Tin Cups and Peppermints

 

One of my favorite posts for Christmas, from 2011.

We arrived at this chapter of Little House on the Prairie the other night. As the chapter opens, Laura and Mary have been peering anxiously out the window for days. It's December and there has been no snow in Indian Territory. No snow of course, means no Santa. On top of that, all the rain has caused the creek to rise, and so their one Christmas guest, Mr. Edwards, won't be able to make it either. Pa brings in the Christmas turkey, but even the thought of such a fat turkey for Christmas dinner isn't enough to cheer up the little girls. Ma does let them hang up stockings, and Laura thinks her mother mentions something about white sugar as she drifts off to sleep.

The next morning, Laura is startled awake as Mr. Edwards comes in with a big bundle. He tells the girls he met Santa Claus in Independence, and Santa has asked him to fetch the gifts for the girls. After he tells the tale, the girls are allowed to look in their stockings. They both receive a tin cup, peppermint candy, cakes made with white sugar (and white flour), and a new penny.

"There never had been such a Christmas," Wilder writes.

After the girls thank Mr. Edwards ("and they meant it with all their hearts"), Pa silently shakes Mr. Edwards' hand. And shakes it again. And Laura observes how all of the adults seem to be on the verge of tears.

Yes, they are.

"we read fiction because it suggests that life has a shape"

Christmas came early this year. In early December, Libby informed me that I was head of the queue, for not one, but two new releases.

Nick Hornby’s Just Like You tells the story of an unlikely love affair between Lucy, a middle-aged single mum, and Joseph, a twentysomething aspiring DJ. It’s 2016, and the chatter is all Brexit. Everyone in her circle wants to stay with the EU. Everyone in his is looking for a way out: “Life hadn’t been fizzy for a while. It had been hard.” As the story unfolds, their resistance to the inevitable makes the ending even more rewarding. And even though life doesn’t feel bubbly these days, Hornby’s witty banter may leave you feeling a little lighter.

 A fan of Sue Miller since The Good Mother, I eagerly picked up (well, actually clicked on) her 2020 release, Monogamy. At first, Annie and Graham seem like an annoyingly cute couple straight out of a Nancy Meyers film. She's a locally known photographer. He owns a bookstore. However, they don’t remain picture-perfect for long. After Graham dies, Annie learns that he was having an affair. As we are all learning something about letting go this year, Miller gives us a multilayered approach to grief and all its manifestations. There's not one "right way" to be sad. 

Best of

I admit this year I was a bit overwhelmed scrolling through NPR’s Book Concierge. I was somewhat relieved to discover some of my favorite reads from 2020 when I paired “Book Club Ideas” with “Realistic Fiction.”

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

Caste by Isabel Wilkerson

Long Bright River by Liz Moore

If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha

Writers and Lovers by Lily King

 

And perhaps I’ve already found my next favorite reads for 2021 after adding “Seriously Great Writing.”

Wintering by Katherine May

The Voyage of the Morning Light by Marina Endicott

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

The Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet

Try these two additional lists for even more recommendations. 

The New Yorker: The Best Books We Read in 2020

The New York Times: Best Gifts for Book Lovers

“Never too late for an accounting"

When I was around 8, we went to see Mickey’s Christmas Carol at the movie theater. I'll never forget the chills I got watching the graveyard scene. Soon after, I would see the George C. Scott version on TV and marvel at the largesse of Christmas Present. With my kids, I would delight at the Muppet’s take. To this day, they still giggle at the memory of the scene when Rizzo kisses Gonzo.  

Of course, the classic story started as a book, which I first read in middle school and soon became an annual read. After discovering Samantha Silva’s novel Mr. Dickens and His Carol in 2018, I was in the mood for another modern adaptation of the familiar tale. It’s frightening how well Marley by Jon Clinch suits Christmas 2020.

As the title reveals, the action centers, not on Ebenezer Scrooge, but on his business partner Jacob Marley. Rather than appear as a ghost, Marley is all flesh and blood, motivated by greed and desire. Master of disguise and charm, he dupes everyone around him for the sake of building up his fortunes. The most nefarious part of the story is that Marley and Scrooge have built up their business by engaging in the transport of enslaved Africans to the Americas. Without giving too much away, Marley’s  penchant for the “knocking-shop” ends up being his demise, but not until after he literally gets away with murder.

