The Betty and Boo Chronicles

Book Review: Smut, Stories by Alan Bennett

2012-01-24T20:21:00.003-05:00

Smut
Stories by Alan Bennett
Picador
2012
Received via NetGalley

When I revealed on Facebook that I was reading a book called Smut (along with Ben Mezrich's Sex on the Moon, which has since gone back to the library unread), I think some of my new friends (and some that knew me back in my high school days) might have gotten the wrong impression of me.

And if you were operating under the assumption that Smut is a trashy tome, well, you would be mistaken, too.

Before getting into a discussion on Alan Bennett's book, which is all of two short stories ("The Greening of Mrs. Donaldson" and "The Shielding of Mrs. Forbes"), let us review the definition of the word itself, with some help from our friends at dictionary.com:

smut [smuht]
noun
1. a particle of soot; sooty matter.
2. a black or dirty mark; smudge.
3. indecent language or publications; obscenity.
4. Plant Pathology .
a. a disease of plants, especially cereal grasses, characterized by the conversion of affected parts into black, powdery masses of spores, caused by fungi of the order Ustilaginales.
b. a fungus causing this disease.
verb (used with object)
5. to soil or smudge.

So, yes, there is a bit of #3 (indecent language and obscenity) and eye-brow raising scenes in Smut. Bennett's use of such isn't gratuitous; rather, it is to illustrate the point that we all have aspects of our personalities that we keep hidden from others and even (sometimes especially) ourselves. Sometimes the people who think they know us best are the ones who know us least of all.

Of the two stories, "The Greening of Mrs. Donaldson" (the first) was my favorite - simply because it seemed to be more original in its premise than the second. A recently widow, Mrs. Donaldson spends her days at the local teaching hospital, where she is employed as an actress portraying a "patient" or a family member of a sick person. She works with medical students and their instructor, and their role-playing serves as a means for the students to gain insight and compassionate on how to care and treat those who are sick and bereaved. Mrs. Donaldson is a pretty good actress (almost too good at times) and enjoys being around the students - so much so that she takes in two of them as "lodgers" in her home. When they're short on rent, the lodgers and Mrs. Donaldson come to an ... alternative agreement.

"The Shielding of Mrs. Forbes" was a much funnier story than "Mrs. Donaldson" (the opening dialogue between Mr. and Mrs. Forbes is hysterical). Again, this is a story about relationships and what we chose to reveal to others and to ourselves and what we keep hidden. Graham Forbes son is getting married, and his mother (who has placed her son on a pedestal) thinks he can do much better than Tracy. Little does she know, there's much more to Tracy than there appears - as well as with her precious, perfect Graham (and her own husband).

Smut marks the first time I've read Alan Bennett, and when I saw this offered on NetGalley for review, I wanted to try it because he was an author I'd heard much about, mainly due to An Uncommon Reader. I also love short stories and I especially love trying new authors in the short story format, which made this appealing. While I was confused at the beginning of "The Greening of Mrs. Donaldson" (it took me a few pages to understand that Mrs. Donaldson was an actress), Bennett did grab my attention immediately and held onto it throughout each story. (The British humor and language also threw me for a loop, but that's due to my own quirks and issues with British humor; I don't always have a good sense of it, much to The Husband's deep dismay.)

Overall, this was an enjoyable, quick read and one that has made me curious to read more of Alan Bennett in the future.

What Other Bloggers Thought:

Savidge Reads

copyright 2011, Melissa, The Betty and Boo Chronicles If you are reading this on a blog or website other than The Betty and Boo Chronicles or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

Weekend Cooking: Happy National Soup Swap Day!

2012-01-21T21:56:00.000-05:00

Weekend Cooking is hosted by my friend Beth Fish Reads and is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page. For more information, see the welcome post.

Now this here is my kind of holiday ... National Soup Swap Day, which just so happens to be today. (I know. I am always the chick that shows up late to the party.)

I only just heard about this a few days ago, but I absolutely love the concept. It's a simple one and all explained on SoupSwap.com, where there's a handy map to find yourself a real-life Soup Swap happening near you.

(My Delaware peeps, take note! There's one happening in Wilmington next weekend!)

Basically, you round yourself up some soup-loving friends and set a date for your swap. (The actual Soup Swap Day is the third Saturday in January but of course, you can swap any time.) Then, you cook up six quarts of one kind of soup, dole it out into containers, and freeze them. On the day of your Soup Swap, everyone brings their containers of soups to the designated party place and everyone goes home with soup to fill their freezer for the dreary winter months ahead.

This is truly my idea of fun.

So. In lieu of not having an actual Soup Swap to go to, nor any actual people to swap soup with in real life, let's do the next best thing. You're all invited over to the blog, right now, for my Virtual Soup Swap. Never mind the 6" of snow we have outside. We'll just pretend that our crockpots have been crockin', our stockpots have been simmering, the wine has been chilled and opened and poured.

Great, you're all here! So glad to see all of you! Let's get started. Here are some of my favorite soups that I've cooked up for you. (Yeah, I know for the real Soup Swap you're supposed to bring just ONE soup ... but let's just make believe I have all the time in the world to make all of these soups to share with yinz.)

Broccoli-Cheese Soup, Panera Bread Style

I don't have a picture of this one, but it definitely tastes like the real thing!

Cream of Tomato Soup

Deborah Madison's recipe from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.

One of my favorite tomato soups ever. (And one of my favorite cookbooks.)

Crockpot Tomato Florentine Soup

from Slow Cooker Cooking by Lora Brody

Another one of my favorite tomato soups.

CrockPot Pasta Fagioli Recipe

from Stephanie O'Dea's awesome blog A Year of Slow Cooking

and cookbook Make It Fast, Cook It Slow

Crockpot Black-Eyed Pea Soup

I make this every New Year's Day (this is also a winner from Stephanie's blog and cookbook) and I admit that I actually like it the next day or so much better. In fact, I just had it for dinner tonight. Nobody else was in the mood for soup and I was (there's 6" of snow outside; you have to eat soup!) so I just went into the freezer and took the last container of this from New Year's for myself. (The rest of the family had pasta and vegetarian meatballs.) One caveat: this isn't all that pretty to look at. It's kind of an "earthy" soup. But dang, it is delicious. And filling. And very nutritious.

Bill Johnson's Manhattan Clam Chowder

I don't know who Bill Johnson is, but his would be a recipe from Family Circle magazine that my mother has held onto since 1976, when my aunt gave it to her. (And this not-so-good photo would be from my cell phone, which is how I took this picture of the bowl of clam chowder my mom made for me when I stayed over her house one winter's night.)

Creamy Split Pea Soup

From Betty Crocker Easy Everyday Vegetarian

Not the best picture, I know, but if you are a fan of split pea soup, this is a good one.

Thanks so much for coming to my Soup Swap! I can't wait to try your soups. Let's do this again real soon, 'kay?

copyright 2011, Melissa, The Betty and Boo Chronicles If you are reading this on a blog or website other than The Betty and Boo Chronicles or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

Inauguration Day, 2012

2012-01-21T13:57:00.006-05:00

Holiday fireworks display at The Husband's work
Photo taken by me, December 2011

Yesterday, January 20, was what I've come to refer to as Inauguration Day in our family. It was the 8th anniversary of Boo's diagnosis, the day that a cold-hearted doctor declared that our beautiful boy had "clinical features of autism spectrum disorder" and changed our lives forever with those six words.

For the past two years, I've written a post on January 20 - my own State of the Autistic Union in this house, if you will. (Inauguration Day, 1.20.2011 and Book Review (Kids): My Brother is Autistic 1.20.2010). I didn't get this post done yesterday because this has been a busier than usual week at work and by last night, I was fried and decided to put on my oxygen mask by logging off the computer and going to bed a little earlier than usual. (I figured you would all understand.)

From last year's post, Inauguration Day, 2011:

To me, January 20 will always be diagnosis day. But more often than not, it often carries with it an inauguration, of a Governor or a President.

I've always thought the anniversary of Boo's autism diagnosis day and inaugurations is a little bit ironic. The Husband is a presidential scholar, has an advanced degree in the study of the American Presidency. It was once a calling academically (although not politically, albeit briefly on the local level, despite what some may have thought.)

Like father like son, one of Boo's first intense interests was, indeed, the American Presidents. The Husband had bought a deck of Presidential flash cards from the National Constitution Center and showed them to Boo, never expecting that at 2 years old he would recite them, in order, along with their Vice Presidents and their political party. History repeated itself at family gatherings, as Boo would be asked to recite facts about Millard Fillmore just as his father did at the same age.

Inauguration Day is one with much promise, of abundant hope, just as it was when the country welcomed President John F. Kennedy on January 20, 1961, with promises of New Frontiers and Camelot. And hope prevailed again, on January 20, 1993, when we braved the bitter cold to be among the throng of people in Washington D.C. for President Bill Clinton's inauguration. And never moreso was hope in the air than on January 20, 2009, when President Obama was inaugurated.

Yet hope was nowhere to be found in a cramped examination room on January 20, 2004, as our questions went unanswered, as we took a badly-photocopied article about the signs of autism, as we collapsed in tears and blinked in disbelief when asked to decide (not at this moment, you have time, but not much) on a therapeutic course of action before the proverbial guillotined window of time would slam shut on our 2 year old's blond head.

And yet, while the memory and heartbreak of this day never quite disappears, and I find myself replaying the moments of the day (this is when we left this is when she told us this is when we came back home), I try to look at our January 20 as more of an Inauguration Day.

Some years, that's much easier to do than others.

Today I find myself trying even moreso to grasp that gold ring of possibility that Inauguration Day brings. I find myself reflecting more than usual on all of Boo's accomplishments (and indeed, he has accomplished so much more than we ever imagined during our breakdown and the Black Hole era of seven years ago).

Last year at this very time, The Husband had just accepted the job that would bring us here and we were betwixt and between so many things. We had just made the decision to stop social skills therapy, for various reasons, and we weren't sure what was ahead of us. We were very much on the cusp of inaugurating a new life.

We're more settled now, in many ways, but if I've learned anything during these 8 years, it is that we always need to have a spirit of forging ahead, of always inaugurating and embracing the new and what comes our way because ... well, that's what we have to do, isn't it? Otherwise, the worry and the uncertainty about the challenges ahead will win - and will squelch the surprise and delight that comes along with the remarkable accomplishments and strides. I've learned that the road is always changing and our autism GPS is often unreliable and unpredictable. That's certainly been the case for us this year.

This Inauguration Day finds us heading into our first IEP meeting in more than 4 years on Monday, with services just having been reinstated (see my post, "Welcome Back" from 1.7.2012 for that story) yet worried if we'll still have them in another year or so, depending on how the powers-that-be decide to define autism for kids like Boo who have Asperger Syndrome. We've been at this table before, but not for a long time; it feels like we are pioneers, starting anew all over again in this territory. We've been here, it is familiar turf, the language sounds familiar, but we are rusty as we are inaugurating this new chapter.

There is so much up in the air. Much uncertainty, both on the local level here and on the wider scale. To paraphrase one of my friends, I think we're in for Mr. Toad's Wild Ride with this one. But for the day to day, all we can do is just keep on doing what we've been doing.

Just as we have been for the past 8 years.

copyright 2011, Melissa, The Betty and Boo Chronicles If you are reading this on a blog or website other than The Betty and Boo Chronicles or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

SOPA (as explained by Betty, age 10)

2012-01-18T20:47:00.002-05:00

Game booth at the Delaware State Fair, July 2010
Photo taken by me (copyright Melissa of The Betty and Boo Chronicles)
I love this picture and have been dying to use it somehow on the blog for nearly 2 years.

As regular readers know, my Betty has a blog and it is there that she turned, in protest, when I told her about SOPA this evening. (She came home from school, went on Wikipedia to look something up for homework, and promptly let out a shriek.) Here, in her words (remember, she is 10) is why SOPA is a bad thing.

UH OH! I have some reeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaalllllllyyyyyyy bad news. You all heard of Congress right? They are like the boss men. You do NOT repeat NOT wanna mess with them. Anyway here's the bad news: CONGRESS WANTS TO TAKE DOWN THE INTERNET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I PROTEST!!!!!!!!!

If there's no Internet, what will we do without our blogs!? Our Facebook pages!? Our YouTube accounts!?

If you protest, PLEASE COMMENT!!!!!!!!!!!

You need the Internet for reasearch and all that fancy shcmancy stuff on there! But never fear! President Obama is here! (BTW I want him to be our President forever and ever and ever.) He will try to stop all this nonsense. Congress, if you shut down the Internet, I shut down your faces! ( I mean that in the nicest possible way.)

