What I've Been Reading

I have a Kindle gift card burning a hole in my pocket and no idea what books to read first! It seems Amazon has become overwhelmed with cheesy Fifty Shades of Gray copycats. If the original wasn't good, don't try to recreate the bad!

First, here's what I've been reading over the past few months. Graduate school was really busy this past semester so reading took a backseat.

I finally finished the George R.R. Martin series! Book four dragged so badly and it took forever to finish, book five was much more interesting. This is a Jeff-recommended series (I'm not a big fantasy reader) and I was surprised by how much I love it. There's a million layers of conflicts and focuses and it's so much fun to discuss. Yes, Jeff and I sit around and argue about fictional characters.

How can you not love Nora Roberts? While I liked the Irish setting, this one didn't stick with me as much as some of her older trilogies. I feel like at this point she's just cranking out as many novels as she can to make money. Her Bride quartet is my favorite, by the way.

I avoided this trilogy for years because everyone who recommended it was also a Twilight fan, putting it in the same category as utter garbage. Curiosity finally got the best of me and I downloaded the trilogy. While I found the plot twists kind of predictable and Katniss underwhelming, it was a quick and fun read. Haymitch is my favorite character, if you're curious. I also convinced Jeff to read this series and he's in Book 2, so we're having more fictional character discussions.



Here's some of the books on my wishlist. Trying to pick what to read next is always so difficult! I'm not including a description because you can easily find these books on Amazon.

It should be no surprise that I have a soft spot for stories set in Asia. Plus, running a soy sauce company sounds interesting.

I love dark and twisted families in books. Your problems pale in comparison to a father being shot and murdered.

I must have read too much love fluff and fantasy because all my books are in the dark and twisted kind of realm right now.

Sherlock got me hooked on mystery. (P.S. Please tell BBC to hurry up with Sherlock. It's ah-mazing!)

More dark and twisted. I think I need a happy cupcake or something.

What have you been reading lately?

Lately

Hey, it's been a while. I've been back on the exercise bangwagon again. It's a shaky ride, but I'm hanging on.

I started Jamie Eason's LiveFit Trainer, a free program that tells me what to do when I'm at the gym.

What Book Did I Read Last Month?

I have a lot of books.

I have a lot of Kindle e-books.

I get confused on what I've read, what I meant to read, what I plan to read, etc. etc. etc. I forget I downloaded that book a month ago. I forget about that book that got thrown into the office last week. I forget a lot.

I tried Shelfari a few months ago. I loved that it linked with Amazon and automatically added my Kindle purchases, but otherwise found it pretty useless.

I still love the idea of having a digital collection of all my books, my wishlists, and favorites, so I tried again.

Round Two : My Goodreads Profile

This one was a pain to set up. I never finished my profile on Shelfari, so it wouldn't let me download my book collection. What? Annoying. All I wanted to do was delete the damn account, not finish it. I added all those books to Goodreads, then quickly glanced at my bookshelves and Kindle history to see what pieces I've missed in the mean time. I'm sure I'm still missing plenty here and there...

But it's a start! I even have a little collection in the sidebar of this blog. Now I just need to find all my random "books to read" lists on paper and computer and compile them in once place. I'll save that job for another night though.

You're On My List

One of our favorite date nights in the states was dinner, a movie, and a bookstore. We'd take the hour drive into the city and get some delicious food. We always had some down time before or after the movie, so we'd wander to the nearest Borders.

I love wandering through the shelves and picking up whatever catches my eye. Jeff would give me a limit that I'd usually break, coming back with an armful of books and the most hopeful eyes I could conjure to convince him to let me buy more books. He'd have one, maybe two if it was a good day. He's a picky reader. I am not.

I miss those trips desperately. All the bookstores over here are in...Japanese. Not so easy to browse. Not to mention Japanese read their books in the other direction. The bookstore on base has a handful of shelves, but for an avid reader, not so enticing. I swear some of those books have been stocked since we moved here...

Thank God for Amazon. Not only do they have the largest selection around, their affordable prices and quick shipping let me keep up my ever growing book collection. The Kindle is the ultimate lifesaver/troublemaker - books in 90 seconds? Yes, please. It's a little dangerous though, which is why Jeff threatens to hide my Kindle at least once a week.

Anyways, I've been reading Sherlock Holmes for the past few weeks. I'm halfway through the first large collection (900+ pages!), and I have Volume II to get through. I'm getting antsy for a new novel. I have a pile from a friend, but that doesn't stop me from browsing.

