'ere, chicky chicky

You know that feeling you get (or ... plethora of feelings you get) after you've had too many lychee martinis or mango margaritas? After a decadent trip to the Bay Area and exactly four late-night chick-lit binges (plus one for the road - or, as it were, sky), I feel familiar hangover pangs and a need to plunge back into the cold, cold waters of Amy and Isabelle, which is what I left off reading before my trip.

The first night, it was Emily Giffin's Something Borrowed, because my hotel room freaked me out and I needed some distraction. I had brought my standbys, and The Woman at the Washington Zoo and A Wrinkle in Time for the plane (I find them really good for settling nerves) but neither was doing the trick for the creepy hotel room. So after I picked up dinner from a Powell Street diner, I went to the Borders at Union Square and grabbed Something Borrowed along with Chasing Harry Winston by Lauren Weisberger. (The latter actually mentions Emily Giffin's Borrowed and its follow-up, Something Blue, which is sort of neat.)

Despite two thousand and one cliches in Something Borrowed, the story did take my mind off the room. SIAS: Goody-two-shoes snakes BFF's fiance (whom everyone knows is wrong for her from page 2 on). One thing that annoys me about the few chick-lit examples I've frolicked in is that everyone has a name like Rachel, Samantha or Marnie, and all the stories take place in Manhattan, and all feature a prodigal daughter who wants her parents to leave her alone - until she is spurned by the real/corporate/chauvinistic world and goes crying to her mom. They hate their jobs, their bosses hate them, and the only way to get through each workweek is to drink too much on Friday night and/or take the jitney to the Hamptons on Saturday. Invariably, someone gets pregnant or dumped or perhaps both, and in the end, someone gets the guy (or a guy), or gets a much better job, and no one gets the swift kick in the pants they so desperately need.

I generalize. But so do they. Also, I realize that to get a broader, fairer view of this genre, I'd have to read more titles. A task which, after I finish Something Blue, Love the One You're With, and Confessions of a Shopaholic, I am unlikely to focus on.

Anyway, I didn't mean to crap all over chick-lit in general - the indulgence did save me from staring wide-eyed at the ceiling till I fell asleep, and I did go back for more at the airport bookstore. Also, I picked up Amanda Eyre Ward's Love Stories in this Town from City Lights (the closest thing to chick-lit they had was Amy Tan, and I'm positive they only carry her for her homages to the city) and read it over a tuna melt and mixed green salad on Sunday in a cafe whose name I can't remember along a street I can't remember either. I remember the stories, though. I tried to consume them in one sitting - and therein lay my mistake. Once the mini-plot to each story went down, all I was left with was the essence of sadness. Most of the stories are about loss or despair about never having had in the first place. Because of my state of mind on this trip, it was back to Emily Giffin that evening.

All told, I got to know Giffin and Weisberger (read The Devil Wears Prada in Vegas last summer, come to think), peeked at Sophie Kinsella (Confessions of a Shopaholic), and inhaled some Jane Green (Babyville). Got home to find The Reader in the mailbox, which I am excited about, and which reminds me that I should start posting chick-lit titles immediately. They seem to be snapped up really quick on PBS.

annual treasurehunt report

Friends of the Library Booksale, 2009:

I'm sure they do all right, and I'm sure stifling heat is part of the FOTL tradition, but this booksale would rake in b'zillions more if they'd find some way to get air conditioning for the McKinley High School cafeteria. I brought a cardboard box but could have stuffed my meager (and mostly halfhearted, might I mention) purchases in my handbag. (Which is kind of a big handbag, but still, I am making a point.)

Got a few more days to decide if I want to go back. Can't hold out till the last day, when everything will be cheaper, because this coming weekend's (Not Our) WEDDING WEEKEND! Woo hoo for Tami and Roger! Anyway, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday are still open. Probably should not go back. Although we are soon going to be the PROUD new owners of a hand-me-down bookshelf from Cub's sister. I'm insanely excited. Cub, a little less so.

1) Bought Gabriel Garcia Marquez' Living to Tell the Tale. A dollar fifty. Liking it so far. Kind of distressed that this is just one of three installments of his autobiography, though.

