Constance Reader Writes Her Own Story

Book review: Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

2012-05-17T18:49:00.004-07:00

At the end of Wolf Hall, Henry VIII has finally claimed Anne Boleyn as his wife after spending seven years fighting for her hand. At the start of Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel's followup novel, Henry has already tired of Anne and set his sights on another. The breakneck reversal, the shocking abruptness of his passions, serve to highlight the dangerousness and unsettledness of Henry's reign, in which the lives of peasants and nobles alike can be thrown into a tailspin depending on the whims of the king.

Henry is a man of juxtapositions. He is described as a big man, larger than life, untouchable, but in a jousting scene that takes a wrong turn, it becomes hideously apparent (as the Boleyns prematurely celebrate) how small and fragile he is, and how so much depends on him. He is arguably the most powerful man in the world, with the ability to tear apart the Church, break holy vows, change natural-born children into bastards and separate men from their heads. And yet he has somehow found himself bewitched by Anne Boleyn, a woman of no especially great beauty or breeding.

Henry also has the power to raise even the most baseborn of men to the greatest heights: one of these is the King's Secretary, Thomas Cromwell. Like his master, he is a study in opposites. As a boy Cromwell was the slumborn son of a blacksmith father; as a man, he holds the key to Henry and his kingdom. He has a reputation for being ruthless and cold, but opens his home to orphaned children in memory of his dead daughters. He's the man who who who never loses his cool, even in his own thoughts, . He is lightfooted as a boxer and yet, the engine that drives the kingdom forward.

Mantel understands Cromwell so well, his impossible position, and that is the beauty of the story. He must protect the realm by protecting the king from himself. He steer the king toward the right decision subtly enough so that he will not notice he's being pushed. To do this, Cromwell draws on everything in his past--his poor childhood, his military service, his time in the household of great European lords, his diplomatic training--all to manage the whims and caprices of one man. Much of the story's narrative takes place in his mind as most of the dramatic satisfaction comes from watching him untangle these knots and tie new ones.

Cromwell is the most finely drawn and entertaining character--if this was a sitcom, the audience would hoot and clap when he walked on set--but all of the characters are really well done and juicily complex. Mantel never resorts to shorthand, and so sweet, put-aside Queen Katherine has a surprising backbone of steel and sharp Anne Boleyn is soft and girlish and pitiable by spells. I am interested to see what Mantel does with pasty, virginal Jane Seymour, who is just rising to power as Bodies comes to its bloody close. She has already hinted at depths of cunning behind that placid mask.

This isn't the most engrossing book I've ever read about the Tudors, nor the most gripping or most fantastically but entertainingly historically inaccurate (Philippa GREGORY), but it is the most comfortable and the most relateable in that you feel a sense of timeliness and immediacy that's usually lacking in books about a time so different from our own. The takeaway is clear: Cromwell was a man before his time.

Mantel writes in an author's note at the end of the book that she's not done with Cromwell's story yet. I'm glad. It's a long way from where Cromwell is at the end of Bodies, on top of the world, to where he ends up. And I can't wait to go inside his head as the long fall happens.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

The moral of the story is do everything the opposite of me

2012-05-17T07:21:00.005-07:00

About a month ago, my blog domain expired. It happened totally without warning, which actually means that after it all happened, I found approximately nine warning emails deep in my spam folder telling me that this would happen and exactly what the consequences would be if I let it. Oops.

The blog was down for weeks while I made a ton of calls and paid exorbitant sums to keep my site from going up for auction. When it was finally back up, a bunch of CR content was missing. Luckily, I had backed everything up and could reupload. Things are just getting back to normal around here. (They could have a lot sooner but I kind of made like an ostrich and hid my head in the sand because messing around with computers makes my heart want to explode).

Baby Lulu thinks computers are DELICIOUS.

Anyway! Your patience is appreciated. I'll be back later tonight or tomorrow with some actual content so, hurrah! Thanks for sticking with me. :)

Now go backup everything you've ever written on your hard drive somewhere.

What I read: Thoughts on the A Song of Ice and Fire series so far

2012-04-25T10:42:00.002-07:00

Things have been a little quieter than normal around here in the past week or two. This is a lot because we've been traveling but a little because I have been pretty exclusively reading George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series for the past two weeks, and reading it so voraciously that I have very little time for anything else (like blogging) (or showering).

At first, I was a little hesitant as to whether I should read the books because I am enjoying the HBO series so much, and the TV series follows the books so closely, and I didn't want to spoil myself. I posted my dilemma on Facebook, and got an overwhelming response to go ahead and read. But I thought I would share the comment I got from Eli (famed writer of the blog Need More Shelves) because it was the one that swayed me in the end and also includes some really good advice:

I've been told that the series has made a decision not to follow the books exactly - my guess is that way they can split things up and make more seasons while waiting for the final books to be written! I've finished through book #4, but am waiting to read #5 until the next one comes out (This is on the advice of my husband, who says the cliffhanger of #5 really stinks...)

