I Don't Get It

This lady comes into the library pretty regularly, but the only books she ever checks out are by Mary Higgins Clark.  That's it.  Okay, maybe once in a blue moon she picks one by Danielle Steel.  I just don't get it.  But I'm not judging, not judging.  Much.

Only This Moment

When I take my breaks to pump milk for my son at work, I'm reading Momfulness: Mothering with Mindfulness, Compassion and Grace by Denise Roy.  (Any opportunity to read!)  I've just started it and so far I'm not rushing it, unlike my normal breakneck gobbling reading pace.  It's lovely - centering, quiet, wise.  I need a centering voice in my head these days.  I'm all over the place all the time, a million pieces of me scattered here and there.  Parts of me at work, parts of me with my husband, whom I feel like I rarely see, parts of me playing on the floor with my son.  An endless calendar and to-do list in my head, nagging me about my yard full of weeds, my unmopped floor, the cobwebs multiplying on the ceiling, the grocery list, the laundry, the friends I haven't called or seen in weeks.  One of our cars needs major repairs, more than the car is worth, so we're in the hunt for a new one - an exciting prospect but tiring as well.

It never ends.  Life doesn't stop.  Things just keep piling up, and this is how it has always been, but with an eight month old, it feels like a very heavy load.  Sometimes I feel completely overwhelmed.

Enter Momfulness.  Today I read a passage on Presence, reminding me to be in the moment.  It contains a short meditation you can do anywhere at any time, short enough to memorize or post on a small card somewhere in sight.  It's a meditation from Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh:

Breathing in, I calm my body.

Breathing out, I smile.

Dwelling in the present moment

I know that this is a wonderful moment.

I sat there in the storage room, breast pump whirring away, and closed my eyes.  Breathe in.  Breathe out.  This is the only moment.  I am making milk to feed my son.  I am lucky to have a place and time to do this at work.  So many women do not have a supportive pro-breastfeeding workplaces. I am lucky to have a job.  I am lucky to have this good quality pump.  I am lucky to have a son.

Roy says that not every moment is a wonderful moment, but it's the only moment.  You can switch out the words if you need to.  But in this moment of quiet and relative solitude, there is much wonder.

Book Rut!

Sweet potato fries!  I've been reading some bad books lately.  First there was the new P.D. James Death Comes to Pemberley, a mystery set six years after the events of Pride and Prejudice.  Lifeless.  Snore.  Then there was Twain's Feast, our February book group pick.  It has a great premise (examining foods on Mark Twain's favorite American foods list - what do people still eat today and what's extinct?)  In the hands of a more skilled writer it could have been a lot better.  Then came Bruno, Chief of Police.  I'm a bit of a Francophile and thought a mystery set in a small town in the Southwest of France would be magnifique.  Quel dommage, I was wrong.  Setting, good.  Mystery and characters, flat. 

What's wrong with me?  Why do I keep picking losers?  Obviously my selection process needs some tweaking.  I've been going on pure whim, but perhaps a bit more intentionality would offer better choices.  Or maybe I just need to learn to cut bait and run.  Among my many quirky reading habits is the notion that I can't quit a mystery novel before I learn who did it.  And I don't like to abandon a book group pick, although I have done so a couple of times.  (We Need to Talk About Kevin comes to mind, which I shelved on Goodreads under "Yuck!")  But with limited reading time (J's nap time, lunch break at work) I need to get better about cutting my losses.  Maybe I've simply been experiencing a run of bad luck.

My luck may be turning around.  I'm reading, no, devouring, Margot Livesey's The Flight of Gemma Hardy.  This is a book to get lost in, a rich page-turner.  You need not have read one word of Jane Eyre (of which it is a re-imagining) to enjoy it.  Actually, I haven't read Jane Eyre since I was a freshman in high school, and have forgotten all but the basic plot outline, so I couldn't tell you how closely it follows the original anyway.  It's set in Scotland and Iceland in the 1950s and 60s, and Gemma is a heroine I instantly wanted to root for.  The setting is just as deliciously broody and damp as any Anglophile would dream of.  About two-thirds of the way through I don't want to put it down; simultaneously, I don't want it to end. I've really enjoyed all the novels of Livesey's that I've read, and intend to read the rest before too long. 

