Deb Nance
We watched The Wasp Woman, a film from 1959, on Kanopy this week. I think Miss Pickerell Goes to Mars is the children's book-equivalent:
(1) Lots of action.
(2) Inexplicable things happen (Miss Pickerell wanders into a rocket in her pasture and the ship takes off, the crew mistakenly believing that Pickerell is a crew member they were awaiting; Pickerell is able to crochet onboard the spaceship; the ship is able to land and take off again).
(3) Post-1951 (that's the Miss Pickerell Goes to Mars copyright) knowledge of Mars makes some of the events of the story unlikely (especially the look of Mars as the crew takes a stroll on the planet).
(4) Flag-waving belief in the power of science to do incredible things.
Still, Pickerell is a strong woman character, who obeys the captain except when an emergency arises.
As children, siblings Byron and Bennie are close but they grow apart as they get older. Bennie becomes estranged from her parents, too, after her parents express their dismay about Bennie's relationship choices.
And then Byron and Bennie's father dies. It isn't many years later that Byron and Bennie's mother dies, too. When their mother dies, the two learn that their mother has left them a recording, and the recording reveals the surprising secrets their mother kept about her life.
The Caribbean setting of their mother's youth was fresh and fascinating. I enjoyed learning about the complex lives of the many diverse characters in the story. The black cake served as a lovely metaphor for the lives and experiences of the characters.
It can't happen here. Not in America. Surely...
But it can and it does. Senator Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip runs for president on a platform to restore American prosperity and stature in the world, and Windrip rapidly becomes popular with the people. Within days of his election, Windrip and his people begin to shut down the legislative and judicial branches of government in the name of what is best for the country. Newspapers are shut down and reestablished with the control of Windrip's people. A citizen's military called the Minute Men is established and soon the thugs are running the country. The unemployed are put into labor camps and dissidents are put into concentration camps. Common people keep their mouths shut or face prison or death.
It Can't Happen Here is a shocking picture of a world rapidly flipped upside down by people seeking power. It's a tragic story of an America marked by lies where it's hard to know what is true. It's a frightening depiction of how easily people will go along with an agenda that sounds like it will improve lives.
It Can't Happen Here a cautionary tale for us all.
Gil leaves the life he has in New York and starts over in Arizona, buying a house sight unseen except for some Internet photos, and he chooses to begin his new life with a walk out west. He gets settled in his new home, and it isn't long before the house next door, also for sale, has new owners and a family soon moves in. The house next door has a glass wall that permits Gil to look in on their day-to-day activities. Gil and the family quickly get to know each other and become friends.
A quietly meditative book that centers on Gil, a man with a traumatic start to life, but who has a gift for establishing relationships with people, who has a magical way of daring to gently speak truth and work through difficulties, who is a deep and genuine friend to all he comes to know.
The author is masterful at creating scenes that are emotionally resonant without resorting to tanks and cannonballs. Millet draws an intricate picture of life in our world, pulling in elements of human society as well as the natural world, and respects her readers enough to allow us to take away from the scenes what we will. And we do. Dinosaurs is the sort of story that makes us keep going back to the book after we have finished it and rereading parts and thinking about the story and the characters again and again.
How to rate The Real Work? What classification do I give it? Who is the target audience for this book? Besides people who love Gopnik like me, I mean?
Gopnik explores the idea of mastering a task. He tries to learn how to do several types of work. All of the types of work take many years of practice before mastery is achieved. Gopnik works with a baker, an artist, a dancer, a boxer, and a driving instructor.
As always, Gopnik writes about his experiences masterfully (if you will), combining a picture of the actual work encounters with Gopnik's brilliant philosophical musings about the experiences.
For a tiny book, I had a lot of take-aways:
“EMOTIONAL TROUBLE
—UNHAPPINESS—
IS ESSENTIALLY
OUR OWN CREATION.”
Dalai Lama. Be Happy (The Dalai Lama's Be Inspired) (p. 4). Hampton Roads Publishing. Kindle Edition.
What are we doing wrong?
