largess

flying back into cleveland from denver we came through about seventeen layers of clouds. it was so choppy i was holding onto the armrest and the seat in front of me and hoping that i wouldn’t have to use the special little bag joe tossed on my lap once the captain turned on the fasten seatbelt sign.

(which reminds me, who are these people who feel like they don’t have to fasten their seat belt when the sign tells them? i’ve always known that i’m something of a freaky rule-follower, but isn’t it ridiculous to be wandering toward the bathroom when the plane is heaving to and fro like a sailboat hitting a reef? and, speaking of airplane bathrooms, there is nothing that can make an eight month pregnant woman feel more huge and unwieldy than an attempt to use the airplane bathroom–especially those models with the doors that hinge inward. this baby is lucky if she doesn’t have a brain injury from me trying to extricate myself from the lavatory.)

and this is all to say, joe finished two residency interviews in colorado and i’m conflicted. i love colorado. (who doesn’t love colorado?) it has 300 days of sun! mountains! other stuff! and it was so so delightful to see little henry having a wonderful time with his grandparents. but. and here’s the but. it is so durn expensive to live there. i have no idea how we would do it with two little kiddos and a resident’s salary. so ann arbor is looking better and better. (am i that shallow that all i really want is a bigger apartment?)

trepidation, i guess, is what i’m feeling. this is a year full of staggeringly huge Events. and i’m scared of making any of the decisions. and i’m scared of the responsibility. and though living as a perpetual student isn’t an option, it does start to look tempting, doesn’t it?

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the book trail: how reading changed my life

happy halloween! the only thing better than candy, is a good book. hope you got a chance to pick up this slim little book of essays. here’s our guest host emily’s view on things.

I thank our inspiring hostess for her persistent invitation to review a book.  It gave me the swift kick in the glut I needed to open and finish something worth discussing. I selected Quindlen’s book with the hope that she would give me additional momentum to push me to read her manageable book lists. In her extended essay, Quindlen weaves her evolution as a reader from a young girl to a middle-aged woman with contemporary literary issues.  The End.

The teacher in me can’t help but form discussion questions when I read.  This non-traditional ‘book review’ addresses the foremost themes through quotes and question format to engage you in a conversation.  I am dying to know what you think about Quindlen’s ideas and hope that regardless of whether you picked up the 70 page essay, you will offer your two bits.

Chapter 1

“Perhaps restlessness is a necessary corollary of devoted literacy.” p. 4

1. What causes restlessness? How does reading relieve it? Is reading merely an escape for the discontent?

Anna seems to have been inconvenienced as a child by having to interact with others.

2. Can our passion for reading impair our interactions with others? p. 5-8

In response to this question, I remember a reading experience I had several years ago. Even though I am not a Harry Potter fanatic, when the last volume was published, I found myself using every spare minute and hour to rip through the chapters.  I recall feeling peevish when my reading was interrupted by a hungry baby and husband.  I was startled by being so perturbed, yet was too engrossed in the suspense to slow my pace until I had finished the text.

Reading for pleasure v. reading for purpose. The former represents snobbery. p. 9-10

3. Do your perceptions of others change based on their reading habits?

Chapter 2

“The act of reading, the act of seeing a story on a page as opposed to hearing a story told - is infinitely more complex…” p.16

1. How have audio books impacted reading?

2. True or False? Women read more than men for intellectual exercise and companionship. p. 29-31

Chapter 3

She introduces the infamous concept of the Canon and suggests that reading literature ‘is not simply for personal growth, but for cultural and societal growth as well.” p. 39

1. What are your views on the Canon?

2. Have you experienced censorship of book lists or thought that a book should have been removed from a required reading list?

Ch. 4

Quindlen addresses the dynamics of the symbiotic relationship between reading and writing.

1. Have you felt inspired to write after reading? What did you read? Will you share what you wrote? p. 53

She shares her first memories of watching her parents read. p. 56

2. Do you have memories of your parents reading on their own/with you? How has their attitude towards literacy impacted your own reading identity/habits?

“But a computer is no substitute for a book. No one wants to take a computer to bed at the end of a long day, to read a chapter or two before dropping off to sleep.” p.64

3. Has the computer detracted from the joy of pleasure reading? Is technology killing or promoting literacy?

Case and point: I made a conscious choice to bury myself in my comforter to finish the essay last night instead of reading and taking notes on the computer .

Chapter 4

Books, words, authors, characters are immortal.

“Through [books] we experience other times, other places, other lives. We manage to become more than our own selves. The only dead are those who grow sere and shriveled within, unable to step outside their own lives and into those of others. Ignorance is death. A closed mind is a catafalque.” p. 69

1.  The meaning of catafalque - discuss.

For anyone else like me who could only guess at the definition of a catafalque: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catafalque

Book Lists

1. Which of these do you love/cherish/recommend?

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott  Doesn’t everyone think they are the independent, creative, and adventurous Josephine March?