OMG. If Congress shuts down the Internet, they shut down my BLOG! And my mom's blog! I can't let that happen! I'll DIE without my blog! Some people ( Not the Congress guys) have shut down some of the most important websites on the Internet as a way of saying ``This is what the world will be like if there is no Internet.

If you protest about any of this PRETTY PLEASE WITH SUGAR ON TOP COMMENT!!!!!!!! BLAME SOPA!!!!! (Stop Online Piracy Act)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

copyright 2011, Melissa, The Betty and Boo Chronicles If you are reading this on a blog or website other than The Betty and Boo Chronicles or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

Philadelphia Freedom (Unless You Have "Mental Retardation" and Need a Transplant)

2012-01-16T23:30:00.000-05:00

"'Cause I live and breathe that Philadelphia freedom

From the day that I was born, I've waved the flag ...."

"Philadelphia Freedom" ~ Elton John

"Oh, brother, are you going to leave me wasting away

on the streets of Philadelphia?"

"Streets of Philadelphia" ~ Bruce Springsteen

Maybe this happens to other people who move away from the city where they were born and raised and lived within 2 hours of for their entire lives.

Maybe the miles between give you a sort of a perspective, a sense of seeing your city as other people see your city.

If that's the case, then my hometown of Philadelphia isn't looking too much like the City of Brotherly Love lately.

Because tonight, I'm thinking of the fact that my city has had 17 homicides since the start of 2012 -but I am most especially thinking of a crime in Philadelphia that occurred against a 2 year old girl named Amelia that has the disability community absolutely outraged - as well it rightfully should.

All the details are here, in this blog post ("Brick Walls"), written by Amelia's mother, Chrissy, after an emotional meeting at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), where she and Chrissy's father Joe were told that Amelia could not and would not have a life-saving kidney transplant at CHOP.

The reason?

Amelia has a rare condition called Wolf-Hirshhorn Syndrome, which causes cognitive impairment. She also has seizures as part of her disability.

According to the transplant team, Amelia has "mental retardation" and that, you see, affects her quality of life and her ability to take the required transplant medications. All of which makes her an unsuitable candidate for a transplant.

Read that again. (No, rather, read Chrissy's heartwrenching blog post (if you haven't already done so) and then come back here. I'm not going anywhere.)

I first learned of this situation on Friday night through a friend on Facebook, who forwarded me Chrissy's blog post, which I then posted to my Wall. I was - still am - outraged. Appalled. Saddened. On so many levels. At the use of the archaic and dated terminology. At the horrible way this family was treated.

I knew I wanted to write about this but it has taken me several days to even begin to be able to because this hit home for me for several reasons.

For starters, I know CHOP. Or, at least, I thought I did. I've been to CHOP more times than I ever imagined I would be, starting when Boo was all of five weeks old and we were told by our primary care pediatrician on the day after Christmas to get him down there as soon as we could because he had a hernia. Our developmental pediatrician who we saw for Boo's autism was there, our ENT who gave us his home phone number after both kids' operations for their tubes was there, and probably several other specialists who I am forgetting.

We have always had top-notch care. That's what you expect from CHOP. That's what every family deserves, everywhere.

But as many of my friends know first-hand - and what this godawful situation at CHOP shows - is that if a toddler with a cognitive disability can be denied a kidney transplant in such a callous and cold manner at one of the nation's most prestigious and most renowned children's hospitals, with the most sterling of reputations, then what's stopping this from happening at other medical centers?

In other words, if this can happen at CHOP, then what's stopping this from happening elsewhere?

Not much.

NO PARENT deserves to have a doctor sit across from him or her, playing God, making grand pronouncements about a sleeping baby in a stroller's quality of life. NO PARENT deserves to have someone say, "We've been warned about you."

What did they expect the Riveras were going to do after hearing that the team wouldn't allow them to move forward with the transplant (one that they plan to identify a family member as a potential match for) that could save their daughter's life? Simply collect their daughter and their things, say thank you, and be on their way?

As one might imagine, through Amelia's mom's blog, the Rivera's story quickly went viral. When last I checked on Friday night, CHOP's Facebook page was a maelstrom of vitriol. A petition on change.org garnered 16,000 signatures. Several of my friends have written posts about Amelia's situation. (See Susan Senator's "Everyone Deserves a New Kidney"; and Love That Max's post here;)

The good news is that there might be a resolution after all. According to CBS Philadelphia, CHOP officials have contacted Chrissy Rivera and want to discuss Amelia's case further.

I hope that CHOP does the right thing here and allows this transplant to proceed. (And arranges it so that this doctor can never talk to a family in this manner ever again.)

Because as much as I love my newly adopted city of Pittsburgh, my heart will always belong to Philadelphia.

And I don't want to see one more crime on its streets.

copyright 2011, Melissa, The Betty and Boo Chronicles If you are reading this on a blog or website other than The Betty and Boo Chronicles or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

The Sunday Salon: Some Books Forgotten

2012-01-15T22:14:00.000-05:00

I'm getting this week's Sunday Salon in under the wire tonight because my day has been spent with the usual weekend errands (library and the grocery store) as well as being preoccupied with some other kinds of books.

You see, I was always a fairly avid reader but nothing like until book blogging entered my life. In the years before that took hold, my main hobby was scrapbooking.

I still scrapbook every so often, but it has definitely fallen by the wayside. There was a time when I religiously sat down at my dining room table and created 10 pages every Friday night. When we moved into this apartment and The Husband saw Rubbermaid container after container of photos and paraphenalia coming in the door, I knew I had to try and get some control over this. Anyway, so I've been spending part of the day digital scrapbooking in hopes of completing our family's Christmas album from this past year - and to take advantage of a pretty cool Creative Memories sale. (I used to be a Consultant, so I'm still very much a loyalist to them.)

So, I did 5 scrapbook pages tonight. Not as many as I'd hoped to, but that's 5 more than I had when I woke up this morning.

All that being said, I only finished one book this week - and the title of this post being "Some Books Forgotten" fits this particular book quite well, because it is indeed a book I'd like to forget. It's The Life All Around Me by Ellen Foster, by Kaye Gibbons, which sounds confusing until one realizes that this is the sequel to the bestselling (and wonderful) novel Ellen Foster. I absolutely adored Ellen Foster and had high hopes for this (which I listened to on audio) but oh my God ... what a confusing, disjointed, rambling little book.

I liked the first 8 pages. After that, this became a long tangent that become really tough to understand and get into. I happen to own this (yay! another one off Mount TBR!) and I'll be donating this to the library - or somewhere - at my earliest opportunity. I feel kind of bad inflicting this on someone else, but ... well, maybe it will find a happy home.

I'm still reading (and, for the most part, enjoying) American Bee: The National Spelling Bee and the Culture of Word Nerds by James Maguire. Some other reviewers have said this is repetitive in parts, which I agree with. But it is interesting to read about the origins of the National Spelling Bee, how the words are determined (to the extent that this can be revealed), the brief profiles of the winners throughout the years (and how many are currently still involved with the Bee in a professional capacity), and how changes in society (in racial relations and gender equality) have impacted on the competition. Part of it is also just the sheer fascination with the number of words there really are in the English language - and how few of them we really know. This is a geeky read at its best.

This one is due back to the library with no renewals (of course) on Tuesday, so I need to spend some time with this tomorrow. (I'm only on page 142 of 363.) I'm thinking about pairing this with Myla Goldberg's Bee Season for the Truth in Fiction reading challenge.

Hope you had a great Sunday!

copyright 2011, Melissa, The Betty and Boo Chronicles If you are reading this on a blog or website other than The Betty and Boo Chronicles or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

Weekend Cooking: 2011: A Look Back at a Year in Food (and a Look Ahead)

2012-01-14T16:41:00.002-05:00

Weekend Cooking is hosted by my friend Beth Fish Reads and is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page. For more information, see the welcome post.

Since we bloggers do year-end wrap ups of books and everything else, I thought a look back at 2011 as it was in food might be a bit of a fun retrospective.

(I had intended to do this post last week, but since I had just finished Joy for Beginners the night before, I couldn't wait to tell you about that ... so that review became last weekend's Weekend Cooking post. I figured you wouldn't mind the week's delay for this.)

Three specific restaurant meals immediately come to mind as highlights of the year in food.

There was the fun dinner with several book bloggers in May at New York City's Eataly, following the Book Blogger Convention.

From left, Teresa from Shelf Love (with glasses), Colleen from Books in the City, Ash from English Major's Junk Food, Florinda from The 3Rs Blog, Kim from Sophisticated Dorkiness, and yours truly.

In the summer, several coworkers and I reunited for the first time in many, many years and had a delicious dinner at Coyote Crossing in Conshohocken, Pa - not to mention this tower of margaritas that was the envy of the other patrons. We nicknamed this the "Tower of Power."

Never fear. There was some food involved that night, too. I can prove it, because I am that annoying friend who photographs everyone's meal.

Starting with mine, this Coyote Veggie Burrito (pictured below) with poblano onion strips, rice, corn, and black beans. It was topped with a pumpkin flower sauce (whatever that is, but it was damn good) and avocados.

Then there was my friend D.'s Tequila Lime Salad.

The dessert that I shared with my friend T., cheesecake wrapped in a flour tortilla dusted with cinnamon and sugar, with chocolate sauce for dipping.

And lots of laughs and memories to last us another several years (although hopefully it won't be that long till we're together again.)

And then there was my visit to eden-a vegan cafe in Scranton, where I had one of their amazing Fun and Green Burgers for lunch. There's another business trip to Scranton in my future (maybe as early as this month or next, but definitely again next fall) and I'll be eating at eden for every single one of my meals while I'm in town.

The kids and I visited the Farm to Feast exhibit at the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens here in Pittsburgh.

There was birthday cake, and the particular happiness that a piece of lemon cake brought to my friend's little boy (and me).

There was also the mundane stuff of trying to make meal plans (I succeeded somewhat, and need to work on this more in the new year) and trying to eat us out of house and home when we were moving and I didn't want to take the entire contents of our pantry with us. I did pretty good with that.

This was also the year I pretty much gave up chocolate.

(I know. For some of you, that sounds like giving up a limb.)

But it started becoming too much of a migraine trigger even in the smallest amounts and I - never really much one for sweets anyway - decided to give it up. My dad, also a migraine sufferer, was always "allergic" to chocolate and as I grew older I understood why. It's made a tremendous difference.

Towards the end of 2011 came the wake-up call from my doctor ("You Could Have Wound Up in a Coma!" and Other Phrases That You Don't Want Your Doctor to Tell You") that, given my cholesterol numbers from the bloodwork she ordered, is going to affect my eating habits in 2012 and beyond. Apparently, my triglycerides are too far gone off the charts that they can't even measure my bad cholesterol - or some such nonsense. And my total cholesterol is in the moderately high range.

I've already started to make some changes since getting these results the week before Christmas. (And can I tell you how much fun it is going on a low-cholesterol diet THE WEEK BEFORE CHRISTMAS??!!) But, my attitude was, better to be on a low-cholesterol diet now rather than a hospital diet of food in the cardiac ward after having a heart attack or stroke.

Breakfast is now a bowl of oatmeal with a sliced banana. I'm down to an average of one cup of coffee a day, mainly because I'm back on my thyroid medication (which prompted the coma comment from the doctor) and most days I don't feel like I need that mid-afternoon cup of caffeine. Snacks are walnuts or some raw veggies, like carrots. Salads are present at lunch and dinner, if not my meal itself. My nightly bowl of ice cream has been eliminated. (Well, most nights. I think I treated myself to a bowl one night this year, which isn't too bad.)

This has only been a few weeks now and while it's not easy (and admittedly, not always fun because I really love my pizza and pasta and ohmigawd, my cheese) it is what needs to be the new normal around here as far as food goes. I'll be writing more about this journey in the months to come because it is going to meet a change in our eating habits, mostly mine.

Here's to a healthy 2012!

copyright 2011, Melissa, The Betty and Boo Chronicles If you are reading this on a blog or website other than The Betty and Boo Chronicles or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

Book Review: How It Ended: New and Collected Stories, by Jay McInerney

2012-01-12T19:27:00.000-05:00

How It Ended: New and Collected Stories
by Jay McInerney
Alfred A. Knopf
2009
331 pages

OK, so here's one of my guilty literary pleasures. I absolutely love me some Jay McInerney. I adore the guy and his writing, and have for quite some time. But here's the thing about me and McInerney: as much as I hate to admit it, I've come to the conclusion that I can only take him in smallish doses, and How It Ended: New and Collected Stories confirms that theory. This is not a collection of stories that is meant to be read straight through, as I did over the New Years weekend. (Especially over such a weekend made for debauchery such as New Years.)