I am in the middle of A Storm of Swords (the third book) now, and I have to say that I am really glad I went for it because though the TV show is pretty great, it comes nowhere near being able to convey the level of detail and the richness of the books. I always think of myself as a imaginative person, but reading the series has really pointed out the limits of my creativity. Once upon a time, I had a friend tell me that every night before she went to sleep, she would lie in bed and dream up this imaginary world in minute detail, down to the architecture of the buildings and what the currency looked like. I tried it a few times, but was never quite able to do it in that level of detail. I could never create the kind of fully developed world that Martin has created if I had a million nights of insomnia in a row. It is incredible! You get the feeling that he must live in his world part of the year, like people who summer in Florida.

Other thoughts:

My thoughts on the Stark family have changed since I've started the books. In the show I bought into the whole honor and duty thing; now, in the words of Spaceballs, I am beginning to think that "good is dumb."
I worry that Martin is going to die before he finishes the series because of the sheer time it takes him to write each book. I hope he has left detailed notes somewhere on how everything turns out, just in case. I think when you are the writer of a complicated and beloved series like this, you have a duty to your readers do this, no matter your age or health, because who knows? A piano could fall on your head tomorrow.
In case you are wondering, my favorite character is the eunuch Varys, just because I have no idea of his motivations and loyalties, and I look forward to finding out.
The scenes of the Night's Watch beyond the Wall are creeping me out so bad that last night I couldn't get out of bed to shut the window because I was sure an icy hand was going to reach through the screen and grab me. So I shivered all night in my cold room.

I am going to take a brief break from the series just because I don't want to finish it too quickly, and also because I have review copies piling up, waiting to be read, but in the meantime, I would love to talk more about it. Have you read the books? What are your thoughts on them? Can we dork out over this a little, please?

P.S.: I wanted to add that I DID draw the winners for the April books giveaway on Monday, I just forgot to post them! Oops! Congrats are in order for Tedious and Brief, who won the copy of Death Comes to Pemberley, and Kristen K., who won Girl Hunter. Thanks to all who entered. Stay tuned for another go round in May.

Lu's best friend

2012-04-23T15:05:00.000-07:00

"My little dog – a heartbeat at my feet." -Edith Wharton

Books we love: Guest post by Literary Lindsey

2012-04-19T08:37:00.000-07:00

Today's Books we love is a guest post written by the amazing Literary Lindsey, a wife, mother, and Jersey Shore girl reading as many books as she can. She has titled her post today "From Aunt Ashley with Love," and after reading (and laughing!), I kind of want to write a companion piece called, "Girl, I Feel You, My Sister is Like This, Too." (But I wouldn't have it any other way.)

Check out Lindsey's blog at www.literarylindsey.blogspot.com. It's one of my faves!
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Do you have a sister whom you adore? Do you have the sort of relationship where you enjoy playing pranks on your sister or intentionally grossing them out because it is fun? Do you have a sibling with whom you have an extensive list of inside jokes? Allow me to introduce you to my sister Ashley. She will soon be returning from a semester in Kenya, because she is an International Relations major and the sort of cool person who jets off to Africa for a few months.

Ashley is 4 years younger than I am. When my son David was born, Ashley quickly established what sort of aunt she intended to be: the kind that buys books that will drive her sister crazy.

Book #1: Feet Are Neat

I hate feet. They gross me out. I just do not have any desire to look at your feet. I generally try not to pay too much attention to mine, either. So, naturally, this is one of the first books purchased for my precious baby boy.

We read a lot about feet in David’s first few years of life. I tried not to think about it too much. Feet are not neat, Aunt Ashley!

Book #2: Dinosaurs Love Underpants by Claire Freedman and Ben Cort

David loves underwear – the choosing of it, the concept of it, and running around the house wearing nothing but underwear. Did we need a book where dinosaurs fight to the death in order to lay claim to the beautiful gift of underwear? Maybe not. Do we have one? Oh yes we do – thanks to Aunt Ashley.

My favorite part is the index of underwear available at the front and back of the book.

Book #3: The Big Noisy Book of Animals by Britta Teckentrup

Did my sister get this book because she thought David loved animals? No. Did she purchase it in the hope that he would one day become a veterinarian or a zoologist? Nope. Did she buy this book for David so that I would have to read to him about animal poop for several pages? Why, yes she did. She told me so.

Book #4: The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

There is apparently nothing a sister likes more than making her big sister do the ugly cry. Often. I know this because Aunt Ashley bought this book for David.

In case you don’t know, The Giving Tree is the story of a little boy and a tree. The tree (aka mother) loves the boy so much that she literally gives him everything that she has in an attempt to make him happy.

Wouldn’t it be easy to just hide it and prevent the sniffly mommy cries that will result from reading it? If only I could. Unfortunately, David just informed me it is his favorite book. I’m off to get the tissues.

DIY: Eric Carle painting

2012-04-18T12:20:00.005-07:00

I've been looking lately for art projects to do with Lulu: things that are engrossing and creative while still being simple enough for her to do. And I think I might have found the perfect thing in these Eric Carle-style paintings.

You'll need: Tissue paper, tempera paint, brushes and assorted miscellaneous objects to use for printing, and your favorite Eric Carle book for inspiration.

How to: Paint the tissue paper with fingers, brushes, sponges, and whatever you can get your hands on. (You'll want to place a piece of cardboard under the paper because paint will bleed through, and you'll also want to use a light touch or the tissue paper will rip). Wait for the paint to dry, and paint on top of it or use brushes to add spatter. (Eric Carle gives a lot of detail about the techniques he uses on his website). When everything has had time to dry again, use scissors to cut the paper into whatever shapes you can think of, arrange on construction paper, and glue into place.