2) The Awakening by Kate Chopin. Two dollars. This, along with the Marquez, was something I vascillated on for awhile but decided to go ahead and buy it because it was inscribed. I am drawn to books with pasts. I feel so sad when I find a book that was given as a gift at a garage or rummage sale. When you give someone a book, you're either taking a huge risk and putting your heart out on a limb - giving the book because you loved it and/or hope the recipient will love it too - or you just don't give a crap. Inscribed discarded books tell me that a heartfelt effort was spurned and the book needs a loving home. Do not tell my husband I think this way and that that's part of the reason a good number of books live on our shelves. He thinks I'm crazy enough as it is.

3) Paid two measly bucks for new-looking copy of blogger-journalist Rebecca Eckler's 2004 pregnancy memoir Knocked Up: Confessions of a Hip Mother-to-Be. And I want a refund. If Eckler's self-portrait is accurate, she was for nine months a ridiculous, self-absorbed ball of misery whose every self-centered whine* probably made her nameless fiance so very glad theirs was a long-distance relationship. She's so determined not to let pregnancy and motherhood change her life that for more than 300 pages she brags about her daily french fry and Big Mac consumption, and smokes cigarettes. Somewhere in the second trimester I think it is, she acquires a weird sort-of boyfriend who fills the void in her life that should have been filled by the guy who made this all possible, the nameless fiance.

*Not talking about her references to morning sickness or the assorted aches and pains that come with pregnancy. Talking about her incessant whining about being fat. 1) News flash: Growing a kid in your uterus makes you appear fat. Even though Eckler didn't plan her pregnancy, surely she knew that much? 2) Eating fries and Big Macs every will not make you appear fat. It will make you fat.

Kind of want to sneak the book back into the booksale or maybe ask for a trade. Ha.

Grabbed a few others as well, maybe TBB later.

Might hit up the sale again sometime this week. Wasn't really feeling it last time ... that's why I ended up rescuing orphan Christmas gifts instead of squealing with joy over truly awesome finds like last year.

super PBS mail haul ...

... including stuff I forgot I ordered. Apparently Beast in View is lost in transit, but pretty much everything else arrived in mail locker #2 today:

1) Death, Bones and Stately Homes. My latest in a long-running series of attempts to get into mystery franchises so that there'll never be a lack of quick, fun, one-shot reads at my fingertips. If this doesn't work out, I'll try Lillian Jackson Braun.

2) Mishima: A Biography.

3) Anansi Boys. Although Stardust put me to sleep, I liked The Graveyard Book enough to peruse PBS for more Gaiman titles.

4) California Diaries: Dawn Diary Three. The California Diaries spinoff of the Babysitters Club is totally unpalatable to me. Apparently when Dawn reclaimed her West Coast roots, she became an uber-drama queen thanks to Sunny et al. This is one I don't remember ordering.

5) The Fire at Mary Anne's House. The last book ever written in the straight-up Babysitters Club series. And the one I'm saving for last, even though chronologically it comes long before the end, Farewell, Dawn. Before you comment on how so much Stoneybrook will rot my brain, remember that for a schoolteacher, that is the sole purpose of summer vacation.

Sometime this summer I'll have to set up the new classroom bookshelf (the teeny one I have the kids' books currently stuffed in has got to go). I will have to watch my shelves like a hawk and may have to set up a whole new borrowing system or do away with take-home borrowing altogether (don't worry, they still have the library downstairs) because I hear that the incoming class has sticky fingers when it comes to books.

Even having read only the book jackets so far, I'm looking forward to sharing The Underneath with them, as well as Savvy. Am not yet 100 percent sure I'm putting Nation or even The Graveyard Book on the classroom shelf. Though I'm not one to censor, I have to think like a parent sometimes. Even though my copy has this cover and not this one, I still need to see how "old" the kids are before I decide what goes on the shelf.

summer reads

Between teaching, hiking, swimming, and hobbling toward the finish line at one or two small-potatoes races this summer, I think prime time for reading will be just before I fall asleep each night.

