Sunday Salon: Reading in recovery

It's a gorgeous Sunday afternoon here in Oregon, the crocuses are in full bloom, the trees are budding, and part of me yearns to frolic in the fresh air. Unfortunately, that part of me is unequivocally connected to the rest of me, which is recovering from a flu-ish thing that rendered me immobile Thursday and much of Friday. I feel okay now, as long as I don't eat too much or too fast, or think too hard about vigorous things such as mopping the floor.

While I was sick, I got caught up on blogs for the first time since summer! And, by caught up, I mean I only have 1500 unread messages in my feed reader. (Don't worry: it makes sense to me).

I also finished reading Adele Barker's memoir, Not Quite Paradise: An American Sojourn in Sri Lanka. I was really excited to read this because I've had a couple of friends who were raised in Sri Lanka, and I was eager to learn more about their homeland. I did learn a lot, and enjoyed reading about Barker and her son's adjustment to life on the island. The book dragged for me in the middle, though. And, Barker had a habit of randomly switching tenses that mystified me, causing me to have to reread sections to try to figure out whether it was me missing some subtle purpose behind the tense change, or the author missing the not-so-subtle purpose behind generally sticking to either past tense or present when writing a memoir. So, this turned out to be one of those, "Glad I read it; glad I'm done with it" reads. (LibraryThing sent me this book and the next one as part of their Early Reviewers program).

With that finished, I turned to something lighter (I thought): a YA book that's coming out this June called The Secret to Lying, by Todd Mitchell. I'm going to review this one more fully when I have more time to put into it, but suffice it to say: Todd Mitchell has earned himself a new fan.

It took me a while to warm up to The Secret to Lying. It's John Green's fault--the set-up was too reminiscent of the set-up to the delightful Looking for Alaska. This is a completely different book, though, especially after the first few chapters, and by the end, I loved it (dare I say it?) more than either of the John Green books I've read. I'd better stop before I end up writing the whole review right here and now. Can not wait to share my thoughts on this one. Todd Mitchell, come visit Portland. I want to shake your hand.

And now, I'm reading Generation Text, written by psychologist Michael Osit, about raising kids in this digital era. The potential impact of current technology and expectations on our children is well-researched by Dr. Osit, and eye-opening. Though this book came out in 2008, this is the perfect time for me to be reading it as my oldest just got his first cell phone last month. I'm glad to have Dr. Osit's insights for guidance as we tread this new territory as a family. (I think I found this one on the new books shelf of the library).

Whether you're reading in sunshine, snow, or rain, I hope you're having a relaxing Sunday!

Books to Drool Over: The Pioneer Woman Cooks

The recipes in the The Pioneer Woman Cooks look pretty good, but to me they're secondary to the rest of the book. The magic is in the photos (all taken by the author) and the stories behind them.

Ree Drummond was a city girl who fell in love with a cowboy and moved to his family ranch, where she now homeschools their four children and takes gorgeous photos of her family and friends. Her cookbook includes photo essays on the horses, the men who work the cattle, and the women who keep each other company out on the lonely plains. I like to think of Ree as living my alternate universe life--you know, the one I'd be living had my dear one been the type to major in Ag Sci in college instead of Art History? The cookbook, and her blog The Pioneer Woman, allow me to visit that alternate universe for a few minutes at a time, without having to get all muddy.

But, what about the recipes? They strike a balance in style, between Drummond's meat-and-potatoes husband and her oh-how-I-miss-sushi-takeout self, and they look delicious. She also generally cooks with a lot of butter and cream. As in, she probably uses more in one day than I use in a week. A week in which I baked a batch of cookies, even.

So, I'll have to adapt her recipes to my family's lifestyle, which doesn't involve roping cattle or building fences, much. I haven't gotten around to doing that yet (adapting the recipes, that is. Although the same could be said for building fences) but I loved the book regardless, for its personal touch and its straightforward portrayal of modern ranching life.

