book reviews

Yep, more of 'em! I've been burning through the books, since we're getting closer to the end of the year and I want to finish as many as possible. I still think 2010 will be a third "no new books year", sadly enough.

Antonia Barber, The Ghosts. I hadn't read this one in years - one of those books you had a copy of as a kid, then it disappeared somewhere along the way. My excellent husband found me a copy - long after I'd forgotten both title and author's name - and it held up quite nicely to rereading. The mystery is a bit simplistic, but the plot is good and inventive and you care about the characters.

Alan Alda, Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself. I liked his first book quite a bit. This one I felt rambled a bit too much, and to be honest, I didn't find the overall framing of the book by quoting all his public speeches to be that interesting. He's a good writer with a lot of interesting things to say, but this book missed the mark, as far as I'm concerned.

Louis L'Amour, Kilrone. Very solid. Nice Some interpersonal issues could have done with being tied up a little better - the ending was a little more abrupt than I'd have liked - but it had plenty of action and a decent plot.

Alexander Key, Escape to Witch Mountain. I read this one to the boys, and they really got into it. While reading aloud I noticed that it has a lot of exposition and a lot of journey to fill in what's essentially a pretty short story, but it's well-written and you feel for the characters as they try to figure out who they are and how to get back to their people.

book reviews

Fannie Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. I've read this one several times, and I find it more meaning-filled and beautiful every time. The messages about love, relationships, and the process of getting old are timeless. The movie is good; the book is transcendent. Well worth reading. And reading again.

L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Ingleside. A nice little installment in the series. Lots of little stories about Anne's children and the usual side stories about the local families. Very much in Montgomery's style. Not her best, but a nice light read.

Armistead Maupin, More Tales of the City. The further adventures of the madcap San Franciscan crew. A bit wacky and hard to believe, but still quite enjoyable to read.

Time Life, Voices of the Civil War: Gettysburg. A compilation of original letters and diary entries regarding the battle of Gettysburg from start to finish, with an overview of the battle. Very nice for reference.

Thanksgiving reflections

No, this isn't going to be a post filled with thankfulness mush. Not that I have a problem with that - I live a great life and it's only right that I should be thankful for all the blessings that crowd every day of it - but it's not what's on my mind right now.

The last couple of days, as I've been wallowing in the pre-Christmas frenzy that has me well into the cards, the presents, and the wrapping already, I've been wondering why I don't get more excited about Thanksgiving. It's a non-religious holiday; it's a holiday with a basis in American history (albeit a very gray basis that brings up a lot of questions that are difficult to explain to small children ... last night's discussion of why the Indian "war whoop" can be offensive went well over Charles's head); it's all about good food; and I love Plimoth. So why isn't it more exciting? Why do I skip right over the turkey feathers and head straight for the snowmen and candy canes?

The reason, I think, is that it's just a long weekend that starts with a big meal around here. We don't travel anywhere, don't have family in to visit, and just have a nice quiet weekend. Of course, I LIKE that we don't travel anywhere, and not having a family (my particular family) to deal with is actually one of the things I'm thankful for, and I don't knock nice quiet weekends. But it's not that different, to me, from Memorial Day, Labor Day, or Columbus Day - all weekends that I like, but none of which really feel like a big special celebration.

Granted, my lack of excitement about Thanksgiving doesn't bother me as much as it seems to bother other people, so I don't much mind being conflicted about the quiet holiday. Because I know if I had the big boisterous family-filled Norman Rockwell-style holiday, I'd be conflicted about that, too, with half of me wishing we could just stay home and eat turkey and have a nice quiet weekend.

At least I'm consistent about some things!

must get out more!

I live half an hour from downtown Boston. You know how often I go there?

That's right, I don't. An entire city at my disposal, but getting down there never makes it onto the schedule.

I've been reminded of this fact this week, as both last night and the night before I was in Boston picking my friend (in town with her show) up at her hotel and dropping her off. The second time I even took my kids. You know, the ones who have almost never been there. To the big city that they live half an hour away from. They had a great time, put up with the traffic lights and how long it took to find a parking garage, and were sad (despite it being dark and late at night) to go home, even though all we'd done was walk through a few streets and eat at McDonald's.

