese people she met and interviewed over the course of her day to day travels. She eventually turned those stories into a book called The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices. Western women who had adopted girls from China began to write her and asking her to tell the stories of Chinese women who had abandoned or given up their daughters. Xinran wrote this volume in response to those requests.

I think what was most surprising about this book was that it was not simply a story of 10 women who Xinran interviewed, it was really a loose journalistic account of Chinese adoption policy and the history of orphanages and the cultural norms that lead families to preferring boys over girls in China.

Parts of it were painful to read. Girls and women in some places in China are treated quite literally like garbage. Other parts were enlightening. Xinran, as a good journalist does, tried to uncover some of the government's secrets about orphanages and explain why adoptions slowed down so drastically in 2006 or why they refused to acknowledge adoptions were happening until 1993.

Xinran interviews orphanage workers and adoption officials and several mothers who she meets who give up their babies. She also tells a few painful stories of her own of things she has witnessed through the years.

Although the translation felt awkward at points, this was a book I definitely savored. The end of the book includes several appendices about Chinese adoption law and family planning law that were quite interesting. She also includes the letters from the adoptive moms asking her to write this book.

I do not think I can send it to Catherine as I have noted that Xinran is on the Chinese government's list of banned authors. It is easy to see why.

So now which books do you read slowly?

PS All Xinran's books are available at the MCPL or the Herman B Wells library at IUB.

Making Toast by Roger Rosenblatt

2010-05-17T10:33:00.000-07:00

This is a short sweet elegiac memoir about Roger Rosenblatt's family. Roger lost his 38 year old daughter Amy to a heart attack owing to a very rare heart condition that no one knew she had. Amy was a doctor and a mother to three small children. Roger and his wife move in with their widowed son-in-law to help raise their grandchildren, and so goes Roger's very sweet and sad story of his new life and his effort to understand his grief and keep himself whole for the sake of his three grandchildren.

Roger Rosenblatt is an accomplished author. He has written for the Washington Post and Time magazine as well as several books of fiction and non-fiction. I did not feel this story was anything surprising or earth shaking. There were no new revelations about grief or death. I think when I got it from the library, it had been so advertised that I was expecting something like writing miracles. I expected to crack open the BIG STORY!

So no miracles, no revelatory writing or insights. Really just simple truth. The only thing the author seems to be able to do for his growing grandchildren is to make their morning toast. And so he does. Life goes painfully on.