Find more Weekend Cooking posts at Beth Fish Reads

Four books I wish I'd loved (mini-reviews)

I was looking forward to reading Where the God of Love Hangs Out because Amy Bloom writes beautifully, but her Away didn't appeal to me. Unfortunately, she's now 0 for 2 with me. Again, the writing is lovely. And again, the storyline (or lines, in this case, as this is a sort of half collection of short stories, half novella) pushed me away when characters took off in directions I just didn't get. Several connected stories trace the path of an ongoing affair between two married friends; another group of stories follow the relationship with a woman and her stepson that inexplicably veers into inappropriate territory and never finds its way back. I think I know where she was going with these, but she left me behind. (LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program sent me this)

Start off with a self-centered character with a chip on her shoulder. Have the character announce her big plan to her family over Christmas--a plan that is about as mature and well-thought out as a 6-year-old's plan to run away from home, and that involves disrupting the life of her 16-year-old niece/daughter. The family is shocked and angry, the issue is discussed between every possible pairing of family members with the exception of the neice/daughter. Though she's supposed to be the key to the plot, the teen floats through the book cheerfully saying hi to everyone and pointing out cute jeans in magazines. She doesn't seem to have much of a relationship with anyone in the book, least of all her aunt/mother who wants to take her home with her. Toss in a quick semi-romance for the heck of it, and there you have it. (Another book from LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program)

The Ice Chorus follows Liselle as she retreats from her marriage (destroyed while she cheated on her husband with a painter named Charlie) and her son (equally destroyed, and refusing to speak to her) to a cottage in an Irish fishing village. I enjoyed the village and the stories of the people she met and interviewed there. I only wish the aspects of the story that moved beyond the romance-from-afar --and there were many-- had developed into the main focus of the story, because the flashbacks to the romance with Charlie did nothing to convince me that the man was worth waiting for. I didn't like him, and I didn't like Liselle when she was with him. I had a hard time empathizing with her pain over her son not talking to her, given how she'd handled the end of her marriage. As she waited in the cute fishing village for Charlie to show up, my greatest hope for her was that he wouldn't show, and that she would grow enough through her experiences there to decide she didn't need him after all. (Author Sarah Stonich sent me this book).

This is a classic case of a book coming too highly recommended. The blogger-types, they adore Beth Kephart. And after so much gushing, I expected Nothing But Ghosts to blow me away. And, it was . . . fine.

Fine was not the reaction I was hoping for.

I put off reviewing it for a couple of months, in hopes that its brilliance would reach me through osmosis if it sat next to my bedside table long enough. The result was that I forgot what it was about and had to read all the reviews I could handle (oh, the gushing!) to remind myself. I now remember the plot, but I can't remember why Katie didn't especially grab me, why her grief over her dead mom didn't tear me up even a little, why Kephart's words didn't leap off the page straight into my heart. Just that they didn't, and I wish they had (I bought this book at A Children's Place bookstore).

Diversity Roll Call: Magazines & Lit Journals

I was at the salon the other day without a book (what was I thinking?). I ended up perusing a few magazines while waiting for my hairdresser to work her magic on me, and--

By the way, is it my imagination, or has Cosmo changed a lot since the eighties? Because I could swear there used to be an occasional issue that didn't read like the Kama Sutra.

--Wait, that's not where I was going with this. Focus, Ali.

In these days of controversy over "whitewashing" in the publishing industry, I looked at the magazines at the salon from a different perspective. I know some magazines target people of certain ethnicities or hues, but is there such a thing as a truly diverse magazine? Or one that at least aims in that direction? What about The New Yorker, does it aim for diversity? (I'll admit, I wouldn't know. I still haven't gotten past my childhood resentment at all those New Yorkers in waiting rooms and on airplanes, full of cartoons that weren't remotely funny. The nerve!).

So, your assignment is to do one of the following sometime in the next couple of weeks or so:

1) Take a look at the magazines or literary journals you read. If you don't read them, pick one up from the library just for the heck of it. Look at the ads, the photo spreads, the authors and subjects of the articles. Do people of color exist in the world this publication presents to its readers? How about gays, lesbians, or people with physical differences?

2) Do you know of a magazine or journal that does embrace diversity? Be it high brow or low brow, tell us about it. If you don't know of any, do a little digging. They've got to be out there.

To participate in this Diversity Roll Call, co-hosted by Susan of Color Online and myself, please add a link directly to your post.

Last Night I Sang to the Monster--Benjamin Alire Saenz (book review)

The second I read Doret's review of this 2009 YA novel about a troubled 18-year-old young man in alcohol rehab, I knew I had to get my hands on it. My library was, as usual, happy to oblige. Thanks, library!

It wasn't quite what I expected, in some ways it was better. It took me a few chapters to adjust to the voice, there's a lot of repetition of particular phrases ("that tears me up," "I'm wigging out" and lots of talk about God writing words on people's hearts) and it drove me a little nuts in the beginning, seeming like an attempt to mimic/update Holden Caulfield's voice from The Catcher in the Rye. It's not. Saenz makes his purpose clear as Zach begins working on owning his feelings instead of using catch phrases to distance himself from them.

