Deb Nance
I did not like this book, so I am probably not the best person to review it. Why, I'd like to ask Mr. Charles Dickens, would you go to visit a place you find to be dirty and dilapidated and filled with people that are dirty and dilapidated? He seemed to like a couple of spots in Italy, especially parts of Rome and Florence, but the rest? It was hard for me to listen him tear down the spiritual practices of the people and the life in small villages and the art. On and on he went.
I wish I had skipped this book.
I should have known better.
This wasn't ever going to be a book for me.
But it is set in Italy. And it's about a group of strangers-to-friends who travel together and share life stories. I thought those two things would override my initial reluctance.
Nope. I knew where it was going from page one.
But, hey, that's just me. You may love it.
Nobody can tell you how to do it.
They can tell you how they did it.
They can share stories of their attempts to write, good and bad.
But, honestly, after reading five books about writing this year, including this one by a very good writer, a knowledgeable writer, I say that nobody can tell you how to do it.
Ruta Sepetys suggests that you, as she has done, explore the stories you've encountered and experienced in your life. Try that if you wish. And if it works for you, good. If not, try someone else and test out their ideas.
Nobody can tell you how to do it.
They can tell you how they did it.
They can share stories of their attempts to write, good and bad.
But, honestly, after reading five books about writing this year, including this one by a very good writer, a knowledgeable writer, I say that nobody can tell you how to do it.
Natalie Goldberg suggests that you, as she has done, follow these rules: (1) Keep your hand moving (2) Lose control (3) Be specific (4) Don't think (5) Feel free to write the worst junk in the world and (6) Go for the jugular.
Try that if you wish. And if it works for you, good. If not, try someone else and test out their ideas.
Annie Ernaux, a recent Nobel prize-winning author, tells the story of her mother's life. She begins with her mother's death. Ernaux tells her mother's story clinically, from a measured distance, and this is an effective way to write.
Several lines caused me to gasp, to reread, to underline.
When Ernaux goes to the undertaker to choose a coffin, the undertaker tells her, “All our prices include tax.”
That little detail.
Of the funeral, Ernaux writes, “I wanted the ceremony to last forever, I wanted more to be done for my mother...“
I remember that feeling.
And then, after the funeral, Ernaux notes, “I would cry for no particular reason.” Yes.
Much later, when she drives past the nursing home where her mother lived, she sees a light in the window of the room her mother occupied and realizes another person is now living there. And she suddenly knows that one day she, too, will live in a nursing home, living as her mother lived in her last purposeless years. And, yes.
This is a very short book, only a little more than sixty pages. It is well worth reading.
What a wonderful ride of a story!
Sai Mudawan is an assistant to the master mapmaker, Paiyoon Wongyai, when the mapmaker asks her to come along on a mapmaking journey through an unexplored sea. Sai has a series of adventures that keep the reader guessing about what is going to happen next.
A complete delight!
Scientist Jaron Lanier offers ten reasons for deleting our social media accounts now.
1. You are losing your free will.
2. Quitting social media is the most finely targeted way to resist the insanity of our times.
3. Social media is making you into an a-hole.
4. Social media is undermining truth.
5. Social media is making what you say meaningless.
6. Social media is destroying your capacity for empathy.
7. Social media is making you unhappy.
8. Social media doesn't want you to have economic dignity.
9. Social media is making politics impossible.
10. Social media hates your soul.
It seems pretty clear that social media is toxic. Is the toxicity terminal for individuals? For our society?
All around the world people have unique ways to improve one's happiness. This book describes the location and purpose of each manner of becoming happier and it also explains the health and happiness benefits, shares specific sites where the method is practiced, and includes ways to practice these methods at home.
For my own future reference, I am making a list of the practices here: Aloha spirit, coffee ceremony, crystal and stone healing, dolce far niente, fika, friluftsliv, gezelligheid, Gross National Happiness, hygge, kikgai, meraki, pura vida, romanticism, shinrin yoku, sisu, slow food, tai chi, ubuntu, yoga, and zen meditation.
David Page takes a deep dive into the history and development of America's favorite foods including pizza, chicken, Chinese food, Mexican food, hamburgers, and ice cream.
Each section is full of fascinating stories, and Page takes time to visit places that are considered the best at preparing each dish.
There's a recipe after each section, though none of the recipes look doable for an amateur cook like me.
