Category: BookLust I

Educating Esme

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Educating EsmeCodell, Esme Raji. Educating Esme:  Diary oi a Teacher’s First Year. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 1999.

Word to the wise: if you want to celebrate education month and you need something really quick to read, grab Educating Esme. Barely 200 pages it’s an entertaining, fast and funny book. This one interested me on so many different levels. For starters, at one time I thought I might be a teacher – even declared Education as my major for a while (until I found out that you never have time to read anything, you just pretend you do). It also interested me because I know two different people who have gone through that “first year” of teaching. They had completely different experiences and I wanted to compare notes.

What went on LibraryThing:
Educating Esme: Diary of a Teacher’s First Year  is smart and funny. It’s a journey inside the mind of a young, fresh-minded educator hell bent on doing things her way. Her lessons and style of teaching are engaging. They allow students to be themselves and in the process learn something.  The students are not bribed or cajoled into lesson plans. Codell disguises education in a safe, fun environment. This is not to say she doesn’t have her share of problems. Chicago has it’s gang culture, it’s broken homes, it’s drug addled families; not to mention a difficult hierarchy within the school system. Codell encounters it all with grace and strength.

Funny quotes: “The way they sassed patrons they didn’t like. The way they seemed to know too much. A little like librarians” (p 62). You would think this quote would somehow offend me on some level…especially considering the fact Esme is describing prostitutes! LOL
“What sort of Jedi would I be if I don’t really face the Dark Side? Mr. Turner may be Vader, but is there an enemy that remains to be revealed , like that bossy old wrinkled guy who told Vader what to do?” (p 112).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter “Teachers and Teaching Tales” (p 230). I love how Pearl calls Codell “relatively” hip (p 231).

Love, Loss, and What I Wore

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Mr. StylishBeckerman, Ilene. Love, Loss, and What I Wore. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 1995.

This is on the list in honor of National Fashion Month. Someone told me it really does exists (this fashion month), so I’ve added a bunch of books to the April List. Go Figure.
Anyway, back to Love, Loss, and What I Wore. What a freakin’ cute book. At first I was a cynic and thought, geeze, if this is writing then anyone can do it! Basically Beckerman’s book is small, 139 page, 50% illustrated, all about what she wore throughout major moments of her life. We’re only talking about 65 pages of text which only took me 25 minutes to read (twice). But, in all actuality I loved it. Here are a few reasons why:
I have a lot in common with Beckerman despite the fact she grew up in New York City in the 1940’s and 50’s. For example:

  • Her sister had a significant other who didn’t like her name and insisted on calling her something completely different (ahem)
  • She sometimes wore clothing backwards because it suited her better that way ( 🙂 )
  • She went to Simmon College (yup)
  • She has a fur coat from Bonwit Teller (don’t hate me)
  • She has shopped at the Short Hills Mall (you have too, RT!)
  • She prefers black (duh)

Quotes that caused me to think:
“After I went to love with my grandparents, I never saw my father again” (p 40).
“In another drawer she kept a long, thick, auburn braid of hair that my mother had saved from when she was young and had cut her hair. It was about fourteen inches in length, and sometimes I wore it as a chignon” (p 86). Does anyone else find this a little funky?

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter “Do Clothes Make the Man (or Woman)?” (p 75).

Elephant of the Sea

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elephant of the seaKirby, David. “Elephant of the Sea,” The Ha-Ha.Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003. 46.

Crack me up. This poem is really funny. It’s one of those comments on culture and keeping up with what’s cool. It’s also about language. Words and meanings. A French man wants to buy an automobile just like his American friend’s. Right down to the manatee on the license plate – the “elephant of the sea.” The friend doesn’t get it. He’s imagining what the clerk at the DMV are going to say and how the whole incident will shape her future.
And this is just one poem. Everything David Kirby writes is great. He is like geek rock of poetry. He’s smart and too funny for words.

Favorite line: “‘I can have zuh elephant of the zuh sea on my matriculation?’ to a clerk who’s got this grin on her face like she’s either seeing God or having an aneurysm” (p 46). 