So how do you go about choosing the books that you read?  Whim, cover-judging, magazine reviews, friend recommendations?  I'm always interested in the whys and hows of people's reading choices.

Book Review: Crampton Hodnet, by Barbara Pym

You might think that with an almost six-month-old at home, I would have no time to read.  Well, you would be wrong!  I enjoy a luxurious 30 minute lunch break at work, which after microwaving my Lean Cuisine and cleaning up my silverware amounts to about 24 minutes, and the nightly 3.5 minutes from when I get into bed to when I fall asleep.  In that 27.5 minutes a day, I indulge in my true passion - books.

When the modern world presses upon me too much - people looking down at their phones, almost running smack into me in the aisles of Target, the incivility and stupidity of reality television and the news - I crave a retreat to a simpler time.  No, not the Amish inspirational romances that are so strangely popular these days.   I crave something British, a bit genteel but with a smidgen of droll wit - something like Jane Austen or Barbara Pym.   Pym's novels of the mid-twentieth century are like Austen's with their drawing rooms, spinsters, and vicars; just add electricity, automobiles, and church jumble sales.  I adored Pym's Excellent Women and have been slowly making my way through the rest of her works.   Alexander McCall Smith, another author who's work I've been recently enjoying, wrote a nice piece on Excellent Women for the Guardian.

Set in Oxford, the titular Crampton Hodnet is a fictitious nearby vicarage devised by Mr. Latimer, a young curate boarding with the formidable elder Miss Doggett and her lady companion Miss Morrow.  (Miss Morrow is basically a lady-in-waiting, a spinster in her mid-30's who tend to blend in with the drapes and make witty asides to herself.)  Mr. Latimer and Miss Morrow get caught walking in the rain one day, heading home from the same direction but not together, and the curate freaks out when an acquaintance sees them and assumes they were together - hence the unnecessary fabrication.  These are the kinds of things upon which Pym builds her stories - and slight though they may seem, they loom large in the insular, gossipy circles of her novels.  Her books do not end as happily as most of Austen's do, however - there is a much more complicated depiction of marriage and the roles of men and women here.  Yet I always find myself laughing out loud at something in her tales; they are so wryly funny.  Here, a passage in which Miss Morrow sees Mr. Latimer off to a trip to Paris and then does something uncharacteristically passionate:

It was a lovely morning, when even the monkey-puzzle (tree)  was bathed in sunshine.  She clasped a branch in her hand and stood feeling its prickliness and looking up into the dark tower of the branches.  It was like being in church.  And yet on a day like this, one realized it was a living thing too and had beauty, as most living things have in some form or another.  Dear monkey-puzzle, thought Miss Morrow, impulsively clasping her arms around the trunk. 
"Now Miss Morrow," came Miss Doggett's voice, loud and firm, "you must find some other time to indulge in your nature worship or whatever it is.  You look quite ridiculous.  I hope nobody saw you."
"Only God can make a tree," said Miss Morrow unexpectedly. 

Miss Doggett goes on to point out that she messed up her dress, and Miss Morrow, seeing that her drab colored clothing was unsullied, thinks, 'That was the best of drab clothes.  One could be a nature-worshipper without fear of soiling one's dress.'

I am so glad that I have yet to work my through all of Pym's novels.  They are truly delightful and I intend to parse them out, savoring the pleasure for some time.  And then, of course, there's always the joy of re-reading!

Already Snarky

I've just been back to work two weeks and I'm already the snarky librarian again. :) In reality, everyone here has been absolutely lovely to me, asking after the baby and my family, indulging my desire to show off pictures. It's quite a transition - just when you sort of get a hold on being a mother in the first place, they yank you back to the workforce for most of the day! Not coincidentally, I bought a Powerball ticket last week for the first time in years.

