The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris

Such an odd story.
I dream a lot. Many nights, I have nightmares. Sometimes I just dream strange things. Sometimes I dream the same dream many, many times. And sometimes, I can talk myself out of a dream ... or I will say to myself in my dream, "Oh, we're dreaming this again, are we?"
My brain plays weird games with me.
I'm used to it.
The Unnamed had that same essence of strangeness to it. It was just ... different. I didn't love or hate it. I didn't have any desire to put it down, but I didn't count the minutes until I could pick it up again, either.
It's the story of a man with an unnamed "condition" - mental or physical, no one knows - that forces him to walk without warning. For miles and miles through all elements and obstacles, he would walk. Until he was finished walking. Then he would sleep. Wherever he ended the walk. In the street, the woods, a parking lot, a place of business.
And the story is about what The Unnamed does to his life, his family, his career.
It was an odd story.
At times I was intrigued and interested and other times my mind wandered like the lead character ...
but in the end ... ?
It was just the end.
Very odd and quite sad.

Lost and Found by Carolyn Parkhurst

I like reality shows. I'm not proud of it, but I'm not ashamed, either! I love a good social experiment and I always have. The hidden camera videos we watched in high school psychology classes were my favorite .... and don't forget Candid Camera! And now I love the Amazing Race and The Apprentice, especially the celebrity version!! I'll even waste a day watching those damn real housewives!
So it's really no surprise that I actually enjoyed this story about a fictional reality show. It's one of those books that you are embarrassed to tell people that you are reading it .... and that you actually like it!
No, it won't go down in my history as an all-time favorite or anything, but I did have fun with it for a few days and I'll admit it!

The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs

I heard this book was good.


Unlike the many fine folks in Blazing Saddles who heard the sheriff was hung,

I heard wrong.

Meet Puzzle!

Five Year Olds Are Funny!

My niece and her three kids are visiting from Illinois. My great niece, Isabelle, is five. She has a little brother, Isaac, and a little sister, Ivy. They are all adorable and so much fun! They definitely have more energy than I do, but I still wish we could spend more time together than we are able to now.
And this surprise visit has been amazing! Isabelle and I tease each other and giggle a lot and I thoroughly enjoy her clever sense of humor!
This afternoon, my sister, Grandma Robin, my niece, Leigh, and the kids spent the afternoon in Washington DC in spite of the nearly unbearable heat. We were walking through the Museum of Natural History with the two smaller kids in a double stroller and Isabelle holding hands with both her grandma and great aunt. As she tried to get us to hold hands with each other, she said, "Don't you guys hold hands?" I know she thought she was being funny, so I said, "Of course we do! We're sisters and sisters hold hands!"
Isabelle looked amazed! "You guys are sisters?!"
My sister, Isabelle's grandma, said, "Yes, we're sisters!"
I asked Isabelle if she really didn't know that we were sisters and she just looked at me quizzically.
Robin said, "Aunt Becca is my Ivy!"
Isabelle said, in a snide, under her breath kind of way, "Yeah, poison ivy!"

The World in Six Songs by Daniel J. Levitin

I used to work as a manager at a movie theatre when I first got out of the Air Force. We played our own music while people were filing in to find their seats. At the later shows, I would play some pretty wild stuff! I would go up to the projection booth and peer out into the audience. If anyone was getting into the music, I would know they were "cool" (I was new in town and desperate to meet people)! It worked, too, I met my friend, Lori, that way. She couldn't believe she was hearing Sisters of Mercy at a movie theatre in Iowa!
Music is a huge part of my life. More than likely, it is a huge part of everyone's life. I never really stopped to think why that is, I just accepted and enjoyed it as a fact of life!
The World in Six Songs - How the Musical Brain Created Nature explains a lot of the "why that is". I think I would seriously enjoy taking one of Mr. Levitin's classes, but I have to be honest, it took me over 3 weeks to read this damn book and I found my mind wandering a lot! While there is a great deal of fascinating information on these pages, and my copy is super fat with dog-eared pages, it is really just a paperback text book and I have never been good at studying on my own.
The book is extremely interesting and well-written, but I think I would rather just sit down and have a conversation with the author. Especially since he seems to have conversations with some pretty amazing people (Sting, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon)!!