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lustin the chapter “Poetry Pleasers” (p 188). He’s also mentioned in Book Lust in the chapter “Kitchen-Sink Poetry” (p 138).

Gain

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GainPowers, Richard. Gain.New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998.

LibraryThing review (with a few edits): Gain reminds me of a fictional A Civil Action. Big company being implicated in a cancer case. Except it’s more complicated than that. In trying to describe Gain to my husband, here’s what I said, “There are two stories being told. In the here and now is Laura, real estate agent, mother of two, divorced, just found out she has cancer. Simultaneously, there is the historical story of these soap making brothers who create a chemical conglomerate. The historical story is like a train from the past rushing towards the future, each chapter brings the giant closer to Laura’s story until they collide disastrously. You switch back and forth between Laura (now) and the brothers (from the past)” My husband just cocked his head and replied, “huh.” Okay, so he didn’t get it. In truth, the historical side is more complicated, scientifically written; the voice more impersonal & dry. It should be because it’s recounting the rise of a company from its roots including the advances in science and the strategies of marketing, whereas Laura’s part of the story is more intimate, emotional, warm and telling.

Favorite lines: “They throw silence back and forth at each other until the gyny surgeon comes in” (p 74).
“Avoid meat and fat. Don’t smoke or drink. Limit the time you spend in the sun. Don’t expose yourself to toxic chemicals at home or at work. Do not indulge in multiple sexual partners. And send twenty-five dollars” (p 283). This last one cracked me up because Laura has just gotten a solicitation from a cancer charity looking for money. At first she thinks she’s being targeted as someone who would be more sympathetic because she has cancer. The above is her reaction to the mailing.
But, probably my favorite – favorite part isn’t a line I can quote but a whole section. Laura goes to the library and learns the value of research…from a librarian.

BookLust Twist: Gain is actually in More Book Lust twice. Once for the reason why I’m reading it in April: it’s included in the “Ecofiction” chapter (p 78), and again in “Richard Powers: Too Good To Miss” (p 192).

Three Roads to the Alamo

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Davis, C. William, Three Roads to the Alamo: The Lives and Fortunes of David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis. New York: HarperPerennial, 1999.

When I first picked up Three Roads I thought to myself there is no way I want to carry this thing around with me. It’s nearly 800 pages long, and despite the pages being super thin, it’s a heavy book. However, when I quickly calculated that in order to finish Three Roads by the end of March (the month Texas became a state), I would need to read over 40 pages a day I decided carry it around, I would! 
When I read the reviews for Davis’s book one word always seemed to pop up: exhaustive. Exhaustive research, exhaustive detail, exhaustive portraits, exhaustive this, exhaustive that. It’s true. There is so much detail given to not only the personalities and lives of Crockett, Bowie, and Travis, but to the culture and landscape of both politics and era as well. It’s as if the reader is witness to the pioneering growth of Louisiana, Texas and Virginia by default. History, politics and geography all rolled into one book.
Because not much is known about Crockett, Bowie and Travis each has become a legend beyond compare. Using as much information as he was able to research (exhaustively) Davis does a great job trying to dispel rumor and myth surrounding each man, admitting that these are men of folklorish proportions, but not much of it can be substantiated.
Confession: knowing there was no way I was going to finish this in time I skipped to the last chapter of the book. It is, of course, the end of Crockett, Bowie and Travis. Davis paints a tragic picture of what their last days must have been like in Alamo, Texas. The one image that kept playing in my mind was the uncertainty of their fates. When their families did not hear from them they could only speculate and worry. Word travelled slowly in those days. A telegram dispatched two weeks earlier can give loved ones the impression you are still alive despite the fact you died the next day.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter “Texas: Lone Star State of Mind” (p 233).

HUGE woops. This was supposed to be published last month!

Apologizing to Dogs

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Apologizing To Dogs
Coomer, Joe. Apologizing to Dogs. New York: Scribner, 1999.