So let this be a reminder to me that one of the country's major cities, a city with a lot of history and a lot of culture, rests pretty much at my fingertips and it's really irresponsible of me not to take my children (not to mention myself) into it more often.

book reviews

L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Windy Poplars. A very Montgomeryan book. Lots of interesting characters, little side stories here and there, all drawn together by the main narrative. Very enjoyable.

Jo-Ann Fabrics, Your Guide to Creativity. This weighty tome was given to me by my in-laws before Greyson was born. I just finished it. It is absolutely chock full of good ideas, how-tos in every branch of home-related creativity you can think of. Sadly, it will probably go on my shelf and sit there gathering dust for a good decade before I get around to working on any of its ideas ... but it's good to know it will be there in case I need it. Definitely a reference worth having.

John Berendt, The City of Falling Angels. I find Berendt's style both unique and interesting. He does what I think so many of us would like to do - finds a place that interests him, then somehow manages to get around and meet people and really get a sense of the fabric of the place. And he always finds an underlying story to weave all the others together. It makes for fascinating reading and gives the reader the sense of actually knowing something about a place, in this case Venice, where they've never been.

Joel Wainwright, Decolonizing Development. This is my brother-in-law's book based on his Ph.D. dissertation. It's essentially a discussion of the way colonialism and colonization have negatively impacted the lives of the Maya and the efforts of the Maya to reclaim themselves. There was, I admit, a lot of jargon that went over my head, but overall I found the book quite well-written - and unusually for a scholarly work written for other scholars, I could hear Joel's voice strongly in the writing. I don't know that I gained any earth-shattering knowledge, but I did find it interesting reading and appreciate having been exposed to the perspective.

Monday, Monday

Can't trust that day.

Actually, come to think of it, I find Monday all too reliable. It shows up bright and early when the alarm goes off and reminds me that it's time to get up, to get the kids up, to pack them up, to send them off to school. To start the week. I like to have Monday unscheduled, if I can, so I can get a good, energetic start, get some things done, feel like I'm on top of my to-do list.

When Monday comes complete with first-thing-in-the-morning plans, I wind up feeling behind before I even sit down to look at the to-do list, and the dropped ball rolls down the hill gathering moss until it's too ponderous to contemplate.

Time to catch it now before it gets away from me ...

random thoughts

Today I'm going to write down all the little thoughts I have that I want to share with someone but tend to forget about before I get the opportunity. (It'll be kind of like a lot of Tweets/Facebook status updates, but a lot more rapid-fire. I always try to hold those down so I won't annoy anyone.)

Last night I wished my first Merry Christmas of the season and saw my first holiday-decorated house of the season. :)

I've never understood the appeal of The West Wing. Even Aaron Sorkin can't make the daily doings of the White House seem interesting.

Recording "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" was a nice thing for Gordon Lightfoot to do. It keeps the memory of those men alive and is a reminder of the dangers of life on the sea.

I wish there was any one thing I found as harmless and comforting as my daughter finds sucking her thumb.

Prerecorded phone calls should be abolished. If it's not important enough to hire a real person to make the call, it's not important enough to call about. (I make an exception for the school superintendent's announcement of school closing due to inclement weather. But that's it.)

I suddenly want to read a dialogue between Free Range Kids's Lenore Skenazy and Baby Name Wizard Laura Wattenberg on the naming practices of free range parents, how names affect our kids' lives in the world, free range or otherwise, and how to tell what kind of parent you are by what you named your kid.

The U.S. adult smoking rate has risen. What century do we live in again? How can people squander their health and money that way for nothing?

