Books, For Small Hands, Eyes

When I married David I inherited nine nieces and nephews, now there are ten of them under the age of ten and.  I have become the unavoidable cruel aunt who gives books for presents.  Because she doesn't think you need anymore plastic that can splinter and lodge in anyone's septum, because she doesn't believe in electronics for children and because she loves books more than most other things.  Because she is so so sad that the nieces are too old to get Miss Rumphius, the Lupine Lady and that no one ever bought it for them when they were small so that they would know that the greatest thing you can do is plant lupines and live near the sea, better if you can do it in Maine (this is a fact).   I have to keep a running list so I don't get Grandfather Twilight for the same child for two occasions in a row

Two of the nephews are turning four this summer and I think they need some books about the sea and the summer.  Maybe because I'm feeling deprived with no time at the sea, the boys are getting books of boats, and sand and water and old men who live by the sea and keep boats patched.  Books of water colours.

Burt Dow, Deep-Water Man By Robert McCloskey

 

 

 

Time of Wonder By Robert McCloskey

 

 

All the World By Liz Garton Scanlon

Reading

Last week I didn't write anything here.  I wrote cover letters and emailed responses to apartment listings.  I scoured the interwebs for jobs in Washington that might point me toward a career instead of another way to kill a couple of years (anyone remember my brief stint as the front desk girl at a Days Inn?)

I also read the Slaughter article and am still reading Mommy Wars.  I thought a lot about what it means to be a woman in the workforce and what it means to be a woman who wants to have a lot of kids and be a mom like my mom was and still have a professional life.  It seems like this is an intractable problem and that no matter how mean we are to each other it will be an issue.  There isn't a two cent fix or we would have fixed it.

All of which is to say that I have been absent.  I'm back though.

And you are welcome for the bad cell phone picture of my knees.  It's what my weekend/week looked like.  Sometimes there was a baby.

Summer Reading

My reading goes through fits and starts.  I read twelve books in three weeks then don't read at all for a month and a half.  Summer reading time is upon me though and I'm planning on rereading a few of my favourites.  Alice McDermott because she writes the most lovely things; Alice Walker because it reminds me of my year abroad when I read everything she'd written in six weeks and sobbed the whole time; and Jo Ann Beard because she has a new one I haven't yet read and she has that awesome Iowa vibe I love so hard.  Something about summer makes me want to keep the reading fiction and female.  What are you reading? Anything amazing?

 “I suppose I've never set out to write a novel in which nothing happens . . . only to write a novel about the lives of certain characters. That nothing 'happens' in their lives is beside the point to me; I'm still interested in how they live, and think, and speak, and make some sense of their own experience. Incident (in novels and in life) is momentary, and temporary, but the memory of an incident, the story told about it, the meaning it takes on or loses over time, is lifelong and fluid, and that's what interests me and what I hope will prove interesting to readers. We're deluged with stories of things that have happened, events, circumstances, actions, etc. We need some stories that reveal how we think and feel and hope and dream. ”  - Alice McDermott (because she will always be my favourite)

 A.  Charming Billy
B. The Boys of My Youth
C. The Way Forward is With a Broken Heart
D. The Dud Avocado

What Are You Reading?

I feel like I always have a stack of things I'm sort of but not really reading on my nightstand. Here are the three I'm actually excited about right now:

La Perdida by Jessica Abel

I was reading (and not really enjoying) Watchmen the other day and my boss brought this out and recommended it and I really am enjoying it. It's no Epileptic but it's pretty rad.

Everything We Love Can Be Saved by Alice Walker

I remember reading The Way Forward is with a Broken Heart in college and it rocking my world. I adored it. I read eight Alice Walker books in a row and never was quite so blown away. So far I like this one but it's early days yet.

What's the Matter with Kansas? By Thomas Frank

David is reading this now so it's not actually on my bedside table but on his. It sounds like intellectual honesty isn't so important to this dude but it's a very interesting topic.

What are you reading? I need some recommendations.

Summer Reading

A couple of weeks ago David and I went to the library sale and came home with three backs full of books. I'm attempting to make a serious dent in the gazillions of books hanging around the house unread. I found gorgeous copies of Women On War, Edited by Daniela Gioseffi and Male and Female, By Margaret Mead that will fill my quota of non-fiction. After hearing this, I think it's time to revisit My Antonia By Willa Cather. I was mad about it when I was twelve so in theory it will be twelve years better. The Golden Notebook, By Doris Lessing has been kicking around our flat for a while and I loved her short stories. Miami, By Joan Didion has been on my bedside table since we moved a year ago and I've reread the first chapter like eight times. This summer it will happen. Fast Food Nation, By Eric Schlosser and Primary Colours have also been on my To-Read list for way to long. This summer baby this summer.

Summer Reading

I'm threatening (myself not my work) with my two weeks notice and am leaving Mississippi for the summer within a month (HURRAH!) so I'm thinking summery thoughts and from thence has come the summer reading list. My favourite thing in the universe is to go to Wonder Book in Hagerstown and buying bags full of books for five dollars (somehow when a book only costs ten cents you will buy a much more varied selection) so I'm sure there will much more read this summer but this is somewhere to start.

A) Happens Every Day by Isabel Gillies is apparently wonderful, there was an excerpt in Vogue and everyone from my favourite NPR reviewers to Elle Magazine loved it. The fact that Gillies isn't a writer is suppose to be a benefit but we shall see (this coming from someone who read Tori Spelling's book so take it for what its worth).

B) Jill and the Perfect Pony and other Jill Crew books by Ruby Ferguson. My mum read these as a child and I picked up the torch pretty early, Mum bought me the whole set for my graduation last year. Superficially they are about horses but really they are about being keen and enthusiastic and the importance of white-wash and bucking up and making do. All of which seems rather pertinent right about now.

C) The Ambassadors by Henry James seems like something one ought to read and every summer I attempt an 'ought to' especially since avoiding complete brain atrophy seems essential post college. I heard one of my favourite authors Ann Patchett speak this past weekend at the Southern Literature Festival in Jackson and she said Henry James is "life ruiningly wonderful" which I thought was pretty groovy, listen to her talk about it on NPR here.

D) The Thin Place By Katheryn Davis was called a "brilliant, peculiar book" by the New Yorker which is enough for me. Read the wee reviews here.

E) The Drunk Driver Has the Right of Way by Ethan Coen of film fame. While Coen's poems will not be taught at my alma mater any time soon, I think they are kind of fun and who doesn't want to read a limerick involving "a well-endowed rhinoceros making love to a Sherman tank"

F) Bangkok 8 by John Burndett because no summer reading list would be complete without a book about a dead marine in Bangkok and some exciting police espionage. Yes. Thank you.

E) Serve the People By Jen Lin-Liu. There are only so many times you can read Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto and I have an obsessive need to read about noodles and dumplings.


As I write this I am working in the back garden and it's finally cooled down, it was 98 at lunch. Maybe Mississippi isn't so bad...