But as for the giveaway for the new David Sedaris book, Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls, the handy dandy Rafflecopter chose a winner:

Congrats to Julianne of Outlandish Lit!

In one of the greatest scenes I’ve read in recent memory, Julian English fantasizes about throwing his drink in the face of Harry Reilly. What has Harry done? Nothing, really. But at this particular dance, Harry Reilly tells story after story, and it’s not just that – Harry has a specific method to his storytelling, mannerisms of which Julian tires. But he dissuades himself, reminding himself that Harry has loaned him quite a bit of money to pull Julian out of a pinch at the Cadillac dealership. Plus, Julian’s afraid people might think it’s because Harry dotes on Julian’s wife, Caroline.

The narrative passes, and then one partygoer tells another that Julian did indeed toss his drink into Harry Reilly’s face, and as the inside of the book says, “in one rash moment born inside a highball glass, Julian breaks with polite society and begins a rapid descent toward self-destruction.”

Just a small indiscretion in the scheme of things, really, but in 1930s suburban Pennsylvania, Julian’s action threatens to topple the carefully placed house of cards that the city of Gibbsville and its elite have created. In a society where single men and women are paired off based on their looks and prospects, and the society page lists who attended whose party, Julian has willfully placed himself outside the rules, and O’Hara depicts Julian’s existential crisis in brilliant moments of stream of consciousness and internal monologue. As Julian remarks at one point, there are other, worse indiscretions – affairs conducted under the nose of one’s wife; domestic abuse; suicide – but those are one offs. Julian English’s breach is not just societal; it’s seen as evidence of English’s hatred of Catholics (Reilly is a Catholic), as evidence of his snobbishness, as his place is higher than that of Reilly’s.

John O’Hara is near brutal in his descriptions of the various characters in Appointment in Samarra – deftly describing a well-respected doctor and a small-time whiskey runner in equally harsh light. Even Julian’s wife, the lovely and admired Caroline, doesn’t escape his ire. Though she loves her husband, she’s much too concerned with the demise of the couple’s social status to concern herself with her husband’s rapid descent. Yet even in O’Hara’s bald depictions of these people, there is sympathy, to the end. For, if any people were more a product of the times, it’s the Gibbsville set. Bound by their conventions but expected to be young and free and daring, the men and women in Appointment in Samarra are, much like the title of the book, destined to burn quick and bright before meeting their fates.

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Josh Hanagarne needs strength – both literal and figurative. Diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome in high school, Josh battles his ever-increasing tics without success for much of his life. Crediting his dad for getting him to hit the gym, and his mom for the introduction to the library, Hanagarne relates his journey thus far in The World’s Strongest Librarian.

From a young age, Josh appreciated books, eating marigold flowers in an attempt to mimic a hungry gopher in a children’s book. His mother took him to the doctor, explaining:

“A story went to his head,” Mom said….

“He likes books,” she said. “They give him ideas, though.”

“That’s the point, right?” said the doctor.

Once his tics develop, Josh becomes more and more self aware and angry at his uncontrollable body, until discovering strength training and oddly enough, revisiting the library.

Though I tend to approach memoirs with one eyebrow raised significantly, The World’s Strongest Librarian is the best of memoir writing. Hanagarne doesn’t know the answers. In fact, the memoir feels significantly like an exploration of himself instead of an explanation, and Josh tackles his syndrome, his Mormon background, and his experiences at the library in this improbable tale, making this quote from his friend Frankie Faires both apt and intriguing:

“We get better at what we do. If your body is your biography, then you are, at any given time, a perfect representation of all of your resolved and unresolved stresses.”

As much about the strangeness of a library as it is about the strangeness of a life lived with Tourette Syndrome, The World’s Strongest Librarian is one you should add to your Goodreads shelf.

I’ve heard it said that when the poet T.S. Eliot was writing The Wasteland, he chose February as the cruelest month, then changed it to April in revisions. If you ask me, he got it right the first time. As far as I’m concerned, February’s only redeeming feature is its brevity. If it were any longer, I would tear it from my calendar in protest.

Lori Shepherd is in mom hell. Her husband is in sunny Majorca, and she’s stuck inside with eight-year-old twin boys. Bad weather has shut down school, and the only thing keeping her sane is her neighbor, Bree Pym. Seeking refuge from paint fumes at her own home, Bree helps keep the boys entertained by suggesting a trip to Skeaping Manor.