Pregnant Snapping Turtles Do Not Like Beer!

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

Sometimes I think certain sections of my life would make an interesting play. I like the way a play seems to break it all down more than a motion picture.
More real - more raw.
More intimate.
While I certainly enjoyed "A Raisin in the Sun" and "The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window" (both by Lorraine Hansberry) very much, I really felt connected to "The Glass Menagerie". The characters were vaguely familiar and subtly intense. Tennessee Williams was amazing like that.
Amanda (the mother) was strikingly simple and complicated .... and sad.
Laura was delicate and flawed.
Tom was restless.
Amazingly, Mr. Williams could take that .... just that .... and make a beautiful, magical, sorrowful moment that would last for all eternity.
Bravo!

The Alamo

Two Beautiful Plays by Lorraine Hansberry

Harlem
By Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?


I have never read a play simply for the pure pleasure of reading a great story. But recently, I read two. A Raisin in the Sun and The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, both by Lorraine Hansberry. I suppose I cheated a bit, because both plays came bound together in one lovely little paperback, but that didn’t make me love them any less. In fact, the commentaries between the plays were absolutely heartfelt and breathtaking! Lorraine Hansberry was a beautiful, funny, insightful woman who, in her abruptly short life, changed the world with her raw perception and clever, genuine dialog.
While Raisin takes us into the South Side of Chicago and a family clinging to, losing, and grasping to figure out and save their dreams .... The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window takes us to a very different dark place in American society with another ragtag cast of characters doing very much the same thing in their own way.
A Raisin in the Sun seems to end on a happy note, although we know the Lee family has a much more difficult journey ahead of them and Sign leaves us sad, angry and charged.
However each play is so much more than that. More than the stories come to life on the stage. More than what you see in front of you. The author is very funny and intuitive, very much in tune with the world and human condition. But both plays left me feeling differently about the world around me and that is a beautiful and amazing testament to Ms Hansberry!!

Remembering Spain!

Heroes for My Son by Brad Meltzer

I don't know exactly what the word "hero" means to me. I don't know if we run into heroes every day or if many people even strive to become one. I like to think so.
I do know Brad Meltzer's little book, Heroes for My Son, is a beautiful gift he gave to his children and they will most definitely call him a hero for that!
The book is filled with everyday heroes from all walks of life. Some obvious choices, some more obscure. I like the reasons they are heroes to this author, for now they are to me, as well. Filled with beautiful character sketches and touching testaments, this book is absolutely moving and real.
For all of my heroes, past and present - thank you!

They called Lou Gehrig "the Iron Horse".
But he wasn't made of iron.
He was made like us.
... He just didn't let that stop him.

The Irresistible Henry House by Lisa Grunwald

I used to think that it was an Orphan Edge. There was a large, white, one-room house full of cots lined against the walls that sat out on the edge of town where children went if they didn’t have parents or their parents couldn’t stand them any longer. I grew up in South Dakota where we heard the horror stories of buffalo being run off cliffs to their brutal demise. That’s what the Orphan Edge was to me! Just an edge ... like a huge cliff and if you went too long out in the house without being adopted, you were simply sent, en mass, over the Edge.
My mother would threaten to send me out to the Orphan Edge if I didn’t straighten up, and that didn’t really seem like a viable option to me. Although there was a lot of singing and dancing going on out there (what else are you going to do while you are waiting to be thrown over the Edge like a herd of naughty buffalo?), I knew I was not nearly as talented as Annie and Oliver and I couldn’t even be chosen in the top ten for dodge ball, so clearly there was no way I was going to be chosen by a new family after being cast away from another one!
It’s funny, too, how much of what we believe when we are children still holds a special place in our minds long after we learn the truth. So it will forever be the Orphan Edge to me. And I know what goes on out there!
The Irresistible Henry House is a story inspired by an actual occurrence in these United States between 1919 and 1959: Practice babies! No kidding! They used to pull babies from the Orphan Edge and loan them to Home Economics schools. They lived in Practice Houses and were raised by several mothers at a time! After a year at the Practice House, they would be sent back to the Orphan Edge where they were considered “lucky” to have had such a head start and would probably be adopted before the less fortunate orphans.
The fictional Henry House was one such baby.
This coming of age story takes us through Henry’s life from his birth in 1946 up to his promising young adulthood in the late 60’s. Filled with interesting pop cultural references and colorful details, the story of Henry House is a roller coaster of emotions for the characters and readers alike.
I felt both happy and sad while reading it and it inspired thoughtfulness and creativity within myself. Not a classic by any means, I think The Irresistible Henry House would make an amazing, fun motion picture in the right hands and I, for one, will definitely go see it!!
I wonder if there will be singing and dancing?