If you need lighthearted fare this season, leave this one on the shelf. But if you want to dive into a world that may be even darker than our own, Marley deserves a chance.  Certainly, you’ll never see Marley’s chains the same way again.

Some Peril

 Recently, I came across my kids’ Christmas lists from 2011. My son was three at the time and my daughter was six. He was into books featuring Spiderman or Super Friends and loved Duplo Blocks. She couldn’t get enough of Disney fairy books and doll accessories for her knockoff American Girl doll. 

As they’ve grown up, holidays have become simpler and yet, more complicated. This year, my son wants to build his own computer. My daughter pines for some roller skates she saw on Instagram. They are sold out. Some peril is involved in deciding what to get her instead. 

One constant is that Santa will always bring them a book or two for their stocking. Even if they get cast aside on Christmas morning for shinier objects, they will eventually end up on their nightstands.

For the middle schooler:

Hannah Green and Her Unfeasibly Mundane Existence by Michael Marshall Smith

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet Book 1 by Ta-Nehisi Coates 

 

For the high schooler:

Watch Us Rise by Ellen Hagan and Renee Watson

American Street by Ibi Zoboi

“How often do you get to learn that lesson? That sometimes you just lose?”

 Looking for escapist fiction, while steering away from anything truly apocalyptic, can be a challenge these days. I haven’t connected with a lot of science fiction I’ve tried. And the same goes for romance (with the recent exception of books by her and her).  And finding fiction that checks both thought provoker and page turner is even harder. Enter Memorial by Bryan Washington.

Benson and Mike are a young couple living in Houston. The week Mike’s mother is expected for an extended visit from Japan, Mike tells Benson he’ll be flying to Japan to spend time with his dying father.

Told from both men’s perspective, Washington examines the work, sweat, and yes, tears, involved in keeping a relationship from floundering. Mike’s mother sums it up best when she says:

“I’m fluent in fine, Mitsuko says. Fine means f*cked.”

Read an excerpt published in the New Yorker here.

Gaslighting

Allie Lang, a single mother, lives contract to contract in her work as a celebrity ghostwriter. After her last project was scrapped due to the #metoo proclivities of its subject, she’s excited for her next assignment: a book on motherhood by emerging feminist icon Lana Breban. So begins Impersonation by Heidi Pitlor.

As the weeks pass, Lana refuses to share any personal memories of raising her son Norton.  So Allie begins drawing from her own experiences with breastfeeding, toddler tantrums, and thwarting gender stereotypes to pad the narrative. Lana is thrilled with these stories even as she continues to brush off Allie’s inquiries into her own mothering style.

While Lana has the luxury of stretching out the project, Allie struggles to make her rent, pay for a broken filling without insurance, and find a reliable babysitter she can afford.  Even though she signed a confidentiality agreement, Allie tells her mother about her latest project. Her mother, in turn, brags to a friend who ends up tweeting out her identity after the book is published.

Although she feels betrayed by Lana’s response to the brouhaha that ensues, Allie learns she must fight for the right to tell her own story. Not anyone else’s.

Fans of Pitlor’s The Daylight Marriage will relish the way similar themes of parenthood and codependency play out in a much happier ending.  

Faux-ingenuous

Whichever way the votes tally this week, we are still four years away from electing the first female president. 

In the alternate history Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld, we would, in 2020, be four years into the term of the first.

In this version of events,* Hillary and Bill still meet at Yale Law School. She’s charmed by his charisma, and they soon become a couple. Early on, she catches him kissing another woman, but they stay together. After graduation, they move to Arkansas together. She teaches at the law school, and he runs, and loses, his first campaign for office. When she realizes his dalliances have been ongoing, Hillary decides to move to Chicago without him.

“The margin between staying and leaving was so thin; really, it could have done either way.”

Fast forward two decades, Hillary is a law professor. After she hears Bill is going to run for president, she considers a run for Congress. Even though Carol Moseley Braun has a chance of becoming the first Black female Senator, Hillary decides to run against her in the primary. And wins.

“Some people who run for office want to create change, and some want everyone to fall in love with them.”

In this portrayal of Hillary, Sittenfeld gives us someone who wants both. 

* If you want to get into the nitty gritty of the plausibility of this universe, read this. 