Here's what caught my eye today...

Anne Lamott - Some Assembly Required

 

 

 

 

In Some Assembly Required, Anne Lamott enters a new and unexpected chapter of her own life: grandmotherhood.

Stunned to learn that her son, Sam, is about to become a father at nineteen, Lamott begins a journal about the first year of her grandson Jax's life.

In careful and often hilarious detail, Lamott and Sam-about whom she first wrote so movingly in Operating Instructions-struggle to balance their changing roles with the demands of college and work, as they both forge new relationships with Jax's mother, who has her own ideas about how to raise a child. Lamott writes about the complex feelings that Jax fosters in her, recalling her own experiences with Sam when she was a single mother. Over the course of the year, the rhythms of life, death, family, and friends unfold in surprising and joyful ways.
By turns poignant and funny, honest and touching, Some Assembly Required is the true story of how the birth of a baby changes a family-as this book will change everyone who reads it. (Copied from Amazon)

Jenny Lawson - Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

 

Jenny Lawson realized that the most mortifying moments of our lives—the ones we’d like to pretend never happened—are in fact the ones that define us. In Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, Lawson takes readers on a hilarious journey recalling her bizarre upbringing in rural Texas, her devastatingly awkward high school years, and her relationship with her long-suffering husband, Victor. Chapters include: “Stanley the Magical, Talking Squirrel”; “A Series of Angry Post-It Notes to My Husband”; “My Vagina Is Fine. Thanks for Asking”; “And Then I Snuck a Dead Cuban Alligator on an Airplane.” Pictures with captions (no one would believe these things without proof) accompany the text. (Copied from Amazon)

Jane Maas - Mad Women

 

What was it like to be an advertising woman on Madison Avenue in the 60s and 70s – that Mad Men era of casual sex and professional serfdom? A real-life Peggy Olson reveals it all in this immensely entertaining and bittersweet memoir.

Mad Women is a tell-all account of life in the New York advertising world by Jane Maas, a copywriter who succeeded in the primarily male jungle depicted in the hit show Mad Men.  
Fans of the show are dying to know how accurate it is: was there really that much sex at the office? Were there really three-martini lunches? Were women really second-class citizens? Jane Maas says the answer to all three questions is unequivocally “yes.” Her book, based on her own experiences and countless interviews with her peers, gives the full stories, from the junior account man whose wife almost left him when she found the copy of Screw magazine he’d used to find “a date” for a client, to the Ogilvy & Mather’s annual Boat Ride, a sex-and-booze filled orgy, from which it was said no virgin ever returned intact. Wickedly funny and full of juicy inside information, Mad Women also tackles some of the tougher issues of the era, such as unequal pay, rampant, jaw-dropping sexism, and the difficult choice many women faced between motherhood and their careers. (Copied from Amazon)

Ellen Ullman - By Bloo

San Francisco in the 1970s. Free love has given way to radical feminism, psychedelic ecstasy to hard-edged gloom. The Zodiac Killer stalks the streets. A disgraced professor takes an office in a downtown tower to plot his return. But the walls are thin and he’s distracted by voices from next door—his neighbor is a psychologist, and one of her patients dislikes the hum of the white-noise machine. And so he begins to hear about the patient’s troubles with her female lover, her conflicts with her adoptive, avowedly WASP family, and her quest to track down her birth mother. The professor is not just absorbed but enraptured. And the further he is pulled into the patient’s recounting of her dramas—and the most profound questions of her own identity—the more he needs the story to move forward. The patient’s questions about her birth family have led her to a Catholic charity that trafficked freshly baptized orphans out of Germany after World War II. But confronted with this new self— “I have no idea what it means to say ‘I’m a Jew’”—the patient finds her search stalled. Armed with the few details he’s gleaned, the professor takes up the quest and quickly finds the patient’s mother in records from a German displaced-persons camp. But he can’t let on that he’s been eavesdropping, so he mocks up a reply from an adoption agency the patient has contacted and drops it in the mail. Through the wall, he hears how his dear patient is energized by the news, and so is he. He unearths more clues and invests more and more in this secret, fraught, triangular relationship: himself, the patient, and her therapist, who is herself German. His research leads them deep into the history of displaced-persons camps, of postwar Zionism, and—most troubling of all—of the Nazi Lebensborn program.