I also didn't expect Zach to be the only teen character. His high school friends are all in the past and only mentioned briefly. His cohorts at the rehab center are all older. These characters are so richly drawn, providing a deep background for Zach's journey from numb denial to a young man ready to remember his past so he can move forward into his future. Even the tree has personality. I'll let that tree, and Zach's 53-year-old roommate, Rafael, have the last word:

"See that tree?" It was a stubby cypress tree, all bent and twisted.

"Yeah, I see it."

"It's my favorite tree."

"It's not that great a tree," I said.

"That's it. That's exactly it. It's like me. The wind beat the holy crap out of it when it was just a sapling. Never could straighten itself out again." He sort of smiled at me. "But, Zach, it didn't die." He looked like maybe he wanted to cry. But he didn't. "It's alive."

"Maybe it should have just given up."

"That tree didn't know how to do that. It only knew how to live. Crooked. Bent. Taller trees dwarfing it even more. It just wanted to live. I named it, you know?"

He was waiting for me to ask what he'd named it--but I decided I didn't want to ask.

"Zach," he whispered. "The tree's name is Zach."[p. 135]

Diversity Roll Call: Paradigm Shift

It's time for another Diversity Roll Call, this time hosted at Color Online.

Have you ever read a book and the character's perspective opened you to ideas, beliefs or realities that you had never considered? Tell us a about a work or an author whose body of work changed how you looked at the world, others or yourself. Have you ever read a book and had a paradigm shift because of it?

The first book that came to mind was Roots. Slavery was an abstract concept to me before I read it, as a teen. Despite controversies about Haley's genealogical methodology, he did put a face on the victims of and participants in slavery for me. But I wouldn't call that a paradigm shift, exactly. I ended up in the same place I'd started, just with a deeper understanding.

Black Like Me was another thing entirely.

In 1959, in an attempt to overcome his inability to understand the black experience, John Howard Griffin underwent a medical procedure to darken his skin pigment so that strangers perceived him as a black man. Black Like Me is the memoir describing his experiences in different parts of the U.S., when transformed into a dark-skinned man.

When I think about it now, the impact of this book disturbs me. People experienced blatant racism every day in 1959. Why would it take a white man with dark skin to convince anyone (Griffin included) of the extent to which racism existed? Does he somehow have more authority on the matter, after a brief experiment, than any black person would have after a lifetime? And if not, why was this book considered so groundbreaking?

But at the age that I read it (probably 18 or 19), the concept of race as a human construct was new to me. I had so many assumptions that I wasn't aware of, including the idea that people were inherently different from each other based on race. Not in any specific way I could have pinpointed, certainly not inferior or deserving of disdain. But the fact that the same person could have such entirely different experiences of life due to others' perceptions of them? Blew my mind.

That's when I first questioned my own conceptions of people. Sure, I was nice to everyone. I did have fairly diverse friends, for a middle class girl who spent most of her childhood in a 95% white city. But were there subtle differences in how I connected to people, based on my assumptions about their racial or ethnic background?

The answer is such an obvious yes to me, two decades later, that it's hard to convey the impact of asking the question for the first time. It's a question I hope I never stop asking myself.

Would you like to participate in Diversity Roll Call this week? I hope you'll head on over to Color Online and add your link. Got a question or topic related to diversity you'd like to see here? Suggestions are welcomed with open arms, you can send them to Susan or to me at Worducopia-at-gmail-dot-com.

Short Story Mondays: A Choice of Accommodations

Source: Unaccustomed Earth (Jhumpa Lahiri,2006)
Date read: 1/10 (#7)
Briefly: A young married couple tries to rekindle their relationship at the wedding of his former crush.

Afterthoughts: I listened to the audio version of this, which means I turned it on in my car when I was driving without my kids. At this rate it takes several weeks to finish a story--not the ideal listening scenario. Despite this, and despite the fact that Lahiri bounces through a series of flashbacks and summaries of previous events, Amit and Megan's story drew me back in every single time, and stuck with me long after it was done.

Lahiri is well known for bringing the East Indian-American experience to readers. A Choice of Accommodations is written from the point of view of an Indian-American character, but the character's ethnicity is secondary. This is a day-in-the-life-of-a-marriage story that transcends cultural differences.

Amit and Megan's young daughters never make an appearance in the story, and yet they are extremely present. In one section, Amit makes the social blunder of mentioning to another wedding guest that his marriage "disappeared" when their second daughter was born. He recalls how time alone became so precious to each of them during that overwhelming time, that it was coveted and nurtured far more than time as a couple. This has led this couple to where they are today--a weekend getaway, hoping to rediscover themselves individually and as a couple. Minor disasters ensue. Can this marriage be saved?