Slade House

It’s hard to top the news for scares these days. But if you are looking for something to read while you hide out from the trick or treaters this weekend, here’s a look back to a post I wrote in 2016.

David Mitchell’s Slade House opens in 1979 in a voice reminiscent of characters from Mitchell's Black Swan Green. (This isn’t so bad, I thought.) Nathan and his mother have been invited by Lady Norah Grayer for an afternoon of music at her city residence Slade House. After some trouble finding the address, they step through an iron gate into a beautiful garden. Lady Norah’s brother Jonah befriends Nathan and they begin a game of chase around the house. After being frightened by a dog, Nathan runs inside and finds himself face-to-face of a portrait…of himself hanging on the wall. Nathan wakes up and finds himself with his father in Rhodesia. Has the previous scene been a dream? Or is this his dream now?

Mitchell keeps us guessing until the next section opens in 1988 when another unsuspecting guest of Slade House finds himself dreaming awake and sees his portrait on the stairs. Nine years later a group of college students in a paranormal society seek out the house hoping to find the guests who have disappeared in years past. They too meet their end at the hands of the crafty twins.

There is some comfort in the repetition. Upon meeting each new narrator, the reader expects he or she also will meet his or her demise.

Breathing a sigh of relief, we find the final narrator not at Slade House, but a local pub. She is meeting an informant who tells her the life histories of the Grayer twins. In true Mitchell fashion, we get an action-packed final section in which the twins’ weakened power is overrun by a time-traveling avenger.   

All in all, although there were a few hair-prickling scenes, I haven’t had nightmares and have had no trouble falling asleep. Though if someone invites me over for afternoon tea, I will be more than a little wary. 

Opportunity Hoarding

 Although I’m relieved to be finished with graduate school, I miss the commute to Seattle which gave me the opportunity to catch up on various podcasts. Of course, when I listen to a podcast, I want to read more about whatever topic may be covered whether it’s Dolly Parton, the history of slavery, Hallmark Christmas movies, or, in this case, white parents’ impact on public schools.  

Nice White Parents is the latest from Serial. Producer Chana Joffe-Walt put together this list of books she read while researching the series. For quick reference, I’ve also listed them below.

Turns out I also miss having access to the university library which might carry these titles. Instead, I’ve pestered my local library to add them to its collection. Maybe you’ll fare better at yours.

In the meantime, take a listen. 

White Kids by Margaret A. Hagerman

Despite the Best Intentions by Amanda E. Lewis and John B. Diamond

The Lost Education of Horace Tate by Vanessa Siddle Walker

Mothers of Massive Resistance by Elizabeth Gillespie McRae

Why Busing Failed by Matthew F. Delmont

Ghosts in the Schoolyard by Eve L. Ewing

Cutting School by Noliwe M. Rooks

Lighting up the screen

I’ve been looking forward to several recent page to screen adaptations and, so far, haven’t been disappointed. The Hate U Give does justice to the YA novel of the same name by Angie Thomas. Coming later this year to HBO is an adaptation of You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz called The Undoing (fans of Big Little Lies get excited). And I’m currently mesmerized by the performances of Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington in the Hulu series Little Fires Everywhere based on the book by Celeste. Ng.

Bill and Elena Richardson are raising four children in planned to perfection Shaker Heights, Ohio. Everything in Elena’s life appears to be going swimmingly:  successful husband, fulfilling career as a journalist for a small-town paper, and pride in her four above average children. Having inherited a small rental property in town that helps fund the family’s beach vacations, Elena also gets to play benevolent landlady. Her latest tenant is Mia Warren, a photographer who travels around the country seeking inspiration from each new locale.

Mia’s daughter Pearl soon becomes a fixture at the Richardson household, going shopping with the eldest Lexie, crushing on Trip, and hanging out with Moody. Meanwhile, the Richardson’s youngest daughter, Izzie, gravitates toward Mia as a role-model and, as a bonus, to piss off her mother.  

Although Ng explores a multitude of subplots, they all serve to coalesce around the dangers of best laid plans. Whether it is grappling with nascent mothering (unwanted pregnancies, infertility, surrogacy, adoption, abandonment) or adolescent parenting (curfews, friendship, rebellion, cynicism), Ng, like Mia, stages an intricate set of artifacts before burning it all down.

Banned Books Week

This week I look back at posts of books that were once banned. Click on the titles to read the original post.