Happy Memorial Day

Look Who's Ten!!

The Ask by Sam Lipsyte

The Ask by Sam Lipsyte reminded me a bit of The Catcher in the Rye with a new, not at all improved, Holden Caulfield in the form of plump, pushing forty Milo Burke. The language is brilliant, albeit dirty, and the wild, ridiculously normal situations are extremely ... well, real.
Take the story for the story and it's basically just pathetic, but the author's (and narrator's) way with words makes the whole thing unrestrainedly hilarious!!
Each character is more flawed than the next and while reading each and every far-out scenario you realize that you quite possibly know these people, or people like these people.
I always try to see the humor in the worst moments life has to offer, which is probably why I enjoyed The Ask so much!

Make a Joyful Noise

Tony on the Pony

Sightless Wednesday!

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

I loved the title of this book and chose it because I somehow thought I could relate. Someone who wants things to be perfect but is too lazy to make sure it happens.
A clever idea for a book, The Imperfectionists is really just a series of short stories based on the characters surrounding a sinking newspaper in Rome. Although I would have liked the characters to overlap a bit more, and perhaps a little less irony at the end of each, the stories were very well written and enjoyable to read. Mr. Rachman certainly has a way with a character sketch!
Although, overall, the themes were a bit depressing, I would still say I enjoyed reading The Imperfectionists, in spite of my laziness.

The Scent of Summer Past

Once upon a time I lived in the Black Hills of South Dakota in a little trailer in the alley behind Professor Straum’s Old Time Portrait Studio, where I worked while on delayed entry into the Air Force. It was a lonely/happy time. That is a strange combo platter, to be sure, but it really best describes the way it was for me.
Truly on my own for the first time, I learned how to find pleasure in the simple things .... find new friends, find new contentedness in myself and the air around me.
I loved that time in my life.
The Black Hills are an absolutely gorgeous place to find one’s self. Even on a tight “photographer’s” budget! During the week I dined on instant rice and enjoyed a little splash in the sink we used in the darkroom in lieu of a real bath.
For fun we held up the stagecoach a couple of times a day with the prop weapons we shared with the studio across the street (the “competition” was owned by the same person!) We took strolls on the boardwalk and hiked into the woods. We swam in a hot spring the local boys found and we dined on the kindness of travelers from time to time.
We dangled our feet in the stream while panning for gold and marveled at Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse. We told stories and shared laughter with strangers.
We wandered through caves and danced in the streets at night while drinking the cheapest beer we could buy and listening to mixed tapes of Missing Persons, INXS, U2, etc.
Once a week, I would splurge and pay 25 cents for a real shower at the campground and enjoy a bag of popcorn out of the machine.
I would climb to the highest peak and let the sun warm my face and the breeze rustle my hair. And I would dream the day away .....
The air is different there.
It was a sweet, simple time and I will never forget that summer ......

