Stone Fox

I picked up Stone Fox from the library for Charles a week ago.  He skipped over it in favor of Zapato Power and Bunjitsu Bunny, but we finally got to it on Sunday night.  I read about half of the book then (it moves pretty quickly and is not a long chapter book) and Tony read the rest Monday night.

 

I was in my bathroom taking out my contacts when Charles came in to tell me about the end of the book.  I knew what was coming and I started tearing up right away.

 

“Mommy, Searchlight and Willy were doing the race and Grandfather got better and then they stopped ten feet from the finish line and Searchlight’s heart burst!”

 

“Oh, honey, I know…”

 

I enveloped Charles in my arms as he told me the rest of the story and sobbed.  Then I sobbed.  Then we read the last three pages of the book again and sobbed some more.  Then we had a lovely, long talk about loyalty, sacrifice, sacrificial love, respect, and pride in others.

 

The best books are the ones that make us feel something.  I am so glad that Charles was so affected by Searchlight’s sacrifice and death in the story.  Novels teach our children empathy, provide opportunities for difficult conversations, and give me a chance to see the softer side of this tough-as-nails kid.

 

 

This was his fourth chin-up, engaged solely for documentation purposes.  Apparently, he does them on the playground at recess every day.

 

Books, man.  Books.

Reader

It happened quickly.  Charles entered kindergarten knowing all of his letters and some of the sounds they make, and now, barely 5 months in, he can read full books aloud to his brother.

 

 

And thank God, because I’m getting a little tired of reading about Star Wars.

 

Charles’s and Jamie’s reading diet has been heavy on the superheroes, with a smattering of Berenstain Bears, Mercer Mayer, and random other books from our shelves or the library.  However, I’m constantly scouring Pinterest (the Devil’s website) and library websites for recommendation for chapter books to read aloud to my boys.  Jamie, believe it or not, will sit still and listen to chapter books, even when he doesn’t totally understand the plot.

 

Charles is a bit too young for The Boxcar Children, but here are some other great chapter books we have enjoyed:

 

Beverly Cleary books, nearly all of them.  We’ve worked our way through the Ramona Quimby books, the Henry Huggins books, and some of the Motorcycle Mouse books.  Charles loved them, especially Henry & Ribsy because Henry catches a Chinook Salmon, just like Charles did last summer.

 

My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett.  Seriously, this book is fantastic.  It’s short enough to be read all at once or over a couple of evenings, and it presents some good examples of cleverness.

 

Nate the Great series by Marjorie Sharmat.  These detective stories and easy to understand, and I love the idea of teaching Charles to be observant.  Charles really loves the pancakes.

 

Mr. Popper’s Penguins by Richard Atwater.  We’re reading this right now, and the kids BEGGED me to read another chapter before school this morning.

 

Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White.  Prepare to cry when Charlotte dies.  My kids, my boy children, just don’t understand.

 

Roald Dahl books, all of them.  We’ve read James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  There are some tough parts where we’ve had conversations about poverty and what happens when one’s parents die, but overall, we loved the whimsy in these books.

 

It makes my heart so happy that my children are readers.  They love books so much.  Aside from all the obvious benefits of reading and loving books (cognitive function, vocabulary, learning about different places and times), I once read that novel readers are more empathetic because they learn to see things from others’ points of view.  So yeah, I’m teaching my kids empathy without even trying.  Parenting win, right?

 

What are some of your favorite early chapter books?

Book Reviews

One thing I have a lot of time for these days is reading.  I read when I nurse and I read when I hold my sleeping Freddie.

 

*Aside: Right now, Freddie is sleeping in his crib.  Probably a fluke, but I’ll take it!  I brushed my teeth, put on makeup, did the dishes, and started a load of laundry… and it’s amazing how good those accomplishments make me feel.

 

So, in the past few weeks, I’ve done a lot of reading.  I read a lot when I was in the last week of pregnancy, too (when I wasn’t sleeping), because the couch was, by far, the most comfortable spot for me to repose.  I abandoned a couple of books partway through (why spend my time on something that doesn’t amuse me or isn’t interesting?), including both Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit and The Missing of the Somme, and I’m still slogging my way through Guns, Germs, and Steel (required reading for the freshman class – I think – when I was a senior at Whitman, so I figured it had some merit, though so far it is soporific), but for the most part, I’ve read some pretty great books lately.  Here is a brief synopsis:

 

The Painter by Peter Heller: I really enjoyed Heller’s debut novel, The Dog Stars, but The Painter really didn’t do it for me.  It was convoluted and weird and I didn’t identify with the characters much.  But The Dog Stars was great, so if you haven’t read that, do.

 

Blackout by Connie Willis: The first in a two-parter, this was a fun novel about time travel to the London Blitz during WWII.  Okay, that’s not a compelling review, but if you’re looking for something fun and interestingly-written and not too challenging, I highly recommend it.  Plus, there’s some neat history.  I have since read several of Willis’s other books and have enjoyed them all.  A good starting point is The Doomsday Book, which was a little long, but To Say Nothing of the Dog is also engrossing, and has a caper-like quality.

 

A Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russell: Russell’s books are beautifully-written, full of heartbreaking detail and captivating plot.  Since I was reading the Willis books about WWII, this fit right in – it’s set in WWII Italy, a theater of the war I didn’t know much about before reading this.

 

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson: I thoroughly enjoy Larsen’s take on history, and this book was no exception.  Richly detailed and using personal accounts, it follows the rise of Hitler in Berlin from the viewpoint of the American ambassador and his daughter.  Isn’t it great that people kept diaries so that we can experience history in this way?

 

Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo: I’d never read it as a kid, and it was funny and poignant and I look forward to reading it to/with my kids in a few years.