I'm not sure what exactly we're going to do with ours, yet, but I am looking forward to figuring it out!

Which Eric Carle book do you like best? (We like The Very Busy Spider because she's a cold-blooded badass.)

D.E.A.R. friends

2012-04-12T06:49:00.002-07:00

Today is April 12, which means it's author Beverly Cleary's birthday (her 96th!), which means it's also Drop Everything and Read day. Did you know that Ramona Quimby is the official spokesperson of D.E.A.R.? Is your family planning on dropping everything and curling up together with a book some time today? Ours is!

If you're short on reading material, here are a few articles you might turn to:

-The New York Times examines the ageless appeal of the Ramona books
-Beverly Cleary speaks with the L.A. Times about her "exceptionally happy career"
-The Atlantic talked with Cleary (about Twitter! And the internetes!) last year, on her 95th birthday.
-A very Beverly Cleary tour of Oregon.

And if you have any extra time (snort! Extra time!), you might listen to NPR's interview with Cleary about all of the wonderful things that have happened on Klickitat Street over the years.

What are you going to drop everything and read today? (I've got The Land of Decoration calling my name). And are you a Ramona fan? My favorite Ramona book would have to be Ramona and Her Father, because that's the one with the NOSMO KING, which I thought was HIGH HUMOR as a kid. Which is yours?

For me and my gal

2012-04-11T11:16:00.000-07:00

clockwise from top left: No One Belongs Here More than You by Miranda July; BIT toddler bike; neon circles banner; La Pochette clutch; Monsters Eat Whiny Children by Bruce Eric Kaplan; tiered-tie gladiators for baby; DIY painted spoons; colorblock stripe boatneck tee.

My favorite part of law school probably had to be the highlighters. There was something incongrously festive about seeing swathes of neon covering dry law text. And I was an over-highlighter for sure. Whenever I opened my book in class it was like my own personal torts disco (watch out for banana peels).

So I am glad that neon has come back into fashion, and I am glad that the book design world is following suit on the trend. These stories by Miranda July actually come in four bright colors and I am tempted to collect them all. The Monsters book by Bruce Kaplan has a special place in my heart after our five-hour slog across the state of Virginia last night. And all the stuff in between is there simply because made me go, "Oooo!" and I thought I would share.

Your verdict on neon: Cute or MY RETINAS?

Books we love: Happy Birthday to You

2012-04-09T09:05:00.000-07:00

This week's Books We Love feature is a guest post by What Would Gwyneth Do?, who blogs about doing motherhood in style (You can also find her on Twitter and Facebook). Today is her daughter Little D's birthday, and she's chosen to write about a book that helps to make the day so special for her family. I hope you'll join me in wishing Little D a happy birthday, and in thanking her mama for sharing with us!

Dr. Seuss is a staple on many a mini bookshelf around the world, but nothing holds a candle to this particular title in our house, Happy Birthday to You.

We stumbled upon the world of Katroo when some dear friends gave this book to my then two-year-old daughter on her birthday. I had never heard of it, but she assured me it would become a favorite in our house, as it had in hers, and she was right.

Not only does it boast the usual Dr. Seuss features we all know and love – a rhythmic rhyme that seems to dance on your tongue; bright, almost hallucinatory images that can keep hold of even the most easily distracted toddler’s attention; and laugh out loud details that are signature Seuss – it has become one of the few books in our house that has also become a true tradition.

Now, every year on her birthday, we sit and read this with Little D. We laugh along with the Great Birthday Bird. We fly through the land of Katroo. We chant “I AM I!” at the top of our little lungs.

We drool over the cake baked by Snookers and Snookers, the “official Katroo happy birthday cake cookers.”

We believe in birthdays around here. We start the day with a bedroom overflowing with balloons. We eat ice cream for breakfast. We do “whatever we want” all day. And we go to sleep with enough memories to carry us through another year. I love that this book has become one of those memories.

What I read: Week of 4/1/12

2012-04-06T20:30:00.002-07:00

-The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian (my review)

-Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie

-Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin

And for good measure:

-A more in-depth view of Philip Larkin's legacy

-The whole of Middlemarch, in one ten-foot panel illustration

-How to tell where your vegetables come from just by looking at them

-A review of an edible cookbook (you can tear out the pages and use them as pasta!)

I am mid-way through Catherine and Game of Thrones and keep flipping back and forth between them, sometimes multiple times in the same sitting. And my poor tired brain can't keep up, so there are scenes in which the young empress of Russia is galloping through the forests and I fully expect her to have a bloody encounter with a band of wildlings. I think it says a lot about Massie's book, that it is well-written enough to be mistaken for a novel, and Martin's book, too, that he has created a world that seems so real that my mind can't confine it to just those pages.

Speaking of Game of Thrones, my whole family--aunts, parents, James, Lu--watched the first episode of season 2 together last week, and we'll watch the second episode together this Sunday night. And then my week-long visit will come to an end, and it will be back to Northern Virginia and our tiny condo and our cats and our real life. And that's not a bad thing. It's just that sometimes I feel caught between two worlds: my family in one place and my friends I love like family in another. I wish that these two worlds didn't exist four hours away from each other. I'm already dreading leaving, already planning the next visit.

