Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Accomplished

  • All packages mailed. The final two went last night, guaranteed, for an arm and a leg, to be delivered on Christmas Eve.
  • Most of the Christmas cards sent. A grand accomplishment considering that we ordered them only 10 days ago and had no Christmas letter as of Sunday 6 pm.
  • Laundry.
  • All Christmas shopping. Thanks in large part to Amazon and their free trial period of Amazon Prime Shipping.
  • Groceries at Costco. It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be and I was in and out in 1/2 hour.
  • Teacher gifts
Still left to do:
  • Trip to regular grocery store. I get to go to MJ's winter party this afternoon and so she and I will head to the store and get all we need for Christmas morning pecan sticky buns and quiche, the turkey brine, plus the new recipe I am trying for Christmas dessert.
  • Pick up the house tonight in preparation for my wonderful cleaning ladies tomorrow. Yippee! It just happened that they were scheduled to come two days before Christmas, which also just happens to be my birthday. I often pined for a Mother's Day or birthday gift where my whole house would be clean at once. Here, I have it!
  • Some present wrapping

And I won't mention things that didn't make the list at all this year. But, all in all, pretty good.
Read more . . .

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Conversation with a 2 1/2 Year Old

Me: Oh, you're my little baby. You're always going to be my baby!

Z: I'm not a baby! I'm a boy.

Me: Ok, you're my little boy. You'll always be my little boy. But, you're growing up too fast! Pretty soon, you'll be going to kindergarten.

Z: And I'll read Harry Potter!
Read more . . .

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Thoughts on the first day of winter















1. 6-10 inches?!? What the? They said a dusting. This is not a dusting.
2. Where's that boot? How can it already be missing?
3. Why didn't we clean out the garage earlier? And get the sand toys put away?
4. San Diego is sounding really nice about now.

I just read that snow is falling at a rate of 1 inch per hour in my town. My neighbor just called to ask for help with a stuck car. I guess I won't be driving to dance rehearsal today.

Thursday was Veteran's Day. I got the day off of work. It was a beautiful day, probably up to 55 degrees. I walked around our lake and was surprised that there were still a few leaves hanging on. I hate the feeling of walking off a cliff.

Read more . . .

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Sorrows and Joys

Last week, one of my dearest friends, a brilliant, amazing, young, 33-year-old with no children had a hysterectomy. Every time I think or talk about it, a lump rises in my throat and tears well up in my eyes.

This week, my sister and her husband are meeting their newborn son, born last night, whom they are adopting. Our family couldn't be more happy for them.

The counter-position of these two events is dizzying.
Read more . . .

Monday, September 20, 2010

First Day

I love back to school time. I always wish I was starting school again. It's just about my favorite time of the year. Mr T just started kindergarten and he is spouting Spanish words and phrases already. He has been gleefully reading Captain Underpants books lately. One of the cartoon characters said, "We kick butt." He showed it to me and I told him it wasn't the nicest thing to say. He said, "I know. But it's really funny." Hmm. A boy after the manner of his father and uncle.






This is how Z looked on the first day of school. We went for a walk one night and were devoured by mosquitoes. His eye was just about swollen shut for a couple of days so we called him Quasimodo. He is struggling against the taunting of an older brother, who loves to call him a "weirdo" to which Z screams, "I'm NOT a weirdo." (Both boys can't pronounce their R's which makes it all the more entertaining.)














It's hard to believe MJ is in 4th grade already. She is seeming more and more grown up. We had "the talk" with her the first week of school. We had prepped her by telling her we were going out to dinner and had something really important to tell her. After our discussion, she kept saying, "this isn't what I expected at all!" She thought we would be discussing her sometimes strained relationship with T.

Read more . . .

Wachet Auf

I heard this achingly beautiful Bach chorale during the credits of a Mad Men episode. It was familiar, and once I heard it, I couldn't get it out of my mind. I tried picking out the melody last night on the piano and then downloaded the music tonight. My goal: to learn it and play it in church.
Read more . . .