Lined up:

The Bookseller of Kabul, Asne Seierstad
Amy and Isabelle, Elizabeth Strout
The Underneath, Kathi Appelt
Savvy, Ingrid Law
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster, John Krakauer
Death, Bones and Stately Homes, Valerie S. Malmont

olive kitteridge

I don't know why my mind as of late has insisted on playing casting director for the as-yet-unmade movie version of every book I read (Danny Strong as Owen Meany - OK, that was made, several times but ...), and don't even get me started on what I see as the DEFINITIVE cast of The Babysitters Club, to trump every "cinematic" attempt ever made), but I can really see Frances McDormand playing the unapologetic Olive Kitteridge. Henry, her ever-beneficent husband, leaves me stumped, though. Get back to you on that one.

You will marry a beast and love her, Olive thought. You will have a son and love him. You will be endlessly kind to townspeople as they come to you for medicine, tall in your white lab coat. You will end your days blind and mute in a wheelchair. That will be your life.

It's really not all as Andrew Beckett as the passage above. Not done with the book yet, so can't give a really good review, but can say I love it. You know those moments where you read or watch something and can immediately identify with the character - "I'm Carrie Bradshaw!" - I had one or two of those moments with Olive Kitteridge. And if you read the book, you'll know that chances are that revelation is not a Personal Best Moment. But it's okay. (Isn't it?)

I just read the vignette called "Tulips," which chilled me to the bone. The dozens of ways family members can hurt each other in the delivery of a few sentences, the horror of a person's total insanity plastered over by the most desperate desire to appear loved and needed. Had to stop and take a breather. Next up: "Basket of Trips."

Should be finished soon - the cast of characters is long and the town "family tree" slightly convoluted. If I had read more reviews before reading the book (which I never do, for obvious reasons) I would have known that I should have been treating it as completely separate stories with one common thread (Olive) rather than trying to piece every single person and every single event together.

TBC.

eek

Today FLW recommends Margaret Millar's Beast in View, which from Amazon's sneak peek seems intriguing - but here's my Sunday Secret: I'm horribly afraid of multiple-personality movies and books, and with all the teasers I've read, I'm afraid BIV might turn out to be one. I'd prefer a straight-up murder mystery (well, not too straight-up, or I guess there's really limited mystery potential).

I ordered it from PBS anyway. :P

Speaking of PBS, stuff has been coming in amazingly fast. Yesterday I discovered that sending paperbacks via Media Mail is not always the smartest way to go. For an additional 20 cents or so (if it's a reasonably-sized paperback) you could opt for first-class, which will place the book in the receivers hands in less than a week, as opposed to MM's 4- to 6-week wait ...

i used to live in stoneybrook

Just spent 3 PBS credits on Babysitters Club titles. I got into the books in the fifth grade, when I ordered one from a Scholastic leaflet (it was The Truth About Stacey (#3), which taught me about friendship, Connecticut, and juvenile-onset diabetes) and grew so deeply esconced in the lives of Kristy, Claudia, Stacey, Mary Anne and Dawn that I didn't grow out the series when everyone else seemed to. (Or were they hiding their BSC behind their R.L. Stine like I was?) My interest in continuing faded around #51, but re-read my favorites often. The Ghost at Dawn's House, Kristy and the Snobs, Kristy and the Mother's Day Surprise, Dawn's Wicked Stepsister ... The stories that weren't too farfetched but still brought the good old Stoneybrook drama.

And now, re-reading oldies and fervently ordering and devouring the ones I never read, it's like I never left. I've so far refused to pick up an Abby book because I'm something of a purist and didn't even really like the Logan and Shannon chapters in the Super Specials, but I made room for them - adding Abby, was that really necessary? She seems like a spaz.

Last night I read The Babysitters Remember which I thought would be a throwaway Super Special (recaps, whatever) but it was actually pretty good. It filled in some gaps from the regular series (e.g. why was Shannon Kilbourne such a bleeping bleep when Kristy met her?) and made me tear up (e.g. when Mimi went to bat for six-year-old Claudia, who was humiliated by her teacher for drawing a butterfly self-portrait.)