But we still have two full days together in this visit, filled with fun things, including seeing The Hunger Games tomorrow with my sister and aunts and Easter brunch with the fam at the Founder's Inn on Sunday. I plan to enjoy them both as hard as I can and put everything else out of my mind.

New things Lu has started doing, just since we've been here: pointing up at things and demanding to know what they are ("Dat?"), waving at her reflection in mirrors and windows, sharing food with her puppydog friends, walking with just the lightest touch on a hand holding her up. We've spent a lot of time outdoors, between these developments, where Lu feasted on about one million of the five million seed pods scattered on the grass. (And ate an azalea, as a palate cleanser).

Happy Easter/spring/weekend! That should cover all the bases. Don't forget to enter my April giveaway, if you haven't already. Also, I have a special treat planned for Monday, so please meet me back here because I can't wait to share.

The many faces of Anne

2012-04-05T05:26:00.003-07:00

When I come across a vintage copy of Anne of Green Gables, I love to study the cover to see the way the marketing team decided to depict the titular Anne. While Lizzy Bennet is always decked out in her Regency best, and the March girls are always steeped firmly in Civil-War era hoops and curls, Anne's fashion and styling seem to change to appeal to each new generation of girl readers. A cloche hat in the '20s, a perky hair flip in the '50s, a wreath of daisies for '60s flower-child Anne.

The six covers I've posted above show a glimpse of Anne's evolution from Gibson girl of the 1910s to the spunky, Punky Brewsterish Anne of the 1990s (the last cover puts me in mind of Topanga from the old TV series Boy Meets World. Anybody else?) I have to admit the middle picture in the bottom row, of That '70s Anne, makes me a little skeptical (I imagine her and Gilbert toking up and listening to Foghat by the Lake of Shining Waters), but overall, I really like seeing these interpretations of how one of my favorite book characters has been portrayed over the years.

The Confederation Centre has a great gallery of L.M. Montgomery covers throughout the years. Which is your favorite?

Giveaway: Girl Hunter and Death Comes to Pemberley

2012-04-04T19:16:00.004-07:00

In honor of the season, I'm spring cleaning my shelves and giving away a couple recent reads (both read only by me, both in hardcover).

Girl Hunter by Georgia Pellegrini and Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James

I'll use a random number generator to pick two winners--one for each book--on Friday, April 21, 2012. Just fill out the form for a chance to win.

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Thanks for doing your small bit to keep me from appearing on Hoarders: Bibliophile Edition. I am grateful. Good luck!

Book review and open letter: The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian

2012-04-03T17:56:00.005-07:00

Dear Chris Bohjalian,

I am writing to say that I really liked your story about the pilot who had an accident and was so wracked with guilt he began to imagine that the ghosts of his victims lived in the cellar of the house in upstate New Hampshire where he went to hide out after the crash. It was atmospheric and spooky and psychological and it raised the hair on the back of my neck in the BEST way.

In fact, I liked it so much more than your other recent story about the coven of witches who grow poisonous plants in their greenhouses and plan on concocting a Fountain-of-Youth type tincture to ensure them eternal life just as soon as they can find the "blood of a traumatized twin" to complete the recipe. That one was all kinds of HUH? and WTF and I did not like it very much at all.

The problem is that both of these distinct and very dissimilar narratives were forged together into one novel, The Night Strangers, and they really shouldn't have been. Because their extreme dissimilarity in tone and voice and EVERYTHING felt something like the literary version of those kid flip books where you can turn the pages and make the doctor wear clown pants! Or else like an 80,000-word game of Telephone, where "The captain rides at dawn" becomes "The coconuts hide orange flan." Or like a 300-page-long verse of the old kid song "One of these things is not like the other." I could go on, but I won't, because now that song is ringing in my head and I have to end this soon so that I can go blow my brains out.

Dude, I hope you won't think me presumptuous when you read this, but I have to ask: WHAT happened to you? A scant 12 years ago, you were an Oprah book club pick! And not even one of the fluffy ones meant to be a breather in-between Anna Karenina and Toni Morrison. Midwives was no The Bluest Eye, but it could hold its own with books like Drowning Ruth and The Poisonwood Bible. It was definitely better than that James Frey nonsense. It had something to say. It had a grandeur. It felt important.

But when I look at your career since Midwives, I am concerned in a Tim Gunn way. Because the progression looks something like this:

Homebirth --> gun violence --> transgender issues --> homeopathy --> violence against women --> World War II --> angels --> WITCHES

And I just don't know how you get from point A to point WITCHES. I don't. Obviously, something happened between "World War II" and "angels," and I am not sure what. Did you run out of SERIOUS BUSINESS to write about? Did you decide you wanted some of the dollar bills floating from the money train pulling into Twi-hard station? Did you fall and hit your head?

Did you have a Freaky Friday experience where you ran at Jodi Picoult really hard and switched bodies and now you are her and she is Chris Bohjalian? But no, that can't be, because then Jodi Picoult would be writing popular fiction that is also thoughtful and nuanced while you write popular fiction that is maudlin and sensationalized, and also, honestly, even Jodi Picoult would balk at some of the sloppy shit in The Night Strangers. Having the pilot go from wanting to kill himself rather than live with the guilt to basking in the light of eternal youth with nary an explanation for his mood change? Naming all of the witches after plants so that we can identify them as long as we know anything about the world at all? I want to go where you are trying to take me but then I run into these things and I just CAN'T.