Thursday, August 26, 2010

My new phone

My two-year contract obligation with Verizon was up and so I had my "New Every Two" incentive where they give you a big discount on a phone to get you to sign up for another two years. We went to the Verizon store on Tuesday night and I walked out with this sweet baby.

AJ got to play with it while I was visiting teaching. The next day, he was showing me some things on it and then he said,



"I hope you realize what you have." Big pause, and then in a slightly anguished voice, "This would change my life!"

Ahh, my dear technie husband whose favorite activity is to read the Best Buy ad and think about the next gadget he wants to buy. He is not getting a new phone because he already has a perfectly usable, paid for by his office, Blackberry. I told him we could share.

I've already tried out the turn by turn navigation system (replaces GPS just like that) and the free Google Sky Map app. Just point the phone at an object in the night sky, and it will show you the star map and identify the constellation. We'll have a lot of fun with this on vacation at the beach next week.

Read more . . .

Sunday, August 08, 2010

The countdown is on!

This week, I took the kids to Target and we left with a total of 75 separate items in our bags. I think it might be a record for us. It's back to school time and I handed both my school kids their lists and let them have at it. It took at least 1/2 hour, and that was standing just in the smallish school supply area.

MJ was skipping as we came in, she was so excited. "It's just like Christmas! It only comes once a year!"

I just wish I didn't have to sharpen all those pencils.

Read more . . .

Monday, July 26, 2010

The Hand that First Held Mine

I have gotten away from blogging about books. Between work and kids and house and time with AJ, most of my blogging time has gotten sapped away. I have been doing a fair amount of reading, though, and happily have been on a streak of good reads.

Anyway. I have been enjoying several books that fit in to the Women Unbound Challenge. The Hand that First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell wasn't one that I jumped into, thinking it would be a good fit for the challenge. I expected a nice summer novel, which is was, but there were some interesting descriptions of motherhood that made me think (again) about my experiences as a mother compared with how other women experience mothering.

In this novel, O'Farrell deftly weaves together two stories. The first centers on Lexie, a non-traditional woman who literally throws off the conventional life of her parents by leaving home to go make her fortune in post-war London. There she finds work, and also love, and finally she finds a calling as a journalist. She loves what she does, she is good at it, and she makes a life for herself. When she finds herself unexpectedly pregnant, she decides to raise her child on her own terms. She juggles work and the care of her son, and finds herself with a fierce love and connection to her son.

In the second story, set in contemporary London, Elina, an artist, has just given birth to a child. She has barely survived a traumatic birth and is struggling to recover physically at the same time she must care for a newborn. During this same period, Ted, her boyfriend and father of the child, is going through a painful process of remembering snatches of his childhood. He has always had a memory filled with gaps, but now he starts to remember images and voices. Through the course of the story, the mystery of his past unwinds and connects with the Lexie strand to a satisfying conclusion.

The theme that is the same between the stories is the powerful relationship between a mother and her young child. O'Farrell describes the powerful and physical love of both mothers, as well as the strong and almost unthinking intuition that drives them to care for and protect their children. "Elina is on her feet before she's even aware of moving" as she gets up to care for her baby. Ted is amazed at the way that Elina can calm the crying Jonah the way no one else, including him, can. "She has been unprepared for this fierce spring in her, this feeling that isn't covered by the word 'love', which is far too small for it, that sometimes she thinks she might faint with the urgency of her feeling for him, that sometimes she misses him desperately even when he is right there, that it's like a form of madness, of possession, that often she has to creep into the room when he has fallen asleep just to look at him, to check, to whisper to him."

Elina's experience with a newborn is mirrored by Lexie's:
When she leave the house on these mornings, she senses a thread that runs between her and her son, and as she walks away through the streets she is aware of it unspooling, bit by bit. By the end of the day, she feels utterly unravelled, almost mad with desire to be back with him, and she urges the Tube train to rattle faster through the tunnels, to speed over the rails, to get her back to her child as quickly as possible. It takes a while, once she's there with him, to wind herself back to rightness, to get the thread back to where it out to be--a length of no more than a couple of feet or so feels best, Lexie decides.