Revisiting Stoneybrook reaffirms my goal: to re-build the entire collection and house it in my classroom (holy cow, that's a lot of "re"s). The kids who tear through Twilight and Gossip Girl should at least taste the more wholesome but still funny writing of Ann M. Martin (and her ghostwriters). 1) Kristy Thomas has a kick-ass vocabulary. 2) The art of expositing background info? Ann M. Martin is queen. 3) As a kid reader, I loved that the babysitters (while babysitting) seemed closer to 30 than 13. As an adult of course I'm more skeptical (what sane parents would leave an infant in the care of two eleven-year-olds?) but as a kid it made me think that kids really could do these things - run a profitable business, organize Color Wars, solve mysteries, and put irresponsible adults in their places.

On deck: #113 Claudia Makes Up Her Mind. Boys, school and blessings in disguise. Yum. When I've finished my short stack of BSC, I'll get back to The Golden Notebook, but for now, it's still the weekend ...

armadillo claws

I have borrowed my friend's copy of A Prayer for Owen Meany and am unable to put it down. I had many opportunities this less-than-stellar weekend to steal away to her quiet apartment to read, with her sweet orange cat perched on my tum. Which occasionally made it hard to breathe, but he's so sweet I couldn't bear to move him until serious oxygen deprivation set in.

I flipped through The 158-Pound Marriage, which she also had lying around, but the name "Utch" and a scene involving a cow on a hot day made me put it back down. Perhaps a book for later.

my FLW pop-up reviews

For Maurice Sendak's Mommy? and Encyclopedia Prehistorica Dinosaurs by Robert Sabuda and Matthew Reinhart.

http://www.flashlightworthybooks.com/Best-Pop-Up-Books/238?fd=3066-1829#bid-3066

like the '90s all over again

I think I've figured out why I like mailing PBS books so much. It's like therapy. Printing out a two-sheet mailing label, finding some way to scotch-tape them together to make something big enough to wrap an oversized paperback, and securing the whole thing with enough packing tape to immobilize a full-grown man - there's something so 1996 about it. As well-intentioned and sweetly primitive as a mix tape, all wrapped up and shipped off with all your hopes that the receiver will like it as much as you did.

Mailing Hotel Honolulu today.

:)

the pig is a magical animal

Wow. At last check-in, I swore no one would touch my PBS bookshelf with a ten-foot pole, but thus far I've gotten four requests: The Blank Slate: Modern Denial of Human Nature, Tales of a Female Nomad, Exterminate All The Brutes, and Lost in a Good Book (Thursday Next Book 2).

Since I was so awesomely productive, getting all the books down to the PO on time (although I did send them off at the recommended parcel post rate, which is dreadfully, awfully, hideously SLOW), I took myself to Barnes and Noble and bought Kitchen Confidential.

Yah, I know. Defeating the purpose of blah blah blah. But not really! Because I am slowly - and I daresay, albeit prematurely, surely - clearing the shelves of the books I will probably never read. I am clearing the shelves of the books that need a better home than the one I'm providing. And I'm replacing them with books that get gobbled up on the spot (like Kitchen Confidential and the one PBS book I've received so far, The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America. Next to Bourdain, Bill Bryson might be the love of my nonfiction life.

Today I took great pleasure in an activity most others would probably find very weird: I got a takeout lunch (chopped salad and chicken chowder) and sat in my car in a congested mall parking lot, reading and eating. Bliss - the perfect end to an imperfect but satisfying Spring Break.

except no one wants what i'm willing to part with

All right, I'm all set up on PaperbackSwap.com. Please don't consider my bookshelf a reflection of my taste in reading - those are, after all, the books I'm willing to part with. This is in response to my husband(!)'s pleas to me to "please get rid of some of your books." I stuffed the most disappointing ones I could find into a box, posted the titles on PBS, and with my two automatic free credits promptly sent out for The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America by Bill Bryson, and Songbook by Nick Hornby. This means that in about a week, I will have added two books to my shelf and gotten rid of none. Good times!