Every day I ride the Yellow Line to work. And every day I forget those memories of a warm South Dakota summer 26 years ago.
But each time I get off the train at Huntington Station, for a split second, I smell the forest of yesteryear. The Black Hills. Every day I forget and every day I am reminded again as if for the first time.
Each and every day I am treated with a pleasant memory hidden away in the back of my mind caught forever in the sweet scent of the air at a train station in Alexandria Virginia.
Life is funny like that.

Dog Days of Spring!

Tops

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

In spite of the delicate subject matter, I am so happy I read Still Alice by Lisa Genova. I considered putting it down when I realized what the book was about, but thankfully, I did not.
I have a sister-in-law, also named Lisa, who’s mother was diagnosed with early on-set Alzheimer’s disease at a young age. I remember Lisa, a strong, funny woman and natural caregiver, telling me stories of the progression of her mother’s disease and the struggles she and her family endured.
In turns tragic, frustrating, poignant and comical, life with Alzheimer’s is a difficult one for everyone involved. I remember seeing Lisa’s mother changing before our very eyes and how I felt whenever I was around her.
I felt uncomfortable and embarrassed. And that embarrasses me to this day.
Still Alice is a moving story of a fifty year old woman in the prime of her life and career being diagnosed and living with early on-set Alzheimer’s disease. Written in first person, this novel delves into the progression of a fatal disease and what it means for the life of a YOUNG woman with a brilliant career, happy marriage and growing family.
But, it is so beautifully written ... elegantly blending medical facts with extremely raw human emotion. Amazingly, I found it extremely uplifting! Sometimes we have to understand (and having lost loved ones to fatal illnesses over the last decade, it’s something I have firsthand experience with) that, although a life is altered and, sadly, shortened, it is still a life worth living and respecting.

My House

The Girl Who Fell From the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow

Once again, I chose a very sad book.
A story of labels and tragedy, confusion and pain.
A story of how words can wound and how sometimes life just gets in the way of living. Thank God for the cherry blossoms
and birds chirping
and for lunch breaks under the springtime sun
~ if not for these simple pleasures,
I would have been left depressed and darkened.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

In spite of my abnormally large head, I am far from what I would consider a brainiac. I did not excel in math and science and spent most of my education baffled by that subject matter.
So no one is more surprised than I am that I absolutely loved “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot. I am not even sure why I chose this book. Probably only because the author shares my name. Seriously, I am that simple.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is the beautiful story of a young mother who walked into Johns Hopkins Hospital complaining (although not much complaining from Henrietta) of a painful "knot" in her cervix and a bloody vaginal discharge. That day, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer, and the appearance of the tumor was unlike anything that had ever been seen by the examining doctor.
Cells from the carcinoma were removed from Henrietta’s body for research purposes without her knowledge or permission and became the first cells to be grown and kept alive in a laboratory.
This story covers the amazing science and discoveries in medicine following the discovery of Henrietta’s cells (known as HeLa) and the life and struggles of the family who knew nothing about the advances in medicine attributed to their beloved mother.
So while their mother’s cells were busy making medical history significantly contributing to major cancer research,
the polio vaccine, space missions, first cloned and mapped genes, atom bomb research, etc.
Henrietta’s family still cannot obtain medical insurance.
And while Henrietta lies in an unmarked grave in Virginia, there is not so much as a wing in Johns Hopkins Hospital to honor her amazing contribution to medicine and healing.
This book covers science, medicine, law .... and humanity. I smiled, chuckled, gasped and wept openly while reading this amazing story. The author brilliantly put it all into words I could easily comprehend as she did the same for Henrietta’s family. I absolutely recommend reading “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”!
Absolutely!