These descriptions of mothering do not overwhelm the story, and I found myself really liking the book, in spite of not being able to entirely identify with these feelings both mothers have. I don't doubt that women feel like this, but I never felt quite so strongly about my babies. Yes, there was infatuation. There were many moments of delight and awe in getting to know them and in being around them. But, I always felt replaceable (save for breast feeding) by AJ. He always could care for them at least as ably as I. And I felt that there was nothing special about my femaleness that gave me the mothering gene. Maybe that's overstating it, but that's my recollection. I always, since the time I was a young adult, have questioned my lack of intuition that is supposed to go hand in hand with the XX chromosome, and I certainly never felt any extra intuition with my children. If anything, the "intuition" that I thought I had turned out to be completely wrong.

Anyway, because I have always felt a bit at odds with traditional descriptions of what the mothering experience is like for women, I have wondered if one version is held up to the light to the exclusion of many women's experiences, or if many or even most women feel something like this.

Read more . . .

Friday, July 16, 2010

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

another summer solstice

I remember last summer and fall with a shudder. I was angry, impatient, and ready to explode at the slightest provocation. I carried around a feeling of sadness that felt heavy in my chest and it seemed like days would go by without any relief. I was depressed.

This spring and summer, I've been enjoying the extra light. A few times this week, as I sat in my bed reading after the house had grown still, I would occasionally glance out my large window to the west to see if any light was still visible. By yesterday, it had grown hot enough to turn on the air, but I cracked the window to listen to the sounds of summer outside. Last night, around 10, the final traces of light were disappearing.

I was remembering another dark summer solstice when I was struggling with the kids. It was neither an unusual event nor reaction, but it's already two years gone. From even further back, right after we moved to Minnesota, I have another joyful summer memory that I hope someday to get to "see" again--I imagine our own heavenly personal viewing rooms where we can watch moments from our lives.

I feel so peaceful, so calm right now. In spite of all the things that I could improve, in spite of the craziness. I know it won't last, but for now, I am basking.

Read more . . .

Monday, May 10, 2010

The solace of books

Z-Man has been a little sick. The other day, he completely fell apart and AJ whisked off to his bed for an immediate nap. He was sobbing, disconsolate, in his bed. A few minutes later I went in to try to calm him down. His face was soaked with tears, snot, and a whole lot of sweat thrown in there too. I hugged him and he immediately asked me for his froggy blanket that he had thrown out of his bed in the hot blush of first anger, which had quickly melted into remorse. I asked him if there was anything else he wanted, to which he replied, "I want a book."

My heart melted. Yes, little boy, books can bring you comfort.

I gave him three (though I couldn't find the hippo book he requested) and he snuggled up with them and went to sleep.
Read more . . .

Singing of Mother


Yesterday, my kids sang along with the primary in praise of mothers. Since I sit in primary during singing time, I've been listening to these songs for a while now. Just for kicks, I decided to look up all the songs about mothers in the music book to see how mothers are described.






Here you go--attributes of mother:

Gentle
Tender
Kind
Happy
Lovely
Full of cheer
Bright

And don't forget True. I am convinced, though, the only reason mothers are labeled "true" is that lyricists needed something to rhyme with "I love you."

I loved the singing.

Read more . . .

Tuesday, May 04, 2010

What We're Reading This Week

The Z-Man is really starting to talk. He still mimics a lot, but also has a lot to say on his own. One of my favorite things to hear him say is "I go libree! I go libree!" And whenever we pull into the parking lot of the library, he cheers, "Lay! Lay!" (His Y's sound like L's.)