LibraryThing Review: The first thing I thought when I started to read this book is odd, odd, odd. For one, the first character you meet is a man named “Bone.” He’s not called Bone because he’s super skinny. Nothing obvious like that. He’s called Bone because he sucks on a chicken bone all the time. How bizarre.
The whole story just gets weirder and weirder. Elderly Effie sits out on her porch and spies on the neighborhood. She keeps a journal of everything her paranoid self sees. Her neighbors come and go around her, all of them quirky, too. I found the development of each character too shallow to muster up any real feelings for them. In fact, there are so many characters and their development so shallow I had trouble keeping them straight. In all, there are over 18 different characters and each get barely a paragraph at one time. If anyone, I liked Carl the best. In an effort to impress a woman he builds a boat…from inside his house – using the insides of his house. And. And, I liked Himself, the dog. Himself is the star of the story, but you wouldn’t know right away.

Here are a couple of funny/good quotes:
“‘You know what’s wrong with you, Mrs. Haygood? You’ve got opticum rectitus, a growth connecting the optic nerve to the rectum, producing a continual sh!tty outlook,’ Mr. Haygood said. He was oiling a gear on a blue tin tank” (p 34). 
“10:57 Strong marijuana odor from That Big Indian’s. I think one of his bathtubs is creeping over my property line” (p 37). Obviously, this is from Effie’s journal. She’s the funniest one in the book. Her paranoia is great.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter “Great Dogs in Fiction” (p 105). Himself is a great dog but he was barely in it.

The Road From Coorain

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Road from Coorain
Conway, Jill Kerr. The Road From Coorain. New York: Vintage Books, 1989.

First and foremost for the record: Jill Kerr Conway was the very first woman president of Smith College. Just had to get that out there since we’re in the area and I thought that was a pretty interesting fact.
According to several different travel websites, April is the start of the best season to visit Australia. Taking that as my cue I decided Road From Coorain would be my very first April book.
My LibraryThing Review:
Jill Conway’s memoir is about her unusual childhood in Australia. Raised until she was 11 on a sheep farm in Coorain, Australia, Conway grows up without other children for companionship. All she knows are her family, (her only playmates being her older brothers), the hard work associated with raising sheep, and the cruelty of mother nature when she doesn’t bring the rains. She doesn’t have social graces, competitive edges or the typical angsts associated with coming-of age girls. Things like sports, fashion and friendships are lost on her when she finally reaches the big city of Sydney. I can certainly relate to all of it coming from an island life that lacked much of the same things.
One of my favorite parts of the book was when Jill goes back to Coorain to help with shearing season. She’s teetering on the edge of adulthood so she sees everything with a different eye and intellect. Comparing her life as it was she notices her mother’s gardens are all dead and gone. The house doesn’t have the luster of cleanliness. It’s decidedly more rundown than she remembered. She allows that the farm is no place for a young person. I see this moment as pivotal in Conway’s life. It helps her reach for loftier goals and makes her examine her own future.
My only disappointment? I wished Conway included pictures. I know, I know. Not all memoirs need mementos like photographs, but she described her personal landscape in such a way that I wanted more. Her house, her sheep, her family. I realize Conway painted adequate pictures of all of it, but it would have been nice to have more.
Favorite quotes:
“Had she known how to tell directions she would have walked her way to human voices” (p 25).
“Being Australian, we exchanged no deep confidences” (p 142).
“I was angry at myself for being so upset by receiving the treatment I ought to have expected anyway” (p 194).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Girls Growing Up” (p 101).

Deep in the Green

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Raver, Anne. Deep in the Green: an Exploration of Country Pleasures. New York: Vintage, 1996. 

For LibraryThing: Anne Raver is a writer and gardener but it’s hard to tell which came first. Her enthuasism for growing things (outside for she doesn’t deal with indoor plants well) shows in every word she writes in every essay. In the beginning I wanted Deep in the Green to be one of those nonfiction journals about a gardener making a life for herself after divorce. Diving into the growing after a relationship dies. Instead, Deep in the Green is best described as a series of essays that barely connect to one another but have a central theme…gardening & growing. As a columnist for the New York Times I guess it’s easy to string a bunch of essays together and call it a book.