Full of ghoulish exhibits, Skeaping Manor is…unique, and Lori leaves the boys to ogle shrunken heads with Bree and heads up to visit the silver only to find an enigmatic little girl in a pink puffy coat looking at a silver salt cellar. When the little girl, Daisy, tells Lori about the origin of the salt cellar and a lost Russian prince, Lori is struck by the little girl’s poise and sadness. So when she finds a pink coat like the little girl was wearing with a silver salt cellar in the pocket the next day at a charity shop, Lori thinks maybe Daisy was telling the truth. She’s even more curious when she finds out Daisy and her mother have left town without a trace.

With Aunt Dimity’s supernatural wisdom comforting her, Lori strikes out with Bree by her side, learning a little something about herself and the “lost prince” they seek.

This is my first go round with Aunt Dimity, and it certainly won’t be my last. I had no idea Aunt Dimity was otherworldly – she doesn’t quite seem to be a ghost – but I was a bit skeptical. No fear! Aunt Dimity & the Lost Prince was absolutely one of the most fun cozy mysteries I’ve read in a while, and I’ve already scoped out the ebook prices to see how many I can buy on payday.

Add it to your Goodreads shelf.

*This book was sent to me by the publisher, Dutton, in exchange for an honest review.

Julia Percy sits beside her grandfather’s deathbed, grieving his coming death and anxious about what life without him means. As an orphan whose cruel cousin Eamon will come into the family estate and title, Julia is concerned. Plus, the magic of her life, her grandfather’s ability to manipulate time, will die with him, and it saddens her.

Meanwhile, Nick Davenant is 200 years in the future and an ocean away. Having jumped just as death was imminent on the battlefield, Lord Nicholas Falcott wakes up to the knowledge that he can never go back. The Guild, a secret network of time travelers, trains him to live in his new present and gives him a new name and an ungodly amount of money to adjust.

And he’s mostly fine with that, except the dark eyes of a young woman haunt his dreams. When an edict from The Guild arrives, Nick learns that everything he’s believed about time travel is false, that he can go back – and The Guild needs him to return to his own time because there are others like him but with different, more sinister aims. Nick is hesitant to return, but he’s thrilled to reunite with his mother and sisters and the dark-eyed girl, Julia, the granddaughter of an earl who lives in the neighboring estate.

Time travel in The River of No Return is no scientific experiment. Instead, time jumpers only move within the river of time through periods of intense emotion – and most jumpers only discover their abilities on the point of death. Learning to harness that energy is Nick’s task. Julia, on the other hand, is unaware of her abilities, thinking her grandfather was the manipulator of time. As her cousin attempts to find the talisman, something he believes will give him these abilities, Julia comes to realize her grandfather was not the manipulator…she is. Her abilities far exceed those of her grandfather or The Guild, and that puts the dark-eyed Julia, the woman Nick realizes he loves, in danger.

I don’t think there’s much you can say about a book that kept you up until 3:45 a.m., but I’ll try. The story of my relationship with this book began when I told the publicist I was intrigued by the premise of a different sort of time travel novel. The relationship heightened when I opened the package and discovered an absolutely beautiful book tucked inside. I actually gasped. I knew it was true love when I didn’t eat dinner, missed the gym, and only looked up at 3:45 a.m., the book finished and tucked by my side. Even after I set it down, I thought about this book, part time travel, part Regency romance, all adventure. Now that’s a good read.

After a mad dash home from work and a dozen texts between me and my mom (who was a giver this year, too), I feverishly began making bookmarks as I did last year to pass out with my book – Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. Because I’m trying to get back into my gym routine, I decided not to skip but instead bring a copy to my Zumba instructor, a guy with a wicked sense of humor. He said he was actually familiar with Sedaris because he had been in a production of The Santaland Diaries, so I knew it would likely be a hit.

Hot, red in the face, and sweaty from Zumba, I met my mom in the parking lot of the park where we handed out books last year. In the minutes I was waiting for her, I turned to “You Can’t Kill the Rooster” and proceeded reading and laughing until tears were streaming down my face. In it, Sedaris describes his younger brother, the one his parents were too exhausted to discipline in the same manner as David, going from warnings of “Don’t smoke pot” to “Don’t smoke pot in the living room” in about a decade. Full of obscenities but absolutely hilarious, the story is gold. My mom walked up and asked why I was crying. As I tried to explain, tears streaming down my face and still laughing, she listened, but I don’t think I quite got across to her the extent of the bad language…

She and I headed toward a fire station – her brilliant idea – and we spent a pleasant time visiting with the firemen and getting a tour of the station. She even climbed up into the truck while I snapped a few photos. She was handing out a volume of American poetry in large print, a vastly different type of book and honestly, an easier sell to most.