Anyway, my snarkiness has absolutely nothing to do with my patrons, but with the books I shelve day in and day out. I have a running list of authors who need to stop writing books. Oh, I don't really mean it - these authors are still quite popular, and people coming into the library to check out their books in part justifies my job, right? So of course I am not serious. But in terms of my loathing to shelve their books (more accurately, smooshing and shifting their books into an ever decreasing space on the shelf) I hereby would like these authors to cease and desist.

In no particular order: James Patterson, Nora Roberts, Danielle Steele, Debbie Macomber, Janet Evanovich, Patricia Cornwell, Tom Clancy (the DOORSTOPS this guy comes out with!), and Clive Cussler (although he gets points for writing the book that became the cute movie Sahara with Matthew McConoughey.)

I actually don't read any of these authors, which makes it much easier for me to dismiss them. Next, I move on to genres. In the cross hairs: Amish romances and anything with a vampire or werewolf.

Boy Books

We're having a boy! At least that's what the ultrasound tech told us, and I have to trust her experience, because I wasn't at all sure what I was looking at! :) It's terribly surprising and exciting - it's a whole new world. I know all about girl stuff (I was a very girly girl), but as an only child, I know NOTHING about boy stuff! And it occurred to me this afternoon, as I was shelving juvenile fiction, that I'll have to start reading some BOY BOOKS. A lifetime of reading Nancy Drew, Little Women, Anastasia Krupnick, and Sweet Valley High has ill prepared me for getting a little boy excited about reading! At least there's always Harry Potter. Thankfully, I have some time before Little Man is ready for the J-Shelves. We'll do some board books first, and they're pretty gender neutral.

Puh-lease.

Is this really neccessary?!?

In addition, I would like to abolish all Jane Austen "updates" - the latest one I saw on our shelves is Bespelling Jane Austen. It's four romantic novellas based on Austen's works - with a paranormal twist. The poor woman. Can we just LEAVE HER ALONE? Her works are timeless masterpieces in and of themselves!

Book Review - Espresso Tales

One of the weirdest of my pregnancy experiences thus far has been a phase in the first trimester where I couldn't read. Books held no attraction for me for about three or four weeks. This is highly unusual for me. I had no attention span, and this combined with overwhelming fatigue left me crashing in front of the television every night after work. I didn't even care what I was watching, truthfully. If I did deign to read something, it was a pregnancy book. Blessedly, somewhere along week 9 or 10 I was able to enjoy my usual steady diet of fiction and I felt like myself again.

I am trying to make the most of my pre-baby time in many ways: spending time with friends, going out to eat, reading voraciously. My life is about to change in ways I can't even imagine, and I am sure that reading will be challenging if not impossible once Peanut arrives.

I just finished a positively delightful novel, Espresso Tales, the second of the Scotland Street series by Alexander McCall Smith. He's a Scottish author best known for his No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency mysteries, which I have not read. This is not a mystery, but a story about people and families living on and around Scotland Street in Edinburgh. You have Bruce, the ridiculous narcissist, trying to open a wine shop knowing next to nothing about business or wine, and there's Pat, his roommate, who works in an art gallery and gets an invitation to attend a nudist picnic with a young man she's interested in. There's poor Bertie, a 6-year old genius pushed by his overbearing mother to play saxophone, learn Italian, and take yoga, when really all he wants to do is watch trains and go fishing. There's Cyril, the dog who longs to bite ankles but doesn't want his master to yell at him, and Domenica, the wise older anthropologist in a bit of a rut. These characters yearn, make mistakes, overthink, pontificate, blunder through life, like the rest of us; they feel real and the reader roots for them - even the unsympathetic ones have their charms.

Why do I love reading these novels? They're light without being vapid, funny without trying too hard, subtly moving without manipulating emotions. Entertaining and intelligent, wise and witty. I am excited that there are three more novels in the series.