Temple Grandin has a new book. Like Animals in Translation, which I really enjoyed (thesis: it's perfectly fine to eat meat, but we owe farm animals a good life and a quick end before they become our dinner), it's co-written with Catherine Johnson. I can't add anything to my bookshelf right now, though. Boo.

he always sat near anne tyler at borders

Why does the death of an author (or actor) make me feel like I have to go read (or watch) something by them?

Adding to my TDL: find a copy of Rabbit, Run.

meme-alicious

Last book bought:

My last book purchase was actually a stack of books, and when the Amazon box arrived, I tore it open and distributed the books quite haphazardly among the eight shelves of one bookcase, and three shelves of another - much the way the compulsive shoe buyer would hide a new pair of slingbacks in a tattered old shoebox. From that stash, the title I'm on right now: Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. This first read around I'm savoring the tone of the correspondence of the two friends - so intimate, yet so proper. I wish the term "witty banter" hadn't been sarcasticized to death, because this is truly Lowell and Bishop's (albeit unwitting) gift to the reader. Later I hope to attempt some of the poetry of Bishop and Lowell to truly digest and understand what these intimations are all about.

Last book read:

The Piano Tuner, by Daniel Mason. Prior to reading this, it had been a long time since reading a book felt like watching a movie. I think the last book was Saving Fish from Drowning, which, like The Piano Tuner, is set in Burma. I read a lot of harsh criticisms of TPT, many that said Mason wrote clumsily, like a creative writing major doing his senior project or something. I found the writing lyrical and the story totally enchanting. You knew from the start that the piano tuner would die (seriously, I didn't give anything away by telling you that) but still, when it happened, I was in shock. And give Daniel Mason a break - the man wrote the book while he was a student in medical school, for corn's sake.

Five books that mean a lot to you:

1) Maurice Sendak's Outside Over There is one of my favorite books of all time. It is a poem, a song. It will take you to sea, to sadness, to goblin territory, and home again, and you just may recognize all those places - even as illustrated by Maurice Sendak.

2) A Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler. I love three books by Anne Tyler - A Patchwork Planet, Saint Maybe, and Ladder of Years. My favorite, Patchwork, is about a man named Barnaby Gaitlin, a character in whose wrinkled plaid shirt and Corvette Sting Ray I've been sitting since it first occurred to me that popularity and integrity could be mutually exclusive. So, since preschool.

3) I'm gonna cheat with this one and name two books: Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin, Jr. and Big Pumpkin by Erica Silverman. In 2001 I did a brief stint as a special-education preschool teacher in the area of Honolulu I would later call my home. It was a diverse, highly transient demographic. The preschool assignment was one of the most memorable I've ever had. In my class was a boy, classified on paper as borderline autistic and oppositional defiant. He had difficulty expressing himself and displayed physical aggression toward others. But. When he pulled Brown Bear or Pumpkin out of the book box every morning (and it was inevitably one of the two), he was peaceful. He was absorbed. Happy. And he read.

With Nicholas I got to see, firsthand, the value of whole language literacy instruction. At first I read the book to all eight kids. When he adopted them as his favorites, he would demand they be read to him one-on-one. Soon, he was reading the books to me. "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what do you see?" He would imitate my inflection, hold up the pictures for me to see, and even do little lead-ins to the next animal before turning the page. "He's not reading," his mother scoffed one afternoon. "He just memorized the text." I explained to her that his ability to match words to corresponding images was an important gateway skill to reading. And I had her listen to him read Big Pumpkin. If the words were, "Along came a ghost. 'I am bigger than you, and I am stronger, too,' said he. 'Let me try.'" - Nicholas would say, on that page, "A ghost came. I'm big and strong. I will pull out the pumpkin!" Of course to his tired, skeptical, phonics-trained mother, that wasn't reading, either. But as for me - nothing brought me the same kind of joy as hearing Nicholas learn to read with these two books.