With ferocious intelligence and an enthralling, magnetic prose, Ellen Ullman weaves a dark and brilliant, intensely personal novel that feels as big and timeless as it is sharp and timely. It is an ambitious work that establishes her as a major writer. (Copied from Amazon)

What to read first? Jeff has a new video game releasing soon, so that should be a good bargaining chip to download some new books...

Starting the Big List

It's official, I've broken in my Day Zero Project!



54.   Read one hundred and twenty-five books (9/125)

I've read nine books since we last talked:

1. Nora Roberts - The Next Always 
2. Diane Haeger - The Secret Bride: In the Court of Henry VIII (In Progress!) 
3. Sophie Kinsella - Shopaholic Ties the Knot 
4. Sophie Kinsella - Shopaholic and Sister
5.  Sophie Kinsella - Shopaholic and Baby 
6. Nora Roberts - Enchanted 
7. Nora Roberts - Charmed 
8. Nora Roberts - Entranced 
9. Nora Roberts - Captivated

The new Nora Roberts book was okay, but not as good as some of her others. The Sophie Kinsella Shopaholic series is SO funny and cute. The flop movie turned me off, but I'm so glad I gave the books a chance. I've loved every Sophie Kinsella book I've read -- I think I might have even read them all? The Nora Roberts series was cheap for my Kindle. It was a little fantasy, with witches and magic. It was okay, again. Nothing amazing, but plenty good enough to curl up with and forget the world for a while. My favorite kind.




69.   Try ten new slow-cooker recipes (2/10)

 I've been trying so hard to use my slow cooker more. I've got chili on the menu for later in the week. But I've had the hardest time finding good recipes for it that don't come out totally bland.

We tried a BBQ chicken recipe that was just that - BLAND. It was so bad, I didn't even eat it. Fail! But it counts.

Last week I tried a different beef recipe. I have a favorite that I make all the time, and everyone loves. But I wanted something different, so I tried this French Dip Recipe. It was pretty good! I topped the sandwiches with mozzarella and broiled them for a few minutes, and they reminded me of a sub you would pick up at a sandwich shop like Charlie's Subs, which we have on base. Still pretty tasty. I've got half leftover which we'll probably eat later this week.



70.   Try ten restaurants in and around Misawa (2/10)

Since the weather is so full of snow and ice, we've been staying close to home. Which makes adventures hard to tackle, so we've been eating instead.

We tried a local Italian restaurant called Angelo's one weekend.

Excuse the blurry photo. I took a picture of Jeff eating his tortellini, but he was chewing and it's just bad. I ate most of my margherita pizza before I remembered to snap a picture. It was a really good dinner. We both got a salad and delicious crusty garlic bread. Both of our meals were delicious. We'll probably go back sometime in the near future.

We also tried a local fast food place called Sukiya. We've heard about it a lot from our friends but hadn't gone yet. On Saturday I had a craving for yakisoba, but my favorite place had no parking, so we went elsewhere. We tried Sukiya since it had plenty of parking (this little city has NO parking).

It's basically rice bowls of all combinations. Jeff got a basic beef bowl, I got a 3 cheese beef bowl, and we both got miso soup. It was really tasty, although I think I prefer another rice bowl place we tried a while back. I didn't take a picture, but it looks really similar to this. This picture is from the other place I prefer, which I cannot pronounce the name of, and we went there a couple times over the summer. I've been meaning to go back, but you know how that goes.

It doesn't fit neatly into the checklist, but I've started my "Get in Shape to Climb Mount Fuji" challenge. I worked out hard last week and was dying by Friday, and I started it again this week. I'm hoping next month I can make it longer than five minutes on the stair stepper...but I have lost 3lbs. since I've started!