This is a mean review. And I feel mean for writing it. I am pretty sure you will never read this, but if you do, then I do not want you to feel bad. I feel bad when I choose my blue espadrilles over the pink ones (even though pink is a tricky color to match sometimes) because the pink ones probably get lonely in my closet. And hurting an actual person's actual feelings is like eleven million times worse than that. So if you ever do read this review, please disregard the first few paragraphs. Just don't read them. Start here, instead:

Dear Chris Bohjalian,

I miss you. Please come back.

Your pal,

Cath

What I read: Week of 3/26/12

2012-04-02T18:20:00.007-07:00

Carry the One by Carol Anshaw
A Friend of the Family by Lauren Grodstein
Tolstoy and the Purple Chair by Nina Sankovitch

I feel like everything I read this past week was really depressing. I don't know if this is because Lu has apparently decided to STOP SLEEPING--no naps, multiple wakings in the night--and everything seems like I'm seeing it through a haze or because of the complicated and stressful issues springing up in my own life right now or because it was actually some depressing shit that I read, but I am having a hard time writing about it in depth. Will it suffice if I just say that Anshaw's book was depressing but beautifully written, Grodstein's depressing but striking, and Sankovitch's depressing and ultimately forgettable?

James, Lulu, and I drove down to Norfolk on Friday to spend the week with family, and to attend two birthday parties separated by a span of eight decades. On Saturday morning, I watched my middle school friend Patty's baby Sarah pick delicately at a pink-iced cake and on Saturday evening, I hugged my Great-Aunt Cat as we gathered to celebrate her eighty-first year on the planet. You would think the parties would be very different, but they weren't, really. A few universal truths applied to both: that when someone is absent from a gathering, you keep their place for them. That there is nothing as tantalizing as the gift of another year stretching out in front of you. And also, that cake is delicious.

And many, many more

_________

On Sunday, J&I met up with our friends Sarah and Erin and their husbands and babies and we went to the zoo. Our kids are like stairsteps: Lu was born in March, Erin's Baby James in April, and Sarah's Baby Andrew in May. We posed for pictures, which we always love to do every time we are together.

And then we went to go see the new tiger exhibit, about which there had been made much ado. It was set up as a winding trail that takes you past all sorts of other less-impressive animals, to whet your appetite for the majestic tigers. There were some sad orangutans, and Lu clapped with glee at the sight of a mandril's rainbow-colored butt, and there were some meerkats, and then finally, we arrived at the tigers. Just in time to see a Canada goose make the biggest mistake of its life and fly over the fence and alight in the tiger compound.

Everyone in the crowd screamed as one tiger pounced on the bird. And there was blood and honking and feathers and more blood as the goose delivered a well-placed-yet-futile blow with its beak to the tiger's face and then the tiger stalked away with the goose in its jaws. And then the other tiger decided to get in on the action and the two tigers fought over the bird, roaring and clawing each other and they had to shut down the tiger exhibit and it was all very traumatizing.

Scarred for life

In my opinion. As we drove home, James turned to me and said, in a hushed voice: "I have had the most amazing year. I mean, first my kid is born, and then I am in an earthquake, and then THIS happens."

And that was our weekend. How was yours?

Ask Constance Reader: Making room for reading

2012-03-30T07:35:00.005-07:00

This week's question is one that I get a lot, both on and off-line. I've decided to post it in the very polite form I got from Deanna via Facebook because it didn't seem as judgy as some of the others (and believe me, they can get very judgy):

How do you find time to read so much? I am a SAH mom with a little boy around your daughter's age and I haven't finished a book in weeks. Is there a secret or are you just blessed with a sleepy baby? Please share. :)

I always feel so strange when people ask me how I read so much now that I have a baby because I read far, far less since I had a baby than I did before I had one. I used to finish at least a book a day. Now, my average is 3-4 a week and fewer during teething, when I was down to 1-2 out of sheer sleep deprivation, which was not as bad as September 2011, the month that marked the peak of Lu's colic, during which I read a whopping ZERO books.

And a lot of the reason that I am able to read so much is that I read really, really fast. When I was in college, I scored like $10 by participating in a study on speedreading and found that I read about 450 words a minute, which is almost 150 more than the average adult reader. It was a talent that meant I always had to wait an ungodly amount of time between Baby-Sitters Club books as a kid, but it has served me well as a parent.

My advice would be not to necessarily make more time for reading--because I know that that is often impossible--but to optimize the time you have to make room for reading. Sometimes, I take a bath instead of a shower simply because I can take a book with me while I soap up. I read in the car. I have Kindle on my iPhone and read in line at the bank, the grocery store, and in the pediatrician's waiting room. I read (very carefully) while stirring vegetables on the stove. I'm still breastfeeding, partly because it gives me the perfect excuse to take an hour and a half out of a busy day and read. (And partly for the immune system benefits! All around win!) 5 minutes here, 5 minutes there, and it starts to really add up.