Reading Rules

What is good about books about writing is that they keep a writer company. For that purpose, they're very useful. -Martha Grimes

I'm reading a Martha Grimes mystery at the moment. It's the 14th in the Detective Richard Jury series, called The Case Has Altered. I've always been a mystery fan, ever since I was 7 or 8 and got my hands on my aunt's old, yellow-spined Nancy Drew books that my grandmother had kept. Must be something I inherited from Aunt Tonia, since she also introduced me a few years later to Agatha Christie's Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. There are a gazillion mysteries out there, and frankly most of them seem pretty silly - the cat ones, the food ones, the scrapbook ones, things of that ilk. I don't want funny mysteries, really, and I don't want supernatural ones either. I want solid, intelligent, well-written, realistic, but not overly graphic mysteries. And if they're set in the UK then that's a huge plus too. I admit, I've become quite the Anglophile over the years. (Must have been all that listening to The Smiths, The Cure, and U2 in high school!)

Sometimes when I'm in the middle of one of these Jury novels I wonder, why in the heck am I still reading them? When there are SO MANY good books out there I've yet to read, why continue marching my way, slowly, through this series, or the other British mystery writer I enjoy, Ruth Rendell's, works? I suppose it's the same reason I continue to watch every episode of "Bones," even when the writing is uneven and frustrating. It's the characters! I've invested so much emotionally in the characters of Grimes's books - charming, sad Detective Jury, his good friend, amateur detective/man of means Melrose Plant, all the quirky characters in the town of Long Piddleton where Plant lives. They're practically old friends, and it's a pleasant respite to visit with them. Jury and Plant are both spectacularly unlucky in love, and there is usually some subplot about one or the other of them trying and failing to sustain relationships. I continue to hope that in the end (if there is an end?) at least one of them will find true love. (Hmmm, sounds sort of like "Bones" again, doesn't it?)

I can't devour a whole series in its entirety like some readers can. I'll read one and not pick up the next one for a couple of months, at least, so I can prolong the experience. (I do that with other authors' works too, not just mystery series.) That's one of my "reading rules." Everybody has them, I think, if they read habitually. My other hard and fast rule is this: Unless the book is a Book Group pick, then I give it 60-70 pages. If it fails to sustain my interest, or the characters are too annoying, then I turn it back in. Life is too short to read crappy books!

I don't know if I'd call this a rule, per se, but it's definitely a tendency of mine. I have a hard time reading books that everyone and their brother raves about. There are certain books that people who don't make a habit of reading somehow hear about and want.* The Twilight books, the Left Behind books, Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, Tuesdays With Morrie, anything by Nicholas Sparks... all of these come to mind in this category. There are also literary fiction offerings that everyone says you "have" to read: for example, The Kite Runner, The Help, Three Cups of Tea, Memoirs of a Geisha. Haven't read any of these. Okay, you're right, I DID read the Da Vinci Code, but only because my then-boyfriend raved about it and I was young and stupid and would have done just about anything he suggested, okay?

When too many people tell me I "should" read something, my internal bull starts snorting and stamping its feet on the ground. Resistance rears its stubborn head. They may be the best damn books in the world and I may be a ninny for refusing to read them, but I just don't care. Refer to Reading Rule Number 1: Life is too short to read crappy books! And crappy, like beauty, is most definitely in the eye of the beholder.

So what are your reading rules? I'm always interested in why people read what they read.

(*And I admit, even though I know better and all I really care about is that people read and use their public library system, that I'm a terrible book snob.)

Mo' Money, Mo' Problems?

I've been reading Ariel Gore's newest book, Bluebird: Women and the new Psychology of Happiness. (Never read her before - she's fantastic! Where have I been?) It's about the positive psychology movement, whether or not it's a bunch of junk and how it can be applied to women's lives. What I like most about the book are the personal journal entries and stories from women who Gore interviewed as subjects. They are thought-provoking and illuminating.


There's a short chapter on money - whether women tend to devalue the role money plays in our lives and happiness. A certain story piqued my interest. A friend of Gore's went to college and noticed that "the kids from upper-class backgrounds seemed to have a wholly different attitude toward money from the kids who grew up poor... what might she learn from her new, entitled friends?"


She discovered that "people who grew up with money welcome money into their lives. People who grew up poor tend to have a lot of negative associations with money - they associate money with money problems."


Whoa. Seems like a simple enough concept. But it hit me right in the gut when I read it.