A Mother's Prayer for Its Daughter

First, Lord: No tattoos. May neither Chinese symbol for truth nor Winnie-the-Pooh holding the FSU logo stain her tender haunches.
May she be Beautiful but not Damaged, for it’s the Damage that draws the creepy soccer coach’s eye, not the Beauty.
When the Crystal Meth is offered, May she remember the parents who cut her grapes in half
And stick with Beer.
Guide her, protect her.
When crossing the street, stepping onto boats, swimming in the ocean, swimming in pools, walking near pools, standing on the subway platform, crossing 86th Street, stepping off of boats, using mall restrooms, getting on and off escalators, driving on country roads while arguing, leaning on large windows, walking in parking lots, riding Ferris wheels, roller-coasters, log flumes, or anything called “Hell Drop”, “Tower of Torture”, or “The Death Spiral Rock ‘N Zero G Ball featuring Aerosmith”, and standing on any kind of balcony ever, anywhere, at any age.
Lead her away from Acting but not all the way to Finance.
Something where she can make her own hours but still feel intellectually fulfilled and get outside sometimes.
And not have to wear high heels.
What would that be, Lord? Architecture? Midwifery? Golf course design? I’m asking you, because if I kknew, I’d be doing it, Youdamnit.
May she play the Drums to the fiery rhythm of her Own Heart with the sinewy strength of her Own Arms, so she need Not Lie With Drummers.
Grant her a Rough Patch from twelve to seventeen.
Let her draw horses and be interested in Barbies for much too long,
For Childhood is short-a Tiger Flower blooming in Magenta for one day-
And Adulthood is long and Dry-Humping in cars will wait.
O Lord, break the Internet forever,
That she may be spared the misspelled invective of her peers
And the online marketing campaign for Rape Hostel V: Girls Just Wanna Get Stabbed.
And when she one day turns on me and calls me a Bitch in front of Hollister,
Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends,
For I will not have that Shit, I will not have it.
And should she choose to be a Mother one day, be my eyes, Lord,
That I may see her, lying on a blanket on the floor at 4:50AM, all-at-once exhausted, bored, and in love with the little creature whose poop is leaking up its back.
“My mother did this for me once”, she will realize as she cleans feces off her baby’s neck. “My mother did this for me.” And the delayed gratitude will wash over her as it does each generation and she will make a Mental Note to call me. And she will forget.
But I’ll know, because I peeped it with Your God Eyes.
Amen.

Bossypants, Page 261-263 (according to Kindle)

An excerpt from Bossypants, the hilarious work of Tina Fey. I read it a few months ago and LOVED it. I was just clicking through my Kindle for a new book to read and stumbled across my highlight of this prayer. I had to share, I love it so much. Seriously, buy this book! It’s one of my favorites of the year.
Note, I realize this might give people the wrong idea. No, I’m not becoming a mother. I just laughed out loud at this excerpt and SO many other pages of the book that I had to share. But if and when I do become a mother, this doesn’t seem too far off the mark of what I would be thinking.
For now, though, I’m telling you again to check out this book. Tina Fey is an incredible writer who wraps her life story with so much dry humor and wit. I’m tempted to go back and read it all over again just for a good laugh.

The Traitor's Wife

I haven’t done a book review in a while, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been reading. I’ve actually been re-reading a lot of my favorites. I’ve also been picking an Edgar Allen Poe short story here and there to give me the creeps just in time for Halloween.
I also picked up The Traitor’s Wife a few weeks ago at the BX. We were browsing and it caught my eye, then sounded interesting enough to buy.
Here’s a synopsis posted on Amazon:

In the harsh wilderness of colonial Massachusetts, Martha Allen works as a servant in her cousin’s household, taking charge and locking wills with everyone. Thomas Carrier labors for the family and is known both for his immense strength and size and mysterious past. The two begin a courtship that suits their independent natures, with Thomas slowly revealing the story of his part in the English Civil War. But in the rugged new world they inhabit, danger is ever present, whether it be from the assassins sent from London to kill the executioner of Charles I or the wolves-in many forms-who hunt for blood. A love story and a tale of courage, The Wolves of Andover confirms Kathleen Kent’s ability to craft powerful stories of family from colonial history.

The book was previously named The Wolves of Andover and has been re-named, apparently. It’s also a prequel to Kathleen Kent’s first novel The Heretic’s Daughter, which is now on my list of books to read in the future.