My daughter is quite irritating with her constant demands for Christmas and visits to a hotel and her birthday ... all of them RIGHT NOW. Or possibly tomorrow. But certainly no later than that, or she will whine, pout, and stamp her foot.

book reviews

Ivor Noel Hume, Civilized Men. I like Hume's writing - he's one of my favorite archaeology/history writers - so I was interested when I saw he'd written a fiction novel. I later discovered that apparently it was originally a screenplay, so the book is more a novelization, which shows. Also, the production budget for the book was very, very low. The typos and lack of copyediting made some passages really painful to read. But I got through, and I did enjoy the story. I thought a bit too much time was spent on all the high muckety-mucks of Jamestown and their political machinations, and not quite enough time spent on the two young men whose experiences in the New World are ostensibly the focus. I'd have liked more detail on their lives in and around Jamestown. Altogether it was a good story, but not one I would be able to get through again, thanks to the cheapo publishers.

Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'urbervilles. Since the base premise of this novel - that a woman is placed beyond the pale by being the victim of a sexual assault - is such an outdated concept, I had little patience for the ramifications of the event. Why should the man who married her think her seducer was her "real husband", while he doesn't feel the same about the woman he slept with before marriage? Why doesn't she realize it? Tess's self-effacing ways are unbelievable, her husband unworthy of the name, and it's all told in such tedious prose that I'm amazed I made it all the way through the book. Sorry, Mr. Hardy, but you don't fit in the modern world.

L. M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island. Well, how much is there to say, really? Anne Shirley goes to college - it's a fun book, I love Aunt Jamesina and Patty's Place, and it's L.M. Montgomery, whose style is simple and lovely.

Anne Perry, Pentecost Alley. I think this one does a good job of drawing in some of the secondary characters while also advancing the metaplot. (I'm not a fan of metaplots, and you'll hear more about that as I get further into the later works in the series, but in some cases it's kind of inevitable that your characters advance in their lives and the lives become more complicated. This book fits those complications into the underlying mystery fairly seamlessly.) Altogether, a solid entry in the series ... and it's been long enough since I read the last one that I'm not so burnt out on Perry's style.

the inevitable

Around here, we're mostly pretty healthy. I can't remember the last time one of the kids had to be taken to the doctor due to illness, or missed a day of school. Lou and I come down with things slightly more often (and of course he deals with near-constant sinus infections), but in general illness rarely gets in the way of the things we need and want to do.

This year everyone's perceptions in the area of viruses and other germs going around seem pretty heightened (possibly also distorted, but that's difficult to be clear on). H1N1 has dominated the focus, but of course, the vast majority of what's going around tend to be the nonnamed illnesses that congregate wherever large groups of children go. All of which makes it nearly inevitable that one or more of the kids (and therefore us) will come down with something any day now. I go around trying to gauge levels of contagion, whether that sneeze really means something, and if my throat really feels that scratchy or am I just talking myself into it because someone mentioned flu.

(The eldest child got the seasonal vaccine. The younger two are scheduled for it at the end of the month. None of them are likely to get the H1N1 because of the shortages and the complication of trying to get to the pedi's office twice in a month. I'm always on the fence about flu vaccines and whether they're necessary/a good idea. I suspect it's six of one, half a dozen of the other, but can't be sure.)

But of course, truthfully, there's not much I can do. Between tae kwon do, school, preschool, gymnastics, eating out, the bus, grocery stores, playdates, work, and so on, there's no way to avoid being exposed. So the best thing I can do is be informed, be aware of how they're all feeling, and be ready to drop everything and pull out the chicken soup and hot cocoa whichever morning one of them wakes up unschoolworthy. And try not to worry about it too much before it happens!

"miss" vs. "ma'am"

I'd be interested to see where I stand in this spectrum. I'm aware that a lot of women I know are offended by being referred to as "ma'am" because they don't feel old enough for that. (You know, when you're out and someone picks up something you dropped, or you're talking to a host/ess at a restaurant, or something like that.)

Personally, I feel that the term "miss" has an implied sneer, a condescension. I'm in my 30s, I have gray hair, I usually have at least one child with me. All of this, I feel, has earned me the consideration that I am mature enough to be a "ma'am", and it does annoy me to be referred to as "miss". I don't mind it as much from someone who is clearly older than I am - in that case, "miss" is somewhat warranted - but especially if the person is clearly in their early 20s or younger, the sneering "miss" is just insulting.