 

Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell: This book made me want to see Lawrence of Arabia, a movie I’d always passed over.  It also provided an interesting character sketch of Winston Churchill based on his bodyguard’s writings.  Oh, and, it’s a typical Russell novel, in that the characters are well-developed and the plot, while not as insistent as her other books, is good.

 

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler: Chandler essentially created the noir detective novel in the 1930s, full of metaphors and similes and slang that call to mind Humphrey Bogart and Dick Tracy.  I’m going to buy this book for my brother.

 

The March by E.L. Doctorow: A novel of Sherman’s March to the Sea told through the accounts of infantry, freed slaves, nurses, and Sherman himself, this book was exceptional.  The detail of the March is all there, but so, too, are the details of the interpersonal (often funny) daily lives swept up in the March.

 

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris: I don’t have any idea why I had never picked up a David Sedaris book before.  I laughed all through this book and have added more of his books to my e-library shelf.

 

Like so many blog posts to come, I started this one this morning and am ending it close to 2 PM.  The baby is in my arms and he just vomited down my cleavage (which is substantial – the one benefit of the post-partum period for us small-breasted women), I’ve been to work today, the grocery store, and managed to eat some chips with tuna salad and salsa and several Oreos with a glass of almond milk (calcium!).  Shall we call it an accomplished day?  Yes, we shall.

Book Report

I’ve read several good books lately, all different, and all ones I would recommend reading.

 

The first in this latest list is one about which I actually called my mother before I was done reading it and told her to check it out from the library.  It’s The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson.  It started slowly, but as it built, it became more and more absurd and more and more funny.  There are a few books that make me laugh out loud while I’m reading them and even fewer from which I’ll bother to read passages out loud to Tony; this was one of those rare books.  Things just kept getting crazier and crazier – it reminded me of a Zucker, Abrahams, Zucker movie.  So, I guess if you liked Airplane! or The Naked Gun, for instance, you might like this book.

 

When I last did a book report, I was about to start Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson.  What’s with reading about geriatrics lately?  I honestly don’t know, but I do know that this was a wonderful novel about an old man confronting prejudice in his sleepy English town and learning to live his life again.  It had an element of “Oh! I know someone exactly like that!” about it, which makes things a bit more fun.  Also, there’s a distinct “watching a trainwreck” feeling I got during a couple of parts of the book – a feeling that can sometimes bother me and cause me to feel embarrassment on the part of the characters, but in this case was more of the “I can’t look away!” variety.

 

Are you among the few people left in the world who have not read The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini?  There’s a reason it was a best-seller for so long.  Maybe, if you’re like me, you haven’t picked it up yet because you thought it would be painfully sad.  I don’t mind emotion in the novels I read, but I do tend to bypass books that look like their sole purpose is to make me cry.  This was not one of those books, thankfully, and I’m glad I checked it out.  It is sad, it is poignant, but it’s also comedic and beautifully written and full of hope.  I love stories of hope and I adore stories of redemption, even if things don’t always turn out wonderfully.

 

I read Elizabeth Kostova’s The Swan Thieves and I was not nearly as enamored by it as I was with The Historian.  Both were back-and-forth in time books, but The Swan Thieves was just more boring.  I guess reading about a lonely nineteenth-century impressionist artist and her totally staid love affair with an older man and how it relates but doesn’t relate to a modern artist’s weird obsession and psychotic episode just didn’t grab me in the same way that Vlad the Impaler did in The Historian.  Also, it was really, really loooong.

 

Time again for you to tell me what YOU’RE reading.  Is it good?  I’m adding to my library wish list since I know that I’ll be spending many overnight hours awake, nursing and infant, in no time at all.

Book Updates

I just finished The Splendour Falls by Susanna Kearsley.  I was expecting another timeshift romantic (not necessarily romance but romantic, like the excitement and mystery of love but not a bodice-ripping tale of infatuation) novel, but this one was more mystery.  Most of the Kearsley novels I have read so far include an element of the main character reliving the past in her dreams or in a trance and then trying to solve the past mystery while finally hooking up with her reincarnated past-lover, or actually being transported to the past, solving a mystery, and choosing to remain in the past for love.  Sounds trite and maybe a bit weird, but they are entertaining novels, I promise you.  The Winter Sea was the first I read, and it won some awards, so I can at least say that I’m not the only one who enjoyed it.

 

The Splendour Falls seems to be an older novel that has finally been published – after all, there are still static-y international calls and francs and lire in Europe.  There is a hint of romance, but not much.  The mystery takes center stage, but it’s a bit forced and not well fleshed-out.  Still, it was the type of mystery I prefer these days: no blood and gore, no terrible monsters preying on children or innocents, no devil-worship, no sociopaths.  Okay, well, a little sociopathic behavior.  After all, people are killed and the killer thinks to justify these murders (totally sociopathic), but he’s not eating them after he kills them or anything like that. 

 

So I don’t know: read it, maybe, if you’ve read all the other Kearsleys and want more, but perhaps don’t read it if you are expecting a revelation of a novel.

 

In other disappointments, I’m about halfway through Lev Grossman’s novel The Magicians and I am bored.  The mystical world is clearly a giant ripoff of Narnia and I don’t go in for Young Adult novels in general (Hunger Games being one of the few exceptions).  I might finish it; I might not. 

 

What have you read lately?  Anything good?  I have Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand in my Kindle, ready for me to abandon The Magicians.

Miscellany

1.  I just attempted to summarize the major characters and plot points of seasons 1-3 of Downton Abbey for my coworkers in preparation for a trivia night at a local bar.  Not an easy feat, but then somebody said, “This sort of sounds like Game of Thrones, but early 20th-century England.”  Yes.

 

2.  I never realize how much my kids are growing until I pull out seasonal wear and it doesn’t fit.  Charles started swim lessons last week and his trunks from this summer don’t fit at all.  Where am I going to find a new swimsuit in January? 