2. Are there any books that you have passed by for the last time and feel motivated to read now?

Middlemarch by George Eliot

emily recently relocated from solon, ohio to utah. she holds a masters degree in english as a second language and is busy awaiting the arrival of daughter number two.

i assure you, emily, that i am going to answer all of your questions, but first i am going to the halloween parade.

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oprah buries the book

i hope i’m overreacting.

this afternoon, sprawled on the couch, trying to ease the braxton-hicks contractions, i started flipping through the channels. and there was larger than life oprah (maybe this is why we need cable) telling the entire world that the amazon kindle was the most amazing gadget EVER.

the minute she uttered those words, i saw books dropping off shelves, wounded and fluttering to the ground with their pages shattered.

why this one woman has so much power to dictate american taste, i do not know. but i do know that i rarely agree with her. and today she has me absolutely seething. i wish she would stick to housewares or giving away cars or helping people find their better selves and leave books alone. i wish she didn’t have a book club. i wish she had never dealt nonfiction writers and their genre such a blow with her reaction to james frey. [not that frey wasn’t incredibly naughty… but oprah bypassed an intelligent discussion on nonfiction’s (especially memoir’s) inherent problems, ignoring that most nonfiction writers have been dealing with and discussing “truth” since the genre’s inception.]

trust me, i like trees as much as the next gal, but is that a reason to replace the very real, very tactile experience of book-reading with a screen?

i have this horrorific picture in my mind of little children holding the kindle on their lap and tapping through screens instead of holding in the night kitchen or caps for sale. agh!

reading is so essential. so vital. we don’t need to read and carry 4000 books at a time. just one book. one book that smells like a book. and hefts like a book. and let’s us leave notes in the margins and hot chocolate stains and memories along its pages. just one book at a time.

which reminds me, if you haven’t started how reading changed my life by anna quindlen for this month’s book club–start! it’s short (92 pages) and keeps discussing some of these very issues.

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moving

i just need a minute to gloat.

after weeks of nervous waiting, we’ve heard back from every general practice residency program joe applied to. and joe is six for six: that’s right, six applications and six invitations to interview.

it’s all itchy feeling to not know where we’ll land next year. i mean, who knew we’d live in cleveland for four years? i spent most of my youth mocking cleveland, along with shreveport, louisiana. (i really, really don’t want to live in shreveport, louisiana.)

so here are the choices: iowa city, iowa; ann arbor, michigan; salt lake city, utah; denver, colorado; denver, colorado; and denver, colorado.

[insert sneaky grin.]

yes, the chances are good, something like 50% in fact, that the match will fling us back under my western sky. go ahead. cast your vote. where will i be toting my couch and bookshelves come may?

[ps - henry is now happily eating toast and running around like a little whirling dervish again.]

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twenty-nine

it’s my birthday. to celebrate, henry contracted hand, foot, and mouth disease. (for those of you who aren’t up on your childhood diseases, it means his hands, feet, and mouth are covered with blisters and he cries all night and he cries all day and not even ice cream can calm his tears.) we’ve been watching movies since wednesday. there’s nothing like days on end of baby einstein and veggie tales and clifford the big red dog to make a woman balancing on the cusp of thirty-hood examine her life.

to keep my mind off how badly i want to curl up in my own bed and cry until i fall asleep, i will now make a list of everything (okay, not everything) that i’m glad i did in my twenties. (i realize i still have a year left in my twenties, so if anything else of note happens, you’ll be the first to know.)

1. i became twitterpated with a bearded man who wrote poetry.
2. i traipsed all over london: plunking down seven pounds every other night to see theatre (chekhov! shakespeare! patrick stewart!)
3. i backpacked through france, germany, and switzerland with my sister and a few other scraggly girls, spending at least one memorable night in a camper outside of munich with a bunch of very rowdy, very drunk, very irish people.
4. i became twitterpated with a non-bearded man who wrote poetry.
5. i ate lots and lots of key lime pie ice cream from the corner maverick gas station in provo, utah.
6. i became twitterpated with a non-bearded, non-poetry-writing man who made art.
7. i lived in russia: taught the hokey-pokey to rooms full of russians to critical acclaim.
8. i hiked most of the way from scotland to london. (yes, there was a lot of rain.)
9. i became twitterpated by a non-bearded man with a gimp leg who occasionally wrote me poetry but mostly talked to me about math and astronomy.
10. then i married him.
11. i graduated from college.
12. i got my masters degree.
13. i had a baby. in a bathtub. (or was it a whirlpool?)
14. i wrote a book about russia.
15. i had my first publication. (if you don’t count that pretty little ditty i wrote for dog fancy when i was twelve.)
16. i moved to cleveland.

what about you? remembering something i left off the list? remembering something you’ve done yourself… ?

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