Favorite quotes:
“You know how the army is. they send you here , they send you there. Vietnam. Ohio. ‘I learned Thai no trouble, but I never did figure out what language they were speaking in Cleveland'” (p 24).
“Still we are drawn homeward, unable to erase our bloodlines” (p 42).
“I like to learn this way. Like learning to float or ride a bicycle. You can’t imagine doing it before you do it, but you have to imagine it in order to do it. And then you never forget” (p 155).
“I’m not sure what their religion is. Food, maybe” (p 173).

Thanks to this book I learned the latin name for a favorite flower I never bothered to look up (clematis jackmanni) and an interesting fact about poppies being illegal to grow (makes me think about how many times I’ve seen the federal law broken). Probably my favorite part about reading Deep in the Green is that once I got over the disjointed essays I read it with a salivating imagination. Anne Raver writes like I eat – straight from the garden, the bush or tree. I’ve tried to describe that foraging feeling – that satisfaction which comes from eating off Earth’s plate.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter “Gear Up For Gardening” (p 96).

Catcher in the Rye

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IMG_0672Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. New York: Bantam, 1985.

How many times have you read this book? I’ve lost count. Because I ran out of things to read over the weekend (Continental Drift wasn’t in yet) I picked this one back up. We have it at home because, ironically, my husband stole it from his high school. What an appropriate book to walk out with (he never cared for school either). Everyone should have a copy of Catcher in the Rye no matter how they get their hands on it.

I didn’t write a review for LibraryThing. What more could I say that hasn’t already been said by 200 people (and risk getting one of those “not a review” things)?
Holden Caufield is a contradiction in terms. He gets annoyed or hates everyone around him pretty easily, yet he hungers for attention, companionship, and isn’t afraid to admit his shortcomings. He swears frequently yet is offended by a “fukc you” on the wall of his kid sister’s school. I’ve read reviews claiming Holden has “mental issues” or is “a brat.” But, consider the circumstances – he’s a 16 year old kid who just got kicked out of another preppy boarding school. His parents aren’t really involved in his life and his still grieving over the loss of his brother (to leukemia). I wasn’t perfect at 16 and I think if I had been just a little braver, I would have been a little more rebellious, too.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust twice: once in “Boys Coming of Age” (p 45) and again in “100 Good Reads, Decade by Decade: 1950s (p 177).

Funny side story: on the morning I decided to reread Catchermy husband was playing with my ipod, getting my music ready for the race. I stood there, book in hand, listening to itunes’ 30 second sample of “We Didn’t Start the Fire” by Billy Joel (thanks, Manda!) and heard the line about Catcher in the Rye. Spotting the coincidence I showed kisa the book. It freaked him out a little, especially when I told him I had no idea he was going to play the clip, nor that Catcher would be mentioned in that brief 30 seconds.

Great Expectations

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Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Believe it or not, I had never read this before. Not in high school, not in college, not in fun. Go figure. It’s a classic which translated (back in the day) into the assumption of being boring. It was written in 1861 which translated into practically a foreign language (ekerval?). All that translated into me being narrow minded. Great Expectations is wonderful. It opens with Pip (our young main character) encountering an escaped convict in a field. The convict threatens bodily harm if Pip can’t produce some food and, of course, a file. Why was Pip targeted? His brother-in-law is a blacksmith. Of course he is going to have instruments strong enough to tackle something like…leg irons. So, it starts out pretty exciting and not at all unrealizable.

Here are some of my (early) favorite quotes from Pip’s life with his sister and her husband, Joe:
“She concluded by throwing me – I often served as a connubial missle- at Joe, who, glad to get hold of me on any terms, passed me onto the chimney and quietly fenced me up there with his great leg” (p 7).
“My sister having much to do, was going to church vicariously; that is to say, Joe and I were going” (p 20). While Pip’s sister is seen as cruel I cannot help but find humor in both these passages.
After Pip decides to become a gentleman he makes an observation that struck me: “So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise” (p 206). Estrella, his love interest, has another observation akin to Pip’s: “I’ll tell you what real love is…It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter…! (p 227).