By page 110 or so of this collection of stories, I felt like I needed to check myself into the likes of the Betty Ford Clinic because I was feeling in needed of a detox. The coke! The parties! The beautiful people! The affairs! New York! It's all here, and it's the stuff that Jay McInerney's stories are made of (and why I love him so).

Escaping into a McInerney book is like spending an evening in the company of that friend of yours who is living la vida loca - you know, the one who goes to all the great concerts and all the cool parties, the One Who Has A Life while you're in your PJs by 7 p.m. It's fun, in a way, to live vicariously through such people, which again, is why these stories are good but just not read back to back.

The characters in these stories are, for the most part, gorgeous and rich and incredibly lonely and sad. They're adulterers. They're living in the aftermath of the 80s and 9/11. Several make re-appearances from their starring roles in other McInerney novels (notably, Russell and Corrine Calloway from Brightness Falls and Alison from Story of My Life).

How It Ended is comprised of 26 stories. In my opinion, among the best are:

"The Madonna of Turkey Season" about a family struggling to celebrate the holidays each year after the passing of their mother;
"Sleeping with Pigs", a brilliant story about a woman's fetish for sleeping with a pig and how that is connected with her grieving her deceased brother;
"My Public Service," about an idealistic staffer on a political campaign who quickly becomes jaded;
"The Queen and I," about the enduring spirit of friendship over family;
"Con Doctor," about a doctor in a prison who can't come to terms with his own past;
"I Love You, Honey," about the lengths one will go for revenge and possessiveness, and
"Getting in Touch with Lonnie," where a celebrity gets a surprise when visiting his wife in a rehab clinic.

copyright 2011, Melissa, The Betty and Boo Chronicles If you are reading this on a blog or website other than The Betty and Boo Chronicles or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

Best Books of 2011: 6 Best Nonfiction Books

2012-01-09T22:41:00.001-05:00

Have you gotten weary of all the Best of 2011 book lists yet? Hopefully not. I know I've been loving reading these posts and adding piles of books to my "want-to-read" lists.

I still need to do my picks for Best Nonfiction and Best Memoirs (as if you're waiting with bated breath for my selections). I'm going to drag this out into two separate posts because a few of you who are participating in my 2012 Memorable Memoir Reading Challenge have asked for some suggestions and I think that might deserve its own post.

Today, let's talk Best Nonfiction of 2011. The memoirs will wait another day. As usual, these are books that I read in 2011, not necessarily ones that were published in 2011.

I didn't read as much nonfiction this past year as I typically do. My stats say that I read 21 such books, with 9 of them being memoirs. It felt like significantly less and when I checked my 2010 numbers, that was true. I'd read 29 nonfiction books then, with 8 of them being memoirs. I'm not sure what to attribute that to, but I've signed myself up to read 10 books for the Nonfiction Non-Memoir Challenge this year, so that will help.

A few nonfiction books that I wanted to highlight from this year as being exceptional (links and quotes are from my reviews):

American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half Its Food (and what we can do about it)

by Jonathan Bloom

"Every day, America wastes enough food to fill the Rose Bowl. Yes, THAT Rose Bowl - the 90,000 seat football stadium in Pasadena, California."

That's a visual (and a first sentence) that gets your attention, and like taking candy from a baby, Bloom snatches your attention and runs with it through this entire book. He gives more statistics and backs up his meticulous research with an engaging and oftentimes very funny narrative, making this a really interesting (and sobering) read.

Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie Girl Culture, by Peggy Orenstein

"The first Princess items, released with no marketing plan, no focus groups, no advertising, sold as if blessed by a fairy godmother. Within a year, sales had soared to $300 million. By 2009, they were at $4 billion. Four billion dollars! There are more than twenty-six thousand Disney Princess items on the market, a number which, particularly when you exclude cigarette, liquor, cars, and antidepressants, is staggering." (pg. 14) "Of course, girls are not buying the 24/7 princess culture all on their own. So the question is not only why they like it (which is fairly obvious) but what it offers their parents." (pg. 22)

Yes, what indeed?

Orenstein's book is a must-read for any parent or relative or teacher of young girls. She delves into the world of child beauty pageants, the pages of the original versions of fairy tales, and into the online worlds inhabited by thousands of kids starting with the games found on Nick.com and Disney and moving into the virtual and social networking worlds where 3.7 million teens are logging on each month. I found this absolutely fascinating.

Click: The Magic of Instant Connections
by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman

Ever wonder why you "click" with some people and are just "eh" about others? There's more science than serendipity than you might think, and the Brafman brothers explain how it all happens in their book. I'm horrendous at small talk and unfortunately, I need to do a lot of it for my job. This book was great at showing me how to figure out additional ways to make these connections happen (along with the banal small talk).

Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds
by Lyndall Gordon

You think you've got a dysfunctional family? Meet the Dickinsons. You've got your position of power (her father was a trustee of Amherst and the college's treasurer), your adulterers (Emily's brother and sister-in-law), and your manipulators. I admit I never heard of any of this until reading this book, which proved to be as entertaining as any novel or TV show. (Think "Dynasty" in mid-1800s New England.).

Before we delve into the feud, however, it's necessary to learn the biographical facts of who's who and how everyone is related. That takes up approximately the first half of the book, and is very interesting reading.

There's also discussion of why Emily was such a recluse, and Gordon believes the clues are within Emily's poems, with lines like "I felt a Cleaving in my Mind." Epilepsy is presented as a strong possibility and it makes perfect sense. This wasn't a breezy read, but it was one that I enjoyed. As I mentioned earlier, I didn't know anything about this whole Dickinson family feud and that was interesting (and entertaining) to me. Lyndall Gordon's writing made me feel as if I was transported back to that time while at the same time providing some analysis of and thoughts on Emily Dickinson's poetry.

Marriage Confidential: The Post-Romantic Age of Workhorse Wives, Royal Children, Undersexed Spouses, and Rebel Couples Who Are Rewriting the Rules
by Pamela Haag

What if your marriage came with a term limit, a contract of sorts? Kind of like a pre-nup, but one that stated that after a certain number of agreed upon years, you'll evaluate the whole ball of wax and decide if you want to continue onward. If you do, great. If not, you go your separate ways. No harm, no foul.

That's just one of the more unconventional ideas presented in Marriage Confidential, in which Pamela Haag evaluates the whole state of matrimony as it exists today and gives several plausible theories as to why most of us are in relationships where we're more akin to roommates than anything else.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
by Laura Hillenbrand

This was probably my most surprising read of 2011. A friend of mine invited me to join her book club via Goodreads and their selection for that month was Unbroken. Having seen many bloggers raving about this, I figured I would give it a try, but I admit that I was reluctant to do so. A World War II story is not my typical literary fare, and I nearly abandoned it early on. (The first 50 pages are a bit slow going, but I was warned about that.) I'm glad I stuck with this, though, because it became an incredible story, one that really is about survival, resilience and redemption. Louis Zamperini is a true American hero and everyone should know his story.

Have you read any of these? If so, what did you think?

copyright 2011, Melissa, The Betty and Boo Chronicles If you are reading this on a blog or website other than The Betty and Boo Chronicles or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

The Sunday Salon: A Good Reading Start to the New Year

2012-01-08T08:05:00.002-05:00

And how has your first full week of reading gone in this new year? Good? Bad? So-so? On this end, it has indeed been a very good bookish start to 2012 and hopefully the same has been true for you, too. Two books completed, several reading challenges have titles at the beginning of their lists ... so I can't complain.

I started off the year with a book of poetry, just as I did in 2011, which I suppose now makes this a tradition. My selection this year was the appropriately-named Book of Days by Jennifer Hill-Kaucher, which I bought last fall when I visited Jennifer's store (Paper Kite Press and Books) in Kingston, PA. (In this year of focusing on reading my own books, I wanted to start off by reading one from the To-Be-Read (TBR) pile.)

Book of Days is a collection of 41 poems, each divided seamlessly into sections headed by days of the week. To me, they're about the big and small moments that together comprise a life. I'll have a full review up at some point, but suffice it to say that I enjoyed welcoming in the new year with this one.

For yesterday's Weekend Cooking post, I reviewed Erica Bauermeister's heartwarming and thought-provoking novel Joy for Beginners. Again, another good choice for the beginning of the year, as it prompts the reader to ask what new or difficult or scary thing do you need to do within the next year to challenge yourself to grow in order to become a happier, more fulfilled and alive person?

I switched things up to a nonfiction book for this week, and even though I just started it last night and am only on page 9, I'm already engrossed in James Maguire's fascinating American Bee: The National Spelling Bee and the Culture of Word Nerds. His style of writing is great and this reads like a novel. (Speaking of which, I'm thinking about pairing this with Myla Goldberg's Bee Season for the Truth in Fiction Challenge, which would knock another book off Mt. TBR.)

Weather-permitting, I have a day of travel on tap for this Wednesday and my audiobook of choice also happens to be one of my TBR books. I can't even remember how long ago I bought The Life All Around Me by Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons, but I do remember how much I loved Ellen Foster. (This was one of my Best Books Read in 2008).

As for today, it's just a quiet Sunday 'round here. We're doing a drive-by of two houses we're interested in and then we'll be watching the banged-up Steelers in the playoffs. (We're Philly folks born and bred, but we have probably one more season left in us of rooting for the Birds with the way things are going for our Eagles. It's really our civic duty and for the good of the team; we have a history of defecting and then the damn city wins a championship. Happened with the Phillies, so of course it will happen again with the Eagles.)

Hope your Sunday - and your 2012 - is off to a good start!

copyright 2011, Melissa, The Betty and Boo Chronicles If you are reading this on a blog or website other than The Betty and Boo Chronicles or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

Welcome Back

2012-01-07T20:12:00.003-05:00

When Boo was first diagnosed with autism, 8 years ago this month, we were living in Pennsylvania. Even before the diagnosis (which we knew, long before it was official) he was in early intervention services, which led to a specialized day care/preschool placement and an IEP, and floortime services for three years, and diapers being covered by Medicare, and wraparound services.

And then we moved. Not all that far - just across the state line. To Delaware.

But in terms of autism services for Boo, we might as well have moved to the moon.

Our biggest fear was that he would lose everything, all of his services. (Which is, of course, what happened.)

Perhaps we were naive in thinking that we would be able to pack everything up in a box, label it with a Sharpie, take it all with us. Put OT in this box. Floortime goes in this room, over here.

So we met with the folks at the new school district. Asked questions. Were reassured that everything pointed to Boo continuing to receive services. Same as it ever was. We were relieved.

It didn't last. After the new school district did their evaluation, they called us into a meeting and determined that Boo was no longer autistic enough to qualify for special education services. Their exact words:

"A child needs to be 25% delayed in Pennsylvania. Here in Delaware, they need to be 45% delayed and Boo doesn't meet the criteria." They might as well have quoted the infamous Soup Nazi from Seinfeld and yelled, "No services for Boo!"

Which is what happened. We were stunned. As we often said in the four years we lived in the First State, it's not like we crossed the state line and Boo became less autistic. But in the eyes of the powers that be, that's exactly what happened.

We could have fought back. (But how? We didn't know how.) We should have. I think there's a part of me that will always regret not doing so. But my friend Jini once told me (and I have never, ever forgotten this) that we make decisions based on the information and what we have available to us at the time. We weren't (still aren't) anywhere near rich. We couldn't afford a lawyer. I was commuting four hours a day to work. The Husband's job was becoming a living hell.

But somehow, in the midst of this, Boo was doing OK, and we were able to pay privately for some therapies, and some of it was even reimbursed by insurance, so it was all right. That's what we told ourselves anyway.

But we knew that it wasn't. We knew that he was being cheated out of something he deserved, that he deserved more, that he deserved better. There were also other issues going on at the time. Emotionally, we were exhausted, wrecked. Our time in Delaware was very, very hard on a lot of levels, much more difficult than many people ever knew and that we let on. It's only now that we're out of that situation, that we have some time and distance, that we're even able to admit to ourselves how tough it was.

And then, we knew we had little choice but to leave while we still had options, and when we looked, one of those options was coming back to Pennsylvania. All of a sudden, as if a cloud had lifted for all of us, things looked brighter. Things felt brighter. Even though we would be on the opposite end of the state as our hometown of Philadelphia, it felt like we were coming home.