For all of my parental weaknesses and issues, I feel good about the way that my kids are embracing books and reading. Our house is overflowing with books. I recently got a new bookshelf for my bedroom mainly because the kid books were taking over a corner of the room. On the shelves sit two boxes with all the board books, plus another big box of library books and other picture books. We sit on my bed or in the reading chair in my room and read a lot. My kids know that if they ask me to read a book with them, I will almost always agree. This compares with the other things they might ask me to do which I am more likely to turn them down. In my opinion, there's nothing better than snuggling up with a child to read a book. And I'm really excited about the way T's reading is taking off.


Taking a page from the NPR book page, this is what we're reading this week.


Z-Man: He still loves Sesame Street books with Elmo and Zoe. He has pretty much mastered his colors save for blue, but still loves to name them. He is starting to be interested in ABC and counting books. He has also taken quite a shine to Mercy Watson books (see below), or at least to the pictures in Mercy Watson book.


T--This week, we discovered the Tiny Titans graphic novels. I don't really like them, but after we read some together, T sat and read on his own with this one. MJ and some kids from the neighborhood set up a library in our garage, and T "checked out" Fantastic Mr Fox yesterday. He read on his own for quite a while today, proudly stating that he got to page 65 as he was going to bed. I could hear him laughing as he was reading. One of our favorites to read together is Mercy Watson about a pig with a single minded devotion to butter who is being raised like a child by Mr and Mrs Watson. T's favorite character is the cowboy thief and then later reformed criminal Leroy Ninker. We are all excited to go hear the author, Kate DeCamillo, speak and get her autograph next month.


MJ--MJ is in 3rd grade, attending school with 5th and 6th graders. Her school was overflowing, and so this year, they moved the 3rd and 4th grade to the intermediate school. The library there is full of materials that are suited for slightly older kids. She is a good reader, but it really bugs me when she comes home with book after crappy book of Sweet Valley Twins , including stories about first kisses, boyfriends, and getting your period. These are the younger sister of Sweet Valley High books, of which, I admit, I read a few. I am trying to get her to check out other books from her school library and am happy that that the public library doesn't have these books. In addition to Sweet Valley, she is working on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. She also is reading Katie Kazoo and The Magician's Elephant (also to be autographed by Ms DeCamillo).


AJ is probably the least prolific reader in the family in terms of books read, but I am happy that he has plodded through a couple of books in the past couple of months. He is currently working on Michael Chabon's Manhood for Amateurs and earlier in the year read and loved Michael Pollen's Omnivore's Dilemma.


As for me. I have read a lot of mediocre books in the last little while, but things took a turn for the better with Strength in What Remains--the story of a Burundi refugee who leaves during the 1994 genocide and later ends up at Columbia and Dartmouth universities to study medicine--and The Guersey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. I read this for book group. It was pretty good, a nice story, a little on the fluffy feel-good side. But the title is terrible. I can never say it properly. And I just started listening to Game Change, which looks to be a really interesting and fun look at the craziness of the 2008 election.


Read more . . .

Springtime


This spring has been perfect. It finally felt like a "real" spring to me. Not that I've adapted to the traditionally late Minnesota spring, but that spring came early this year. By March, it was warming up and the snow disappeared. Though there were no flowers yet, Easter weekend was a balmy 65. And most importantly, for my peace of mind, there were no spring fake-outs: one week 65 and the next a blizzard or sub-zero temperatures. Now, the lilacs are in glorious bloom, and everywhere I look, there is a wall of green.

I love the feeling of spring: the miracle of a world changed, the constant change in scenery out my back door. The renewal and the thrumming of life.


I need a good poem about spring to capture what I can't express. Anyone have suggestions?


Read more . . .

Monday, March 15, 2010

Montaigne on Reading



The commerce of book goes side by side with me in my whole course, and everywhere is assisting to me; it comforts me in my age and solitude; it eases me of a troublesome weight of idleness, and it delivers me at all hours from company I dislike; and it blunts the points of griefs if there are not extreme, and have got an entire possession of my soul. To divert myself from a troublesome fancy 'tis but to run to my books; they presently fix me to them, and drive the other out of my thoughts; they always receive me with the same kindness.



Wow, I think I need to commit that to memory!
Read more . . .