I really enjoyed the book. It’s a little slow to start, and confusing since the narrative jumps across the ocean from the colonies to England and back, and most of the characters are strangers until you get quite a few chapters in. I had trouble keeping up with who was who, but that doesn’t interrupt the narrative too badly.
I loved the way Kent weaved the narrative with historical glimpses of life in the wilderness of American colonies and life in London. You’d go from a description of a person and their thoughts and feelings to a depiction of the daily chores a woman must do to keep the house safe and running. It was really interesting to me. The love story might feel under-developed compared to most romantic novels, because there are very few words and intimate interactions between the two characters. It seems like nothing has happened and suddenly they’ve both decided to be together. She probably could’ve spent a bit more time on how their emotions develop, but it isn’t sparse either. It’s not like colonial men and women had a lot of time to sit and write love notes to each other or spend afternoons gazing into each other’s eyes anyways.
The connection to English political history is interesting as well. I don’t know extensive facts about that time in history, but I have studied it off and on in relation to literature I’ve studied and in basic history courses. The back room dealings to quietly and quickly dispose of political nightmares doesn’t seem stretched at all, and the depictions and stories of the assasins kept me reading. I think the network of connections through the colonies were accurate, especially for political refugees hiding from the king and his vengeance. I loved the quick stories of colonial men and women plotting and preventing the success of the assassins coming to aide England’s interests. It reminded me of the Underground Railroad decades later.

Overall, I really liked this one. It wasn’t a book I picked up and didn’t put down all night, as it was slow to start and somewhat dense to read for a long period of time, but I did finish it within a week. I loved the book enough to look up its predecessor and make a note of buying it in the future. It’s different enough to stick out on the shelf and it’s well put together, so the historical vignettes and the love story and the murder suspense work together instead of against each other. If you’re into colonial America at all, I think you’d enjoy this one

We Collect Things.

We have lots of stuff. The plus side is we actually use the stuff we collect. The down side is the limited storage options when living in a 2 bedroom apartment overseas, where we can’t just run to Ikea or Wal*mart when we need some affordable and quick storage pieces. If everything is bigger in Texas, everything is smaller in Japan. Houses, furniture, people. Everything is tiny and insufficient for our collections.

What are we collecting?

Besides dust and the insane amount of paperwork the military tries to drown people with, mainly books and movies. Most people are aware of one addiction or the other. If you’ve met me, you know I love to bury my nose in a good book. If you’ve met my husband, you know he can quote movies like nobody’s business. But our collections are like tumors, taking over. We both laugh at how much it feels like we’re always trying to stuff the latest addition to our collection somewhere. Don’t believe me?

Take a look.

April 2010.

Oh, just a few books. This was a year and some change into living together. I had college textbooks and a small collection of “for pleasure” books picked up from Borders. I don’t see any of Jeff’s books on the shelf, but he was deployed at the time so maybe they were with him?

September 2011.

I’m *so* glad we decided to pick up a second bookshelf from Wal*mart before we left the states. It’s one of those sturdy metal shelves that can go anywhere and hold anything. It also gave us the option to do ‘his’ and ‘hers’ bookshelves. Perfect.  (Mine’s on the left!) As you can see, our books are overflowing. And that’s after my electronic love, the Kindle, took over a lot of book purchases. My mission this week was to organize the office (Only so housing could get into the room to do maintenance, not for our own pleasure. Priorities, clearly.) I finished my mission, and then went to a friend’s house and picked up a box full of books. She’s moving and I’m always looking for a new book. It was the perfect pairing. Except I have no idea where to put those 20-30 books I just picked up…for now they’re sitting in the car.
And here’s the bigger, and much more impressive, collection.

February 2010

Not a shabby collection, right? Most of these movies were collected by my then-single husband while he was stationed in Italy. Movie buying slowed down considerably when we got married and actually had bills, but it’s been picking up speed steadily since we moved back overseas. Ask anyone, AFN (American Forces Network) isn’t the most entertaining television on the planet.

September 2011.

 Yes, I’ve got stacks on top of stacks on top of the full shelves. We’ve looked for larger storage solutions, but found limited options over here. Surprisingly, not a lot of people have this size of a movie collection! Ha. The best part? That’s not even all of the collection. See those black squares under the television?

Oh, those are also stuffed with movies. One has all the gaming accessories, three are overflowing with television series. I tried to count the movies a couple times. I always forget the numbers, but they are clearly way up there. We keep them alphabetized as much as possible, which helps when we’re looking for just the right movie. Jeff wants to get them all listed on the computer so we can better keep track of where we need to fill in blank spaces (like trilogies) and what we have doubles of (like Boondock Saints). We started to make a wishlist on Amazon and gave up because every thirty minutes or so Jeff would yell out “Oh hey, what about ________?!” or “I love _____, we need to buy that one”, or any other similar comment. It was time consuming, even for a list lover like me. Especially since we each buy movies pretty frequently these days.

