100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do by Kim Stafford

A few weeks ago I expressed my love and appreciation for this book on the elegant art of listening.  I was so impressed by the author's love of words and writing that I thought I would check out his new memoir  100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother Disappeared.  It was not readily available at the bookstore, so I asked my public library if they would order it, and it showed up in about two weeks.  (Love the public library!)

This is such a fine and exceptional book that I can't stop thinking about it.  Stafford makes everything seem effortless yet profound. His writing is smooth and creamy and makes me want to eat it at every meal.  He is writing about his beloved brother who committed suicide 20 years earlier.  Mr Stafford remembers his brother in a series of stories from their youth together, their short adulthood together and the aftermath of living with such a tragic end to someone you loved.

Every week I sit in the company of great writers who pour their hearts out in short poems, and memoirs of their lives.  Word upon word, each writer is building a series of stories and vignettes not unlike these.  I loved this work.  All the stories individually and as a collective quilt of stories, were without question true and beautiful: honesty that cut to the bone of life.  My fellow writers and I can and do easily write this beautifully and could piece our pieces together to form a grand story, but something about the way he did it seemed profound and unreachable.  He has left something tugging at my heart. Writing that is worth emulating in its candor and vulnerability.

God Bless my library for buying this for me, but  I will have to buy my own copy.  There are many writing lessons to be learned here.

For my reader that lives in Portland. This man runs the Northwest Writing Institute.  You should check it out and take a class from him.  Better yet, I'll come visit and we can both take a course from him.

Le Road Trip

One of my favorite books  of the past few years was a little talked about memoir/sketchbook about a traveling woman who decided to stay put: When Wanderers Cease to Roam.  Her book and drawings and musings about life off the road were so captivating and so thought provoking that it sent me on several writing journeys of my own.  I give it as a gift quite frequently, and I use it for prompts for the many writing circles I run.

When Vivian Swift published this second book modeled much after the first, I knew without looking that I wanted a copy.  She recounts her roadtrip to France that she takes with her new husband.  What they see, where they go and those little travel adventures you have when visiting a foreign country.

Le Road Trip: A Traveler's Journal of Love and France is much like Wanderers in that it is a beautiful book with quirky observations, lovely sketches of all the author does and sees, a breakdown of the phases of a trip from beginning to the inevitable bad travel days to the parting.  This journal is full of reminiscences of past trips, quotes, and the little details that many over look: a mermaid door, the color of the sunset, a cat at a rooming house,  a particular cheese and wine at a cafe.

Ms Swift is taking a post wedding trip with her new husband, a man who is clearly her kindred spirit, so this book in a way is something of a love story--or perhaps a love tribute.   Because of the eclectic, poetic nature of the book, I am a little unclear as to how long the trip was and some of the day to day itinerary was a tad jumbled.  But it really did not matter.  The whole journal was a tribute to adventurers and travelers every where.  It made me a lot nostalgic for the road and anxious to try my hand at my high school french in Paris.  Everything is better with croissant.

Fun fact: did you know that France is the number one tourist destination by far?

This is another lovely book worth owning. Buy it if you can.

Around the House and in the Garden by Dominque Browning

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.

The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball

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.

the memory palace by Mira Bartok

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.  

The Book You want to Savor

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.