 

We do swim lessons for Charles every January through May.  We could do them year-round, but Charles seems to plateau after a few months and then benefit from the time off.  He starts January lessons with renewed enthusiasm and attention, and we see improvement right away.  So if your kids don’t seem to be getting anywhere with a lesson of some sort, consider taking some time off every year.  I don’t know if this would work so well with piano lessons, but maybe.

 

3.  I have been cooking the past few days.  Well, sort of.  I have been utilizing my crock-pot the past few days, which is almost like cooking, but I can do the prep in the morning when I don’t feel like barfing.  My go-to recipes are almost all from A Year of Slow Cooking.  Here is the cream cheese chicken, here the salsa chicken black bean soup, here the taco soup.

 

4.  I just finished the book What Alice Forgot and I liked it.  I didn’t think I would.  In fact, about ten pages into it, I though, oh shit, what am I getting myself into?  Was it going to be all introspective drama and musings on marital relationships and how they evolve over ten years?  Was it going to be gut-wrenchingly sad?  Was there going to be little plot and far too much character development?  I was pleasantly surprised and glad that I kept reading.  There was plot, there was action, and the story was told in such a way that I wanted to know what happened next as well as what happened “back then.”  There were enough twists to keep it interesting, is what I’m saying, and if you think you’d like a story about a woman who bumps her head (hard) and wakes up to find that she’s lost the last ten years of memories, including the birth of three children, the dissolution of her marriage, and significant relationship changes with her sister and mother, as well as a bunch of really batty and weird minor characters to liven things up, well, this book is for you.

 

5.  At the risk of repeating myself: I AM SO SICK.  And I’m sick of being sick.  And all I have to do to recognize that this is EXACTLY how I felt last time is read this really depressing post from when I was pregnant with Jamie.  Oh, look!  It was written EXACTLY three years ago today.  If ever I needed evidence that life doesn’t really change, there it is, I guess.

 

But it does change, because here is a post from when I was 14 weeks pregnant with Jamie (I am 14 weeks pregnant right now), wearing the same shirt I am wearing today (though I can tell you that the jeans in that old photo were NOT maternity and today’s most definitely are), and I am so much bigger now:

 

 

 

6.  Charles visited the neighbors yesterday after work/preschool, so I Jamie and I baked cookies.  I let him do all the mixing so I wouldn’t gag over the open bowl.  He greatly enjoyed licking the spatula when we were done, and I only slightly resented him for being able to savor uncooked cookie dough while I cannot.

 

 

And then, he washed the dishes!  If you do not do this activity with your toddlers, I highly recommend it.  Jamie was occupied for almost 45 minutes, happily splashing in the suds, and the dishes mostly got clean (I had to do a bit more scrubbing and rinsing).

 

 

Tell me he’s not the most adorable child on the planet.  You can’t.  Because he is.

Sickness Reading

My appetite for books has been even more voracious since I got pregnant.  I’m sick, especially in the evening, so I read.  I sit in the recliner or on the couch while the children sword-fight around me and I read.  I read to keep my mind off of how bad I feel and I read because, as much as it is a leisure activity, I still feel like I accomplish something when I finish a book.  Which is kind of dumb, because doing the dishes and playing with my important little men would be accomplishing something.  But there you have it.  Distraction.  I’ll (hopefully) feel better soon and then I’ll spend the evenings in a flurry of dinner-making and children’s book-reading and pretend-playing (Jamie and Charles like to “make” food for me – pretend food – and bring it to me to “gobble” up.  Little do they know that sometimes the mere thought of that pretend hamburger and fries makes me gag).

 

In the past few months, I have read several books I would recommend to you, dear friends.  If you like that sort of thing, go ahead and read the Game of Thrones series.  I read the first two books, and while I wasn’t overly impressed with them, they passed the time.  A friend of mine pointed out that the women were portrayed really terribly, and it’s true.  But there’s intrigue and politics and I might even keep reading for more dragons.  I can see, however, that these might actually (don’t shoot me for saying so) be a better TV show than they are books.  I’ll look into it when I get ambitious enough to requisition the first couple of seasons from Netflix or something. 

 

I also started on the Flavia de Luce series by Alan Bradley, thanks to my mother’s recommendation.  I am enjoying them thoroughly, even if the age of the main character is far-fetched.  They are fun little mysteries narrated by a precocious eleven-year-old in a small town in 1950 England. 

 

For Christmas, I received two books from a good friend, and I have devoured them (yes, in the past week).  The first was a Robert Ludlum book, The Road to Gandolfo.  I had never read Ludlum before, but this certainly inspires me to check out some of his other novels.  Of course, like most of the world, I have seen The Bourne Identity, but I have a feeling the book will be better.  He also sent me an economic history of the Great Depression called The Forgotten Man.  I can’t say enough good stuff about this book.  Do you enjoy history?  This is very well-written and a page-turner, which cannot be said of most non-fiction books, in my opinion.  Maybe I’m just difficult to please.

 

My most recent loan from the library was A Silent Wife by A.S.A Harrison.  I was skeptical at first, despite the good reviews, because a goodly portion of the book is in the present tense.  I usually hate that.  In fact, just a few weeks ago, I put down a book after only a few pages because it was not only written in the present tense, but the second person singular.  Gah!  It hurt my head to read it.  But A Silent Wife was different.  The present tense was juxtaposed with flashbacks, which were written, of course, in the past tense.  It was similar to Gone Girl, in that the story was about the disintegration of a marriage and told from the perspective of both the husband and the wife, but that’s where the similarities end.  It was not a psychological thriller, and I knew whom I wanted to win well before the end of the book. 

 

Speaking of Gillian Flynn, I read Dark Places, and that was enough for me.  I don’t need that kind of horror in my life.  I am looking forward to the Gone Girl movie, however.