This post was prompted by me happily placing the last book just so on our organized and neat bookshelves in the office. The desk was clear, the closet doors could close, the clutter was contained, and my side of the bookshelf was in alphabetical order (I tried to organize Jeff’s books once, he went back and changed everything, so I gave up forever).  My bubble of organization bliss was popped when I remembered the box of books in the car. 20-30 books that somehow need to be crammed onto the bookshelves that are pretty full even after I crammed all my old textbooks into a plastic container in the closet.

And we may or may not have just ordered some new books on Amazon recently… I shudder a little to think of how full this apartment is going to be when we move in 2014.

Books and Movies

I haven't blogged much about what I've been reading lately. The amount of books I'm reading has lessened since I started working, but it definitely hasn't stopped.

My memory of what I've read the past few weeks however...



Anyways, I've been reading more Phillipa Gregory. Always a fan. I preferred The Queen's Fool to The Virgin's Lover. I thought it had a much richer context of growing up to become a woman and having to deal with marriage, men, and living in that society. Both books provided a pretty good description of how challenging being royal or powerful must be, how easy it is to have good intentions go down the drain, and how manipulation is almost always necessary. If you haven't started reading Phillipa Gregory, you should probably give her books a chance sometime. I have The White Queen sitting on my bookshelf waiting to be read.



I bought this one from a friend without really reading the description or knowing the author. I figured I'll give anything a shot. I actually really enjoyed it though. I don't know much about French history, but it was interesting to dive into the past and see what was going on. The references to England's royalty and happenings were especially colorful after getting my fill of British royalty with Phillipa Gregory's books. But it's an interesting love story and depiction again of royal life and the balancing act between personal and public responsibilities and desires. Definitely worth a look.



I've never been a big Nicholas Sparks fan, but a friend recommended this one so I gave it a try. I'd say it wasn't anything extraordinary or ground-breaking, but it was a good read. It at least has a different story than his usuals. And it had captivating main characters, although the descriptions of the abusive ex-husband fell flat for me - I think he depended too much on the deeply religious view of the world without digging into the character's personality enough. But like I said, it's a good, quick read. Perfect for a summer weekend or the like.


We've been seeing some movies in theaters lately too. The movie theater on base is fairly affordable, although it has limited options and times and the movies are usually delayed a few weeks from opening dates back in the states. Still, we can both see a movie with popcorn and soda for around $20, which isn't possible in the states.



I loved Something Borrowed when I first read it. I also loved its sister, Something Blue. So of course I had to watch the movie! I think they chose perfect actors for each role, and I think it was a good interpretation of the book. It was cute and funny and emotional without being over the top in any department. Loved it.



I went into Bridesmaids expecting a funny chick flick. It's SO much more than that! I could not stop laughing, and my laughter was definitely not alone in the theater. The ladies that played in this movie are hilarious alone, and an excellent combination. Can not wait to buy it and make my husband watch it. He rolled his eyes when I said I wanted to go see it, but I think I'll get the last laugh when I force him to watch it and he loves it. Probably my favorite movie of the year.




Not much else has been going on in life lately. Lots of reading and movie watching and relaxing in between the chaos of working with kids all through their summer vacation. Everyone at my work is impatiently counting down the weeks until school begins again.

Have a good weekend!

New Books!

Misawa Air Base had a garage sale this past weekend. One where a person can rent a table and sell whatever they have on hand. It was mostly baby clothes and toys, with some decorations and crafts thrown in. But one table caught our eye...



One of my co-workers is clearing out her house in anticipation of a PCS, and mentioned she'd be getting rid of some books and movies. You know Jeff and I were all over that. She had dirt cheap prices, so we just started stock-piling. Some of the books I'd been eying, like the Philippa Gregory ones, and some I just grabbed because they were $0.25 and looked interesting enough. Jeff said the same thing about the movies. We were thrilled to spend maybe $25 for this whole pile. Not shabby, eh?

We explored Japan a little after that, but of course I did not have my camera and we didn't see anything too interesting.


I keep meaning to post more often, but I can never think of anything interesting to say! Our day to day lives are pretty monotonous, and a lot of details I obviously can't or don't want to share. We work, we relax, we get up and do it again. I'll have to work on some more ideas for the blog... maybe remembering my camera now and then would help!

American Wife

I bought this book up almost a year ago at Borders, after a handful of times of picking it up, reading the back and contemplating, then putting it back in favor of something else. I bought it a few weeks before a semester started, got 100 pages in, then had to put it aside for school books. I finally got the chance to restart and actually finish it. And I loved it.