The LibraryThing review:
“A classic from Charles Dickens. All of the characters are so well developed that the reader cannot help but drawn into their individual plots. From Pip, the blacksmith apprentice turned gentleman in the making (and the hero of our story) to Miss Havisham, a wealthy woman locked away in self-induced seclusion. “

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust and the chapter “A Dickens of a Tale” (p 72). It’s funny that Pearl laments about Dickens having to be a high school mandatory read that students had to “choke down” because many of the reviews I have read recently about Great Expectations mention having to read it in this manner.

Defiant Hero

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IMG_0573
Brockman, Suzanne. The Defiant Hero. New York, Ivy Books, 2001.

I am not a big fan of romance novels. I’m just not into the language they all seem to require. While the plot of The Defiant Hero is riveting, I am more than a little bored by how good looking the three pivotal couples are. The women are all drop dead gorgeous, “impossibly beautiful” with amazing legs, eyes, breasts, you name it… while the men are chiseled, rugged, handsome, can cry on command, etc, etc. These people are so achingly beautiful and yet…there is something keeping every couple apart. They either hate one another, or are suspicious of each other, or something.
Okay, first the plot (The LibraryThing version): Meg is a translator for a European embassy. Her daughter and grandmother get kidnapped by an “Extremist” group. Meg’s love interest is Navy SEAL Lieutenant John. He’s called in by the FBI to help Meg. She specifically asks for him. Alyssa and Sam are the second couple – Alyssa is FBI and Sam is Navy SEAL – both involved with getting Meg because she has become a kidnapper herself. The third couple is Meg’s grandmother and her past. She reminisces about her first husband while being held captive by the “Extremists.” Got all that? In between the macho FBI/kidnapping violence there is a good amount of romance novel sex – the pantie ripping, throbbing kind.
My favorite quotes:
“Unfortunately, though, penises came attached to men. And therein lay one of her biggest problems” (p 9).
“He was gazing at her as if she were a gourmet delicacy the chef had just presented” (p 218).
“He was supposed to spend the night cuffed to a woman he craved more than oxygen” (p 260).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust and the chapter ” Romance Novels: Our Love is Here to Stay” (p 203). Obviously chosen in honor of Valentine’s Day. Wanna know something else that’s cheesy? I waited until 2/14 to crack it open, too. It was a fast and fun read!

Bridget Jones

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IMG_0570Fielding, Helen. Bridget Jones’ Diary. New York: Penguin, 1996.

When I first learned this chick-lit was on my list I didn’t know whether to groan or grin. But, after pages and pages of stuffy political biographies I knew I’d need a fluffy change. I just didn’t expect it to be so funny! Luckily, my good friend let me borrow it…Here’s the LibraryThing Review:
Bridget Jones is a likable 30-something Londoner. A little on the plump side (so she thinks) and more than a little single (so everyone keeps pointing out), her year long diary takes the reader on a journey through her attempts at weight loss and dating. While her weight gain is more that her ultimate loss and her initial love interest cheats on her, Bridget triumphs with humor and a naivete that is undeniably charming. Obsessive and narcisstist characteristics aside, Bridget could be any woman’s best friend. A delightful (quick) read.

My favorite lines:
“I know what her secret is: she’s discovered power” (p 58).
“Love the friends, better than extended Turkish family in weird headscarves any day” (p 74).
“There’s nothing worse than people telling you you look tired. They might as well have done with it and say you look like five kinds of shit” (p 92).
“By 11:30 Sharon was in full and splendid auto-rant” (p 108).