Granted, this is a pretty minor annoyance. When someone refers to me as "miss", it's a brief flash of annoyance and I move on, and I've never been moved to correct anyone ... but I do wish we had a societal standard term for women. Men have Mr. and Sir. Women have Mrs., Ms., or Miss, all with different connotations, and Miss or Ma'am, which are highly polarizing.

reality TV update

Three of our reality shows are running right now - Top Chef, Project Runway, and The Amazing Race. (Okay, Lou only tolerates PR, but he bet on the winner, giving him a vested interest.) At the beginning of the season for each show, we bet on who would be the eventual winner - prize to be determined if and when we win. (I've won twice, both times for The Amazing Race, earning myself a mother's ring and a pair of black leather boots. Lou's won once, I think also for TAR, and I'm not sure what he bought. I should follow up on that.)

Top Chef Las Vegas has had a fairly smooth season, all things considered. The talent pool was divided into two tiers - the really talented chefs who are likely to win, and the less talented chefs who are not going to make it to the finale. Personal issues have been kept to a minimum (other than the growing disdain for Robin, this season's "why is she still here?" victim), and it has largely been all about the food. This is a show that has actually changed the way we approach and talk about food in our house. We're not adventurous enough to consider ourselves "foodies", but I think we appreciate the effort that goes into fine cuisine more. Our picks for this season: Kevin (Lou) and Bryan Voltaggio (Shay), both of whom seem destined to go far and certainly have the capability to win. I give Kevin the edge at this point ... but you never can tell.

Project Runway has had some trouble finding its feet in Los Angeles and on Lifetime. I think the cast this season was a bit of a mismatch, and while I agree that the final three were somewhat inevitable, I don't think any of them is particularly outstanding. Personal issues have clearly simmered under the surface, as the four women remaining in the finale couldn't even speak to each other by the last day of the last challenge. The lack of the usual judges has hurt the show, as well, I think - each challenge may need to stand on its own, but I think it's necessary to have someone other than Heidi have some idea of the continuity of each designer's PR journey. I think the final three will show some interesting work, though, so I look forward to the finale. Our picks this season: Christopher (Lou) and Gordana (Shay), both of whom were eliminated in the antepenultimate episode, in 5th and 4th places, respectively. Not a bad showing.

The Amazing Race has had a very good season. The constant bunching every time there's a plane ride involved has been annoying, but it has cut down on the post-plane ride bunching when things aren't open when the racers arrive, so it's a wash. All the teams that were uber-annoying were eliminated early, and the remaining teams are largely pretty good racers. Plus, the Detours have been more complicated and there have been fewer times when one Detour looked insanely hard and the other one looked so easy that they all chose it. Our picks this season: Sam and Dan (Lou) and Flight Time and Big Easy (Shay), both of whom are strong teams and have every chance of making the finale. We both had Meghan and Cheyne as our second choice, so we'll get half-credit each if they win. Since those three teams could easily make up the final three, it should be a good finale for someone in our house!

And of course, we're a scant two months away from the season premiere of the next season of American Idol, which was a sagging franchise until last year, when a young man named Adam Lambert took the stage and reminded us what it was good for. Hoping for a similar talent next season! (And kind of looking forward to Ellen replacing Paula.)

500th post!

I just happened to notice that as I went to the "dashboard". I had something entirely else in mind to write today, but I feel the need to do something to mark this occasion.

Hm. Well, the 500th book in my catalog currently is Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, by Douglas Adams. Not necessarily my favorite, but entertaining. It does not have 500 pages, so no help there.

Ah, I have it! Things I have done at least 500 times this year:

1. drank coffee
2. said "No" to my children
3. tickled my children
4. brushed my teeth
5. thought about how to reorganize my days better
6. wondered when school was finally going to end
7. wondered when school was finally going to start
8. gotten someone a snack (who am I kidding? I'm sure I've done that 500 times this week.)
9. sat down at my computer (see #8)
10. hugged my most faithful blog reader and told him I loved him :)

Tomorrow back to our regularly scheduled posting. :)