Mom checking out the fire engine. We passed on putting on the uniforms.

After enjoying a visit with the firemen and seeing the obvious pride they take in their work, we headed to the gym, my not-so-smart idea. Duh. People are working out. It’s difficult enough to approach people, and approaching them while they’re hot and sweaty didn’t seem the best idea. We had discussed going back to the hospice center where we gave last year, but today was 6 months to the day that my grandmother died there, and strange though it was that we’d been there to give out books just months before her arrival there and her death, neither of us felt like going.

On to the grocery store! It was overcast today, and not many people were out and about, so we decided the grocery store might be perfect. We checked with the manager at the grocery store near my house, and she ok’d it. Not only did she ok it, but she also wanted a copy of each of our books. She explained that she does like to read but that just having finished school, she was ready to read for fun.

We gave out a few books, with one guy even opening the book of poetry and reciting it to us as his girlfriend laughed from the car. Everyone was appreciative and excited once they got over the wariness of a stranger coming at them with a book.

So a friend has another friend on FB who posted about getting one of our books. She didn’t know we were passing them out but knew enough to ask if it was me. It was!

Mom and I then headed out to the entrance, and only then did we realize our problem. Mom’s giving away mostly wholesome, all-American poetry. I’m handing out a book that drops the “f-bomb” more frequently than a Real Housewife and uses the word “turd” – a word I cannot believe I just typed and that I’ve never used. So mom’s talking up her book of poems to little old ladies and turns to me: “And she has a book of essays!”

I’m trying to give her “the eye” to tell her this might not be the right fit, but oblivious to my discomfort, we hand one of my books over to an unsuspecting elderly Indian lady in traditional garb.

“Mom, I don’t think you realize just what this book (shaking it a bit) has in it,” I said after the lady walked away.

“Is it vulgar?”

“Well, it’s not exactly Best Pastoral American Poems,” I said.

So we changed our tactic. We had an unspoken agreement. Women with young children or older people in professional clothes got the poetry book. Who ended up with my book? I don’t know that I can describe it. You just get a sense about people. I’d open with an explanation of what World Book Night is, describe the book, and then offer it up.

“If you’re easily offended or don’t like bad language, it might not be for you,” I said.

“It’s racy,” my mom said.

I don’t know about you, but racy is a word I reserve for lingerie or 50s movies such as Peyton Place, but it did the trick. People grabbed at it. So beware. If you were in the Kroger parking lot in Beaumont today and got Me Talk Pretty One Day, I don’t want any complaints. You’ve been warned: it’s racy.

I am an unabashed fan of David Sedaris and have been, from the first time I cracked open Naked on an airplane and embarrassed my sister by laughing out loud for the greater majority of the flight. Since my Sedaris reading was all pre-blog, I haven’t had an opportunity to share my love until today*. When I read that his latest book would come out this week, I decided I would gift it to myself for my birthday. Then, lo and behold, this book (actually two copies) appeared on my doorstep last month. I may have been a little excited, considering I’d just driven home from Dallas (a five-hour drive) but plopped down and read this in one sitting.

After the disappointment of When You Are Engulfed in Flames, I was nervous about Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls. I needn’t have been. One of the first stories describes how Sedaris’s father would drop trou each evening, remaining all business up top but sporting his undies for all and sundry to see, regardless of who or what was about. He talks about his parents, and their parenting methods, comparing them to modern parents: “I don’t know how these couples do it, spend hours each night tucking their kids in, reading them books … then rereading them if the child so orders. In my house, our parents put us to bed with two simple words: “Shut up.” That was always the last thing we heard before our lights were turned off. Our artwork did not hang on the refrigerator or anywhere near it, because our parents recognized it for what it was: crap. They did not live in a child’s house, we lived in theirs.” Harsh as it sounds, Sedaris successfully points out the pretty massive changes in our societal view and treatment of children now as compared to many of our own childhoods.