Sunday, March 07, 2010

New Normal

(I'm shamelessly stealing the title from Jen.)

It's been two weeks since I started working, and we are settling into a routine. Things have been more crazy than they will be in the future (I hope) because AJ is traveling a lot right now, we have several home projects at various stages of completion, and we had family in town for a long weekend. I am hoping that after this next week, we will be at a new normal.

I love my new job, the kids are doing great, the commute has been ok, and all in all, it feels like something we can manage. Yippee! I've been reflecting on the path that got me here, and I feel blessed and grateful. This is a good place for us.

Things that I'm not doing as much of as before:

Sleeping
Reading (sniff, sniff)
Wasting time on the computer
Exercising

And of course, the obvious, I'm not spending as much time with my kids, but, also, very happily, I'm not yelling at my kids as much.

It has been a very good two weeks.

Read more . . .

Baby Z--Not a Baby Anymore

We had a birthday last weekend, and our baby is now an official toddler. The Z-Man. He is throwing tantrums left and right and demanding to do everything on his own. But, he is still so sweet, so cuddly, and will still sit and read books with me--our
favorite activity.












The jack in the box was a big hit.

Read more . . .

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

First day...

Was yesterday. It went great. So did today. I love my new job. I love my boss. The kids are doing great. AJ is doing drop offs and I am going early enough so that I can pick up at a good hour and have dinner ready by the time AJ gets home. At least, so far. We'll see how it goes when he's out of town later this week.

As for orientation. I got a 6-page document yesterday with all the acronyms that our group uses. Yippee!

Read more . . .

Saturday, February 06, 2010

The current bane of my existence

AJ took the boys for a long weekend trip to Denver and they had a great time. One of the highlights for T was going to a Nuggets game with his dad, uncle, and papa. Besides the cotton candy, mascot half-time party, and just hanging with the boys, he was thrilled to come home with his own cd that Uncle E snagged for him at halftime.

The cd? It is the original motion picture soundtrack from Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel.


As soon as I heard the news, I screamed. Because I knew exactly what would happen. The only place we listen to actual cds anymore is in the van. So, I envisioned non-stop listening to the Chipmunks every time we set foot in the car.

And thus it is.

Even the Z-Man is constantly requesting them by yelling "kip-munks!" over and over until I give in.

The bad news is that I've misplaced my iPod so I can't even block it out by listening to something else.

For a taste of my torture, check this out. It turns out T's favorite is Beyonce's Single Ladies.

Read more . . .

Thursday, February 04, 2010

Half the Sky

Kristof and WuDunn travel through Asia and Africa, meeting women, listening to their stories, watching them deal with terrible plights, and occasionally seeing resilience and hope shine through their tragedy. By interspersing the personal stories of these women with statistics, they have written Half the Sky, a compelling book that urges the reader to consider the high costs of continued discrimination, neglect, and abuse to women worldwide. Their intent is to move their audience beyond their comfortable armchair, to a world almost unknown in a Western country, to see and understand, and then to act--to do something to make the world a better place for women worldwide.

They cover a range of topics, including forced prostitution, honor killings, the prevalence of maternal mortality (the image of a midwife jumping on the belly of a laboring women still haunts me), and the promise of education and microlending to poor women and the difficulty at times in accessing them.

One interesting issue they bring up is the way that traditions oppressive to girls are maintained by women themselves--for example, genital mutilation. It is the mothers that force their daughters through this ritual in order to protect them from promescuity and preserve the family name. Zoya, another women, whose smile shines out from the pages of the book, claims that husband beating is perfectly legitimate when "the wife in not taking care of her husband or is not obedient." She is one that has left her husband and her in-laws--she is one that has worked to liberate herself from a terrible situation, but still she cannot fathom that a husband does not have the right to beat his wife when she will not obey.

Kristof and WuDunn state

Women themselves absorb and transmit misogynistic values, just as men do. This is not a tidy world of tyrannical men and victimized women, but a messier realm of oppressive social customs adhered to by men and women alike.