Our goal was to get services reinstated in school for Boo, to do right by our son. I spent some time on the phone during The Summer of My Unemployment talking to special education directors and doing what research I could and trying to figure out what was still what from when we originally lived here. And when I told the new team here about the "need to be 45% delayed in Delaware and that Boo didn't meet the criteria," I was gratified to see that, to a person, they were appalled, that they used words like "ridiculous" and "absurd".

So the process started all over again. Back to the proverbial Square One. The gawdfreakinawful questionnaires about meds taken in pregnancies and family histories and developmental milestones and did I give permission to evaluate (hell to the yeah) and the plummeting grades and the mid-point progress report that superceded the parent-teacher conference and the "is it OK if we try him in the Lunch Bunch autism group?" to finally, finally, the letter that arrived this afternoon:

"The student has a disability AND is in need of specially designed instruction, and therefore IS ELIGIBLE for special education. Boo meets special education eligibility criteria as a student with Autism (Asperger Syndrome). It is recommended that he begin to receive specially designed instruction on an itinerant basis through the Autistic Support program."

Yeah, there's a part of me that wishes there was a magic wand that had been waved, where someone could have said that my boy was no longer autistic. Maybe that's part of the reason that kept us hanging on for longer than we knew. Maybe we wanted to believe what we knew wasn't true.

But that's not going to happen anyway, and this is better than that.

This is vindication.

After four years.

Take that, Delaware and your 45% delayed bullshit.

It's sure nice to be back home.

copyright 2011, Melissa, The Betty and Boo Chronicles If you are reading this on a blog or website other than The Betty and Boo Chronicles or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

Weekend Cooking: Book Review: Joy for Beginners, by Erica Bauermeister

2012-01-07T13:55:00.002-05:00

I'll serve up the same disclaimer for Joy for Beginners as I did in my review of Erica Bauermeister's previous novel, The School of Essential Ingredients: you know the advice that you shouldn't go grocery shopping on an empty stomach? Well, similarly, neither should you read an Erica Bauermeister book if you're hungry.

There's just something about the way Bauermeister writes about food that is so decadent and food pron-ish - and in Joy for Beginners the descriptions of the bread-baking, the dinner parties, the wine, the meals in Venice, the kitchen garden, and the aromas are all what (in my view) make this review one that's fitting for a Weekend Cooking post. It also (again, IMHO) qualifies this book as one for Margot's Foodies Read 2 Challenge. Here's a taste:

"It was almost midnight. The tables were cluttered with napkins and used silverware, tablecloths rumpled like bedsheets. The diners reclined in their chairs, hands drifting leisurely back and forth between espresso cups and the last sips of port. Tips of fingers caressed the surface of white plates, snaring the last flakes of chocolate left from cinnamon-dusted truffles. Smells lingered in the air, sliding across bare shoulders, nestling into curls of hair - risotto and chanterelle mushrooms, sweet and rich and buttery, the bite of Parmesan, the rosemary and white wine and garlic of a slow-cooked pork roast. And bread, of course, the long loaves having been passed from hand to hand, chunks pulled off, dipped in small white dishes of green olive oil with dark, molten drops of balsamic vinegar floating in its midst. Wine bottles had long ago lost their ownership, traveling up and down the tables like porters on a train. Artists had met book dealers had met plumbers had met research scientists, people getting up between courses and changing places. Over in the corner, a couple was forming, their heads bending slowly toward each other like candles melting." (pg. 71-72)

Joy for Beginners opens on the eve of a joyous occasion indeed. Kate has gathered several of her closest friends together for a dinner party to celebrate her recovery from cancer. With the way Bauermeister writes, you almost want to pull up a chair and join these ladies for a glass of wine.

"The plates were almost empty, the light gone early from the September sky. The edges of Kate's patio were lost in the foliage beyond, its contours lit by the back porch light and the candles on the wrought iron table, around which the women sat, talking with the ease of those who have settled into one another's lives. Out on the road the occasional car drove by, the sound muffled by the laurel hedge that held the garden with its green walls. Everything felt softened, the garden more smells than sights, emitting the last scents of summer into the air." (pg. 5)

As the dinner party winds down, the conversation turns to the white-water rafting trip down the Grand Canyon that Kate's daughter has planned in celebration, and which terrifies Kate. She strikes a bargain with her friends: if she goes on this trip, each one of them must also, in the next year, do something that is equally new or difficult or scary for them - and since Kate didn't have any say in the white-water rafting trip, she gets to choose their challenges.

In the spirit of friendship, each woman accepts Kate's challenge, which turns out to be something that is perfect for each of them and something that each woman needs. As the novel unfolds, we learn their personal stories and how the friends are connected to each other and to Kate. They're all in different life stages and circumstances, but their stories are familiar enough to be universal. There's Caroline, who is going through a divorce and needs to finally shed her ex-husband's books; Daria, who needs to come to peace with her childhood and learn how to bake bread; Sara, who needs to rediscover her identity and travel alone; Hadley, who needs to open her protective world more; Marion, who needs to become more adventureous, and Ava, who needs to embrace the spirit of survivorship.

In all of their tasks, there is the sense that there has been something holding each woman back, preventing her from living more deeply. From the very first lines of the novel:

"But life is persistent, slipping into your consciousness sideways, catching you with a fleeting moment of color, the unexpected and comforting smell of a neighbor's dinner cooking as you walk on a winter evening, the feeling of warm water running between your fingers as you wash the dishes at night. There is nothing so seductive as reality." (pg 1)

This is a novel that I really enjoyed (and that I can definitely see being made into a movie). It is about the power and spirit of women's friendship, about taking risks and discovering who you are, about the moments of realization and the a-ha moments of enlightment, whether that comes from the every day moments or the big life events.

"There were moments in life, Marion thought, when you reached back, baton in hand, feeling the runner behind you. Felt the clasp of their fingers resonating through the wood, the release of your hand, which then flew forward, empty, into the space ahead of you." (pg. 189)

I chose this book deliberately as my first novel of 2012 after seeing it in the library and knowing how much I enjoyed Erica Bauermeister's The School of Essential Ingredients, and after seeing it on several bloggers' Best of 2011 lists. (Bookstack). It's too early to tell if it will make it onto my year-end best of list, but although this had some similar thematic and formulaic elements as Bauermeister's previous book, it was a perfect read for the beginning of the year.

Joy for Beginners spans an entire year and even though it begins in September, it gets the reader thinking about what changes and challenges you can accept in your own life to become a better person 12 months from now. What do you need to become happier, to grow as a person, to become more fulfilled?

I tried to answer that question, to mentally place myself as among the guests at Kate's dinner party and have her issue the same challenge to me. Melissa, your challenge is to _______ . I think the answer is to finish the damn novel. I've been talking about that for several years now and it just hasn't happened. I've revised the same pages, over and over, but just haven't moved forward. I think I know why and what's been holding me back psychologically. Maybe this is the year to let that all go ... out into the world.

So. If someone challenged you to do something new or different or scary this year, what would your challenge be?

Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads and is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page. For more information, see the welcome post.

copyright 2011, Melissa, The Betty and Boo Chronicles If you are reading this on a blog or website other than The Betty and Boo Chronicles or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

Sometimes, Autism Doesn't Always Get to Be the Excuse

2012-01-05T20:33:00.001-05:00

The insult came seemingly out of nowhere, hurled across the room in my direction, meeting its intended target.

Me.

I looked at my 10 year old daughter, blinked, dared her to repeat her words.

"WHAT, exactly, did you just say?"

The Husband took off his headphones, seeing my "this means business" expression. I had heard Betty loud and clear and I whispered her remark to him. His eyes widened.

"I SAID," Betty hollered. "that I wish you never gave birth to THAT. AUTISTIC. CHILD."

That autistic child, meaning her twin brother.

* * *
Ironically, this followed almost immediately on the heels of something that has become somewhat more commonplace but still rare enough to cause us to exchange who are these kids? glances - the two of them playing together, laughing, seemingly enjoying each other's company.

(That'll teach us to enjoy the moment. Fools, us.)

Shortly thereafter, though, Betty realized she'd forgotten she still had some reading homework. I didn't think to remind her because she had been reading in the morning. (She has trouble recognizing that if her teacher says to read 20 minutes at night and she's already banked 10 minutes in the morning, then she only needs to do another ten more minutes. At least that's how it works according to my math.)

So, naturally, playing with her brother + forgetting her homework = her reading time being screwed up.

Which became his fault.

Because he has autism.

Which became my fault.

Bruno Bettelheim, meet my daughter.

* * *
I surprised myself (and probably The Husband) with how calm I was in the face of Betty's remark. (Meds. They do a body good.) And those of you who know me well and who know the circumstances and story surrounding the twins' birth probably can understand exactly how many buttons that 10 year old managed to push with those 10 words.

But there's a part of me that sees myself in my daughter, recognizes my own self when I hear her blaming the autism for things and circumstances that really aren't the autism's fault to begin with. Understands all too well what she is feeling when she says she wishes she could stop herself sometimes from getting too angry or saying things that she doesn't always mean.

* * *
The Husband left the room to do damage control in the bedroom where the kids had just moments before been laughing and dancing to some show on the Disney channel. He wanted to find out what Boo had possibly overheard. ("Betty said something that got Mommy a little mad. Not a lot mad, but a little mad. And it sounded like Betty doesn't like me.")

Meanwhile, I was left with a thrashing dervish in the living room who was cursing autism.

"I know you have a lot more to deal with than other kids," I said. "I know it's hard dealing with Boo's autism and all that goes with it. But in this case, Boo's autism didn't make you forget to do your homework."

"He was acting silly BECAUSE HE HAS THE STUPID AUTISM and that made me forget, so it's the autism's fault!"

"Sorry, that's not gonna fly with me. At some point, you need to take some responsibility. You knew you had the homework to do and you were watching TV and playing instead."

More pouting. More tears. Finally, an apology. "I'll never say that again, Mommy."

"Good. Because you know, Betty, sometimes autism doesn't always get to be the excuse."

* * *
This all happened Tuesday night. And truthfully, this is just the latest incident of this sort that we've dealt with lately. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, about how this anger of Betty's seemed to have taken a hiatus over the holidays, about how I too in the past have resorted to blaming the autism in certain situations when I knew that the blame needed to be all mine. Still, the recognition of that is being older (by 32 years) than my girl and having a hell of lot more years of therapy on her. (We do have Betty seeing someone, but as The Husband and I discussed, a change is probably in order.)

In other times, I would have made my own excuses. It's a phase. It will pass. It's not as big of a deal as you're making it out to be. You know, all siblings fight. But this feels different because Boo's different. He understands more, about emotions, about feelings. His confidence is growing, in leaps and bounds. He's asking questions. Perhaps most incredibly, he's giving and asking for hugs - constantly. This from the boy who not too long ago shunned all kinds of physical contact. He's coming into his own person, discovering who he is, forming his own sense of self.

So, in the meantime, as we try to find the right programs and the right resources for both of our kids in the midst of this new community of ours, we do what we can. (I've been trying desperately - in vain, it appears - to find some semblance of a SibShop type of group here in the Pittsburgh area. No luck.)

We muddle through. We talk.

We re-affirm our rule that we do not call each other names.

We talk some more.

We do the work. Or try to.

Because there's no excuse not to.

copyright 2011, Melissa, The Betty and Boo Chronicles If you are reading this on a blog or website other than The Betty and Boo Chronicles or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

Wordless Wednesday: All Was Calm, All Was Bright

2012-01-04T14:53:00.003-05:00

One of my favorite pictures from this Christmas season. Betty, by the tree at my mom and stepfather's house.

See more Wordless Wednesday photos here.

copyright 2011, Melissa, The Betty and Boo Chronicles If you are reading this on a blog or website other than The Betty and Boo Chronicles or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

From the Boo Homework Files: First Lines

2012-01-03T20:11:00.001-05:00

First line of what Boo did for homework tonight (a creative writing story assignment, apparently):

"On a crisp afternoon, Rashio Wolff, a 16 year old kid who pranks his older brother Ryan, a 19 year old kid, was washing his car shirtless because he wants girls to know he was available."

copyright 2011, Melissa, The Betty and Boo Chronicles If you are reading this on a blog or website other than The Betty and Boo Chronicles or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

Book Review: A Clockwork Christmas: A Steampunk Christmas Anthology

2012-01-02T12:56:00.000-05:00

A Clockwork Christmas: A Steampunk Christmas Anthology
by JK Coi, PG Forte, Stacy Gail, and Jenny Schwartz
Carina Press
2011
Received from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review

We're still within the 12 days of Christmas, aren't we? I mean, this is my last day of Christmas break (as is The Husband's and the kids) so I think I'm good in getting this review posted in the nick of time for the holiday season. Not that it really matters, because even though A Clockwork Christmas is billed as "A Steampunk Christmas Anthology," there isn't very much in the way of the yuletide in these four novellas that comprise this collection. Trust me when I say you're good to go if you want to read this in the middle of July.