 

The other thing I do to distract myself is watch TV after the kids go to bed.  Normally, Tony and I watch a show or two on Netflix a few times a week, or less often even, depending on how much homework he has or how into my book I am.  But right now, I need all the distraction I can get.  It’s no fun to spend an entire evening watching your kids have fun and your husband do all the work while you sit quietly, trying not to vomit.  So after the kids are asleep, but before we go to bed, we watch TV.  But here’s the rub: we finished the last available seasons of the shows we watch.  We need a new show (or two).  Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.  What are your favorite shows on Netflix streaming?  We have watched and finished all available episodes of (over the past eight years, lest you think all this watching happened in the past two months) 30 Rock, Bones, Psych, Scrubs, White Collar, Greek, The Office, and The League.  We started watching Raising Hope last night and Tony was interested in Eureka.  What say you?

Further Christmas Recap

I do like to find out what people gave and received for Christmas – it’s a big part of the holiday, and even though it feels tacky to talk about it afterward, I am giving you permission.  What did you give for Christmas?  Specifically, what did you give to your parents/spouse/kids?  It’s easy to buy for kids, but I like hearing new ideas.  It’s not always easy to buy for spouses or parents.  Also, what did you get that you particularly love?  No need to exhaustively list the entire contents of everyone’s stockings.

 

I’m afraid I don’t have many photos – I couldn’t even begin to tell you where the big camera is, and I’m a bed-head mess in Christmas morning photos anyway – but I can describe.  With words.

 

“Santa” gave both of the boys harmonicas this year.  A total of $12 for two harmonicas, and they love them.  Even though they are different colors, they appear interchangeable in ownership.  They already need washing and we have now established that food and harmonicas don’t mix. 

 

I bought a book for each of the boys:

 

 

Jamie first read Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site at a friend’s house and he loves it.

 

 

Our local library has a copy of Iggy Peck, Architect, but not Rosie Revere, Engineer, so I added it to our collection.  They’re both must-reads.

 

And my dad gave the boys Toot, Toot, Zoom!, which they love to read along with and they especially love when Tony reads the Pierre character with a zany French accent.

 

 

We also bought each of the boys a toy: Jamie got a Play-Doh bulldozer set and Charles got a LEGO set.  We’re working on fine-motor skills with Charles, so LEGO was a good choice.

 

Our generous friends and family also showered the boys with many presents, the most absurd of which were three ball-hoppers:

 

 

But the coolest was a child-sized Adirondack chair painted to look like Mater from Cars.  Charles loves his computer game the most, while Jamie loves everything and everyone, and transfers his affections from art stuff to the big, giant box, to a new nightlight, almost without taking a breath in between.

 

We gave my nieces and nephews books, of course, and a LEGO set for girls (it came with a book and LEGOS that went with the story, similar to this), and some of the fun B. toys that you find at Target.

 

I gave Tony a portable USB backup charger, because his phone is always dying when we’re away from home, and his only charger is in his truck.  We gave my dad some gourmet tea and my mom some gourmet coffee.  They’re probably the most difficult to buy for each year because, well, they have everything.

 

I was spoiled with plenty of chocolate, new books, and some lovely jewelry, among other things.  Tony gave me some gorgeous sapphire drop earrings (which I’m not wearing today, so no photo), and my mother-in-law gave me (and my sister-in-law) a beautiful pendant necklace:

 

So there you have it!  Much fun was had by all.  Now I want to hear from you.

Beautiful Ruins and Where’d You Go, Bernadette?

I finished two books this weekend.  The first, The Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter, I started a week or so ago.  The second, Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Marie Semple, I started on Friday and finished last night.  I had enough of a book hangover that I just went to bed at 10 PM instead of starting another.

 

 

The Beautiful Ruins was good.  It was one of those books that jumps back and forth between past and present tense and each chapter is told from the point of view of a different character.  The premise is that two people, an American actress and a young, Italian hotelier, meet by chance on the coast of Italy in 1962 and sort of fall in love.  The actress is pregnant and running from the set of Cleopatra.  They lose contact for fifty years, but then the Italian flies to Hollywood to try to find her.  It was well-written with good imagery, and I really appreciated that the author wrapped up all of the characters’ stories in the end, including what would happen to them in the future.  There are some interesting, comical moments and some heartbreaker moments and a bit of social commentary on the entertainment industry (movies, TV, music).  Then, the big questions posed by the novel: Can you love the mess you’ve made of your life?  Do people ever change?  Should they?  What kind of beauty can we find in life and in others if we stop being selfish and start being selfless?

 

 

Where’d You Go, Bernadette is a page-turner and written in a really weird format; it’s a story almost entirely told through emails, faxes, and letters between the main characters.  It was a fast-paced story about familial love and what it means to give up your dreams and, in a way, also about the juxtaposition of our selfish and selfless sides.  The premise is that Bernadette is wacky, her house and marriage and falling apart, the neighbors, who are also parents with children who attend the same private school as Bernadette’s daughter, hate her, and then she disappears.  Her family, specifically her 15-year-old daughter, try to find her.  What made it fun to read was that the characters, all of them, are facing crises and they each reach a breakthrough in ways that are extreme and dramatic.  It’s sort of like reading someone else’s email.  No, it’s exactly like that, because that’s how the book is constructed.  But you feel sort of like you’re spying on people and it’s wonderful.  I highly recommend this book.  It also brought me to tears (in a good way), but it made me laugh out loud, too.

 

Next on my list (I’m picking these three up from the library today):

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

The Curiosity by Stephen Kiernan

When She Woke by Hillary Jordan

 

I’ll let you know how they go!