Beloved

“He licked his lips. ‘Well, if you want my opinion-‘

‘I don’t,' She said. ‘I have my own.'”

Better Nate than Ever

“It turns out that custard can taste really, really depressing when you're not in the mood for it.”

George

“She’s always going on about how we’re not supposed to let people’s expectations limit our choices.”

The Giver

“Even trained for years as they all had been in precision of language, what words could you use which would give another the experience of sunshine?”

The Handmaid’s Tale

 “As the architects of Gilead knew, to institute an effective totalitarian system or indeed any system at all you must offer some benefits and freedoms, at least to a privileged few, in return for those you remove.”

 The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“It's strange because sometimes, I read a book, and I think I am the people in the book.”

Where there's smoke

 

With wildfires raging, the air quality has made it too dangerous to be outside. Luckily, I had picked up a second batch of books curbside before it all started. What better way to escape from the tragedies of reality than to dive into those of fiction?

Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano

A plane crashes. Only one young boy survives. As we watch Edward struggle with his recovery, newfound fame, and the pain of achieving milestones his older brother never will, we also live through the hours of the plane ride.  Intermittently, we meet some of his fellow passengers and slowly discover what went wrong that day. The suspense of this novel lies not only in the mundane minutes of the plane ride that lead up to the crash, but in those everyday moments in the years that follow when Edward begins to hurt a little bit less.

A Death in Harlem by Karla F.C. Holloway

This lyrically written mystery set in Harlem in the 1920s features Weldon Thomas. As the novel opens, Thomas, the area’s first Black police officer, is expecting a quiet night working a literary awards banquet. By the end of the evening, two women from different social classes end up dead. After some weeks pass without an investigation, the women of the community approach Thomas to look into the matter. In the end, he discovers not only the culprit, but a host of secrets that those with enough wealth can conceal.

Curbside

This week I went to the library for the first time since early March. This visit, as you might have expected, was a little different than usual. This was no spontaneous trip on my way home, but a scheduled appointment I made the day before. Instead of making a beeline to the new releases section, I sat in my car and waited for my order. Rather than perusing covers and reading plot summaries, I opted for the "Grab Bag (surprise me!)" option.   

Here’s what my local librarians picked out for me:

Big Lies in a Small Town by Diane Chamberlain

I probably wouldn’t have picked this book based on either the title or cover, so I was pleasantly surprised by both the unique story and character development. Anna is an artist chosen to paint a post office mural during  the early 1940s. Morgan is an art student chosen to restore the mural eight decades later. Despite their different circumstances, art becomes the outlet with which they wrestle with their personal demons.

Moral Compass by Danielle Steel

Despite, or perhaps to spite, her popularity, Danielle Steel hasn’t been an author I’ve ever read. Although I don’t regret the afternoon I spent with this book, I probably won’t seek out others she’s written unless I happen to be in an airport or doctor’s office waiting room.

Treason by Stuart Woods

I have to admit, I enjoyed the snappy dialogue. It was also mildly entertaining to read how one goes about buying a private jet. But the endless Caesar salad lunches and objectification of women got tiresome. By the third phone call (of roughly 300) in the novel, we understood it would be scrambled, but were told again anyway. 

"when things are sad and awful, crying is an appropriate response"

As one of the characters remarks in Goodbye for Now, “When things are sad and awful, crying is an appropriate response.” Turns out laughing is too. Two of Laurie Frankel’s novels will have you doing both.

Although I haven’t see it, apparently there’s a show on Prime that imagines a world in which life goes on in a digital afterlife. A similar premise is at work in Frankel’s Goodbye for Now. After Sam and Meredith are matched in an online dating program that Sam developed, their tenuous relationship is tested by the death of Meredith’s grandmother Livvie. To help Meredith through her grief, Sam develops a program that draws from Livvie’s digital footprint to generate and respond to emails and eventually simulates her video chatting. They develop the idea into a new venture they call RePose and, for a price, offer the service to others who have recently lost a loved one. (spoiler alert) When an unforeseen accident occurs, Sam discovers first-hand the comforts and caveats of his creation.