A Clockwork Christmas does, however, deliver in regards to the steampunk elements - which I had to look up, being that I'm very new to the steampunk genre. I requested A Clockwork Christmas from NetGalley because I thought a Christmas-themed collection of novellas would be a good introduction to the genre as well as be a fun, entertaining book to read on my Kindle during our 6 hour drive (each way) to and from Philadelphia for the holidays. And that it absolutely was.

(For those who, like me, are unfamiliar with steampunk, here's how Wikipedia describes it: a sub-genre of science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, and speculative fiction that involves a setting where steam power is used, most often in Victorian era Britain or the Wild West era of the United States. Works of steampunk often feature anachronistic technology or futuristic innovations as Victorians might have envisioned them, based on a Victorian perspective on fashion, culture, architecture, etc.)

Now, there's an added element in A Clockwork Christmas that certain readers might want to know about beforehand and that bears mentioning. Carina Press is a publisher of romance novels - some of them on the steamy side, from some of the descriptions of ones I've seen - and the first two steampunk novellas (and even the fourth) in A Clockwork Christmas are definitely powered by that particular type of ... uh, steam. From what I understand and can gather from reading other reviews, this isn't typical of most steampunk works. (Or maybe it is. I don't know. I don't have enough experience with the genre, truthfully, but I do know that it is definitely present here. In great - sometimes, often graphic - detail.)

So, some readers may not appreciate that added romantic element. As for me? Well, that didn't bother me nor did it take away from my enjoyment of these four novellas.

Take Crime Wave in a Corset by Stacy Gail, the first novella in the anthology and my favorite of the four. This is the story of Cornelia, a beautiful professional thief who grew up knowing no other way of life and who keeps her physical and emotional scars hidden from anyone who tries to get close to her. When Roderick discovers that Cornelia has stolen a valuable (and sentimental) Faberge egg from him, he demands that she return it - or he'll make certain that she won't live to see Christmas Day. The tension between the two is delicious and makes for a fun and entertaining (and steamy!) story.

Then we have This Winter Heart, by PG Forte, which I also liked. Destitute, Ophelia has returned (from eastern Pennsylvania!) to her husband Dario's estate in the Wild West, after being away for eight years during the Civil War. (An interesting twist there: in this tale, the Civil War happens to have been won by the South.) Lia, as she is known, doesn't return alone; she arrives with her 8 year old son, whose father happens to be (you guessed it) the cad Dario. This comes as somewhat of a surprise to Dario, who believed Lia to be barren - and, because of her father's inventor interventions - inhuman as well. He treats her callously, refusing to admit that he once had feelings for her - and perhaps, still does.

Esme Smith is the protagonist of Wanted: One Scoundrel, Jenny Schwartz's novella about a suffragette in Australia who hires Jed Reeve ("a scoundrel") to promote her feminist agenda in the male social clubs that she's denied access to because she's a woman. I gotta say ... I loved Esme, who was my favorite of all the strong female lead characters presented here. I just adored her independence, smarts, and spunk in a time when women's voices were often silenced and that made Wanted: One Scoundrel a fun story to read. (Plus, there was a twist at the end that I didn't see coming.) And while I liked the romance between Cornelia and Roderick in Crime Wave in a Corset, I really liked the relationship with Esme and Jed.

Finally, JK Coi's Far From Broken was a heartbreaking story about a accomplished ballerina who suffers a horrible crime as revenge for her husband's work as a government spy, the lengths that one will go to save a life, and what it means to be human. There are some similar thematic elements to This Winter Heart in this one, but it is different enough to stand alone. This one had me riveted to my Kindle, as it was the novella I spent New Year's Eve with.

While I thought the Christmas aspect of A Clockwork Christmas was definitely lacking, overall this was an enjoyable, entertaining, turbo-charged romantic read with strong characters and good writing. I'm glad I gave it a try, as it was one of my most surprising reads of 2011. These four novellas were a great introduction to steampunk and while I don't think I'll be abandoning my regular preferences anytime soon, I would certainly consider reading additional works by these talented authors.

What Other Bloggers Thought (did I miss your review? Let me know in the comments!)

Reading Thru the Night

copyright 2011, Melissa, The Betty and Boo Chronicles If you are reading this on a blog or website other than The Betty and Boo Chronicles or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

The Sunday Salon: A Year for the Books and a Look Ahead to 2012

2012-01-01T20:16:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year! Hopefully this first day of 2012 finds you happy and healthy, with more of the same in store for you during the next 12 months.

We celebrated New Year's Eve by taking the kids out for an early (4:30 p.m.) dinner at The Olive Garden and then we just hung out at home. The kids played the Wii and watched TV; The Husband read and played on his iPad, and I finished up two books: A Clockwork Christmas: A Steampunk Christmas Anthology and How It Ended: New and Collected Stories by Jay McInerney before the clock struck midnight. The kids were determined to stay up until 12, and this was the year they actually made it.

I admit, I was a little bummed at my year-end reading totals of 69 books (I wanted to try and make it an even 70) until I realized that A Clockwork Christmas is a collection of four novellas ... so, those can count as four books, right? (Right!) So ... 72 it is. I feel better about that. One of these years (maybe this one?) I'll reach that elusive 100 books read in a year.

That's down slightly from my 2010 total of 79 books, but I attribute that to our move this year (which had me being a single parent during the week for five months). As such, my reading slowed down considerably during much of that process. Still, there were several other notable statistics for 2011. (And yeah, I know my math is a bit screwy in parts ... but so be it.)

# of books read = 72
# of female authors read = 38
# of male authors read = 30
# of new authors read = 40
# of pages read = 13,812
# of audiobooks read = 14
# of hours = 148.36 ... which translates into 6.1 days!
# of fiction books = 46
# of nonfiction books = 21
# of young adult books = 8
# of poetry collections read = 4
# of memoirs read = 9
# of short story collections read = 5
# of books read from the library = 51

# of books read that I purchased this year = 5
# of books read that I acquired/purchased prior to 2011 = 2 (that is rather pathetic)
# of books read that were review copies (including NetGalley) = 8 (one was an anthology with four novellas)
# of books read on my Kindle = 7 (including the anthology mentioned above)
# of books started but that I didn't/couldn't finish = 14 (making this the year of the DNF!)
# of reading challenges joined = 14 (a record!)
# of reading challenges completed = 9 (another record!)
average # of days to finish a book = 5
average # of pages read per day = 37

oldest published book read = The House of the Seven Gables, published in 1851

Authors I read the most:
Michael Cunningham (2 books)
Beth Kephart (2 books)
Jane Mendelsohn (2 books)
Lisa Tucker (2 books)

Of these, I've already posted about my Best Fiction, Young Adult, and Short Story Collections I Read in 2011. I still need to do a post on my picks for Best Nonfiction as well as Best Memoirs, and hopefully I'll have that up this week. But before moving on to 2012, here's a look back at all the books of 2011 that I read (links take you to my reviews):

1. Picnic, Lightning, Poems by Billy Collins
2. Not My Boy! A Dad's Journey with Autism, by Rodney Peete
3. Poems of Emily Dickinson (Kindle)
4. The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson, by Jerome Charyn
5. Innocence, by Jane Mendelsohn
6. The Unnamed, by Joshua Ferris
7. We Have Always Lived in the Castle, by Shirley Jackson
8. Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann
9. Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime, by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin
10. Molly Fox's Birthday, by Deirdre Madden
11. Mockingbird, by Kathryn Erskine
12. Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds, by Lyndall Gordon
13. Tinkers, by Paul Harding
14. All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost, by Lan Samantha Chang
15. American Salvage (Stories), by Bonnie Jo Campbell
16. Talking with Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man's Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut, by Rob Sheffield
17. I Curse the River of Time, by Per Petterson
18. Everybody Loves Somebody, by Joanna Scott
19. The Solitude of Prime Numbers, by Paolo Giordano
20. Room, by Emma Donoghue
21. The Box: Tales from the Darkroom, by Gunter Grass
22. American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Half Its Food (and what we can do about it), by Jonathan Bloom
23. In the Neighborhood: The Search for Community on an American Street, One Sleepover at a Time, by Peter Lovenheim
24. Fragile Beasts, by Tawni O' Dell
25. Carlyle's House and Other Sketches, by Virginia Woolf
26. The Monsters of Templeton, by Lauren Groff
27. Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard, by Liz Murray
28. The Story of Beautiful Girl, by Rachel Simon
29. Dangerous Neighbors, by Beth Kephart
30. I Was Amelia Earhart, by Jane Mendelsohn
31. Reading Jackie: Her Autobiography in Books, by William Kuhn
32. Click: The Magic of Instant Connections, by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman
33. The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman
34. Safe from the Sea, by Peter Geye
35. Repairing Rainbows: A True Story of Family, Tragedy, and Choices, by Lynda Fishman
36. The Best American Poetry 2010, Guest Editor Amy Gerstler, Series Editor David Lehman
37. The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant, by Dan Savage
38. Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture, by Peggy Orenstein
39. Children and Fire, by Ursula Hegi
40. Made for You and Me: Going West, Going Broke, Finding Home, by Caitlin Shetterly
41. By Nightfall, by Michael Cunningham
42. Ford County, Stories by John Grisham
43. Do More Than Give: The Six Practices of Donors Who Change the World, by Leslie R. Crutchfield, John V. Kania, and Mark R. Kramer
44. The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood
45. The Winters in Bloom, by Lisa Tucker
46. Marriage Confidential: The Post-Romantic Age of Workhorse Wives, Royal Children, Undersexed Spouses, and Rebel Couples Who are Rewriting the Rules, by Pamela Haag
47.Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resiliance, and Redemption, by Laura Hillenbrand
48. Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen
49. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs
50. Marcelo in the Real World, by Francisco X. Stork
51. The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd
52. The House of the Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
53. The Adoration of Jenna Fox, by Mary E. Pearson
54. The Maytrees, by Annie Dillard
55. You Are My Only, by Beth Kephart
56. Questioning Walls Open, Poems by Jennifer Hill Kaucher
57. Anne Frank Remembered: The Story of the Woman Who Helped Hide the Frank Family, by Miep Gies
58. Once Upon a Day, by Lisa Tucker
59. Hedda Gabler, by Henrik Ibsen
60. Conversations and Cosmopolitans: Awkward Moments, Mixed Drinks, and How a Mother and Son Finally Shared Who They Really Are, by Robert Rave and Jane Rave
61. The CHICK-tionary: From A-Line to Z-Snap, The Words Every Woman Should Know, by Anna Lefler
62. Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, Stories by Yiyun Li
63. High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never, by Barbara Kingsolver
64. Love on the Big Screen, by William Torgerson
65. A Home at the End of the World, by Michael Cunningham
66. Voices of Our Time: The Original Live Interviews, by Studs Terkel
67. Precipice, by Melissa Luznicky Garrett
A Clockwork Christmas: A Steampunk Christmas Anthology (4 novellas)
68. Crime Wave in a Corset, by Stacy Gail
69. This Winter Heart, by PG Forte
70. Wanted: One Scoundrel, by Jenny Schwartz
71. Far From Broken, by JK Coi
72. How It Ended: New and Collected Stories, by Jay McInerney

I haven't set any reading or blogging goals for myself this year. I've slacked off a bit on my reviews (there are several that are written but just not posted yet) and I want to do a better job of keeping up with my NetGalley reviews. I'm incredibly behind with those. My only other goal is my perpetual goal of reading more from the stacks of books I currently own. (Hopefully the Mt. TBR Reading Challenge - of which I've set a goal of reading 40 of my own books! - will help with that.)

To begin my reading year of 2012, I'm starting with a collection of poetry - just as I did last year - and I selected from my shelves the appropriately named Book of Days by Jennifer Hill-Kaucher. I bought this last fall when I visited Paper Kite Press and Books in Kingston, PA, which is owned by Jennifer and her husband Dan Waber.