The Paris Wife

I’ve read a few books lately and they’ve mostly been forgettable – some of them squarely in the “summer beach reads” category of worthless time-passing, some of them I’ve abandoned after giving them the requisite 50 pages (my rule is that any book gets 50 pages and if I can’t get into it by then, I’m out) (the most recent of the abandoned books being a Kindle Special/Daily Deal, whatever, called The Boy in the Suitcase, translated from Danish.  I should have known better, as it combines painful subjects like human trafficking and the abduction of a three-year-old with a main character who is largely dislikeable) – but I’ve been wanting to tell you about one I read for Book Club.  I had to wait until after Book Club to do so, though, so I didn’t show my hand before we’d had our discussion.

 

Book Club is also “eating, drinking, and gossiping club,” just so you know.

 

Our selections for this meeting were The Paris Wife by Paula McLain and The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway.  I have long loved Hemingway (my brother claims that all women love Hemingway) and I guess I didn’t really have much of a desire to know about him and his life, but what I learned from The Paris Wife did not make me like him very much. 

 

The Paris Wife reads a bit like a diary of someone who’s life is unimaginably dull… I wondered from the outset how Hadley Richardson, Hemingway’s starter wife, ever attracted and held onto such a lively, young artist.  By the end of the novel, of course, she doesn’t attract him anymore.  She’s portrayed as sad, boring, and introspective from the beginning, and yet she maintained friendships with a variety of interesting people in the European art-set in the twenties and even before her marriage had partied with animated friends.  My conclusion?  She wasn’t boring, but Paula McLain portrays her as such.

 

The other tough part about the book was getting to know Ernest Hemingway in all his faults.  His “artistic temperament” is stereotypical; his needs and whims were the only ones that were important to him, and Hadley meekly went along with each one.  He abused his friends and resents their success, even though he didn’t want to “use” his friendships to get ahead as an author.  He clearly suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, albeit in a time when it was neither diagnosed nor treated.

 

The fun of reading The Paris Wife for me was seeing how characters and places from Hemingway’s real life mirrored characters and places in The Sun Also Rises.  And what a fantastic book that is!  I love the simplified imagery; it’s as if I can see every scene without effort.  The lack of backstories is explained in The Paris Wife as Hemingway develops his writing, and that is interesting to note in Sun as well.  However, no other aspect of The Paris Wife was fun.  It was a dreadful read.

 

Hemingway is not an uplifting writer.  The Sun Also Rises is not an uplifting book.  But it is a book with substance and a distilled beauty that I appreciate even more having read The Paris Wife.  The Paris Wife is not an uplifting book, and is, in my opinion, a badly written one.

 

I would much preferred to have read Paris Without End: The True Story of Hemingway’s First Wife by Gioia Diliberto.  Check out this teaser:

 

“Hadley Richardson and Ernest Hemingway were the golden couple of Paris in the twenties, the center of an expatriate community boasting the likes of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, and James and Nora Joyce. In this haunting account of the young Hemingways, Gioia Diliberto explores their passionate courtship, their family life in Paris with baby Bumby, and their thrilling, adventurous relationship—a literary love story scarred by Hadley’s loss of the only copy of Hemingway’s first novel and ultimately destroyed by a devastating ménage à trois on the French Riviera.” 

 

That sounds much better than The Paris Wife.  Perhaps I will grab it from the library this week…

Classics for Littles

Last night was the first time that I read a whole story to Jamie that wasn’t about trains or farm animals and was, you know, long (except for Go Dog, Go, which has been in reading rotation since he was an infant).  We read lots of board books, two-minute trips through Sandra Boynton’s weird world of animals doing silly things, but until yesterday, Jamie has rejected the Dr. Seuss and the P.D. Eastman.  Too long to hold his attention?  I don’t know.  All I know is, we’re back, with stories that I love and could read a million times (have read a million times). 

 

We go to the library every few weeks to stock up on more books.  I had a collection from my own childhood of Dr. Seuss and P.D. Eastman and The Berenstain Bears.  If you’re looking for great books for your kids and haven’t yet read all of those, head to your local library.  They’re timeless and interesting to kids and adults.  I have also picked up random books from the shelves and found that Charles loves all the Jonathan London Froggy books, the Babar books by Jean de Brunhoff (these are LONG, and isn’t it amazing to see your child’s interest held by a long book?), and most recently, the Frog and Toad books by Arnold Lobel and the Amelia Bedelia books by Peggy Parish.

 

Classic books are classic for a reason – they fun, silly, they involve children, and their plots or morals or jokes are always relevant.  The new Berenstain Bears?  Terrible.  But the really old ones, done in verse, or the ones that are an involved story with lessons for both children and parents, are fantastic.

 

We let Charles read pretty much whatever he wants, and that’s how we ended up owning about 20 Batman, Superman, and Spider-Man books (easy readers bought in six-packs for $9.99 at Costco), but the novelty wears off pretty quickly and he gravitates back to the stories that are less… action, I guess, and more substance. 

 

What are your favorites?  We are headed back to the library soon, and I badly want to get something new (to them).  What amazing books am I forgetting?

 

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In an effort to make things more comment-friendly, I’m going to remove the CAPTCHA requirement for comments… we’ll see how much spam I get.

Treasure Island, Roach Book Reviews

Reading continues apace; I just finished Treasure Island and have been on a Mary Roach bender for a few weeks.  Let’s discuss, shall we?

 

I read Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson primarily because I thought I might like to someday read it to my boys.  And, indeed, I do.  It was an easy read, except for the old English language that cropped up every once in awhile.  If you’re looking to tackle the classics and be able to say you’ve read one of those books that everyone is “supposed” to read, well, this is a great place to start.  It’s adventure!  It’s pirates!  It’s plucky-young-boy-saves-the-day!  And my copy had all of the original artwork by NC Wyeth, which was kind of cool.

