Perfection by Julie Metz

This has been an unbelievably snowy winter!  We are in the last two days of January, and we've already missed five days of school.  Aside from accumulating four and a half feet of snow and these school days that will need to be made up in the beautiful, sunny, happy days of June (when everyone's mind has been on vacation since May 1st), I've discovered that I've gained a little more than I've bargained for this month.  I haven't stepped on a scale recently, but the waist line in my jeans is clearly screaming, "Cool it, lady.  We're reaching our max."  It's so hard to go outside for my daily walk in all of this snow and ice, and it's so easy to eat those brownies and Hershey Kisses by the handful because they speak to me in a much more tantalizing and soothing voice than those pesky uptight jeans.

It has also been easy to spend money.  What else is there to do when you're snowed in?  Usually, I check books out of the library.  But cabin fever has been driving and chauffering me to the malls and bookstores in search of atmospheric change.  I need to get out and do something other than clean house, shovel snow, and watch TV.  So on top of snow, school days, and a few extra pounds (please, God, only be a few), I have gained a few more books for my home library.  One of the books that I randomly bought in a hazy, vulnerable moment of snow-day impulsivity is Perfection:  A Memoir of Betrayal and Renewal by Julie Metz.

One of the things that attracted me to the book was its title, more specifically, the word "renewal."  I think many of us eventually hit a point or even several points in our lives where we feel the desire to change something about ourselves and how we live.  We want to reinvent ourselves because we believe it will provide us with a renewed sense of happiness and success.  I wanted to find out how this woman could renew herself after discovering her husband's infedelities after he suddenly dies.  At the age of 44, Metz is not only left a widow and a single mother of a six-year old daughter, but she is now left with the knowledge of her husband's secret life full of lies and deceit.  She plods through moments of loneliness and despair but somehow finds a way to summon the fortitude to confront her husband's mistresses and move past his affairs.

Metz provides us with an honest and bold look into her personal life through a natural prose that guides us easily from one experience to the next.  I enjoyed how she provided us with subtle hints into people's personalities aimed to steer our thinking toward the guilt or innocence of a particular party.  These clues also appeared to be personal retrospective discoveries that she made while writing her memoir.  The book did have a few low points for me, though.  For example, the section devoted to Darwin's Theory of Evolution to explain why men cheat was a bit technical and dull to read.  I also found my mind wandering as she ran through a detailed laundry list of every one (I'm assuming every one but who can be sure) of her sexual encounters since college.  Granted, I understand the author's purpose for including these tales (the need to belong, feel loved, important, special, etc., etc.) but didn't feel like we needed to be dragged through so many of them.  Fortunately, these bumps and baubles did not diminish my admiration for her ability to forgive.  Though she does not forgive everyone involved, she finds a way to make a series of choices that allow her to trudge through, make changes, and find peace for herself and daughter.

Other memoirs I've enjoyed:
     *  Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
     *  A Piece of Cake by Cupcake Brown
     *  The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
     *  Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

It's always motivating and enlightening when I read the right book at the right time.  The Alchemist came to me about four years too late.  But, hey, I'll take what I can get at this point.  And at this point, this fable is exactly what I needed to lift my spirits and to give myself that kick in the rear that the past four to five year's worth of job search frustration has tried to squash.  I absolutely love my current job.  But like every other position I have been lucky enough to obtain over the past few years in this disastrous economy, it is unfortunately not a permanent position - nor, a well-paying one.  So as I slump over my computer, updating my resume, filling out the mountains of paperwork, and writing essays to every school in the tri-state area trying to convince them what a great teacher I am, I will think of Santiago and his journey to keep me going.

Santiago is a shepherd boy who takes a risk by selling his sheep in order to travel from Spain to the Pyramids of Egypt where he believes a lucrative treasure awaits him.  By obtaining this treasure, Santiago will fulfill his Personal Legend, his own personal success and happiness.  He makes quick friends and encounters a number of people along the way who either lead him to the Pyramids or betray his trust.  One of his biggest allies and confidantes becomes The Alchemist who encourages him to be more observant of omens and to follow the messages of these omens, which come from a higher power.