After Book of Days, I'm planning to read Joy for Beginners by Erica Bauermeister. I really liked The School of Essential Ingredients and this one (about a group of women who, upon celebrating their friend's recovery from cancer, decide to promise to do one thing in the next year that terrifies them) looks just as good ... and perfect for New Years!

Hope your 2012 is wonderful!

copyright 2011, Melissa, The Betty and Boo Chronicles If you are reading this on a blog or website other than The Betty and Boo Chronicles or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

My Best Books I Read in 2011 Lists: Best Fiction, Young Adult, and Short Stories

2011-12-30T12:25:00.001-05:00

I love this time of the year, this looking back and making lists reflecting on the year gone by and what lies ahead. And with all that comes my annual list of the Best Books I Read in 2011.

I'm probably going to end 2011 with having read either 69 or 70 books, depending on how the next day or so goes. (I'd like to get to that nice round number of 70.) So, while this seems like a lengthy list, it's really not when you look at it as a percentage. Still, it was a pretty good reading year, all things considered.

My usual disclaimer applies: these are books that I read in 2011, not necessarily books that were published in 2011 (although there are are few of those as well). I've broken my annual list down for you into two separate posts. In this post, I'll give you my picks for:

Best Fiction

Best Books That Are Marketed for Young Adults But That Completely Blew Me Away and Are Ones That Every Grown Up Should Read;
and

Best Short Story Collections

In a separate (and shorter) post that will go up either later today or tomorrow, I'll give you my Best Memoirs/Essays and Best Nonfiction lists. The descriptions are from my reviews; you can click on the links in the title to read the review in its entirety. (Some I didn't write a review for - and I'm guessing that, at this point, that's not going to be happening - but they are ones that still stay with me even months later which is even more a testament to how lasting and wonderful they are!) Books are listed alphabetically, by author's last name.

Best Fiction

The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson, by Jerome Charyn

"And both of us luxuriate in the village yard with words that have a lover's lightning - lightning that can shake the world, invert what is for what ought to be." (pg. 161) Words that have a lover's lightning. How can any reader not love that phrase? And words like that, my friends, are part and parcel of the treat you're in for with this superb novel.

Jerome Charyn makes Emily Dickinson so intriguing, capturing her voice and her feisty spirit in such a way that you can't help but want to keep reading and learning more.The reader is taken on a wonderful literary ride through Emily's life (Charyn writes in the beginning which elements of the book are fictional, which is very helpful because that is one of my personal stumbling blocks with historical fiction). We meet her beaus and her Holyoke friends, her headmistresses, and her family. We see her as a budding poet and as a recluse, forever in mourning of the deaths that affected her and would become a force in her poetry.

By Nightfall, by Michael Cunningham

By Nightfall is a novel about internal and external beauty and what happens to us when we feel that the beauty has gone out of our lives. Peter Harris knows a little something about beauty. He's a 44 year old art dealer in New York City with a respectable client list and a slight case of insomnia, living in SoHo with his 41 year old wife Rebecca. Like many professional couples who have been married and have been parents for a number of years (21 of them), theirs has become a marriage (a life) of complacency, of routine and familiarity, of going through the everyday motions of jobs, of sex, of social obligations. By Nightfall is much more of a in-depth look at who we are as a person, and how we relate to each other, and the questions we ask ourselves in the middle of the night as we sense our life becoming not what we anticipated.

(Cunningham's debut novel, A Home at the End of the World, which I also read this year, deserves an honorable mention on this list. I'm just not sure how I feel about the last third of the book. It felt rushed, too tidy. But the writing, my God ....)

Room, by Emma Donoghue

The first thing you need to understand about Room is that this is so much more than your regular novel, and about so much more than the actual plot. So much more.

From the book jacket: To five-year old Jack, Room is the world. It's where he was born. It's where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. There are endless wonders that let loose Jack's imagination - the snake under Bed that he constructs out of eggshells, the imaginary world projected through the TV, the coziness of Wardrobe below Ma's clothes, where she tucks him in safely at night in case Old Nick comes.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma it's the prison where she has been held since she was nineteen - for seven years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in that eleven-by-eleven foot space. But Jack's curiosity is building alongside her own desperation - and she knows that Room cannot contain either much longer."

It is original in respect to the writing - for it is the mark of a true talent to sustain the incredibly authentic voice of a five-year-old over the course of a novel, which Emma Donoghue (a mother of two young children herself) does brilliantly. The pacing is perfect and has you on the edge of your seat. While Room is indeed very tense in parts, this isn't a gory or graphic novel. (Donoghue could have easily gone down that road, but didn't, and it works just as well.)

The Solitude of Prime Numbers, by Paolo Giordano

The Monsters of Templeton, by Lauren Groff

(I had a review written in Drafts, attempted to copy and paste a portion thereof here for you, and promptly deleted whole damn thing. Sadly, it was really good. Almost as good as the book, which I really loved and which was the first book I read on my Kindle.)

Children and Fire, by Ursula Hegi

Internal and interpersonal conflicts, those spoken and unspoken, are at the heart of Children and Fire. Thekla - a teacher of 9 year old boys - is a complicated, conflicted woman, proud of her independence but who learns that it has come at a price paid by others' dependence and guilt. While she's thrilled to have finally landed a teaching position after ten years, it comes with a combination of guilt and loyalty to her beloved teacher and mentor, Sonja Siderova. There's the personal torment of those in her family (her mother Almut, her father Wilhelm) that they can never escape, that keeps them prisoners in their minds. There's Thekla's inability to commit to Emil, whom she loves but who she won't allow herself to fully love. ("Loving was different. It was only the falling she minded. She wished she could love like a man, be skin only, lust only. Her friend Emil was good practice." pg. 13)

The structure of Children and Fire works beautifully and provides for the novel's tension, particularly toward the end. The chapters alternate between February 27, 1937 as we follow Thekla and her students through their school day and the years 1899 - 1933 which provides the critical elements to the novel's backstory such as the relationship between Thekla's parents and a wealthy Jewish couple in town and her father's family tragedy. The day that the current action takes place, Tuesday, February 27, 1937, is not random; it's the one year anniversary of a fire that destroyed the Reichstag, the parliment building in Berlin. Even though that fire was hundreds of miles away from quiet and quaint Burgdorf, there is the fear that whatever evil force was responsible for the fire will eventually come to their small village. (And as the reader knows from history, it surely will.)

The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd

Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann

In this National Book Award winning novel, Colum McCann transports his reader to New York on August 7, 1974. There, high atop the city and on a wire strung between the newly constructed World Trade Center towers (which are not even at half their full office capacity), is tightrope walker Phillipe Petit, strolling and soft-shoeing his way across the skyscrapers, 110 stories above the concrete jungle below.

But although the fundambulist's story is at the center of the novel, Let the Great World Spin is really about the stories of those who witnessed this daring act and those whose lives were therefore affected by it. While the tightrope walk really did happen, the fictitious literary liberties taken by McCann are within these stories. As with Olive Kitteridge (another novel within stories that I adored), all of these characters are not simply witnesses; they are all connected. How McCann shows this while drawing his reader into a New York of August 1974 - a time when the Bronx was burning, a time defined by Vietnam and boys who didn't make it home - is the brilliance of this novel.

The characters who inhabit this world are vivid, incredibly true to life and alive on the pages. We see Tillie and Jazzlyn, a mother-daughter prostitute pair living in the Bronx. We see Corrigan, an Irish immigrant and priest who is one of the more complex characters in the novel, and his brother Ciaran who is stymied as to how best to help. There's Claire, a grieving mother whose only child was killed in Vietnam despite working on computer programs and seeing a future that included computers being interlinked and having the ability to communicate with one another. Let the Great World Spin is about the everyday (a car crash, a judge presiding over a case, a group of ladies gathering for tea) and the extraordinary.

It is about the extraordinary moments in the everyday.

I Was Amelia Earhart, by Jane Mendelsohn

The Story of Beautiful Girl, by Rachel Simon

Every once in awhile, a novel comes along with the power to significantly change one's perspective while simultaneously being a beacon of hope for people who have been forgotten, who are disenfranchised, and who remain on the fringes of society.

It happened with To Kill a Mockingbird, the classic novel by Harper Lee that illuminated race relations in the Deep South. And it has the potential to happen again (as I hope and pray it does) with The Story of Beautiful Girl by Rachel Simon.

Just as To Kill a Mockingbird was and still is, The Story of Beautiful Girl is also a game-changer, this time for people with developmental disabilities who were, once upon a time, "put away," sent to stark and barbaric institutions with cringeworthy names like The School for the Incurable and Feebleminded, forgotten by families and by the world as a whole.

That's the name of the fictitious Pennsylvania "school" where Lynnie Goldberg was placed as a young child by her middle-class, Caucasian family who didn't have the emotional wherewithal to cope with and accept her developmental disability. Such was common in the 1950s and 60s, a time when parents were advised to put their children away to better "forget" about their mistakes in the form of their children who were labeled as imbeciles, idiots, incurable.

(But as The Story of Beautiful Girl illustrates so clearly, forgetting becomes impossible to do when hearts are involved, even when the distance of years and place come into play.)

At the School, Lynnie - who is mute - meets Homan, an African American man who is deaf, but who is only known to the school officials as a John Doe, Number Forty-Two. (He is based on a real person.) There they become friends and fall deeply in love amidst the neglect and abuse that was all too prevalent in such institutions (and which still exists today, here, in the United States). Lynnie is also pregnant, and during one storm-filled November night in 1968, the couple escapes from the School. A baby girl is born, and the couple finds refuge - temporarily - with Martha, a retired widowed schoolteacher living in a remote place, both in terms of place (her home) and in terms of the fragile, unresolved feelings she still carries after her husband's emotional distance and loss of their only child. Read the rest of my review here.

Books That Are Marketed for Young Adults but That Completely Blew Me Away and are Ones that Every Grown Up Should Read

Mockingbird, by Kathryn Erskine

With Mockingbird, author Kathryn Erskine gives an incredibly heartfelt and wonderful gift to people with Asperger's Syndrome, their parents and teachers, and their peers.

It is, quite simply, the gift of knowing that there is someone (Erskine herself) who "gets it." And that knowledge, that understanding, is truly something "good and strong and beautiful," to quote one of the many themes that resonate through this book.

When we meet fifth grader Caitlin Smith, her world seems to be anything but good and strong and beautiful. It is a world where her mother died when she was 3, and her beloved brother Devon was recently killed (along with several others) during a school shooting. Left to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives are Caitlin and her grieving father.

While such a tragedy would be difficult for anyone to comprehend, it is compounded even moreso by the fact that Caitlin has Asperger's Syndrome. Her world is very much like the charcoal drawings she creates: black and white. No color, no gray area, no ambiguity. All that is confusing to Caitlin, and she struggles - oh, how she struggles! - to make sense of the senseless, to cope with feelings, to try and reach the elusive closure. Read the rest of my review here.

The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman

This is more fairy tale than fright-fest, more enchantment than gore. Right from the first couple pages, I was captivated by the story of a baby who crawls away from his family - all murdered - to live among the larger-than-life spirits in a nearby graveyard.

"Ever since the child had learned to walk he had been his mother's and father's despair and delight, for there never was such a boy for wandering, for climbing up things, for getting into and out of things. That night, he had been woken by the sound of something on the floor beneath him falling with a crash. Awake, he soon became bored, and had begun looking for a way out of his crib. It had high sides, like the walls of his playpen downstairs, but he was convinced that he could scale it. All he needed was a step ..." (pg 10-11)

C'mon, doesn't that make you want read on to find out what happens to the orphaned boy?

What happens is that he makes his way to a nearby graveyard where he is taken in by the kindly souls that reside there. He gets parents and a new name ("Nobody Owens," and is nicknamed Bod), and a guardian named Silas. They teach him practical things, like history and the alphabet and how to Fade and Haunt. In Bod, Gaiman creates such an endearing, lovable character that you just want to scoop him up and adopt him. He evokes your sympathy, first with the loss of his entire family and then as he is ignored by much of the world when he does, on occasion, venture out of the graveyard.

You Are My Only, by Beth Kephart

You Are My Only is the story of Emmy Rane, a devoted young mother who does what every mother has innocently done: leaves her baby unattended for the briefest of moments. On a still, bright day, outside in the yard while tucked snug in the branches of a tree swing, four month old Baby goes missing. The only trace of her is one single yellow sock.