3) The View from Saturday by E.L. Konigsburg

4) The Underground History of American Education, John Taylor Gatto. Read it in '03, refer to it constantly. An eye-opening read, although one must take JTG with a grain of salt. I hope my teaching reflects some of JTG's most wildly unpopular philosophies of education.

5) The Harry Potter series. I haven't read but the first installment (and that took me a week to choke down) but here's why I think HP is very important.

A book no one will believe you haven't read yet:

The Odyssey.

Tag six people to continue this meme:

Dan, Caryn, ColumbusOH, Vickie, Mama's Dramas, and YOU. Yep, you. I see you! Get blogging!

literary taste

It needn't be Dav Pilkey vs. Ellen Raskin.

I want to start a 4th/5th grade book club where the kids do something like the librarian in this article:

Kristi Jemtegaard, coordinator for youth services for the Arlington Public Library and a former member of a Newbery selection committee, has recruited youngsters at 12 public schools to review books. At Long Branch, about 15 fifth-graders volunteer to skip lunch and recess once a week during the fall to evaluate books that she believes have a chance to win the Caldecott Medal, the picture-book award. They will vote soon -- and learn next month whether they agreed with the real Caldecott committee.

I often wonder about the Newbery selection criteria - not because I think the books are inaccessible per se (but then, I haven't yet read Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!) but because I think appeal to kids should factor in. And in my neck of the library, the kids read what they want to read - which is a few Newberys, a lot of Captain Underpants, and that insipid The Invention of Hugo Cabret (which, incidentally, won the 2008 Caldecott, distinguishing it as a picture book). And on accessibility - what I assume means some degree of relatability to one's own life - I agree that children treasure books whose characters and situations they can relate to, but I disagree that familiarity and literary quality necessarily go hand-in-hand.

I also think that you can look at a plot from one angle - Lois Lowry's The Giver, for example, a book about a fictional dysfunctional utopian society - and say that there is no way kids could "relate." However, what are the things in that book that kids can identify with? Well, the lack of "sameness" in our lives. And maybe the underlying/perceived value of standardization in school and corporate communities. Possibilities for reflection are endless. The Giver would also be a gateway to Kurt Vonnegut, via "Harrison Bergeron" (whose Diana Moonglompers, according to Huffington Post's Gerald Bracey, triumphs with NCLB. A good read.)

Lois Lowry, whose Number the Stars won the award in 1990, is also a gifted writer on the "other side" of the Newbery, having written such treasures as Anastasia Krupnik and Gooney Bird Greene. Books, I would argue, of high quality, but not Newbery material.

So, Winter Break is here, which means 1) more sleeping, 2) more eating, and 3) more reading. Left: Christmas presents! OK, some were presents to myself, but still and all.

By the way, I never did read The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. It belongs to the same YA canon as From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg, and The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder - both of which I never read till Sherry Rose's class in grad school. Add that to my Winter Break / Last Reads of '08 list, I guess.

again with the lame

So consumed with wedding planning, joey combat, and restructuring my classroom that I have not had a lot of time to sit down and dig in to things of great substance. But have been having fun reading snippets, blurbs and blogs, and am getting by daily on the CNN ticker and Slate.

On the writing front, the two things I want to finish are a blurb on vermicomposting for my MIL's work newsletter and the heartfelt thank-you letter (also to MIL, and DIL too) for a lovely wedding present they gave me. These things are very important and long overdue. My sporadic stabs at fiction reside on post-its littering my workspace and canvas tote. It's sad, really.

Realized that since meeting S. I have become a homebody and have not hung out in a coffee shop with a book or a bookstore with a coffee and damnit, I need to fix that. Books and coffee at home are all well and good but it's just not the same.

starcatching

Was issued a new laptop yesterday, for work, and have discovered the joy of VitalSource Bookshelf. So far have downloaded Peter Pan, Amerigo Vespucci's Account of His First Voyage, and Delacroix's painting Algerian Women in Their Apartments. I honestly feel that I have found the one object on Earth I would really need if marooned on a desert island (a good strong internet connection would help). Full-length novels, speeches, plays, and fine art at one's fingertips? Christmas has come early for this good little nerd girl.