As documented elsewhere, I saw again the reduction of women to their reproductive function, resulting in the control of parents and husbands over their daughters and wives: the hymen checks before marriage, the honor induced suicides by a woman after she was raped, the raping of women from opposing tribes during war as a way to humiliate and intimidate the men.

Many of their stories of hope that Kristof and WuDunn share come from local women who have successfully overcome a difficult situation, and have now risen to help other girls and women--including starting microlending programs, finding ways to keep girls in school, helping girls start new lives after escaping from forced prostitution, and helping women to have save and healthy pregnancies and deliveries. Kristof and WuDunn believe that unleashing girls and women from the obstacles and traditions that hold them back is not only a moral necessity, but an economic one as well that will benefit families, towns, countries, and even the global economy.

I am motivated to talk with my kids more about the kinds of issues that women face throughout the world. I am also going to sit down with MJ and open a Kiva account with her (it's been on my list of good intentions for a long time now) and let her pick a women she would like to loan money to. And I'm going to comb through the resources on their website and find something to personally commit to.
Read more . . .

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Changing Together

A long time ago, in what almost seems like another galaxy, I was single. But, I was newly engaged and had just relocated to New Jersey where I would be starting grad school a couple of months later. AJ was also living in Jersey, about an hour from me, for a summer internship.

One Saturday, we drove to the Hill Cumorah pageant with a bunch of single adults. On the way, we stopped at the Corning Museum of Glass to have a look around. AJ and I had had lots of impassioned discussions about what our future life would be like. We had talked a lot about gender and gender roles and he knew I had some issues. In fact, those discussions started long before we were engaged and dating.

I don't remember much about what led up to another discussion of gender in the museum, but I do remember this from AJ: "Just promise me that we will never put our kids in full time day care."

I hemmed and hawed because who knew what our future held? But, I think I eventually said ok.

Now, all these years later, I am on the verge of starting a full time job. It's not exactly the scenario I would have chosen, but all in all, I am excited and invigorated by the prospects. And not only that, but AJ is 100% behind the decision as well.

We've been through lots of different things, but less than a lot of other people. No major illnesses, no major financial problems, no more craziness than an average family. Compared to then, we are probably more cynical about some things, but still hold out hope for other things, maybe foolishly. We have three kids that quarrel and an often untidy house in the suburbs. You know. Just a pretty normal life.

Through both the mundane and life altering changes, I am grateful that we have been able to evolve as a couple and a family. I am particularly grateful for AJ and for his ability and willingness to envision and enact a different life than he anticipated.

Read more . . .

Thursday, January 07, 2010

Best of 2009

I haven't done a good job chronicling and reviewing books here like I used to. I want to try to go back to my roots and do more of that, but for now, here are my favorite reads of 2009.


Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner. This was my first Stegner. It's the memorable and gripping and searing story of two couples who met in Madison and then remained close friends over many years. Stegner does an amazing job portraying the four characters. And Charity still haunts me. This would be great for a book group.

All God's Creatures Have a Place in the Choir by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and Emma Lou Thayne. I read this one in the spring, right around the time I went to a retreat and met Claudia Bushman, a colleague of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. That was probably the high point of my year. I love LTU--she is a hero of mine. This is a book of personal essays about being female and Mormon, about friendship, sisterhood, and community, about motherhood and writing. Like any collection of essays, there were some that were more personally meaningful to me, but this is such a great compilation of Emma Lou Thayne's and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's writing, and bubbles over with the richness of their lives and their thoughtful insights. In its totality, their book celebrates women's gifts, not as anything generically applied to all with XX chromosomes, but individual woman's gifts and contributions, unique and precious, and ultimately beneficial to the community at large, no matter the shape of their talents.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. When I heard the premise of this book, I was skeptical. It sounded like it would be a feminist screed cloaked in a badly fitting story. But, Atwood is an amazing storyteller and she develops the dytopian world that the handmaid precariously navigates. As a member of a society that has almost lost its ability to reproduce due to a terrible environmental disaster, the few women who can still bear children become very important to the theocratic state. These are the handmaids--named after the women in the Old Testament who stepped in to bear children for the patriarchs when their wives were infertile. Atwood utilizes a narrative device that tells a portion of the handmaid's story through her own diary that has been discovered many years hence. Her current name is Offred because she now belongs to a powerful man named Fred. I also read Oryx and Crake this year, and enjoyed it as well, though it spoke more to environmental devastation than to issues around gender.