And sometimes, yes, I ignore that giant heap of diapers waiting to go in the wash so that I can sneak in another chapter, and yes, I will tell you this with only a little shame: on at least two occasions, I have put Lulu in her exersaucer about an inch from the TV screen so that I could finish the end of a particularly gripping novel. (Dear CPS: It had to go back to the library THAT DAY.)

Do I feel guilty about this? Yes, but I feel guilty about everything. I feel guilty about the flowers I picked to put on my table because now I am a flower murderer. I think the real question is: Should I feel guilty about this? The judgy commenters would obviously say yes, but my answer is that I don't think so. Reading keeps me sane. It keeps me from screaming at my husband and rolling my eyes when Lu raises her arms to be picked up for the fortieth time in an hour. It reminds me that I'm a person, that whether or not I am taking the time out of the day to relax and be happy is something that matters, that life is supposed to be enjoyed. And so I stay up late reading the night before we have company come over and then five minutes before they get here I shove everything into a closet and cross my fingers behind my back that they don't get curious and open it (and die in an avalanche).

There's a very real sense this could all be an elaborate justification to excuse away my slovenly habits. But it makes a weird kind of sense to me.

Parent or not: how do you find time in your day for reading? When I was a little girl, I used to dream about inventing a Plexiglass box set into the bathroom wall so that I could read while I showered. How cool would that be?

Once upon a time

2012-03-29T10:44:00.002-07:00

I'm so charmed by these minimalist fairy-tale posters by Christian Jackson. It almost takes more imagination to enjoy them than it would a larger, more detailed illustration and I think that's very cool.

Jackson gives a really great interview at My Modern Metropolis: "When the idea for the posters came to me, the iconic images for each story just sort of poured out." You can read more here, where you can also see the rest of his designs. Which is your favorite?

(I can't stop thinking of minimalist cover designs for famous books, now, too. For Gatsby: a shirt? A green light? Can you see it?)

Book review: The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall

2012-03-28T05:36:00.002-07:00

When I studied family law in law school, we touched briefly on the subject of the polygamist family. At the time, the publishing world was exploding with print on the topic so I feel like I got it on all sides–from the cautionary fictionalized tale to the firsthand narrative account to the sociological literature on the social and emotional effects of this family arrangement for the plural wives and the young boys who are often cast out of their homes to avoid competition with the older, more established menfolk. The law school I attended takes a very permissive view on almost every topic having to do with marriage and sexuality, but the implications were still clear: the polygamist family can be a dangerous, subjugating arrangement, a threat to the liberty and independence of the women and children involved in it.

I was prepared for more of the same message in Brady Udall's The Lonely Polygamist, but Udall isn't taking a stand on the issues with his sweeping, Cold-War-era novel. Instead, he uses one large polygamist family as a microcosm of the feelings of grief, overwork, disappointment, jealousy, exhaustion, and worry that are pervasive in almost every kind of family unit.

Golden Richards has four wives (who have fallen into bickering amongst themselves) and 28 children (whose names he remembers by singing them to the tune of The Old Gray Mare). He is building a whorehouse over the state line in Nevada, and has lied to his wives and to his church, telling them he is overseeing work on a senior center. He is also taking tentative steps toward an affair with the wife of his boss, the whorehouse owner, who doesn't seem too stable, mentally, as if poor Golden doesn't have enough problems already, but the heart wants what it wants and there ain't no accounting for sense.

The setup seems ridiculous, and Udall plays it for laughs with some deft one-liners ("He could see the framed needlepoint above the mantel, FAMILIES ARE FOREVER, and wondered if the slogan was meant as a promise or a threat"). At the same time, though, he is subtly peeling back layers until the family's secret pain is laid bare. At the heart of the turmoil is the unexpected death of Daughter #9 and the feelings of resentment brewing in Son #4, whose actions will have devastating consequences for each member of the family.

There's a point in the novel where it stops seeming ridiculous, a point at which you realize it's not a satire after all, but a very real, honest story of a family struggling with all of the things that families do, only on a larger, more urgent scale.

Udall's writing reminded me very strongly of that of John Irving, in the way that he is able to take a band of people considered to be losers, outsiders, and freaks and to normalize them, sympathize them, imbue them with the frailty and beauty that accompanies the human condition. Just as Owen Meany's size and stature fades in the background in the light of his bravery, his love, so does the Richards family's unusual arrangement fade away, seeming more and more unimportant as each person's unique wants and desires are laid bare and separate. The moral of the story seems clear: there are many ways of looking at something, but the way that thing appears often has nothing to do with the way it feels.

"Because this, after all, was the basic truth they all chose to live by: that love was no finite commodity. That it was not subject to the cruel reckoning of addition and subtraction, that to give to one did not necessarily mean to take from another; that the heart, in its infinite capacity--even the confused and cheating heart of the man in front of her, even the paltry thing now clenched and faltering inside her own chest--could open itself to all who would enter, like a house with windows and doors thrown wide, like the heart of God itself, vast and accommodating and holy, a mansion of rooms without number, full of multitudes without end."

Does The Lonely Polygamist touch on the myriad issues facing polygamist families? No, not in a realistic way. But is it laugh out loud funny, beautifully and sweetly written, worthy of the blurbs in reviews that refer to it as the next "Great American Novel?" Yes, yes–and probably yes to that one, too.