You can see this unfold because we have all experienced this - a simple act that results in the shifting and forever changing of lives - and you can see this in the opening pages of You Are My Only because Beth Kephart takes you right there. You're with Emmy in her moments of desperate terror (anyone who has ever had a child wander off, gone missing even for mere moments, knows this piercing anguish). You're right there when Emmy's emotionally and physically abusive husband is in her face, accusing her of being a bad mother by causing Baby's disappearance through her carelessness.

From there, You Are My Only alternates between two timeframes and two points of view: Emmy Rane's, as she endures the days and months after Baby's disappearance, and Sophie Marks' (formerly Baby) who is now 14 and living an always-on-the-run-from-the-No-Good life with Cheryl, the only mother she has ever known. The way in which this story unfolds for its reader is beautifully written, with Kephart's signature lyrical prose infusing each page.

You Are My Only is a story that reflects the times in which we live. While there have always been hearts-held-captive baby-gone-missing stories in our nation's history (think Lindbergh, think Elizabeth Smart, think Jaycee Dugard) having this fictional one appear now brings a powerful message in these dark days of personal despair and economic uncertainty for so many. With You Are My Only, Kephart is saying that we have the strength within us to endure the darkness and break through into the light. It is a message that she personally knows well, and it shows - beautifully, triumphantly - in this novel.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs

Sixteen-year old Jacob Portman and his grandfather Abe have a special relationship. They're connected in a way that transcends familial bonds, and in a way that mystifies (and maddens) Jacob's emotionally-distant parents. Their closeness allows Jacob to become curious about his grandfather's past, about the "peculiar" children he grew up with (and the reasons for their peculiarity) and why they still so much a part of Abe's life today.

Abe's past is one spent in a children's home (that would be Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children), located off the coast of Wales. Jacob and his orinithologist father travel to this remote island for two purposes: bird-watching and research for the father and for Jacob, to discover the origins of the stories his grandfather held close to his heart while cryptically sharing details with Jacob. What begins as Abe's story continues as Jacob's, and as he discovers truths he never imagined, author Ransom Riggs takes his reader right there to Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Read the rest of my review here.

Best Short Story Collections

Gold Boy, Emerald Girl

Stories by Yiyun Li

Everybody Loves Somebody

Stories by Joanna Scott

Some additional Honorable Mentions:
The Unnamed, by Joshua Ferris
Ford County: Stories by John Grisham
We Have Always Lived in the Castle, by Shirley Jackson
Dangerous Neighbors, by Beth Kephart
The Adoration of Jenna Fox, by Mary E. Pearson
Marcelo in the Real World, by Francisco X. Stork

Have you read any of these? Did any of them make your Best Of 2011 list ... or make it onto your list of books you'd like to read in 2012? Regardless, hope you have a Happy New Year ... and Happy Reading!

2012 Challenges: The Master Sign Up Post

2011-12-29T18:39:00.001-05:00

I had originally intended to write separate sign up posts for all of my intended Reading Challenges for 2012, but after the second one, I knew nobody was going to read 17 of those.

Yeah, I know. Seventeen reading challenges. That's 3 more than I signed up for last year. I've said it before: this is the literary equivalent of my husband's Fantasy Football team.

My approach to reading challenges is this: I don't plan my reading to coincide with nor center around any particular challenge. Rather, it's pretty certain that whatever book I'm reading at the moment can most likely be matched to any of the various challenges I have going on at the time. And I like that a-ha moment of discovery. If I find I'm falling short in one challenge, then there's the fun of trying to find books that might have been on my TBR list that would qualify. I try not to stress over all of this and to remember that it is really all in the name of fun.

Anyway, so here goes it for 2012. All of these run from January 1-December 31, 2012 unless otherwise specified. You can go to the blog url listed on the button for more details or within my description if you'd like to join in.

1. The 2nds Challenge was a really fun challenge for me last year, so I was glad to see that it is being offered again. It's at its own designated blog this year. I'm signing up at the "A few more bites" level, which means I'm committing to reading 6 books that are the second in a series or the second time I've read the author.

2. I've been meaning to participate in the A-Z Book Challenge every year, but for some reason, I never get around to signing up. This year, I'm adding this one to my list. I don't expect to be able to finish this challenge, truthfully, but it will be fun to see how far I get.

3. I'm in the car a lot for work, especially during the spring and fall months, so the Audio Book Challenge hosted by Teresa's Reading Corner is a given. I'm going to increase my goal for this one to the Going Steady level, which means that I'll strive to listen to 12 audio books this year. That should really be no problem. (25 seems a little high, but that might not even be entirely out of the question, especially in the fall.)

4. The 2012 Chunkster Challenge is hosted by Wendy and Vasilly at chunksterchallenge.blogspot.com. There are a few changes to the 2012 challenge, namely the dates. It typically started in February but has now switched to beginning on January 1. There are several other changes too, so you'll want to read the sign up post carefully. I'm going for The Chubby Chunkster, which means that I will be aiming to read 4 books of at least 450 pages. (Personally, I'm striving for The Plump Primer level - especially since there are new categories allowed this year! - but am only officially commiting to the Chubby Chunkster).

5. The E-Book Challenge has a new host this year, that of Sarah of Workaday Reads. I only read 6 e-books this year (which is pretty pathetic, but still met my goal for this year's challenge). Still, I'd like to increase that number, so I'm going for the CD level, which is 10 e-books.

6. For Serena's Fearless Poetry Exploration Challenge, I am going to commit to reading and reviewing two books of poetry during 2012.

7. I didn't do so well with the Foodies Reading Challenge this year (bit off a bit more than I could chew) but that' not stopping me from going back to the buffet table for more. I'm going for the Pastry Chef level this year, which means that I will strive to read 4-8 food-related books.

8. I'm delighted to be hosting the Memorable Memoirs Reading Challenge again, and it certainly isn't too late to sign up if you haven't already done so. You can do so here. We keep things pretty low-key. I'm going for the Memoirist level on this, which means I'm going to try and read 10 or more memoirs. We'll see if that happens. This year I read 9.

9. This is absolutely, without a doubt, THE challenge I need this year. I mean, if I do no other challenge, this is the one, hosted by My Readers Block. I need to make a serious commitment to reading my own books this year. I know I say this each and every year, but we're quickly becoming crunched for space here in the apartment and my books are a big part of that problem. I also have quite a few boxes in storage, too. That being said, I'm going for the Mt. Ararat level, which means I am committing to reading 40 of my own books. This is HUGE for me, people, especially when you consider I'm probably only going to read 70 books total this entire year. But it needs to be done. That's 3-4 books a month. Definitely doable.

10. Hosted by Literary Escapism. I really enjoy this challenge, and I confess that it's one of the easier ones for me. I like discovering new authors and am going for the 25 New Author level again this year.

11. I love reading non-fiction, so I am thrilled to see that Julie of My Book Retreat is hosting a Non-Fiction Non-Memoir Reading Challenge. I'm officially in for the Diploma Level on this one (10 nonfiction books) but I'd really like to strive for the Bachelor's level (15 nonfiction books).

12. I think self-published authors tend to take a lot of crap, so I'm glad that Sarah is hosting the Self-Published Reading Challenge. I'm going for the Sentence level (5 books) on this one.

13. I'm so glad someone (Library of Clean Reads) is hosting a Short Story Reading Challenge, because you know how much I love my short stories. I'm going for the Tales Galore level for this one, which is 7-9 books (collections of short stories).

14. This was another challenge that I didn't fare so well at this year, but I'm going for the Y'all Come Back Now, Y'Hear? Level on this one in 2012. That means I'm committing to read 4 books set in the South (SC, GA, AL, NC, VA, TN, MS, LA, KY, WV, TX, AR, FL) and written by an author from the South.

15. Also hosted by Library of Clean Reads, is the Time Travel Reading Challenge. I'm going for the Surprise Trip, which is 1-3 books.

16. This is probably going to be my most challenging Challenge of this year. Truth in Fiction is being hosted by Fig and Thistle with the goal of reading a specified number of book pairs that are comprised of one fiction book and one related non-fiction book. (The non-fiction book could be journals, memoirs, etc.) Instead of individual reviews, after each pair write a joint review. I'm going for the Sophomore level on this Challenge, which is to do 2 such pairings.

17. Finally, the What's In a Name Reading Challenge is one of my favorites, so I am absolutely thrilled that Beth Fish Reads is hosting this again! This one is a lot of fun, as we have to read one book in each of the following categories:

A book with a topographical feature (land formation) in the title

A book with something you'd see in the sky in the title

A book with a creepy crawly in the title
A book with a type of house in the title

A book with something you'd carry in your pocket, purse, or backpack in the title
A book with a something you'd find on a calendar in the title.

I can't guarantee that I won't be adding to this, but I think that's a pretty good list. How about you? Are you participating in any of these challenges? Did I entice you to join me in any?

Ye Ol' Annual "Books We Got and Gave for Christmas" Post

2011-12-28T14:40:00.000-05:00

(This is my favorite Christmas ornament of all time. I think my parents got this for me when I was in elementary school and I've had it ever since. I love it. If I could only have one Christmas ornament on my tree, this would be it.)

Anyway, it's time for the Ye Ol' Annual Books We Got and Gave for Christmas post. I realize this doesn't help any of you who could have used this post as inspiration for your gift-giving a few weeks (or days) ago, but so be it.

Here's what we found under our tree:

Santa's big on giving books to Betty and Boo, and he left quite a few for them this year:

For Boo:
Tales of a Sixth Grade Muppet, by Kirk Scroggs
Big Nate in a Class By Himself, by Lincoln Pierce
The Strange Case of Origami Yoda, by Tom Angelberger
From our friends, he also got Pittsburgh and the State of Pennsylvania: Cool Things Every Kid Should Know.

(We gave The Strange Case of Origami Yoda as well as Darth Paper Strikes Back to our nephew.)

For Betty, Santa left three of Laurie Halse Anderson's Vet Volunteers series books (Teacher's Pet, Time to Fly, and Fear of Falling), three American Girl books (McKenna, Meet Marie Grace, Meet Cecile), and Dolphins and Whales. (Not pictured is a reference guide to dogs.) She also got a Barnes and Noble gift card from our friends.

Below are two books that The Husband got from his parents:

George Harrison Living in the Material World, by Olivia Harrison and The Johnstown Flood, by David McCullough. The latter is a very strong contender to possibly become the first and only book that The Husband and I have both read, as explained in this post.

And then there was this pile:

That's my Kindle on top of the pile, which was a gift last year from The Husband. However, I was lucky enough to get several generous Amazon gift cards (from my Book Blogger Secret Santa, my mother and stepfather, and my in-laws) and have since been in downloading heaven. So far, I've purchased The Mill River Recluse by Darcie Chan; The Quickening by Michelle Hoover; In Leah's Wake by Terri Guiliano Long; Turning Point by my friend Melissa Luznicky Garrett; Dirt: A Story About Gardening, Mothering, and Other Messy Business, by my friend Susan Senator; Pictures of You by Carolyn Levitt; and The Obits: The New York Times Annual 2012. I've also ordered The Thinking Person's Guide to Autism, Still Love in Strange Places, by Beth Kephart, and I've pre-ordered the new Carly Simon biography, More Room in a Broken Heart.

So, my Kindle is a-smokin'... and there's STILL $25 left on the gift cards! From my in-laws, I also got two Marion Winik books that I've been coveting - The Glen Rock Book of the Dead and her essay collection, Above Us Only Sky. A few weeks ago, I fell in love with Mel u's review of Brandon Shire's The Value of Rain, so much so that I immediately added it to my Christmas wish list. Lo and behold, it showed up in my pile of presents from the in-laws!

Rounding out the pile is Stephen King's 11/22/63, which was my selfish gift to The Husband. (Selfish because I might want to read it myself - making this another contender for a shared book that The Husband and I might actually have in common as both having read.)

Finally, there's Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever by Bill O'Reilly, a gift from my mother to The Husband. My mother is a big Bill O'Reilly fan. My Husband, not quite so much.

So there you have it, the books that we found under our tree this Christmas and that we're enjoying this Christmas season. How about you ... did you get any books for Christmas? Any e-readers? Do tell!

copyright 2011, Melissa, The Betty and Boo Chronicles If you are reading this on a blog or website other than The Betty and Boo Chronicles or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

Celebrate Me Home

2011-12-24T16:19:00.001-05:00

Boo's thank you letter to Santa from 2010

Just wanted to take a moment to wish all of my blog readers who are celebrating Christmas today and tomorrow a very happy holiday. We're back in Philadelphia for several days, living the true meaning of "home for the holidays." *

It has been a great, relaxing vacation thus far. The kids are beyond excited, the presents are all bought (as of this morning when I did a final Christmas Eve shopping run) and wrapped, the weather is more than cooperating (i.e., there's no snow!), and everyone is healthy. We're really lucky that both of our families not only live in the Philadelphia area but live within a 10 minute drive of each other. We're spending Christmas Eve at my in-laws' tonight, watching our Eagles and having dinner and dessert, and we'll go back to my mom's tonight where Santa is scheduled to arrive after midnight.