Along with his typical essays are short, fictitious monologues (which I could have done without), a form he says he’s learned from teens who perform “Forensics” for judges, and Sedaris is sharp tongued in the monologues, pointing out the absurdity of all of us – a man who justifies murder because of gay marriage, a woman writing to berate her sister for a cheap wedding gift after she’s stolen the sister’s intended – but he’s just as pointedly critical of himself. He discusses his compulsive diary writing: “I tried rereading it recently and came away wondering, Who is this exhausting drug addict? I wanted to deny him, but that’s the terrible power of a diary: it not only calls forth the person you used to be but rubs your nose in him, reminding you that not all change is evolutionary. More often than not, you didn’t learn from your mistakes…”

Although not as packed with laughs as perhaps Naked or Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, Sedaris’s collection reflects a maturing essayist and humorist. Yet even with the moments of sincerity and sobering self examination, Let’s Explore Diabetes is the bold, funny, and mildly offensive return to the Sedaris for which most have long waited.

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*Which I’ll do in this review but also as I hand out copies of Me Talk Pretty One Day for World Book Night. Yippee!

I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids – and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me….When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination – indeed, everything and anything except me.

[As an invisible person]…you often doubt if you really exist. You wonder whether you aren’t simply a phantom in other people’s minds. Say, a figure in a nightmare which the sleeper tries with all his strength to destroy. It’s when you feel like this that, out of resentment, you begin to bump people back. And, let me confess, you feel that way most of the time. You ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world, that you’re a part of all the sound and anguish, and you strike out with your fists, you curse and you swear to make them recognize you. And, alas, it’s seldom successful.  – Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

I stopped reading when the invisible man describes spooking a man in the street and then beating the man because he doesn’t see the invisible man, saying: “I was both disgusted and ashamed…. Then I was amused: Something in this man’s thick head had sprung out and beaten him within an inch of his life.”

I closed my book and said, “Sometimes the desire to be seen makes people do unimaginable things.” Invisible Man may be a work of fiction, but fiction so often reflects real life, and I certainly believe it’s capable of reflecting real emotion, and that description of feeling so outside of society that no one sees you that you purposely “bump” against it? It gives me chills.

Mass killings are, regardless of other motives, about attention, whether that is attention to a cause or a deep-seated anger or pain. One of the suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, reportedly said in a wrestling profile, “I don’t have a single American friend, I don’t understand them.” Though I won’t speculate as to his thoughts, it does seem that to some extent he felt excluded, Othered, just as the invisible man does. And just as the invisible man rails against his invisibility as an act of reclamation of self and of defiance against those who don’t see him, I believe too that these mass killings are at a very basic level about the same thing.

In my class this semester, we’ve focused many of our discussions on the inability to successfully answer the question: What or who is an American?  We spent time attempting to define the word, and with each text, I try to bring us around to whether that text is exemplifying or undermining our societal norms/goals. I think it’s a valuable conversation to have.

I brought up the FBI photos of the suspects, and I asked them what first came into their minds. We talked about the underlying issues in speculating the suspects’ origins, pointing out that if we can’t define who or what an American is, how can we possibly glance at a photograph and tell? A couple stated if they could speak with the suspects that they might be able to narrow it down, but I pointed out that students in our classroom have accents and that we don’t doubt their qualifications as Americans. I explained that I don’t have the answers here. I have no better definition than the rudely constructed one we’ve updated all semester. In the end, does it matter whether or not the suspects are American? Will it change the deaths or the life-altering injuries or the trauma?

Part of what I’ve seen this week is our intense desire as a nation to know. We want to know exactly what happened, how many people are dead, what the injuries are to others. We want to know who did this and why and how. We just want to know. Because if we know, we can place blame. We can tuck this away into a particular category in our minds and feel safe. As the victim in Invisible Man, we can reconcile ourselves to the fact that the terror wasn’t in our minds and hastily push it back into the darkness. That is very much human nature.

Yet it is that same desperate need for categorization – if the suspect is [insert ethnicity here], the motive must have been [insanity, anger, hatred of America, drugs, extremism, religion] – that causes us to make others feel excluded. And this exclusion all too often makes the excluded bump us back.

One of my students said, “But we’re not like that. We’re college students. We’re open minded and tolerant.” And it’s true, for the most part. They are. But what I wanted them to understand, what I want *us* to understand, is that we can’t escape this society we live in. We can’t remove ourselves from those of us who are also suspicious of those with accents or different skin color or those who beat a woman because of her religion and what we think that means. The reporters questioning Ruslan Tsarni are us, as much as I absolutely hate that aspect of my country. Our need to know creates the need for more, and that need creates the heartbreaking moment when a reporter asks a man living in America what he thinks about a country he calls home, a question that much of this population would never be asked.