Stars are beautiful, but they may not take an active part in anything, they must just look on for ever. It is a punishment put on them for something they did so long ago that no star now knows what it was. So the older ones have become glassy-eyed and seldom speak (winking is the star language), but the little ones still wonder.

(Barrie, J. M. Barrie. Peter Pan. Hayes Barton Press, 1904. 2).

a book by its cover

Blogger's latest notable. Four out of five "Blogs of Note" clicks leave me puzzled as to the definition of notability, but I suspect this one, which excites me to no end, is going to leave many others scratching their heads.

tbc

^sucky update

1. This is fabulous.

2. Sometimes I wonder why I put myself on the AR board with the kids; it's just another deadline to meet, and I am already smothered in "Where the hell's your ..."s. Then I read a book like Elijah of Buxton and I remember why. I'd say "Review to come!" but we all know what that usually means.

3. Conference week has bled into testing week. Will we ever have a solid week to read and write something, well, solid?

sorry, so sorry

This is one of my all-time favorites. It's a collection of essays and blurbs on a diverse range of topics, so like poetry, you can't consume it all at once, but pretty much whatever mood you bring to the bookshelf, Marjorie Williams will provide food for thought.

I wish Williams were still alive and writing, because I love her perspective and her prose style when discussing politics. Reading pundit blogs gives me a headache, because these issues have been on the table for years and I'm just tuning in (and I'm sorry, but what is McCain's "Crap Sandwich"?).

Just finished reading "The Art of the Fake Apology," a short essay published in March 2000. Somehow pieces (especially pieces with politics at the forefront or as backdrop) published before 9/11 seem automatically irrelevant; I skim them, wish for those times back, and move on. Pieces published after, I read for acknowledgment of a new era, scour for glimpses of optimism, an attitude of sure-footedness in this age of tension, heightened security, mistrust.

"The Art of the Fake Apology" is timeless, though. It offers a few examples of W's jack-assery, but other than that, states the author's distaste for bullshit apologies, i.e. the ones used merely to defend oneself, build an image, spin the story. It speaks not only of the character of politicians, but of the character of people.

"A real apology is useless, in the sense that it isn't offered for the giver's gain. Otherwise it isn't a real apology." - Marjorie Williams

Fake apologies may be the artwork of spin doctors and the most savvy of communications directors, but true apologies - any sincere declaration of feeling, for that matter - are way harder to produce. Because don't we all want something back for that kind of effort? Politicians want the upper hand, husbands and wives want forgiveness, people want it acknowledged that they're not the monsters they just made themselves out to be.

Our culture is so focused on "What do I get out of this deal?", and so true apologies are few and far between. The kids I teach really believe that mumbling "Sorry, dude" is an acceptable apology. The hardest thing about teaching them that it isn't, is the fact that true contrition can't be forced. Most times the kids aren't sorry for what they've done. I never tell my kids to apologize to each other (although I may suggest it if the offending party does seem sincerely regretful). Instead, I ask them what they're going to do about the situation. Lots of times, this just puzzles them. But it makes them really think, which I find preferable to them mumbling/shouting/sniping "Sor-reeee" and then going about their day.

fall kidlit spree

Managed to start How to Steal a Dog by Barbara O'Connell, Schooled by Gordon Korman, and ("Finally, Ms. D_C.!") Gail Carson Levine's Fairest this weekend. Julie Schumacher's The Book of One Hundred Truths was the only one that stayed in my purse and so got carried everywhere I went, and so was the only one I finished. It reminded me of Deborah Wiles' Each Little Bird That Sings, although Schumacher's protag, Thea, is older and, even as the story's narrator, far more reticent than Wiles' Comfort Snowberger. Review to come.

Also finding Fairest to be slightly less appealing than (and less reminiscent of) Levine's Ella Enchanted, which I absolutely loved. Actually, Fairest, which deals with a heroine's perceived handicap, reminds me more of Shannon Hale's Princess Academy.