Later in the vacation, several get togethers with friends are scheduled and we're looking forward to seeing everyone. My reading mojo has even returned (yay!) and in my downtime, I've been spending some time with A Clockwork Christmas, a new anthology from Carina Press of four steampunk novellas that each have some connection to Christmas. This is the first steampunk anything I've ever read, and I must say, if the first story ("Crime Wave in a Corset" by Stacy Gail") is any indication of what this genre is like, I could see myself liking this genre. I'm trying to be more diligent about my NetGalley commitments, of which this was one.

I hope that whatever you're doing this weekend that it involves people you love and doing the things you love. Thanks so much for reading the blog and for all your support this year. Merry merry and happy happy!

* = less Internet time than usual

copyright 2011, Melissa, The Betty and Boo Chronicles If you are reading this on a blog or website other than The Betty and Boo Chronicles or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

Stickin' a Fork in the 2011 Reading Challenges

2011-12-22T20:11:00.001-05:00

I've been agonizing over my reading challenges for the last several days.

I tend to do this when I have big stuff on my mind - you know, things like a major holiday (Christmas), a death in the family (my grandmother), projects for work. I zoom in and focus on the minutia, the tiny details of life, because the big stuff ... well, because sometimes the big stuff is just too big.

I'm really close to being finished with both the Reading Madly challenge as well as the Southern Literature challenges (2 books left for each of them) yet I can't seem to decide on books for either, and the thought of being obligated to read four books in the next 9 days is a little daunting, and that has me frozen in place, unable to pick up ANY book. I'm not kidding; I haven't picked up ANYTHING to read since our car ride home from Philadelphia on Sunday, which is highly unlike me.

Which also means that I'm way, way, way overthinking this, and that there's only one solution:

To stick a fork in this year in terms of the reading challenges.

After all, chances are that the same challenges will still be here in 2012. I know the books will be.

So, without further ado, here's how I fared with my 14 challenges that I signed myself up for around this time last year. Dare I say, it was a very good year (bookishly speaking, that is).

Challenges Completed (9 out of 14)
2nds Challenge
Audiobook Challenge
E-book Challenge
Essay Reading Challenge
GLBT Challenge
Memorable Memoir
New Authors
Nordic Challenge
What's in a Name 4

Challenges Failed (5 out of 14)
50 States
Foodies Reading Challenge
Reading Madly
Southern Literature
Where Are You Reading?

I'm signing up for many of these again - and then some. I think I'm up to something ridiculous like 19 or 20 challenges now. (Unlike a lot of posts I've seen about bloggers being burnt out on challenges, I'm not. This was the first year I participated in this many challenges and I found I actually kind of liked it. What can I say - I like the keeping track and the statistics and the listmaking that's involved in all of this.)

How about you? Are you still going strong with any challenges for 2011? Or have you wrapped up your year too?

copyright 2011, Melissa, The Betty and Boo Chronicles If you are reading this on a blog or website other than The Betty and Boo Chronicles or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

The Sunday Salon: A Little Christmas Now

2011-12-18T07:39:00.000-05:00

"For I've grown a little leaner, grown a little colder

Grown a little sadder, grown a little older

And I need a little angel, sitting on my shoulder

Need a little Christmas now ...."

My Christmas prep plans (what absolute bare minimum I've accomplished because I have truly NOT been in the spirit) have gotten more than slightly discombobulated this week, as we find ourselves heading back east this morning to Philadelphia (a 6 hour drive each way) unexpectedly for my grandmother's funeral tomorrow. We were already planning to go back home for the holidays for several days as of this coming Friday (and we're still planning on doing that) so this just throws a bit of a wrench into those plans. It'll be a whirlwind trip, with not even being there for 24 hours during the early part of this week.

Needless to say, it has been a crazy week since Wednesday with not much reading getting done. I finished Michael Cunningham's wonderful A Home at the End of the World, which I loved, and a long workday on the road on Thursday allowed me to finish listening to Studs Terkel's Voices of Our Time, a really interesting and fascinating collection of 48 of his radio interviews spanning the years 1950 through 1990.

I'm honestly not sure what book is up next. There won't be much time to read over the next couple days, and I'm only taking my Kindle with me for this 24 hour trip. (I'm not sure if I'll ever get used to traveling WITHOUT an actual book!) I'm not focused on reading right now, nor on the challenges I have left to finish (and I am really close to finishing the last couple of them too!)

Maybe it's because I'm preoccupied with all that's going on, what with my Christmas procrastination coming to bite me in the behind this year bigtime, coupled with work craziness and some health issues. On the latter, that's nothing life-threatening, but some significant lifestyle/dietary changes and a bunch of pills and supplements that Dr. Feelgood is throwing at me. Let's just say this is NOT the best time of year to go on a low-cholesterol diet, 'mkay?

Honestly, I just want to pull a Rip Van Winkle and sleep until sometime in the middle of April.

All that being said, there was a really cool, awesome, amazing thing that happened yesterday that I just have to tell you about (otherwise, at the rate I'm going there's a good chance the holidays will go by without a mention). In the midst of arguing with Boo about when he was going to try on the outfit I bought him for the funeral, and practicing my remarks (I'll be reading my previous blog post after all, it seems), fitting in hair cuts for The Husband and Betty, and the new cat sitter for the holidays coming over to meet us and see our disasterously mess of an apartment after I called to cancel and she didn't get the message, and finishing up some work projects for early next week ... THIS showed up at the door!

My Book Blogger Holiday Swap package ... from Danielle @the1stdaughter of There's A Book! Honestly, there could not have been a better day for this to arrive.

Just look at what goodies we got! Darth Paper Strikes Back by Tom Angleberger, Ivy and Bean: No News is Good News by Annie Barrows, and When You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead (which has been on my want-to-read list for awhile!) Betty is now enthralled with Darth Paper, which earns Danielle major props because this is a girl who reads the Merck Manual for Pet Health as light bedtime reading. Seriously, if it doesn't have anything to do with animals or veterinary health, Betty is not interested. So, this is a major, major coup. These are coming with us this morning on our car ride east.

Also included were treats like Ring Pops and jelly beans ... and a generous Amazon gift card for me, which I promptly loaded onto my account.

Thank you so much, Danielle, for bringing us a little Christmas now!

copyright 2011, Melissa, The Betty and Boo Chronicles If you are reading this on a blog or website other than The Betty and Boo Chronicles or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

What My Grandmom Taught Me: Make Sure That Guy is "Three-Bus Worthy"

2011-12-16T22:49:00.002-05:00

We lost my Grandmom this week, just a few weeks before what would have been her 99th birthday. There's a part of all of us, I think, that had been hoping she would have made it to 99, even 100 and maybe beyond. Indeed, I always joked with my aunt that she would outlive all of us and at times, it seemed like she was on track to do just that. Here she is above, with my grandfather, who passed away in August 1990. I was one of the speakers at her funeral, along with my dear cousins, and here's what I shared with our family and friends as my eulogy.

My grandfather "wasn't doing well" that summer. In those days, in the sultry summer of 1990, people had just started saying the word cancer in octaves higher than a whisper. And in those days, eyebrows were still raised when women "of a certain age" exerted some degree of independence.

My feisty, stubborn as heck, petite grandmother was living alone, at 77 years old, in the rowhouse where she and her husband had raised three children - and mourned their middle child, that being my father. My grandfather's illness had advanced to the point where it was time for a nursing home, where my grandmother was determined to visit him every day, despite the fact that she didn't drive.

(And even if she did, their one car was an immobile turquoise and white 1957 Chevy held together literally with string and duct-tape, parked like a Franklin Mint collectible on a rough-ride of a narrow street in Philadelphia's Kensington neighborhood that had already seen many better days even by 1990.)

Determined, my grandmother took a maze of public transportation to reach the nursing home - one bus, two buses, three in all. Maybe the elevated subway system was part of it; I don't know. Maybe there were more; my memory of the public transportation logistics is fuzzy now. What's crystal clear is that as she navigated the City of Brotherly Love's network of tracks and wheels, she was teaching me something about love.

At the time all this was happening, I was a self-absorbed college student with a bit of a messed up triangulated (and other applied terms from my psychology classes) love life. I remembered being in awe of my grandmother's ability to even figure out the bus routes when I - a sheltered suburbanite - could count on one hand the number of times I had been on my city's public transportation system. I whined when I had to traverse my college campus in the rain, and here my grandmother was taking three buses a day just so she could go spoon-feed her husband his dinner and to be there to be the one to tell him good night.

That, there, I realized, was love.

So I took a good look at the guy I was dating at the time and asked myself if this was an individual who would ride three buses every single day just to give me a bottle of Ensure as I was dying.

And the answer was ... eh, yeah not so much.

As these things tend to go, there was another guy biding his time, waiting in the wings. I asked myself the same question. Is this someone who I thought was Three-Bus Worthy? Who thought I might be Three-Bus Worthy?

And the answer this time on both counts was ...yeah, maybe so.

(That one would wind up becoming The Husband, who I would start dating officially only mere days before my grandfather passed away.)

Now, with my grandmother's passing this week, I've been doing a lot of thinking about this over the past couple days, and I realized that her lesson of making sure someone is Three Bus Worthy is still true. It's not one she ever verbalized or one we ever spoke about, but rather one that was silently shared. Like any long-term marriages, ours has seen times and situations where the other's Three-Bus Worthiness has been proven and put to the test. Then again, there have been other times when we've been stubborn enough that we didn't even want to take three steps - let alone three damn buses - to reach the other person's side.

We're among the lucky ones, though, because when it comes right down to it, each one of us is on a journey and a ride in life that is similar to the one involving the three buses that my grandmother took every day. Because let's face it: this life is tough enough as it is with the everyday stuff. It's when the big guns come calling - the stuff of children dying (as both sets of my grandparents would experience) and spouses getting sick (ditto), that's when you find out just how Three-Bus Worthy someone really is.

And most likely, you already know - because that's the person who been holding your hand during the ride all along.

copyright 2011, Melissa, The Betty and Boo Chronicles If you are reading this on a blog or website other than The Betty and Boo Chronicles or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

Announcing The 2012 Memorable Memoirs Reading Challenge

2011-12-11T22:47:00.004-05:00

The 2012 Memorable Memoirs Reading Challenge

January 1 - December 31, 2012

It's back again for the 3rd year! (Can you believe it?) If you love memoirs as much as I do or if you simply want to add more memoirs into your reading life, then the 2012 Memorable Memoirs Reading Challenge is for you!

What Counts as A Memoir?
I know there's a difference between memoir and autobiography, but for this challenge, we're going to define memoir as a record of events written by a person having intimate knowledge of them and based on personal observation. Published letters, diaries, journals, autobiographies, nonfiction books on the craft of writing memoirs ... in my book, they all count as Memorable Memoirs for this challenge. (Generally, biographies don't, but I could always be convinced.)

The Rules:
Books, e-books, audiobooks, ARCs, NetGalley books are allowed.
Overlaps with other challenges are also allowed.
Re-reads are allowed.
No need to create a list of books in advance (but if you want to, please feel free!)
You don't need a blog to participate.
You must select a level. You can increase your level, but you can't go back down.

The Dates:
January 1 - December 31, 2012. You can sign up anytime between now and throughout 2012.

The Levels (new this year!)
Diarist: read 1-4 memoirs

Autobiographer: read 5-9 memoirs

Memoirist: read 10+ memoirs.

How to Sign Up:
Write a post on your blog indicating your intent to participate and at what level (Diarist, Autobiographer, or Memoirist) then come back here and leave the link here with Mister Linky:

No blog? No problem! Simply leave a comment that you'll be joining us and at what chosen level.

I'll have a kick off post up in early January along with some of my favorite memoirs if you need some ideas. I'm also planning to do monthly updates, as much as possible, and there might be more surprises in store throughout the year. The most important thing is that we have fun ... and we will.

Looking forward to having you join us! Happy Memorable Memoir Reading!

copyright 2011, Melissa, The Betty and Boo Chronicles If you are reading this on a blog or website other than The Betty and Boo Chronicles or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.