I first read Chancy and the Grand Rascal when it was published in 1966, and it knocked my socks off. I read it once and then I read it again, and then I went to the library to check out everything Mr. Sid Fleischman had written.
Chancy is the story of a boy who heads down the Mississippi to look for his little sisters and brother. He's saved for four years so he has enough money to buy a steamboat ticket. And then he runs into Colonel Plugg, a scoundrel who takes all his money and leaves him with a batch of stale eggs. Chancy is determined to find Plugg and get his money back, so off he goes, on foot, trying to sell wood to steamboats. And then he meets the grand rascal...
Everything kids could want in a story, including fast-talking con artists and cowboys and tall-tale-tellers and rafting over a waterfall and...well, just trust me, it's a fun story from start to finish. There are a group of wild Indians, but perhaps, like most of the characters in this book, they aren't what they seem either.
One hundred pages of poems for a mere fifty cents in 1965. Check it off on the Scholastic Book order form and see if your mom will give you a couple of quarters. Put the coins in a white envelope with your name on the order and give it to your teacher. In a couple of weeks, this book will arrive, and you'll open it and you can leave your small-town Texas behind and travel with the likes of Robert Frost and Langston Hughes and e.e. cummings.
The town of Appleton has problems. The population of the town has been declining, and, if there aren't at least twenty students in its school, the school will close. (There are only nineteen but the daughter of the school's new librarian will make twenty, if she can be enrolled properly despite her having only an initial for a middle name.) The school board, consisting of a single member who owns a clothing store, has passed a rule requiring a dress code, and students are reluctant to follow the new code. There are also problems with the green dot books checked out to students by the new librarian and the financial health of the clothing store and, oddly, even pickles.
A delightful and lighthearted romp that takes on lots of current political issues including crazy laws passed to benefit those in power and book censorship.
Ricardo Nuila served as the interviewer when Abraham Verghese recently visited Houston, and I was reminded, again, of this book. So I got a copy and I just finished it today.
The People's Hospital is Ben Taub, and the stories Nuila tells are those of five uninsured sick people in Houston who find their way to Ben Taub. The stories are deeply moving and disturbing. That people would be allowed to suffer extreme pain, some for many years, without relief, and all because the people did not have health insurance...it's shocking to find this is the case for people in our very, very affluent America.
Nuila is a doctor but he is also a writer, and the result is that he writes and cares for his patients both knowledgeably and compassionately. He takes on the whole healthcare system itself and offers thoughtful ideas for improving the entire system.
What kind of meals are depicted in classic literature? Author Sean Brand takes a close look at breakfasts, lunches, teas, dinners, outdoor meals, children's meals, and special occasion meals as they appear in some of the world's greatest novels. Brand rates each meal, too, for food quality, company, and literary merit.
I've been reading this book in little bites and chunks for, oh, maybe a year or two. It's organized by symptoms of what is ailing you, and, for each symptom, one or more books are offered as cures.
It's a fun way of getting to really know books, and it's a nice way to see what books might resonant with you.
I've also got an ebook version of this book, and I'm pretty sure I'll continue to pop back into the book to take a look at this book or that one, and I think it would be fun to make a master list (maybe I'll see if anyone else has done this) of all the books included.
What I loved about this book is completely different from what I expected.
I am a baker and I love to make desserts, so I thought I'd be scribbling down recipes and jotting down ideas for making desserts.
But, no, Tosi's ideas for desserts are completely different from mine, and I'm not really interested in making any of the recipes she included in this book.
Why, then, did I like this book so much?
I like Tosi's philosophy of baking, and, really, of living. Tosi's mom taught her to live for others, to live exuberantly, to be all-in. When she was little, Tosi began to experiment with baking, seeing what happened when you add, say, orange juice, to a mix. Tosi had many more failures than successes, but she learned about ingredients and combinations of ingredients, and, maybe most importantly, she had fun. And it was her mom who taught Tosi to make small things celebrations—boy, I like her mom.
I want to keep the idea of joy trails, of celebrations of small things every day, of milkshake moments from this book.
Let me save some quotes here, to remind myself, to share with others.
“Joy begets joy, nice begets nice. She (Tosi's mom) believes with her whole heart that if you do something lovely and thoughtful for someone–especially when it's unexpected–they'll realize how good that feels, and they will start doing the same for others.”
“This small act of thoughtfulness hit the heartstrings that quietly ask, Who's taking care of you? Who's thinking of you?”
Take a walk through twenty-five locales of the world, all made famous by their use, in books, as settings for magnificent novels.