One is the Luluest number

2012-03-26T18:11:00.011-07:00

Lulu's first birthday party went off without a hitch (despite the three wardrobe changes because my kid is a diva). J. & I tried to keep it as small as possible after a lot of pompous talk about how simple is better and kids not needing a lot of stimulation. Just one or two close friends, some simple hors d'oeuvres, maybe some music playing softly in the background.

And then we invited 13 people over for BBQ and we all spent five hours shrieking at each other.

People keep asking, "Cathy, did you cry?" Because they know me. I am maudlin. I am a crier. I will laugh at the vaguely inappropriate sign hanging over the pediatrician's office down the street, but I will weep when my parents have to cut down a tree in the backyard of the house I grew up in.

And so yes, I did cry. But it wasn't when I saw my little girl wearing the dress she wore home from the hospital (and that I wore home from the hospital 30 years ago). It wasn't when I saw all the things she can do now, all the people who love her, all the ways that she is starting to determine her own future, make her own friends and fun, and decide how she will interact with the world. It wasn't even when the icing melted off the side of my lovingly handmade cake (I'm blaming Martha Stewart and her stupid candy thermometer.) I managed to smile through all that.

And then, just when I thought I might make it through the day without blubbering, I saw this cheesy shit on my Facebook wall:

After that, the deluge.

Rejected

2012-03-26T06:07:00.001-07:00

The cover of a book that you see may not be the one it started out with. A book can sometimes go through dozens of proposed cover designs before the final design is settled. So many different factors influence the final design, including the thoughts of the major book chains and how the book looks on online bookseller sites (white covers don't look good on Amazon, apparently).

Below are some popular books, with their finalized cover designs on the right and a proposed cover on the left. Which do you like best?

In almost all the cases, save Sag Harbor, I actually like the proposed design more than the one the book ended up with! The one for Heft, especially--I feel like it captures the quirky feel of the novel so much more than the one they went with. I'd love to know why it wasn't the one the publisher decided to use in the end.

Print magazine has a great feature on this topic, in which eight designers show off covers that they designed that weren't accepted in the end and explain how and why each design was rejected. It's fascinating and they are very sanguine about it ("It’s actually a good exercise to have to redesign something,”says freelance designer Gabriele Wilson.") Probably more so than I would be, but I'm cranky like that.

Birthday books

2012-03-22T22:19:00.009-07:00

1/2/3/4/5/6

Lulu's first birthday is this Sunday! I am about to write something I am sure no mommy blogger has ever written before: I can't believe a whole year went by so fast. Isn't that pithy and original?

It's just that I remember so vividly the day last March that I woke up feeling weird and decided to go to the hospital to "get things checked out." I didn't believe it was the day Lu would be born. I was only 32 weeks pregnant, and after three straight months of bed rest, I thought the world would play a perverse joke on me and have her be overdue. I remember peering out the window at the forsythia in the yards we passed and wondering how long this all would take because I had forgotten my book and wanted to get back to it ASAP. The days had all started to blur together for me at that point, and I had to ask James what the date was. "March 25," he said, and I thought it sounded like a good birthday on the off chance that Lulu was born that day. She sneaked in just under the wire at 11:28 PM.

Then:

Now:

Dear Lulu: I had no idea it would be this fun.

Happy birthday, little girl!

Love,

MAMA

DIY: Chalkboard board book

2012-03-22T04:03:00.006-07:00

About a month ago, I painted the back splash in our kitchen with chalkboard paint, and from that moment on, I was firmly addicted. I roamed around the house with a paintbrush in my hand, wondering what I could tackle next. Picture frames? Lamps? My fridge? My FACE?

At the same time, I've been looking online for blank books so that Lu and I can write and illustrate our own stories together. And the two ideas collided, and this was the result.

About five seconds after that last picture was snapped, an epic war was waged over the right to eat chalk. I eventually wrested it away from her, but Lu drew actual BLOOD in the process, so it's hard to say who was the victor.

Some tips for painting the book: be sure to remember the sides of the pages, and wait a few days after painting before applying chalk. The back of the paint can recommended 36 hours wait time and to "prep" the pages by rubbing them entirely with chalk and then wiping. But we couldn't wait, and when we wiped off the chalk, some of the paint came away, too! No big deal--I just repainted that page. Still, patience, virtue, etc.

A fun idea: chalkboard paint comes in a ton of different colors, so how cute would it be to paint every page of the book a different shade and then write/draw on that page all of the things you can think of that are that color? A kind of a different take on I-Spy...

A few of my favorite things

2012-03-21T11:02:00.000-07:00

Favorite photos of me + Lu:

Because a 60-year-old photo booth doesn't care if you're wearing makeup.

Favorite city:

Richmond, Virginia, does the "dilapidated beauty" thing really well.

Favorite fashion trend:

Pattern mixing FTW.

Favorite husband:

He makes better lattes than my other husbands.

Favorite fortune:

It gets even better if you add "in bed" to the end of it.

Favorite number:

Number one, baby.

(You can take away the comma and it still works.)

What are a few of your favorite things right now? Got any brown paper packages tied up with string in the past few days?

I am famous! (Or at least, my desk is.)