I think this is largely due to two things: The first reason is our lack of knowledge of reality (essentially because we are absent a holistic view); the second reason is a self-centered attitude.
Dalai Lama. Be Happy (The Dalai Lama's Be Inspired) (p. 5). Hampton Roads Publishing. Kindle Edition.
So how can I change things?
On one level, you can see negative things, but at a deeper level, you can still be calm,
Dalai Lama. Be Happy (The Dalai Lama's Be Inspired) (p. 36). Hampton Roads Publishing. Kindle Edition.
If it can be overcome, there's no need to worry, because you can make an effort and take action to make change. If there's no way to overcome it, there's no need to worry either, because there is no action you can take to change the situation.
Dalai Lama. Be Happy (The Dalai Lama's Be Inspired) (p. 81). Hampton Roads Publishing. Kindle Edition.
And how about the Dalai Lama's final sentence:
Think more about others' well-being, then your own problem and sickness will feel less painful. Otherwise, I don't know.
Dalai Lama. Be Happy (The Dalai Lama's Be Inspired) (p. 85). Hampton Roads Publishing. Kindle Edition.
I love that. “Otherwise, I don't know.”
Kate is breaking up with her boyfriend, she's turning forty, and she hates her job.
What else could go wrong?
Well, there's Cecily. Somehow Kate gets wrangled into volunteering at an old folks' home and she meets Cecily.
What a character Cecily is. Blunt. Truthful. Out-and-out rude, really. But somehow she also inspires people to shed the old bad stuff and go for what you want.
A few quotes:
“That's one of the worst things about the whole indignity of getting old—things are taken from you constantly: your possessions, your hips, your eyesight.”
Zimmerman, Vicky. Miss Cecily's Recipes for Exceptional Ladies (p. 124). Sourcebooks. Kindle Edition.
“What can't be disguised must be utilized. Don't apologize—improvise.”
Zimmerman, Vicky. Miss Cecily's Recipes for Exceptional Ladies (p. 367). Sourcebooks. Kindle Edition.
“But she's learned that “closure” is something you only get in an episode of Friends. In real life, you live with mess and loose ends and unsent draft emails in your inbox.”
Zimmerman, Vicky. Miss Cecily's Recipes for Exceptional Ladies (p. 368). Sourcebooks. Kindle Edition.
“Oftentimes, when making a dessert, you'll find a pinch of salt brings out the sweetness in the dish far more than extra sugar. It sounds counterintuitive but it is a fact, and one I've thought about often. What's true in the kitchen is often true more generally in life.”
Zimmerman, Vicky. Miss Cecily's Recipes for Exceptional Ladies (p. 376). Sourcebooks. Kindle Edition.
“Male or female, that cat will be named Cecily because all cats are like Cecily—contrary, exquisitely standoffish, fussy about food—and sometimes they pretend they don't need you or love you even though they do.”
Zimmerman, Vicky. Miss Cecily's Recipes for Exceptional Ladies (p. 377). Sourcebooks. Kindle Edition.
“Everywhere, behind closed doors, people are dying, and people are grieving them. It's the most basic fact about human life—tied with birth, I guess—but it's startling too. Everybody dies and yet it's unendurable.”
Ashley has been best friends with Edith for her whole life. And now Edith is sick. Very, very sick. Dying. What is Ashley to do but to pack Edi up and bring her to a hospice nearby and spend all the time Edi has left together?
“Fly, be free! I want to say. I want to say, Stay with me forever! Come to think of it, these are the two things I want to say to everyone I love most.”
What a lovely, lovely book. About dying and death, but, also, about living.
Brad Aronson shares stories of ways to change the world one small act at a time. The book is filled with stories of ways that one small act led people to do good toward others. Humankind includes a list of ways for each of us to join in, using only a small amount of money and time, to improve the world in little ways.