Author Sarah Baxter shares a little of the history of the place at the time in which the book was set, and then she walks you around the place, scene by scene, as it is represented in the novel.
Some of my favorite places shared in Literary Places? Paris as seen in Les Misérables. Florence in A Room with a View. Monterey in Cannery Row.
Gretchen Rubin sets off on another quest to increase her happiness, this time by focusing on ways to focus more on her five senses. We all know how much time those of us who live in the twenty-first century spend in our head; Gretchen Rubin proposes that we escape our heads by living in our bodies through the rich avenues of our taste, touch, smell, hearing, and sight.
I heard Rubin speak at TLA, and that provoked an interest in this book. I liked Rubin's experiments, especially in noticing certain colors on her daily visit to the Met, hosting a taste comparison party, and keeping a sense journal.
I know, I know, four stars for a romance?
Yes, but Happy Place is a little more than a romance.
So what's Happy Place about?
Happy Place is Harriet's last get-together with her for-life friends in the place they have loved for years, a wonderful cottage in Maine. Things are changing, though, and Cleo and her partner Kimmy seem too busy for friendship, and Sabrina has finally agreed to marry Parth, and, most drastic of all, Harriet has broken up with Wyn.
Okay, that sounds like a romance to me. What's with the four stars?
Look at the cover of this book with all its in-your-face pinkness, with young people in bathing suits splashing and laughing, and the author's name in huge type, and you are instantly thinking, Rom-com. Read the blurb on the front book flap and you can't help but think you know where this story is going.
But, and you have to trust me on this, Happy Place is a little more. Happy Place is snappy dialogue, fresh, witty, clever, laugh-out-loud funny at times. And that's huge.
Most importantly, Happy Place is therapy-in-a-book. You will read this book and you will think, Oh, yes, that's wise. You can see the characters growing, becoming stronger and braver, moving in ways that sometimes surprise you but also seem in retrospect to feel inevitable.
A romance, yes, but a romance that might offer more than just being a silly summer read.
“The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy.”
Who can read that sentence and not feel horrified, shocked, ashamed?
Poverty, as we know from hundreds of studies that have been done over the years, is the root of many problems in society—hunger, evictions, homelessness, crime, low achievement in education, and more.
This book looks at the ways affluent Americans keep the poor poor. Some of these are doing with the full knowledge of the affluent and some of these are done unknowingly.
The epilogue is a call to action: As the president of One Fair Wage said, “‘We are not polarized from each other. We are polarized from our electeds.'” The author goes on to say, “The majority of Americans believe the rich aren't paying their fair share in taxes. The majority support a $15 federal minimum wage. Why, then, aren't our elected officials representing the will of the people? This we must demand of them.”
And then, and for me most importantly, this book shares strategies for ending poverty.
Silas Marner has left his homeland after being falsely accused of a crime. In England, he is regarded with suspicion, and, alone and friendless, he occupies himself by amassing gold coins. In Marner's town is a squire with two sons. The older son is being blackmailed by the wicked younger son; the squire does not know that the older son has secretly married an opium addict and has a child. The younger son needs money and, when opportunity arises, steals Marner's gold. Later, the secret wife of the squire's older son dies while attempting to bring the child to him, and the child survives when she is drawn by a warm fire to enter Marner's home. Marner takes the child, who he names Eppie, in, and gradually the village warms to Marner for his kindness.
I love this story of Silas Marner. Perhaps I might take a fraction of a point away for Eppie's unremitting and slightly unlikely cheeriness, but the saving of a soul (Marner) by love (Eppie's) will always be my favorite sort of tale.
Shevek is a physicist who is trying to do an almost-impossible thing: to unite two worlds separated by completely different philosophies of life. One world is that of the home planet, Urras, a planet that is dominated by the ideas of capitalism and private property and individualism. The other world is the breakaway world, the moon of Urras, the world called Anarres, the place where Shevek grew up, and a world that is dominated by ideas of the common good and sharing with others and being part of a group. Both worlds, we soon see, have their strengths and weaknesses, and, within Shevek, an idea grows to bring the worlds together.
Alternating chapters tell of Shevek's life from childhood with his mission on Urras.
This is a rich and thoughtful read. I don't think that I can adequately talk about this book after a single read-through, and it's a book that deserves a second read and a comprehensive discussion with other knowledgable readers. I hope that I will be able to do these things some time in the future.