I had no idea this was based on Laura Bush when I picked it up. I might not have if I had known, I'm not a big political person. I don't like to talk politics, share my beliefs, or read/hear too deeply about others' beliefs. But this book was fiction so I didn't think anything of it. Based on the book, I think I'd love Laura Bush. I know nothing of her true self, besides being a First Lady. But in the book she's an avid reader, a shy and rather introspective person, born and raised in the Midwest, marries into a boisterous family, works as a librarian because she loves reading to kids, and so on. Basically, I saw a lot of myself in this Alice Lindgren.

The first two sections of the book follow a basic fiction plotline-showing how she grew up and became Mrs. Bush (er, Blackwell). I was drawn in from the beginning (I love her grandma, who does nothing but read and smoke). The third section was the most intriguing, because in it she, Alice, questions her husband's choices in "the war", their decisions and choices leading up to and through the presidency, what it means to become famous and how she deals with it, what a marriage really is and what it asks of the two people in it, and a lot of other big picture topics. As Alice, she doesn't give a lot of answers, just poses the questions, which I find more intriguing. She does answer some things, like why she decided to stay married and how she keeps herself sane despite all the news and tabloids.

I have no idea how much this Alice Lundgren/Blackwell character lines up with Laura Bush, but she's a really powerful character. Maybe I think so because I find myself relating so much to her, but I think anyone can see her as such.

The one thing that distracted me is the author herself. Although the book is written through Alice's eyes and she is a self-proclaimed Democrat, I felt like it was more so the author's self-proclaimed liberal views showing through in a lot of the political content. There wasn't a lot of positive representation of Republican people or beliefs, despite the book being full of them. And each time she did discuss Bush's (Blackwell's) decisions in his presidency, the people he chose to work with, his stance on the war, etc., she displayed him in a negative light, at least in my opinion. The criticism was often through Alice's eyes, but for me, it read as the author's criticisms being pushed into the novel. Charlie Blackwell, aka George Bush, doesn't get much of a chance to show the different sides of his personality, especially during the presidential section of the book. Sittenfeld repeatedly tried to show how endearing Charlie's character was through Alice's eyes, but it felt condescending rather than honest some of the time. Maybe it's impossible to write a book about politics without inserting your own beliefs, but I found it distracting.

Otherwise, I really did love this book. And I love the character Alice Lundgren. And I'm tempted to get some Laura Bush biographies now, just to see how much of her is in this character.

And because I related to the book so much, I marked passages all over the place, so I figured I'd share a few to give you a taste of the writing and characters.

At such moments, I felt that we were like the people in California who live in enormous houses on the sides of cliffs, that our lives are beautiful but precarious, their foundations vulnerable...Life was so hard for so many people, the odds were stacked so precipitously against them. The other adults I knew did not seem overly distressed about the imbalances, and certainly not surprised by them, whereas to me they were constantly surprising, they were never not upsetting.

I did not care if Ella went to Princeton, if she was exceptionally pretty, if she grew up to marry a rich man, or really, if she married at all--there were many incarnations of her I felt confident I could embrace, a hippie or a housewife or a career woman. But what I did care about, what I wanted most fervently, was for her to understand that hard work paid off, that decency begat decency, that humility was not a raincoat you occasionally pulled on when you thought conditions called for it, but rather a constant way of existing in the world, knowing that good and bad luck touched everyone and none of us was fully responsible for our fortunes or tragedies. Above all, I wanted my daughter to understand that many people were guided by bitterness and that it was best to avoid these individuals--their moods and behavior were a hornet's nest you had no possible reason to do anything other than bypass and ignore.

(This last one is long, but I couldn't pass it up, being a Midwest girl at heart. And agreeing full heartedly with the whole 3 paragraph passage.)

Then we were back in Wisconsin, a place that in late summer is thrillingly beautiful. When I was young, this was knowledge shared by everyone around me; as an adult, I've never stopped being surprised by how few of the people with whom I interact have any true sense of the states between Pennsylvania and Colorado. Some of these people have spent weeks or months working in such states, but unless they're midwesterners too, to them the region is nothing but polling numbers and caucuses...these people eat at Perkins, and then they complain about the quality of the restaurants.