The only disappointment was a discrepancy with dates. On Wednesday, March 15 Bridget writes “only two weeks to go until birthday” yet, on Tuesday, March 21 she claims it’s her birthday. Two weeks from the 15th is the 29th or at least the 28th. Even if she is counting work weeks it would have been the 25th. Not sure what to think of that. Then there is the time she spends doing something. How is it possible to spend 230 minutes inspecting your face for wrinkles? I’ve done the math. That’s nearly 4 hours – unless London has more minutes to an hour than we do…(ps~ I’m being a snob here. Of course I know Bridget isn’t spending that much time on one activity…)
Another weirdness is that Bridget makes reference to Goldie Hawn and Susan Sarandon a lot. I couldn’t figure out what the reference was all about considering The Banger Sisters didn’t come out until 2002. I’m thinking she meant Thelma and Louise but in that case she didn’t mean Goldie Hawn, but rather Geena Davis. Whatever.

BookLust Twist: From Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust in the chapter called, you guessed it, “Chick-Lit” (p 53).

American Century

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Evans, Harold. The American Century. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998.

Weighing in at over 700 pages, American Century is nothing short of gorgeous. Bold black and white photos stand out on nearly every page, while satiric comics adorn the others. I have always loved the Brown Brothers photo of the construction workers on the Woolworth Building and was pleasantly surprised to see its inclusion on page xvii. 

I liked learning that President Cleveland bought the “dirt” on an opponent and upon receiving the envelope burned it, unopened, on the spot. He also suffered from cancer of the mouth and had an entire artificial jaw.

“You feel small in the presence of dead men, and you don’t ask silly questions” (p 332).
Here’s the LibraryThing version of my review:
“Any history buff should have this sitting on his or her shelf (and have a shelf sturdy enough to support this 700+ book). Chock full of intriguing cartoons and mesmerizing photographs, American Century covers every aspect of U.S. history from 1889 to the mid 1990s. Well written with commentaries and first hand accounts, history comes alive. The people, the politics, the power, the pitiful downfalls. The 20th century is laid out and every historical moment of worth is described and detailed.”

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust and the chapter “American History: Fiction” (p 21). I have to explain that this isn’t fiction. Pearl referenced The American Century while talking about Ken Baker’s novels. Ken Baker helped Harold Evans with The American Century.

Alburqueque

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alburquerque1.jpg

Anaya, Rudolfo. Alburquerque. Alburquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992.

My final book of January – chosen to celebrate the month New Mexico became a state. Anaya’s Alburquerque is rich with the culture of New Mexico’s Mexican population. In the center is Abran Gonzalez, a young ex-boxer from Barelas. Upon discovering he is adopted he sets out to learn as much as he can about his birth parents. It is crucial to his understanding of who he really is. Swirling around Abran there is magical realism, cutthroat politics, deep rooted culture, rich history, and tragic romance.
My one complaint – I don’t know why Anaya has Abran have a chance meeting with his birth father in the very first chapter. It seemed a little too coincidental and more than a little cheesy. He is able to come full circle with the same characters at the end. Like I said, a little cheesy.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter simply called, “New Mexico” (p 167).

Everyday Zen

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zen.jpg

Beck, Charlotte Joko. Everyday Zen: Love and Work. San Francisco: Haper Collins, 1989.

I had a hard time wrapping my brain around the reading of this book. I think I couldn’t figure out what was bugging me until I realized the reading required more than just my brain. It asked my heart and soul, my beliefs and convictions to get involved. It became a religious thing and that was something I really struggled with in order to read Beck’s book. I admit it – I am a person wrestling with and for a belief. If that bothers you, stop reading right here. I am searching for self-acceptance for what I believe and, ultimately, do NOT have faith in.

I found it insteresting that Beck put the word love in the title of her book because in the chapter specifically on love she states, “love is a word not often mentioned in Buddhist texts. And the love (compassion) they talk about is not an emotion…” (p 71). I had an interesting time coming to terms with that concept.

The other quotes that I took to heart are:
“…the storms of life eventually hit them more lightly. If we can accept things just the way they are we’re not going to be gratly upset by anything. And if we do become upset it’s over more quickly” (p 13).
“We can’t love something we need” (p 39).
“Other people are not me” (p 68).
“Not all problems are as tough as these, but less demanding ones may still send us up the wall with worry” (p 99).

New Words:

  • sesshin
  • zazen
  • koan
  • zendo
  • samadhi

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter “Zen Buddhism And Meditation” (p 255).