My Life in France by Julia Child. I loved the film Julie and Julia and saw it with a good friend this summer. I was moved by the story of Julia Child and the way she was able to define and create a life for herself. So, I picked up her memoir and Child's wit, pragmatism, and personality, her sense of humor and her embrace of life shine through. She has such a descriptive way with words and it was a pure pleasure to read. The best of her book is the first half when she and her husband Paul are living in Paris and when she discovers her passion for cooking. I love that she was a bit older (late 30's) when she discovers France and its food, but that when she does, she embraces it so heartily and fully that it powerfully shapes the rest of her life.

An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken. This slim volume is a gem--an exquisitely, beautifully written memoir of a stillbirth. Elizabeth McCracken and her kind, earnest English husband are living in the countryside of France, both working on writing. She is radiantly pregnant, the adorable baby shoes have been purchased, and they have created a vision of their future life with their baby boy nicknamed Pudding. From the very beginning, McCracken lets us in on what will happen. Both her stillborn son, and the living, healthy child that will be born almost exactly a year later. But, the unraveling. Oh, the tragic and painful unraveling. I read this one twice because it was so beautifully written.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. What do I say about this one? I loved the story and the creativity of it. I loved Katniss and I loved Rue. I thought Collins did a great job making the characters real in this book (and was disappointed with Catching Fire--I didn't think it was the same power as Hunger Games).

When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present by Gail Collins. I went to hear Collins speak on her book tour. It was at a dark time of my year--I was so depressed and felt so heavy in such a physical way. I loved hearing her speak and felt myself spark at her ideas and her painstaking research. She has written a great overview of all the things that have changed for women in the US since 1960. Collins is a journalist, and this book is very readable, packed full of stories of women, based mainly on interviews. She covers both the history-making events (Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique, the founding of NOW, the ERA, etc), as well as the more mundane (clothing, day to day life).

The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I don't care if the critics turn their nose up at this book, I loved it. Stockett's characters are so vibrant, so real. I felt like I knew every single one of them. What a topic--the revolutionary action of recording black women's voices and stories. I loved how Stockett portrayed the diversity of characters across both the black and white women. It felt authentic. There was the villainous and bigoted Hilly, yes, but there was also the conflicted, self-centered, and bullied Elizabeth, depressed Lou Anne who credited her maid with helping her get out of bed every day, and of course, Skeeter, one of the heros of the book. And then Aibileen, the other hero--I think she was my favorite character. I loved the way she took care of Elizabeth's daughter, Mae Mobley, and countered the effects of her mother's negligence. And Minny--the sassy maid who can cook like anything, taking care of the trampy Celia. Really wonderful.

Here's to many wonderful reads in 2010!

Read more . . .

Sunday, January 03, 2010

Lost in Translation Update

Back in January, I decided I would read 6 books translated from other languages this year.

Here's how it went.

I started out the year reading Inkdeath by Cornelia Funke, translated by Anthea Bell. After loving both Inkspell and Inkheart, this was a big disappointment. It was slow, it wasn't captivating, and it was way too long. A bad way to start.