Admittedly, the area possesses a dowdiness I personally have always found comforting, but to think of Wisconsin specifically or the Midwest as a whole as anything other than beautiful is to ignore the extraordinary power of the land. The lushness of the grass and trees in August, the roll of the hills (far less of the Midwest is flat than outsiders seem to imagine), that rich smell of soil, the evening sunlight over a field of wheat, or the crickets chirping at dusk on a residential street; All of it, it has always made me feel at peace. There is room to breathe, there is a realness of place. The seasons are extreme, but they pass and return, pass and return, and the world seems far steadier than it does from the vantage point of a coastal city.

Certainly picturesque towns can be found in New England or California or the Pacific Northwest, but I can't shake the sense that they're too picturesque. On the East Coast, especially, these places--Princeton, New Jersey, say, or Farmington, Connecticut--seem to me aggressively quaint, unbecomingly smug, and even xenophobic, downright paranoid in their wariness of those who might somehow infringe upon the local charm. I suspect this wariness is tied to the high cost of real estate, the fear that there might not be enough space or money and what there is of both must be clung to and defended. The West Coast, I think, has a similar self-regard--all that talk of proximity to the ocean and the mountains--and a beauty that I can't help seeing as showy-offy. But the Midwest: It is quietly lovely, not preening with the need to have its attributes remarked on. It is the place I am calmest and most myself.

I really think you'd enjoy this book! It balances the political with growing up, life decisions, marriage and babies, friendships, and all the other things that make politics bearable. And Alice Lindgren/Blackwell is one of my favorite characters in a long time.

The Gravedigger's Daughter

I recently finished Joyce Carol Oates's The Gravedigger's Daughter. I've been stewing on it for a bit because as usual, Oates finishes with an open ending and leaves you with a lot of mixed emotions. And I generally stew for a day or two before I decide how I feel about a book. I always hated walking into class the morning after plowing through a novel and having to answer the question "So what'd you think?!"


But, I have to say, I was enthralled with this one. Rebecca is such a strong female lead, and Oates does a really amazing job of making you connect with her yet still leaving her a big mystery. You care, but you don't always understand what's making her tick, even if you think you do. There's so much interwoven into the plot, you could talk for days about all the themes and story lines that pop up. Female identity, male violence, racial differences, financial differences, geographical differences, love, motherhood, etc. etc. etc. It's a book that as soon as I finished, my fingers itched to plot out themes and discussions on paper. For me, that's a sign that the book reached me and got me thinking.

You don't have to read it so deep though. At its base, the book is a story about a girl surviving. Surviving murder, surviving abuse, surviving motherhood, surviving life. Like I said, I was captivated by Rebecca. I think Oates is an author that provokes more questions than she gives answers, at least from the selection I've read. The plot isn't the predictable "girl figures out who she is after some typical boy-girl hardships", and the answers don't come easy for Rebecca. There's a sense of triumph and its costs, and the sacrifices one must make for "the better life".

I can't tell you exactly what it is, but Joyce Carol Oates is quickly becoming a favorite of mine. I've read Black Water and Blonde, as well as a small selection of her short stories. I'm always captivated by her writing and her characters. While I love my fluff, I really love a book that makes you question. I think Oates is a master of creating a world where there are more questions than answers, and the reader is searching for the answers as eagerly as the character.

This is probably a vague review of the book, but I'm trying not to give too much of the plot away. I was going to quote the Amazon review, but I feel like it gives a bunch of spoilers that are better left unknown. (Note: don't read the Amazon editorial reviews! Go to a bookstore and read the book's jacket instead). And then go back and buy the book on Amazon, because it's currently only $6.40, and I promise I paid more than that when I bought it at Borders a few months back.

I don't think your taste in books matters much, almost anyone could find something they love in this book. So read it. And then pick up some more Joyce Carol Oates. I'm slowly compiling a list of books and authors I need to read (I'm at the stage where I'm thinking I should start this list), and I'm fairly certain finishing all of Oates's novels will be on that list.

Oh, and if you're not ready for such a hefty read, try Black Water instead. It's loosely based on a popular Kennedy (think senator and tragic car accident/drowning), and it's an astounding work. I.could.not.put.it.down. And it's short, so you could knock it out in an afternoon if you wanted to.

Basically, I really think you should try reading Joyce Carol Oates. And I'm so captivated by The Gravedigger's Daughter, I don't even know what to say about it besides read it! You'll love it, or at least have very strong emotions in response to it.