Although Frankel’s humor and spot-on dialogue are apparent in Goodbye, she kicks it up a notch in her subsequent novel This is How it Always Is (another winning pick of Reese’s book club). Rosie Walsh, a physician, and her husband Penn, a writer, have a house-full of boys. When she gets pregnant with their fifth child (“Are you Catholic?” friends ask), they hope for a girl. Instead, tumbling into their messy lives is Claude. Precocious, he announces at three that he wants to be a chef,  a scientist, an ice cream cone, and a girl. The transition takes some time, but eventually Claude becomes Poppy. 

When the family moves to Seattle, Rosie and Penn introduce their four sons and daughter to their new friends and neighbors. Entangled within the story is Penn’s fairy tale about a prince and a magical suit of armor through which he grapples with the life lessons his family is learning and re-learning about acceptance. Frankel, who draws from her own experience raising a transgender child, portrays in Rosie the tensions of feeling hopeful and anxious that every mother can instantly recognize as her own.

"rehearsing fake smiles before toothpaste-flecked mirrors"

With all the talk of back to school, I’ve almost forgotten it’s still summer. Normally, I would have posted a summer reading list or list of beach reads by now. Since this year has been anything but normal, I haven’t felt as motivated to do so.

But whether you’ve managed to find a beach, or are sticking with the couch, here are two books by Colson Whitehead that will transport you to a different time and place – the hallmark of any beach read, worth, well, its salt.

Sag Harbor 

It’s the summer of 1985. Benji has settled in for his stay at his family’s beach house in Sag Harbor. During the school, he's one of a few Black students at his private school in Manhattan. During the summer, he looks forward to, and at the same time has doubts about, fitting in to this summer community of African-American professionals established by his grandparents.  His ambitions –  meet a girl, get a job, and keep his affection for The Smiths to himself.  

During the week he and his brother are left to fend for themselves, only the threat of their parents’ arrival on Friday keeps the  house from sinking into total disrepair. Working at Burger King and the local ice cream shop keeps them stocked in Campbell’s and beer purchased by older cousins.  The weekends his parents do stay bring home-cooked meals, but also the tension of his parents’ troubling relationship.

The Underground Railroad 

That misperception you had in elementary school that the Underground Railroad was, like, a real train,  is brought to life in this novel. Cora, the protagonist, flees from the Georgia cotton plantation where she is enslaved via an underground train to the north. Each subsequent station offers the promise of freedom, but something nefarious is always lurking. It’s hard to tell which is more terrifying – the slave catcher Ridgeway or the well-meaning white people in power she encounters along the way.

radical amazement

Last week I finished up the course work for a Master’s degree in Pastoral Studies. Over three years I took classes in scripture, systemic and historical theology, pastoral skills, and worship and liturgy. I was blessed to take classes with professors and students from a variety of faith traditions. More importantly my conception of “God” expanded.

As did my bookshelves.

Although I have shelves full of many more titles (and notebooks with TBR titles scribbled in the margins), here are four that stood out during my time at Seattle University.

Models of God by Sallie McFague

“God is incarnated or embodied in our world, in both cosmological and anthropological ways. The implication of this picture is that we never meet God unmediated or unembodied.”

Radical Amazement by Judy Cannato

“Our vitality depends on the connections we establish and the communion we share.”

The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman

“The Hebrew Bible would offer an unparalleled source of solidarity and identity to countless communities in the centuries that followed. The details of its stories, drawn from a treasury of ancient memories, fragmentary histories, and rewritten legends, possessed power not as an objective chronicle of events in a tiny land on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean but as a timeless expression of what a people’s divine destiny might be.”

The Powers that Be by Walter Wink

“God at one and the same time upholds a given political or economic system, since some such system is required to support human life; condemns that system insofar as it is destructive of fully human life; and presses forth for its transformation into a more humane order. Conservatives stress the first, revolutionaries the second, reformers the third. The Christian is expected to hold together all three.”

Doing My Homework

I really haven’t known what to say. 

But that's the thing about white privilege that I'm beginning to understand. I haven't had to say anything. 

So I’ve been doing my homework: listening to and reading work from political and religious leaders and writers. And the plan for now is to do more reading and talking with my kids, praying, and offering financial support.

In looking for books about combating racism, I started here. The consensus of what to read first, from a variety of sources, seems to be White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo. I'll start there.  

“Close enough to hear the cameleers’ campfire snap”

“Well, then, that’s so. What we see with our hearts is often far truer than what we see with our eyes.” 