President Obama last night said in his address, “…one of the things that makes America the greatest nation on earth but also what makes Boston such a great city is that we welcome people from all around the world, people from every faith, every ethnicity, from every corner of the globe. So as we continue to learn more about why and how this tragedy happened, let’s make sure that we sustain that spirit.” And for a moment, I wanted to believe it. Instead, I found myself hearing his words less as an acclamation and more as an invocation: Please let us be these people.

And I think, now, sitting at my computer, trying to process the terror and fear and anger and sadness and shock of this week: Please let us live up to what we so like to talk about being. Please. Please let us be these people.

Two sisters sit, side by side, in the backseat of an old car. Amity and Sorrow.

Their hands are hot and close together. A strip of white fabric loops between them, tying them together, wrist to wrist.

…in the car, there was only driving and darkness, the watching of their mother, the roads behind them and the sound of her sister, sobbing, as home stretched away from them, mile after mile.

Amaranth leaves home in desperation, driving without ceasing to leave behind the polygamous cult in which she has conceived and raised her daughters. Neither Amity nor Sorrow has ever known the world outside the compound, but Amaranth has torn the girls from their home after reaching devastating clarity about its ills. A car crash ends their flight, and Bradley, a struggling farmer, comes to their aid.

Amity is, much as her name implies, open to meeting new people, excited about this adventure and only intermittently worried about breaking the rules of her father and spiritual leader. Sorrow, on the other hand, is bereft. Her fierce love of her father and her place within the cult as the Oracle has been ripped from her by a mother who seems not to understand her grief. Amaranth, though, isn’t neglectful of her daughters but simply guilt ridden and horrified by the life she led within the compound.

One of 50 wives, Amaranth looks back on her life before Zachariah, the group’s leader. She recalls the moment she realizes that one, two, three wives will not be enough for him. But she also remembers the love she felt for her sister wives, women who became her strength and her solace. Wrapped up in her own thoughts and her own desire for safety – which she suspects she may be able to find in Bradley – she isn’t cognizant of the girls’ confusion.

Told from both Amaranth and Amity’s perspective, Amity & Sorrow is a strange book. The time period is even difficult to pin down because of the rural locale and the ignorance of the girls. Sorrow is by far the least sympathetic character, but that’s partially because her story is never explored. While that narrative choice makes sense in terms of her zeal for the compound (perhaps making her narrative a bit off kilter), it also restricted her characterization, so that she appeared insane, less a character than a symbol or victim. She becomes, instead, the sacrificial lamb, the deluded child-woman unable to make her own decisions or see beyond the cult.

The book is disturbing in its implications; however, the distance created by the isolation of the characters and their disconnectedness from one another made for odd but enthralling reading.

Add this book to your Goodreads shelf.

When I read CharlesPierce’s piece in Grantland, it struck me when he talks about how the runners in the Boston Marathon had “already traumatized their bodies over 26 hours” that there is an exquisite pain in running but that the pain is immediately followed with a joy so intense, some term it runner’s euphoria.

And that running yesterday was stymied. The pacing and release of the run turned to running in fear, in anguish, in desperation. Some ran to find family. Others ran to tear down the barriers keeping the crowd from the runners, running again to aid the wounded, the shocked, the dying. Still others ran to the hospital to donate blood, taxing their bodies even further and showing up in such large numbers that they were turned away.

I hate everything about these incidents of mass violence in our society. I hate the death and pain – literal and figurative – that they inflict. I hate the fear they instill in each of us, in ways large and small. But I also hate the products of that fear. Seeing the reports that a Saudi national, here on a student visa, was questioned, made me near ill, as I have taught Saudi nationals here on student visas, students so amazingly kind and wonderful that just last week, one brought me a box of 60 (!!) granola bars as thanks for editing a letter for her. I hate, too, our desire to deconstruct the use or avoidance of terms like terrorism, when in reality, people were terrorized yesterday, and though that may not fit the FBI’s definition of terrorism, it works for me. Today, the terror many felt has turned into horror as the shock subsides and the reality sets in.

I want a kinder world. Yes, there have been moments of bravery and love and generosity. Even Twitter was a more watchful, cautious tool than it has been in the midst of more recent crises, as The Signal Watch points out so well. But that we’re learning to adapt and move forward warily doesn’t stop my desire for kindness in its largest sense. The who, why, and how doesn’t matter nearly as much to me in this moment because the answers to those questions won’t change what has happened. And as Craig Ferguson said on his show last night, “I just can’t not think about it.” And I suspect I’ll try and fail to not think about it tonight as my feet pound the pavement.