Sarah's Key by Tatiana De Rosnay

On July 16 and 17, 1942 , more than 13,000 victims (mostly women and children) were arrested in Paris and held at the Vélodrome d'Hiver and the Drancy internment camp nearby, then shipped by rail to Auschwitz. The Vel' d'Hiv Roundup, nickname for the Vélodrome d'Hiver: "Winter Velodrome" cycle track, was a Nazi decreed raid conducted by the French police. The roundup was one of several aimed at reducing the Jewish population in Occupied France. Very few of the transported Jews survived.
Sarah’s Key is a fictional story based on these horrifyingly factual events in the summer of 1942. Sarah’s story is heart-wrenching and difficult. The author, however, flip-flops between Sarah’s story and the story of an American journalist covering the 60th Anniversary of the Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup. Julia is an American who has been living in Paris for over twenty years, married to a French man and raising a child in Paris. She works for a newspaper catering to Americans living in France.
This back and forth between Sarah’s horrific experience and Julia’s modern day discoveries of those events makes it somewhat easier to read, although not nearly enough to take away the anguish and pain of Sarah’s story.
The first half of this book was riveting and nearly impossible to put down. However, once Sarah’s voice became silent, I found the story lost much of it’s luster. I liked the book very much, don’t get me wrong, and I still felt considerable compassion for Julia, but I missed hearing Sarah’s side of the story and the more intense facts surrounding it.
I missed her.
It is a sad, sad story.
On many levels.
This is a work of fiction albeit laced with graphic facts. It is not a text book. It is a story. Keeping that in mind, I would say it is worth reading.

The Queen of Clichés

My mother, like her mother before her, is the Queen of Clichés. I, on the other hand, while growing up was the Princess of Literal. The Amelia Bedelia of Mellette Elementary, if you will. It led to a lot of confusion and misunderstandings around our house. Me thinking my mother was crazy and she, in turn, thinking I had special needs. I walked around scowling and mystified most of the time, while she was walking around betting dollars to doughnuts and taking stitches in time.
I never knew what on God’s green earth she was talking about!
“Well, if you can’t see the forest for the trees, Rebecca, I don’t know what to tell you!”
Ummm, clearly! We lived on the plains of South Dakota ... what trees?! What forest? What was I missing?!
“Pretty is as Pretty does, young lady!”
Who is Pretty and what the hell does she keep doing to get me into so much trouble?
It was baffling!
As I wandered across the street one sunny afternoon, I heard “REBECCA ANNE!” screeching across the airways.
Huh?
“You didn’t look for cars any more than the man in the moon!”
Well, honestly, I probably was looking for the man in the moon which was why I didn’t see the car that nearly hit me!
My eyes were always bigger than my stomach and I was biting off more than I could chew. I was always looking a gift horse in the mouth, telling cock and bull stories, barking up the wrong trees and crying wolf ... although I have no recollection of doing any of these things.
I loved to draw when I was little and I remember asking my mother to join me.
“The only thing I can draw is a bath.”
Okay.
I was fine with that, although while I never saw her actually do it, I couldn’t figure out why she could draw this (according to her):



but not this:




Seemed odd.
I was a curious child, although usually too frightened to ask questions. Mostly because the answers were always so cryptic and confusing. When I did venture to ask a well-thought out and provocative question, my mother would simply roll her eyes and say, “Heavenly Nose, Rebecca.”
I won’t even tell you how old I was when I figured out she was saying, “Heaven Only Knows”, which, while still not answering the questions, would have at least made more sense!
And my grandmother, in addition to her entirely different set of clichés, simply said bizarre things. She was weird.
“Grandma?” I once asked. “There are no chairs left at the table, where should I sit?”
“You could always sit on my thumb.”
For the life of me I still don’t know what that meant!

The Room and the Chair by Lorraine Adams

I feel like I bumped my head and received a concussion where my reading taste buds have lost their ability to ... well, taste. I feel like I haven’t enjoyed a book in a long, long time. Perhaps it’s simply because it took me a long, long time to read this book, which I did not enjoy.
The Room and the Chair was confusing and irritating. Like an annoyingly overzealous child who wants to be everything when he grows up, but can’t really make an intelligent decision on the subject.
There were too many quick-change jumps from here to there, person to person. I found it difficult to keep track of the story and even more difficult to find a reason to care. I did not feel connected to any one character and only mildly with one story line or another - story lines that never did climax or connect even to each other.
And I may have to see a doctor concerning this concussion!