Lurie Mattie is an orphan.  While fleeing a marshal who has a warrant for his arrest, he hides himself among a group of soldiers traveling west with a herd of camels. Eventually he parts ways with this group but gains a new traveling companion in Burke. Theirs is a journey of rivers which Lurie chronicles by drops added to his canteen throughout the pages of Inland by Téa Obreht.

Meanwhile in the Arizona Territory, Nora and Emmett Lark have been trying to subsist on a desert homestead by running a community newspaper. They soon find themselves in the center of the controversy of where the county seat should be established.  As the day of this novel unfolds, Nora slowly realizes that her husband and sons have been caught up in the violence of this controversy. As she is trying to figure out their whereabouts, Nora is also desperately trying to find water as their household is literally down to the last dipperful. Adding to the chaos is the appearance of a mysterious beast which only the most unreliable members of her household have claimed to see.

Having just been charmed by Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife, I was delighted to find similar twists of magical realism, tenacity, and humor in her latest work. 

“ 'Where in all of Christendom did you get a camel?’ she said. ‘Texas.’ There was no truer answer.”

"this bearded, prophetic figure in sandals walks in"

Reading this article about Sesame Street, reminded me of this post I wrote back in 2016.

Taking on a new reading challenge this year found me in the biography section of our new library. Having just watched this movie with my kids, I was drawn to Jim Henson: The Biography by Brian Jay Jones. 

Starting with Henson's childhood, Jones illustrates both the nurturing influences of his fun-loving cast of extended relatives and the natural influences of a childhood spent exploring the creeks of Mississippi. An early fan of television, Henson soon sought out ways to appear on the small screen. He found an opening through puppetry and would spend the rest of his life fighting a reputation of being a children's performer.

Since I spent many of my own childhood afternoons watching repeats of this Muppet movie and introduced my own daughter to television with YouTube clips of this show, I was fascinated by reading the chapters outlining the debut of Miss Piggy’s karate chop and Fozzie’s bad stand-up jokes.

Even more striking, though, is the sheer amount of projects Henson was able to work on at one time. Although there are numerous accounts of Henson's gentle nature in directing these projects, Jones also points out Henson’s characteristic “whim of steel” that allowed many of his projects from The Muppet Show to Labyrinth to go forward.  

Fans of Fraggle Rock or The Dark Crystal will learn much about the script writing and creature crafting of these shows in reading this book. But they will also learn a lot about the determination, charisma, and joys of the man behind their creations.

Virtual Reality

When I was in middle school, all 8th graders were required to take a computer science class. At the beginning of every class the teacher would have us recite the history of computing with a chant.  I vaguely recall the lyrics including Babbage! and FORTRAN!  What I can’t forget is the enthusiasm of the teacher as she punctuated every lesson with a multitude of exclamation points and cheerleader-like excitement.

Something of that enthusiasm for learning is captured in The Unseen World by Liz Moore. Ada Sibelius is a precocious 12-year-old being raised by a single father who isn’t called Dad, but David. Each day, David and the homeschooled Ada go to the computer science lab he directs at the Boston Institute of Technology.  Her favorite parts of the day are when she gets to spend time on the lab’s key project, a chatbot program called ELIXIR. 

One Saturday, Ada wakes to find her father missing. When he reappears late the next day, Ada begins to suspect something is wrong with his memory. Enlisting the help of David’s colleague Liston, Ada concedes that he may more need care than she can provide. Just before he’s placed in a care facility, he hands her a floppy disk that contains a puzzle for her to solve.

Two decades later, we see the adult Ada preparing to meet with investors to demonstrate a virtual reality headset she has helped develop. As she tries to escape her present, she delves deeper into her past, finally cracking the code her father left for her to figure out his true identity – and hers.

Fans of Wrinkle in Time and Anastasia Krupnik will find that Moore’s characters embody the awkwardness of adolescence and the magic of discovery. She also conveys the pain of trying to remain true to one’s identity when the world hasn’t quite caught up as well as the elixir of escaping reality that is all too tempting.

Don’t be too alarmed if when you reach the book’s satisfying conclusion, you find yourself cheering…Gimme an A! Gimme a D! Gimme an A! ADA!