Chauntecleer is a rooster who runs the chicken coop in a time before humans were on Earth, an ordinary rooster, brave but also proud. He is befriended by the sad and mournful dog, Mundo Cani. Chauntecleer meets and marries a lovely hen with a beautiful voice, Pertelote. Pertelote is a refugee from a nearby coop run by the mad rooster Cockatrice, and Cockatrice, guided by the evil Wyrm, a worm who lives inside Earth, plans to go to war against the other animals. It is up to Chauntecleer to stop Wyrm and his henchman, Cockatrice, and so the war begins.
The Book of the Dun Cow is a complex story that weaves in elements of Christianity as well as Celtic mythology.
Professor Lovell plucks orphan Robin Swift from China and brings the boy to England where the professor has Robin tutored in Ancient Greek, Latin, and Chinese in preparation for admission to the Royal Institute of Translation—Babel—at Oxford. It is when Robin is admitted to Oxford that he meets and befriends his fellow year of students, and it is then that he begins training in what is to be his life's occupation: silver-working, the magical art of manifesting meaning held deep within translated words into enchanted silver bars. And it is then that Robin learns of the wider and destructive results of silver-working around the world and of the Hermes Society, the organization that has risen up in opposition to imperial expansion.
Some books are so beautifully written, with such rich characters and intricate settings and widespread truth and meaning, that the books feel as if they are magic; Babel is one of these.
Reading Babel was a rich reading experience.
Oh, families!
Helen, the matriarch of the clan, is dead, and her three grown children—Henry, Kate, and Martin—and their spouses and their children are all struggling to adjust to the new world without her as well as trying to deal with the regular problems—too much work, too little work, intimacy issues, lack of intimacy issues, kid difficulties, money troubles, and more—of life. The remaining family gets together just before Christmas...and here begins the barrage of irritating conversations and rude comments and snarky remarks and cruel statements along with the helpful words and loving thoughts and generous assertions and kind declarations that make up the complexity that is family life.
I greatly enjoyed this well-drawn picture of a family.
“The former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon once said: ‘Happiness is neither a frivolity nor a luxury . . . It should be denied to no one and available to all.'”
Comedian Bill Bailey shares all the ways he has experienced remarkable moments of happiness in his life in this little guide. Bailey takes us on trips to play crazy golf, go paddleboarding, jumping out of airplanes, and exploring underwater as well as sharing the joys of dancing and singing and jogging and cycling. He also reveals the secret happiness derived from swearing and wild swimming and playing a quirky musical instrument. And all of the happiness inducing activity stories are told with the zaniness of a master comedian.
Keeley is trying to live a normal life after a terrible accident that killed her sister, an accident which she survived only after receiving a kidney from a donor. Keeley is invited to come to Paris by the mother of her kidney donor, and, reluctantly, she goes. There she meets Ethan, a man who has suffered through an awful event in his own life.
You can probably figure out what happens—and it all happens pretty much as you hope it will, although the author manages to pop in a homeless child and a dying friend and these are woven into the story in a surprisingly seamless and lovely way.
And—by gosh, by golly—Paris!
All Creation Waits is a book to read for advent, featuring creatures of North America and their habits during the coldest parts of the year. The habits of the creatures are highlighted to remind us humans that we, too, are creatures, and that we, too, can learn how to deal with dark times by looking to see how our fellow creatures deal with dark times.
A wise and thoughtful book.
January Scaller is the ward of affluent Mr. Locke while her father travels the world in search of new items for his collection. And then she happens upon a book, The Ten Thousand Doors of January...
Magic. Travel. Mysterious doors. The power of words. The Ten Thousand Doors of January takes on all of these themes. It's a delight.
There's a mysterious new tenant at Wildfell Hall and all of the town is talking about her. Helen, we are told, is a young and beautiful widow with a young son. Neighbor Gilbert Markham meets Helen and her son and is immediately enchanted with them both, but Helen is oddly elusive. Slowly, Gilbert learns Helen's secrets and the whole story is revealed.
Oh my. Helen made a poor choice early on, against the wishes of her aunt, and she had to pay the price of her poor decisions. Back in the early 1800s, the price a woman had to pay for making a poor choice was absurdly high; there really were no good ways to get out of a bad decision.
It's a story that's a heartbreaking one.