2012-03-21T08:42:00.004-07:00

Hey guys! Cathy at Kittling Books asked me to share some stories about and photos of my blogging space for her feature, Scene of the Blog. Have you ever wondered about the place where alllll this magic happens (said in my best MTV Cribs voice)? Then follow me over there and check it out.

Thanks, Cathy, for letting me be part of your blog for the day!

Books we love: The Seashore Book

2012-03-20T10:11:00.006-07:00

In 1912, E. Boyd Smith published The Seashore Book, a companion piece to his first works, The Farm Book and The Railroad Book, which together were meant to "compete with, perhaps even outshine in popularity, traditional folk and fantasy tales as fitting entertainments for the offspring of a brave New World." Which is a little sad, now, because when you look back at the trilogy, they definitely represent a world that is either utterly vanished or going away fast.

Of the three volumes, The Seashore Book is my favorite, probably because it reminds me of my hometown, or else what my childish mind thought that the Life-Book of Captain Jim would be like when I first read Anne's House of Dreams.

The structure is a series of stories of about Bob and Betty and the summer they spent with old sea captain Ben Hawes. Captain Hawes takes the children rowing, digging for clams, on a visit to a shipyard, sail loft and wreck, and tells them eerie stories about his own seagoing days. It's all very rousing and interesting and some of the images--like that of a burning ship sliding silently through icy seas, watched by a pair of worried polar bears--give me a delicious shiver when I see them.

The illustrations are the most remarkable thing about The Seashore Book. Elmer Boyd Smith was trained in the Brandywine school of illustration, which had as its aim the effort to represent nature in a realistic and accessible way. As a result, Smith's tableaus are vividly authentic, from the multihued colors of the rock faces that ring the seashore to the hunched posture of the men working at the sail loft.

I pulled this book out today because of the beautiful warm weather we're having...The Seashore Book always meant summertime to me as a child and just reading it now makes me smell sunscreen and salt water. Is there a book that can do that for you?

What I read: Week of 3/12/12

2012-03-19T10:09:00.006-07:00

This week, I feel like my catchphrase was the word busy, as in "I couldn't find the time to renew my expired license because I am SO BUSY," or "I have been far TOO BUSY to think of dealing with Mt. St. Laundry, which is threatening to take over my hallway, bedroom, AND bathroom." And then I eke out 20 minutes to sit down and write a weekly reading recap and find that actually, I have reviewed two books last week and read another three on top of that, so maybe instead of busy the word should be something else. Like "discerning."

Here's what I was doing last week, when I was decidedly not doing laundry:

I reviewed The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey and Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield.

I read Sere Prince Halverson's The Underside of Joy (which I received from the publisher), and pretty much everything that you need to know about this book is that I kept thinking Jodi Picoult had written it. Halverson's debut is a very Picoultian tale of a blended family torn apart by disaster. Ella Beene has been the mother figure to her husband Joe's children ever since their birth mother Paige up and left them three years before. But when Joe drowns, Paige returns, intent on reclaiming her children. When Ella finds a pack of letters that proves that Joe was keeping the children from Paige, who actually did want to be involved the WISDOM OF SOLOMON IS STRAINED and there's a custody battle, family secrets are unearthed, et cetera. The unrealistically EVERYONE IS HAPPY! style ending threatens to but doesn't quite obscure Halverson's prose, which is beautiful and well-written and the sole reason why I will look out for her next book.

I also read The Ruins of Us by Keija Parssinen after reading Zibilee's thought-provoking review of it. It's the story of Rosalie, an American living in Saudi Arabia, married to the powerful Abdullah Baylani. When Abdullah takes a second wife, Rosalie finds herself consumed by jealousy and questioning her twenty-five-year relationship with her husband. The fact that her daughter Mariam is testing the limits of her independence and her son, Faizal, has become embroiled in a religious extremist group, do not help Rosalie's peace of mind or her decision as to whether she should pull away from her family and her life abroad and return home. Parssinen's ability to write so clearly and familiarly of such an insular place made me drink up this book, even if I was not entirely sure of the plot pacing. For instance, I would have liked to see more time devoted to Mariam's critique of the Saudi regime, and less to Faisal's relationship with his mother. It's Mariam who faces the same future as Rosalie, whose story could have been more elegantly intertwined with her mother's. But all in all: this was an unusual, dramatic, and resonant novel (just as Zibilee promised!)

Finally, on the way down to visit family this weekend, I finished Fragile Beginnings: Discoveries and Triumphs in the Newborn ICU by Dr. Adam Wolfberg. James drove, and I read out loud some of my favorite passages about medical advances in the care of premature infants, the ethical implications of providing this care, and anecdotes from the NICU stay of Wolfberg's daughter Larissa, who was born at 26 weeks gestation. The book is clearly written for the layperson and raised all sorts of interesting and discussable moral quandaries. I'd recommend this book for parents of preemies who are far enough removed from their own NICU stay to be able to appreciate Wolfberg's blunt honesty about the odds, and for anybody with an admiration for the doctors, nurses, and researchers who have devoted their lives to caring for the smallest and most vulnerable members of society.

A weird mishmash of books, for sure, but that's one of the things I like about reading, the ability to flit from topic to topic, genre to genre. What did you guys read last week? What's on your plate for this one?