Just thinking right now of how much I wish I could teach novels. The basal we use (Harcourt Trophies) provides a nice range of genres and does feature excerpts from a few notable novels but I would love to have the time and freedom to select quality works and really get the kids to start critically analyzing characters, plots, authors' purposes, etc. Making connections (text-to-self, text-to-text, text-to-world) is an HCPS doozy, and using connecting skills with the full texts of carefully selected books would probably be a much richer experience than excerpt after excerpt. Not that I don't like Trophies - I do. I don't have a problem with basal readers as long as the range of selections is varied and appropriate (e.g. not boring to easily-bored fifths, thanks), as Trophies is.

Reviews to come!

i caught myself saying ...

"There's no freaking time to read!"

... But that's one lament I never accept from my kids, barring deaths in the family, horrible accidents, or the library disappearing like the USS Eldridge. Our school librarian, by the way, is beyond amazing; the way she galvanizes the entire school into reading frenzies each year is unbelievable. No excuses from the kids means no excuses from their ADHD teacher. So I tossed it out and made a manageable stack of stuff that they and I will read together.

The Watsons Go to Birmingham: 1963, Christopher Paul Curtis
Kira-Kira, Cynthia Kadohata
Eggs, Jerry Spinelli

I believe Kira-Kira and Eggs are Nene contenders this year, so I'm especially excited about those. I actually read The Watsons with a previous class and it was a great experience; somehow I think this particular class, which needs a Civil Rights movement of sorts of its own, would benefit as well.

a totally different story

In her own memoir, Lucy Grealy's voice is so much more lucid than it is in Ann Patchett's account of their friendship. Her overall presence is quieter. Saner. In Truth and Beauty, Grealy is so often a huge spaz - a larger-than-life personality, at times nearly unbearably (though I can't say unjustifiably) self-centered and demanding of her friends' attention and their constant validation of her talent.

On many occasions, Patchett's book provides details that Grealy "spared" (Patchett's word) the reader (or edited out, because her aim was to produce art, not a documentary), and initially I regretted reading Truth before reading Autobiography. I almost lamented finding Patchett's book first. Shouldn't I have begun with Grealy's account - what's closer to the truth than what comes from the horse's mouth? But now that I've finished both, I honestly don't think it matters. Grealy may or may not have been the most unreliable narrator ever, and Patchett may or may not have painted Lucy differently than she saw herself. It doesn't matter. They are not halves of a single story.

In Truth, Patchett portrays herself as the amenable, ever-dependable ant to Grealy's impetuous, wildly irresponsible but more appealing grasshopper; in Truth, Grealy's voice is steady and rational, even in its humor, even when describing moments of despair and high anxiety. Patchett's Lucy is crazy fun, sometimes annoying, always insecure; Grealy's Lucy is insecure but compos mentis, hopeful, philosophical, finding and holding fast to small, meaningful revelations.

The fact that Grealy does not once mention Patchett or the slew of other friends who care for her with such love and devotion in Truth is understandable but still weird. It was of course an account of her suffering and desire for inner peace and outer acceptance in the context of her cancer and subsequent disfigurement, but Patchett's entire book is a testament to their closeness, their love for each other and Lucy's dependency on Ann. This seemingly huge aspect of Lucy Grealy's life is completely absent from her book. In her review, the Seattle Times' Melinda Bargreen writes that "their brilliant friendship ... was the most vital thing in their lives." I think for Patchett it was. For Grealy, her quest for a positive and stable identity, actually, seems to have been all-consuming.

Of course, the two books were not written as supplements to each other. They were written under completely different circumstances and for completely different purposes. But I can't imagine reading one without the other. After reading Truth, I wanted to hear Lucy Grealy tell her own story, in her own voice. Which is what Autobiography is. It is beautiful, funny and sad, a must-read ... but I still felt it was lacking somehow. And I realized what I had been expecting was to read Ann Patchett's story from Grealy's point of view. It's a totally different story.

So yes, I should have read Autobiography of a Face before reading Truth and Beauty. But they are two amazing stories, in any order. Ann Patchett suggests reading Lucy Grealy's twice, and then again so you can appreciate the beauty of her sentences. I shall.