I have a real chip on my shoulder when it comes to money, and I always have. We didn't have much when I was growing up - I never went to bed hungry or anything, but money was always tight. There were fights about money all the time. After the divorce, my mom and I were on food stamps for a short while. She didn't really know how to handle money and I learned some bad spending habits that took me many years to correct. Despite our constant money struggles, my parents chose to send me to private schools for my entire education. I don't really know how that happened and don't really see the practicality of that choice now, but what's done is done.


I went into a middle school and high school resembling "Beverly Hills 90210," or at least the East Tennessee version. I grew to resent the kids who had money to buy whatever their hearts desired. Kids who crashed their luxury cars, only to have their parents buy them new ones. Kids who went on skiing vacations and didn't have t0 shop for their school uniforms at the annual consignment sale. I had an amazing group of high school friends who never, ever made me feel lass than because of my money situation. But I always knew that I was pretty much the poorest kid in the whole freaking school.


So when I read that section from Bluebird I felt in viscerally. I don't know many people who have worse associations with money than I do. Money makes me nervous, anxious, jealous, disgusted, angry. And since the days of my bad spending habits I've done a 180 degree turn and practically hate to spend money now. I haven't bought a new winter coat in nine years because spending more than $50.00 on one item makes me feel almost ill. Yeah, I've got issues.


In Bluebird, Ariel Gore's friend tried to consciously change her relationship with money by saying all these mantras like, "I am a money magnet. Money flows naturally and easily into my life." She started teaching all of their starving artist friends her theory of "money magnetism." I told Eric about this and he said it sounded like "all that Secret bullshit." I responded, "Well, I buy into that stuff to a certain extent." And I do. It doesn't explain away all of the iniquities and hardship in the world. Sometimes bad stuff just happens. But - there IS some truth to how your view of the world determines your life path. If you play the victim your whole life, things feel out of your control, unlucky things get you down even more, and you can get stuck in a loop of hopelessness and negative emotions. I've seen it happen enough in my own family to believe it.



If I apply this money theory to my life, how does that affect me? I've hated and desired money equally. It's been a temptress, an annoyance, a hassle. But if I look at it objectively, it's also been an ally, a savior, a friend. Me digging myself out of debt has led to a good credit score, which led to a home loan, which led to me and my husband living in our cute little house in the neighborhood we adore. A surprise family inheritance allowed my mother to make some much needed repairs to her home and get herself mostly out of debt. No one in my family, or my husband's, is rich, but we all basically have what we need, which is a blessing.



Maybe I need to start coming up with some money mantras of my own. It couldn't hurt, right? It just might lead to some healing, some letting go of weighty, illogical feelings that could be holding me back. And come next winter, it might also lead to a brand-new coat!

Open

I've been reading a memoir by Dani Shapiro called Devotion. (Here I am again, reading, always reading...) It's a tricky book to describe, but in it she chronicles her feeling of spiritual disconnect and search for meaning. Despite a lovely family and comfortable lifestyle, she is anxious, doubt-ridden, scared. A skilled and eloquent writer, she delves into the depths of a troubled relationship with her mother, baring insecurities fearlessly. I recognize the feelings she describes - the free-floating anxiety, the need to place her faith in something. Where's the time and space for ritual and a spiritual connection in today's rush-rush, technology-driven world? It's exciting to find another soul asking the same questions, praying, sometimes out loud, to a God she's not certain is listening.

I didn't grow up in an Orthodox Jewish household, as Shapiro did. In fact, I grew up nothing at all - no religion. My father emigrated from Iran in 1969, abandoning his Muslim upbringing and embracing the American freedom to practice no faith at all. My mom was baptized in the Baptist church as a child but her family didn't attend church regularly, and from what I can gather, didn't discuss God much at all. Mom and Dad later told me they didn't want to raise me in a certain religious tradition in order to let me choose my own way.

I appreciate that freedom in some ways, but I could have used more conversation about God. I could have used some instruction about the teachings of different religious traditions. I don't remember talking about God much at all as a child, occasionally going to a Methodist church with my mother in brief spurts. I felt like all the other kids in Sunday School knew what the heck was going on, and I was totally clueless. Needless to say, I didn't enjoy it very much.

