Extraordinary Ordinary People by Condoleezza Rice

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

"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

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!

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!

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

 "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

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.