 

Lately I’ve been reading two books by comic science writer Mary Roach.  What’s that?  You’ve never heard of a comic science writer?  Well, Ms. Roach appears to have invented the genre, and a damn fine job she did of it, too.  I was introduced to her writing several years ago when my dream was to become a forensic scientist and my friend Liz bought me the book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers.  It’s all about what happens to a body when it is donated to “Medical Science.”  And it’s fascinating.  But the best part is, Roach does not write dry, boring science.  Her books are filled with humorous observations and interesting footnotes; it often seems like she just can’t help herself from commenting on the weird things she sees.  And she purposely writes about weird things.

 

That said, I just finished Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife and I did not enjoy it as much as her other books – likely because the science surrounding the afterlife is extremely unscientific and squishy.  I learned about experiments on weighing the soul, mediums and their de-bunkers, reincarnation research, and ghosts in white noise.  Nonetheless, there were many funny and fascinating parts.  I am now reading Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void and it is, once again, super interesting.  It’s all about what it’s like to be in space, the strange tests and psychological experiments astronauts undergo before they even get to go into space, and how scientists simulate space on earth.  It’s witty and filled with obscure trivia and really, really well-written.  Next I’m going to read Gulp: Adventures in the Alimentary Canal and Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. 

 

So that’s what I’m reading.  How about you?

The Good News Is: Two Months of Cake

There are a LOT of birthdays in our family this time of year.  It starts with Loris in early May (usually the same weekend as Mother’s Day), then Aunt Lynda, me, my mom, Leland and Joe (same day, also usually Father’s Day weekend), and then Jamie.  Plus all the friends’ and friends’ kids’ birthdays (there are several).  I’m on a bit of birthday overload.

 

I usually start looking for gifts on Amazon or Etsy and then buy locally if I can (I often can’t – we don’t have a new bookstore here, for one thing).  If not, Amazon works for me because orders arrive quickly and the destination-based sales tax ensures that Mount Vernon gets some of the money I pay in tax.  Leland’s gift is already here, one for my friend Liz is on the way (ha!  Now you get to wonder for almost a whole month what it is, Liz!), and my mom should get her gift by Monday.  I got her a very special “card game for terrible people” (you know the one) and instructed her to make sure she and her friends have a few drinks before trying it out.  I hope we’ll play over Independence Day, because I can hardly wait to experience the hilarity.

 

I’ve sought out books for Jamie for his birthday, as I do every year for my kids.  He’s really into trucks and tractors and trains right now and I get so stinkin’ tired of reading the same books again and again every damn day. 

 

 

That should about do it.

 

The best part of farting around on Amazon.com, though?  All the weird shit for sale there.  I’m often reminded of when we used to get the Oregonian delivered my senior year in college and I would browse the classified section for the strangest things for sale.  Once, I found an ad for a 2500-lb meteor.  Now why would anyone sell that?  Here are my current favorite things on Amazon:

 

Caffeinated soap.  Yes, please.

 

Octopus surprise mug.  Because why not?

 

Soap dispenser, anyone?

 

I did not get these for Leland for his birthday, but perhaps I should have.

 

This is just ridiculous.

 

Classy!

 

To go with your 2500-lb meteor.

 

The internet is a straaaaange place, y’all.

On My Bookshelf

I know I just wrote about a book a few days ago, but you must understand, I read a lot.  An appalling amount, really.  I go through two or three books a week and my life is still packed with children, cooking, cleaning, working, exercising, and sometimes sleeping.  I read quickly, much quicker than I speak; I only found out that the whole world didn’t read as rapidly I do a few years ago when it became apparent that most of the men in my life (dad, brother, husband) only read as fast as they speak. 

 

This is not a generalization about men.  Merely that the men in my life seem to share this trait.

 

They probably retain a lot more than I do, and I think it’s telling that they are drawn to different genres than I am.  I like stories.  I will read nonfiction if it has a good story (well-written history qualifies), but I mainly stick to fiction.  I switch back and forth between “heavier” fiction and fluff.  My brother reads horror novels and both Tony and my dad prefer nonfiction (of the motivational sort, like Goals or the dry, interest-specific sort like The Great Tax Wars) or “dude” books, like Tom Clancy or Clive Cussler novels.

 

Which is not a generalization about women – I enjoy those books, too – just that I think both of those authors write with male readers in mind.

 

Back to the main point, I just finished a wonderful book, and I wanted to share.

 

 

I don’t entirely know why I’m drawn to stories featuring the theme of redemption so much, but I am.  One of my favorite books of last year was The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt, also largely featuring the theme of redemption.  The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is, well, not a story I thought I would adore, but I did.  The main character is a retired English gentleman living a sealed-up, frigid life who does something spontaneous and life-changing because he just can’t handle the unsaid words between him and his wife anymore.  His journey of redemption is a literal journey, an unprepared walk of 500 miles to right a wrong from 20 years ago.  The author tells the story of Harold’s past in snippets of remembrances and letters, so that this ordinary stranger becomes a beloved friend searching for grace and not believing he will find it.  The writing is simply beautiful.

 

I might tell you about a new book I loved tomorrow or next month; rest assured, I won’t tell you about the hundreds of mediocre ones I read constantly.  Better than a drug habit, right?

The Art Forger

After reading a disappointing book club selection last month, I’ve been a bit gun-shy about choosing books outside of the easy/pop genre.  I’ve stuck to stuff I knew I would like, including a Susanna Kearsley novel, the latest in the Hangman’s Daughter series, a Nora Roberts trilogy… you get the idea.  No heavy hitters there.  One of the fun things about putting things on hold at the library, though, is that you never know when it’s going to pop up.  I put books on hold months ago and then all of the sudden I have an email to download an available e-book or pick up a book at the library and whoosh!  Suddenly, I’m reading literary fiction again.