To create a space for the acknowledgement of the sacred is one of my main goals in life and certainly something I want to introduce to my own future children. Living life without a connection to something bigger than your to-do list is no way to live. It's an endless loop of work, eat, watch TV, sleep, and do it all over again. Room for ritual, for miracles, for gratitude, for love - this is what makes life rich.

I think quiet time is a huge part of connection to God. I know I crave silence. I didn't used to be that way. Silence can be hard - you're faced with the tape in your mind, all your insecurities, fears, worries. But as Shapiro describes in Devotion, sitting in quiet meditation stirred up "something pure and deep." When you acknowledge the small voice inside that longs for God, yearns to know God intimately, you make yourself vulnerable, open. In an almost childlike way, you're asking for help. Blocking out the need for God-space with all of the modern distractions in the world just isn't working for me anymore.

This book came along at just the right time for me. It's hard to talk to other people about God. Some people want to convert you to their brand of God. Some people think you're nuts to believe in God at all. I get weirdly touchy about God-talk - anyone who is too certain of their opinion turns me off. And yet I can't stop wondering, seeking, searching. I don't necessarily expect answers. I just want to be comfortable living with the questions.

Maybe I don't need to be talking to anyone else about God right now. Maybe I just need to sit quietly and let God talk to me.

The answer is Vonnegut

When I complained to a library patron about my poor focus and book choices recently, she said, "Vonnegut. When you can't find anything to read, get some Vonnegut." She was right! I'm reading God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. It's typically wise, darkly funny, compassionate Vonnegut. I am so glad I've only read a few of his works and have many more to look forward to, since he's no longer with us. I'm confident that my attention span will return eventually, but in the meantime it's lovely to spend some time with this author.

This Reading Life

I find television to be very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go in the other room and read a book. ~Groucho Marx


Since 2001 I've kept a book journal, a record of all the books I've read. Sometimes I only note the title and author; other times I'll write a one or two word review, nothing in depth. If it's particularly spectacular I'll draw a little star by the notation. If anyone recommended it to me I'll usually write that as well.

It's fun to thumb through it and see how my reading tastes have changed. I used to be a big fan of a genre some call Chick Lit. I found comfort and hope in tales of twenty-something urban women trying to find love and get ahead in a career. Red Dress Ink novels, in particular, were my favorites.

I can pinpoint the time when the genre began to sour for me - in the summer of 2004 I tried to read a book by Jane Green, a British author I'd enjoyed immensely before. I wrote in my journal, "Can I be tiring of Chick Lit?" Yes, in fact. I was 26 then, about the right age to give it up.

I made notes in the margins when I began dating someone new and, inevitably, when we broke up. All of my ex-boyfriends inspired some reading choices - I still shake my head over the fact that I read James Carville's and Paul Begala's book Buck Up, Suck Up or Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code - both books that my exes swore I had to read. Blecch. One ex did recommend Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Woolf's Orlando, both great reads. (Coincidence that he was my "best" ex-boyfriend?)

Since I began the journal I've read anywhere from 49 to 82 books a year. I wonder what all this reading has done for me. I've had people tell me that they don't read much because they'd rather be out living life. There's definitely a segment of the population who feel that reading is done at the expense of direct life experience. I think there's some truth in that.

I know that I've been a voracious, almost obsessive reader for at least that past few years now. I know that I've indulged in books instead of facing the challenge of a blank page and actually writing. I've know deep down that I was using reading as a crutch, keeping my fears about writing at arm's length.

Since I've started this blog I've had trouble concentrating on reading and making good selections. I take this as a sign I'm heading in a good direction.

I will always be a reader. I'll have to blog sometime soon about my love for books - I feel like this post is giving them a bad rap! Reading is part of my identity, just like wearing glasses or my infamous sweet tooth. But I'm more aware now of my tendency to put off doing things that scare me by losing myself in a novel. I don't think reading is any less legitimate a hobby or passion than any other. One can get lost in playing cards, snowshoeing, or baking just as easily as reading, right? Surely there is room for both books and a live fully lived?