Julie and Julia - Reread

Reorganizing the bookshelves, as one is wont to do in times of crisis, I came across Julie and Julia. It's just the thing for vicarious cooking (and cleaning up), especially when the stores are still out of flour. Haven't checked on the whole marrow bone thing.

The following is a repost from 2009.

“Sometimes I just made stuff up.” Despite the disclaimer on page one, Julie Powell serves up a humorous account of her attempt to follow all the recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child. Faced with conception complications at home and the endless files to be copied at work, she began the cooking project (and blog documenting the project) in August of 2002. Interspersed throughout the book version are imaginary scenes between Julia and Paul Child. I skimmed these for the most part to get back to the meatier narrative.

Powell recounts her successes – skinning a duck and flipping a flawless crepe - but more entertaining are her mess ups – one memorable description likens her homemade ladyfingers to “so many sunk mastodons” in a “tar pit” of caramelized sugar. She also relates how she connected with her blog readers with proficient swearing and as ifs which resulted in donations of funds and jars of her favorite salsa. You might recoil with her in the discovery of a maggot colony under the drainer, but you’ll marvel at her chutzpah at leaving an offering of butter at the Julia Child exhibit at the Smithsonian.

 If you missed the blog, then read the book. If you missed the book, there’s always the Nora Ephron movie.

The book by Julie Powell is called Julie and Julia: 365 days, 524 recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen: How One Girl Risked Her Marriage, Her Job, and Her Sanity to Master the Art of Living.

Reprieve from Real Life

This is not the time for Station Eleven or The Road. Nor should you pick up The Stand or, heaven forbid, One Second After. However, if you must go there, go here.

For me, turning off the news and escaping into fiction has done wonders for my mental health – and probably irreversible damage to my back.

Before turning to this week’s list of recommendations of escape fiction, I’d like to give a shout out to Libby. Since my Kindle seems to be on the fritz, I’ve relied on her more and more to access free books from the library.

Some are light-hearted, a few are well-written, but in all of them you’ll notice the absence of social distancing and the novelty of well, going places. Best of all, they offer a short reprieve from real life.

Maybe in a Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Waiting for Tom Hanks by Kerry Winfrey

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

The Confession Club by Elizabeth Berg

The Gifted School by Bruce Holsinger

Some Luck by Jane Smiley

The Dutch House by Anne Patchett

The Third Wife by Lisa Jewell

Will you be mine?

You know that feeling? Butterflies in the gut excited feeling. Counting down the minutes until the next meeting feeling. Time stopping in the moment when you are together feeling. That staying up until all hours of the night replaying key moments feeling.

Even though it’s Valentine’s Day, I’m not talking about that feeling.In this case, it's the feeling of discovering a new author.  

A few weeks ago, I stumbled across a book called 26a by Diana Evans when I was scrolling through Libby looking for that little sticker they put on the covers of award winning books.

From the first pages, I was hooked. Not only on the story of growing up in eighties England, but on Evans’ style. The description of twins Georgia and Bessi’s birth likened to roadkill (as weird as that may sound) is gorgeously brutal. The trauma of this beginning foreshadows later moments of darkness. Unfortunately, it’s a darkness that in the end proves unbearable for at least one of the characters. And more poignant when you learn some of Evans’ own story.

I’ve just picked up Evans’ 2018 work – Ordinary People. And haven’t yet been disappointed. Where the focus of 26a was from the perspective of the kids, this novel looks at life from the standpoint of the parents. In chapter two, a wife asks her husband if he’s seen a purple fitted sheet. This seemingly mundane exchange manages to capture perfectly the dissatisfaction both partners are feeling in their relationship. 

Forget chocolate and roses. My heart rests in the pages of a decadently written book. 

Know Thyself

In various social circles recently, self-help books abound.

Over Christmas, my sister wanted to talk about love languages. For me, I totally swoon over acts of service. Yes, you can say "I love you" through doing the laundry.  

The Five Languages by Gary Chapman

In my graduate class, everyone was comparing enneagram numbers. Just from the title alone, I'd say I'm a 9 - "The Peacemaker."   

The Wisdom of the Enneagram by Don Richard Riso

At work, we were all encouraged to take the Clifton StrengthsFinder test. Turns out my top five themes are: Harmony, Intellection, Connectedness, Learner, and Developer.  

Living Your Strengths by Winseman, Clifton, and Liesveld 

What does all this tell me? Something I already knew...

I like to read.