Then, in about May, I read Ghosts by Cesar Aira, translated by Chris Andrews. Here's what Publisher's Weekly had to say about it:

Aira, an unusual Argentinean author (How I Became a Nun), writes a compelling novel about a migrant Chilean family living in an apartment house under construction in Buenos Aires. New Year's Eve finds the hard-drinking Chilean night watchman, Raúl Vinas, hosting a party with his wife, Elisa, their four small children and Elisa's pensive 15-year-old daughter, Patri. Moreover, ghosts reside in the house: naked, dust-covered floating men, mostly unseen except by Elisa and Patri. The novel engineers a clever layering of metaphorical details about the building, but gradually focuses on Elisa's preparations for the party and her conversations with her daughter about finding a real man to marry. Prodded perhaps by her isolation within the family, Patri accepts the ghosts' invitation to a midnight feast, at her life's peril. Aira takes off on fanciful sociological analogies that seem absurd in the mouths of these simple folk, so that in the end the novel functions as an allegorical, albeit touching, comment on his characters' materialism and class.


Yes, it was curious. Too much for my taste. I don't know if this falls in the magical realism genre. Or if it was just too literary for me. But, I didn't really like it.

With two strikes against me, I didn't jump into any other works in translation until the end of the year. Then, with a lingering deadline, I thought maybe I could still make it work.

I read the highly touted Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, translated by Alison Anderson, which seems to be something a lot of book bloggers have read and many have loved. I almost gave up on it several times, because the first 100 pages were soooo slow and way too much philosophizing. If I had had anything else to read at the gym one day, I wouldn't have finished it. As it was, it turned out to be pretty good.

Here's what I said on GoodReads about it.

In part 2, it finally started picking up and engaging me. It's the story of Renee, a woman in Paris who is a concierge to a building full of rich and elitist tenants, who are also intellectually barren and incurious. She spends her free time reading Marx and studying phenomenology with her Tolstoy named cat as only companion, hiding her mind in an attempt to not step outside of prescribed class barriers.

When she meets Mr Ozu, a new resident (the first new resident in the building in 20 years! What kind of stifling and rigid kind of place is this?), she finds a like minded friend. The section where they identify the true nature of each other is charming--Renee underhandedly quotes Anna Karenina, but not without Mr Ozu's recognition and then reciprocation. Though she enjoys conversation and meals with him, finally able to reveal her true self to another, she continues to struggle internally to truly accept a friendship with someone from such a different background.

This is also the story of a precocious and intelligent 12 year old Paloma, daughter of
some tenants, who is unhappy, not able to share her true self with her family. She builds a friendship with both Mr Ozu and Renee and is able to find hope and goodness that has previously eluded her. Both she and Renee pour out their thoughts in diary form, which is how the entirety of the book is written.

As for the title, which has been so alluring to me: "Madame Michel (Renee) has the elegance of the hedgehog: on the outside, she's covered in quills, a real fortress, but my gut feeling is that on the inside, she has the same simple refinement as the hedgehog: a deceptively indolent little creature, fiercely solitary--and terribly elegant."


Then, I read Here's to You Jesusa by Elena Poniatowska, translated by Deanna Heikkinen. It started out strong, but I ended up really disliking it. Another disappointment

From my GoodReads:

Here's To You, Jesusa! chronicles the life of Jesusa, a tough, argumentative, spirited, and pragmatic Mexican women who was a young adult during the Revolution. The book is in her voice, and she goes from one ordeal to the other, always managing to come out on top, no matter how challenging. She is very poor and doesn't settle down anywhere for long, so the book skips around quite a bit. This made it hard to read-- it didn't hold together very well for me, and I skimmed through some of it, and eventually stopped reading with 70 pages left.

I understand that Poniatowska was trying to capture an authentic poor Mexican woman's voice, but I would have like a bit more self examination into how all these events shaped the woman Jesusa was. (For example, the death of her mother when she was young, her father inability to stay in one place for long, an abusive step-mother.) It's all descriptive, but not much more.

The book starts out with a forward by the middle class woman who supposedly finds Jesusa somehow and then spends years interviewing her and learning her story, and who then writes a book about her life. I loved this part and would have liked to see more interplay between the "author" voice and Jesusa.


So, with completing four books, I gave up. I have a few more on my to-read list for next year, so I'm not giving up altogether, but I guess I didn't too well with the selection. That, or maybe I'm just an unsophisticated American through and through and can't really appreciate translated works.

Read more . . .