 

So I just finished The Art Forger by B.A. Shapiro and I liked it.  It wasn’t a revelation of a novel or anything, but I enjoyed it, and by the final third, I was so engrossed that I stayed up late to finish it.  The story follows an artist who has a past indiscretion in the art world and is now persona non grata among curators, galleries, critics, and other artists.  She accepts a job to copy a famous Degas painting knowing full well that the painting had been stolen, and then gets herself caught up in the unraveling of the forgery, has to make some moral judgments, and gets to play detective a bit.  There are some glimpses into the origin of the painting and the subsequent mystery that don’t work as well as they should, namely a series of letters from Isabella Stewart Gardner to her niece (oh, yeah!  This is based on an actual heist, which is fun) that the characters in the novel never get to see, but that are necessary to the plot, and there are some characters that aren’t as well-developed as they should be.  Overall, though, I enjoyed the main character and how normal she seemed.  I also liked her troubles and stumbles, even if they were totally unnecessary to the plot, like her teaching gig at a juvenile detention center.

 

I also liked that everything doesn’t work out at the end with a giant happy ending, it’s-all-perfect-and-the-future-is-rosy sort of wrap-up.  Maybe this means I’ve been reading too much happy-ending pop fiction these days.

 

I just started Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, so I guess I’m back into reading heftier titles these days.  Toss any suggestions you have my way.

Book Report: Gut Wrenchers

During November and December I read a ton, but it was all crap.  Which isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy reading the books that I did, just that they were hardly worth noting.  I’ve probably forgotten most of the plotlines… romance, murder mystery, thrillers, conspiracy… nothing of note, that’s certain.

 

I put off reading the book club selection for this round because I knew it would be an emotionally difficult experience, but I finally got around to it after the New Year.  And then I went and read another gut-wrenching book.  Two sob stories in two weeks – I must be crazy.

 

The thing is, if a book can make me cry, it means it was a good book.  I’m not saying that I want to cry, of course.  In fact, I rather prefer not to.  It’s just that there are so many books with which I feel zero emotional connection, so it’s sometimes refreshing to know that there are still authors out there who can take me for a ride, keep me interested, and get me so emotionally invested that I sob at key points in the story.  Not everyone can write like that; what a gift to have.

 

But I have to wonder what it must be like for those authors.  Do they cry when they write those emotional scenes?  Are they like Kathleen Turner in Romancing the Stone, where she sobs as she writes the last pages of her novel and then pours herself a glass of wine and feasts with her cat?  Or are they a bit more distanced because they knew what was coming?

 

I kind of knew what was coming in one of the books, the book club selection, The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman: heartache.  How could it have been any other way?  I know some of my fellow book-clubbers read this blog, so I’ll spare the analysis, but I will say that the story was compelling and certainly Australia’s involvement in WWI is not something I knew much about beyond the fact that they were there.

 

The other book I just finished is The Dog Stars by Peter Heller.  The prose is different from any other book I have ever read, in a good way, a way that speaks to the trauma of living in post-apocalyptic America following a decimating flu epidemic.  Also heartbreaking, this story was filled with hope and a poignant reflection on the value of a dog, especially when the person you’ve become is something detestable (we all detest parts of ourselves, right?  Buster doesn’t care, he loves me regardless).  There’s also quite the message of hope and the fortitude of the human spirit and our need to seek socialization or maybe create society.

 

I’m glad that I read both of these books, despite the tears.  I might try to avoid the heavy stuff for awhile now, though.

One Too Short, One Too Long: More Book Rants

I just finished a book that had SO MUCH POTENTIAL and here I am, 18 hours later, still stewing about it.

 

It’s no secret that I read, a lot.  I prefer fiction, but I enjoy non-fiction, too, especially in the history genre.  I like literary fiction, historical fiction, mystery, romance… really, anything from the highfalutin classics to honest trash.  And yeah, I judge the books.  I’m a critic, even though I’m pretty sure I couldn’t write a novel worth shit.  But I choose books to fill a certain need in me, and I’d say that because of it, I’m pretty well-read.  I read romance when I’m feeling lovey, or weepy, or (let’s just call it what it is) PMSing.  I read history and other non-fiction when I feel like my brain is turning to mush from dealing with the quotidian tasks of a wife/mother/employer so that I can flex my mental muscle, so to speak.  I read most everything else for escape – because it’s fun to lose myself for an hour each evening in a world of someone else’s creation.

 

And not all books are great; I know that.  I recently recommended Outlander to a friend and she expressed frustration that the main character, while plucky, was also incredibly stupid about some things.  Well, yes, and unfortunately, by the fourth book in the series, I find that she is almost too dumb for words.  Would you take it on faith that the love of your life had died in a famous battle two hundred years previously even if you didn’t see it with your own eyes?  Would you not even think to research his life to see if anything was left over in the 20th Century?  Well, Claire didn’t, and so she missed out on spending 20 years with her husband.  And she is supposed to be sensible.  Shoot!  That’s not just insensible!  That’s against human nature!  Who could honestly resist looking up all the sordid details of their husband’s gory death in the historical record?

 

Like I said, sometimes novels are good, not great.  Outlander is good.  Engrossing, fun, escapism.  I liked it a lot and I read the whole series.

 

But boy does it make me angry when the potential of a book is squandered.  I just finished The Peach Keeper and I am pissed off at the author.  Oh, I’m sure she’s a perfectly nice lady.  But this book!  It had everything going for it: plot, mystery, ghosts, love stories, interesting characters… but nothing, NOTHING, was fleshed out.  This book could have been twice as long and that would have made it better.  I found myself wanting to know the characters more, to understand more of the backstory that was hinted at throughout the novel, to read more about the ghosts and the superstitions and the romances.  Instead, it all just fizzled. 

 

I wonder what it would be like to be a publishing editor?  I would have asked the author to expound upon just about everything in this story.  It could have been good.  Great, even?  We’ll never know.

 

I recently finished IQ84, all three volumes, and that had the opposite problem as The Peach Keeper.  It was SOOOOOO LOOOONG.  I told my sister-in-law that it exemplified Japan as she and her husband had described it: a pace so totally different than that of Western culture that it is unfathomable to those of us not living there.  Everyone, EVERYONE, was described in minute detail in IQ84.  Everyone had a detailed backstory and there was so much in the book that was superfluous to the plot that I would find myself falling asleep over the book every night.  This is not the usual for me – in fact, last year for Lent, I gave up reading past 10:30 pm because my habit is to read “just one more chapter” until it is so late that I have no hope of being well-rested in the morning.  But IQ84, as interesting and florid as the writing was, was pretty boring in spots.  Does this mean that I do not recommend it?  No, not at all.  It was a good book.  Read it, if you like Japanese literature, or are curious what Japanese literature is like.

 

I started a Fannie Flagg novel last night and quit after a few chapters.  Life’s too short to keep reading a book you don’t like.  Now searching for the next good read…

Mud and Books and Girls and Mom

Oh, the cruel nature of a twisted sleep cycle.  For two, maybe three nights last week, Jamie slept through the night.  Still no new teeth.  Now he’s back to being up all the damn time and I’m more exhausted than ever.  I forgot to put shoes on him this morning.  Shoes!

 

My sanity has been mostly saved in this time of sleep turmoil by help from my mother and my friends.  I used to think it was so nice that my parents lived just far enough away that visits had to be planned.  No drop-ins, you know?  Enough time to hide the porn and the crack pipe (or whatever I felt was incriminating that week).  But now that their grandchildren live with me, I sure wish they lived next door.  Tony was away this weekend and my mom is the reason I was able to do this:

 

 

Sunday was the Muds to Suds run in Ferndale, and my Baby Boot Camp team went all out.  We were filthy.  And mom watched the kids for the entire hour I was running and then cleaning off mud.  She also watched them the night before when Charles threw an epic tantrum, complete with vomiting, and Jamie had a blowout diaper.  That woman is amazing, and I’m so, so glad she was there to help.  Doing things like the mud run make me feel almost like I have a life outside of motherhood.

 

Despite the general busyness of our schedules in the Cook household, I made a date to see some girlfriends last night.  It helps me stay, um, no grounded so much, which is what people always say, but something else.  Smart?  More than just a mom?  Grounded is washing out poopy diapers and doing the dishes.  With my girlfriends, I feel elevated.  Once more, it’s a chance to have a life outside of motherhood.  It’s a chance to discuss ideas rather than things and people, a chance to look beyond our insular lives (well, mine’s insular; everyone else’s in the group might be much more expansive).

 

A few months back, a small group of us started a book club.  We have read two books so far, two very different books, both totally engrossing.  I’m excited for our next selection, though it is yet to be determined.

 

What I’m not excited for is the infringement of this new sleep non-pattern on my reading time.  I’m so tired after the kids go to bed that I don’t read more than a chapter or two of whatever book I have at the moment.  Not my preferred method of working through a book.

 

I recently read something amazing, and maybe you’d like to read it, too: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.  It was psychotic, in a good way.  I didn’t know who I was rooting for until the very end.  I was honestly surprised, something that doesn’t often happen.  And the surprise wasn’t contrived, like how you sometimes are sure that one person is the killer but then it turns out that all the novel’s clues were just coincidences and the killer was another character entirely but none of events leading up to the reveal would have ever allowed you to figure that out.  I hate those.  No, this was better than that.  It was awesome, really, and I guess I kind of liked being jerked around by the author in that way, made to like both characters even though they were both totally reprehensible. 

 

So yeah, read that.  If you can stay awake to do so.  I can’t.  I’m reading IQ84 and am totally lost because of lack of continuity; I keep falling asleep, and not because the book is boring.  At least I’m falling asleep reading my own books, though.  Tony keeps falling asleep while he reads books to Charles.  He just gets slower and slower and quieter and quieter until he drops off.  Charles takes it pretty well, coming to find me or just going to sleep himself.   I just laugh.

Reading List

I check out a lot of books from the library.  Part of the reason for this is my frugal nature combined with my voracious reading habit.  The other part is lack of space in our house to keep any more purchased books. 

 

I have several friends who love to buy books.  They love to have them to return to on their Kindle or on their bookshelf any time they want to.  It is a rare thing for me to re-read a book, and those that I do want to re-read, I’ll buy.  But if I bought every book I wanted to read, I’d have been bankrupt a long time ago.  And we would have absolutely no shelf on which to store another book.

 

So this thing sometimes happens with the library: I’ll create a list of books I want to read and then place holds on them- assuming that they’ll come in and be lent to me in a staggered manner- but then they all come in at once.  And then I feel pressured.  Pressured to read all of them, right now, instead of just returning them and putting a new hold on them for later.  Currently, I have 3 e-library books and 3 regular library books all waiting to be consumed… not to mention a book gift that I really want to dive into and the book club selection for this quarter.  It would sure be nice to just take a reading vacation for a week (not a vacation from reading, but rather a getaway during which I do nothing but read), but then I wouldn’t feel like I could savor each of the books.  Sigh… I think I have given myself the solution here: I need to return what I can’t read within the two-week loan period and re-request them for a later date.

 

But anyway, my idiotic problems aside, here is what I’m reading now, and I am loving it:

 

 

I resisted checking it out for the longest time – it has been on my “Amazon Recommends” page for months – because of the baseball thing.  Not that I dislike baseball, I just wasn’t sure I could handle a whole novel, and a long one at that, about baseball.  But here’s the thing: it’s not about baseball.  It’s just set in the environment of a college baseball team.  And loosely, at that, since half of the main characters (the book is told from the point of view of four main characters) are not on the baseball team. 

 

So I thought, maybe you have seen this book and hesitated like I did.  Well, hesitate no longer.  I can assure you that the story is engrossing, the writing is powerful, and even if you don’t like baseball, you will be intrigued by the circumstances baseball provides for these characters.