God and Allah are mentioned in the book; however, it does not preach religion nor attempt to sway your own personal beliefs.  This is a story about finding faith within yourself and following your heart to realize your dreams.  Because Santiago embarks upon a dangerous, long, and tumultuous journey in order to seek out his own treasure, fulfillment in our dreams will also be an arduous struggle.  (And boy, do I ever know that!)  Recognizing omens and following their messages along with following his heart becomes a critical aspect in the success or failure of Santiago's journey.  Perhaps this book is my own omen.  As frustrating and discouraging as my job search has been, teaching is my dream and passion, my Personal Legend.  I'd like to think that if I continue to work hard, work smart, stay motivated, and keep my heart on the right path that I will eventually find my own treasure.

The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar

Money and education create a divide among all of us.  Wealth and knowledge determine our quality of healthcare, living conditions, social status, our ability to read and understand documents, communicate with others, and to verbally defend and protect ourselves and our families.  Some may even argue that a large bank account and a college degree determine happiness.  Authors have penned stories and memoirs based upon the theme of poverty and wealth since ink was put to paper.  Thrity Umrigar opens the doors to this division and contrast in a moving account of the lives of two women, one poor, one middle class, who seemingly lead different lives in The Space Between Us

Once happily married with two children, Bhima is forced to raise her granddaughter in the slums of Bombay after losing her family.  She walks to her job each day through crowds of beggars and streets of filth where she is a servant to Sera, a middle class woman who exudes class, cultivation, and beauty.  Based on social status, economics, and education, these two women outwardly live opposing lifestyles.  Inwardly, however, their lives are more connected than either of them ever come to realize.  Money and education may buy better living conditions and lifestyles; however, it does not immunize these women from the realities of domestic and familial infedelities, tragedies, and sorrows.

The Space Between Us is one of those heartbreaking reads that sticks with you for a long time.  It makes you think about your own position in society and how you use or abuse that position.  It makes you think about how you treat others and why you treat them in such a manner.  It also makes you think about your own attitude toward your own life.  Are you living life to the fullest?  Are you using all of your resources appropirately and in a manner that betters yourself and/or others?  How selfish or giving are you? and are you willing to take risks and cross boundaries even if it is socially unacceptable to protect your own dignity?

Other great reads based on wealth, poverty, and servitude:
     *  The Help by Kathryn Stockett
     *  The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom

Ape House by Sara Gruen

As a reading teacher for first through fourth graders, I am confronted daily with questionable substances, odors, peculiar looks, inappropriate actions and reactions, or something as simple as a singularly uttered word that immediately launch my five senses into cautionary alert.  I would like to think that I have, over the years, perfected the skill of diverting and avoiding such encounters.  However, try as I may and no matter how prepared I may be, one always finds a way to slip through the filter causing a raucous.  If only choosing a book were as predictable as sensing whether or not one of my students is up to no good. . .

I picked up Ape House by Sara Gruen from my library on a whim.  There it was sitting on the shelf, untouched, despite the usual congregation of avid book readers crowded and hovering over my shoulder in the New Release section.  While a book on bonobos (and let's be frank - monkeys) would not normally fascinate me, I truly loved Gruen's Water for Elephants and was willing to keep an open mind and give this one a try.  But how could I have missed the warning signs?  I should have clued into them from my fellow readers the way I pick up on those sneaky little details from my students.  There was a reason why no one was grabbing and clawing past me for this book in the library the way they do for others in a section for 14-day loaners.

I must admit before going any further:  I did not finish the book.  I had about 97 pages left to which I would have finished had I actually been enjoying it and had I not had to return it to the library.  I don't think those remaining 97 pages would have changed my opinion otherwise given that the first 200 really should have sucked me in.

I will also admit that the book did start out interestingly, giving me high hopes for its success.  It contained an element of suspense and action described in great detail.  A facility housing bonobos, who communicate through American Sign Language, is bombed leaving the bonobos without a home and their caretaker in serious medical condition.  We are immediately thrust into the suspense of determining "whodunnit."  Readers weave through a cast of characters who seemingly have a motive for the bombing.  But then in a cruel twist of literary maneuvering, we are told in a matter-of-fact, oh-by-the way manner who claims responsibility for this crime.  We were brought to such a high just to fall flat in a casual flutter on the page.  And then from there, the book never regained its momentum.  It spiraled into a dichotomy of the bonobo's human-like intelligence and their animalistic behaviors, more particularly their frequent and gratuitous sexual activities.  (Humans are animalistic too.  But for argument's sake, we'll call this a dichotomy, drawing a line between man and monkey.)  Unfortunately, the spiraling got a bit out of control for me, and I had to abandon ship.

Other good reads in this genre:
     *  Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
     *  The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

How to Be an American Housewife by Margaret Dilloway

Despite it's title, How to Be an American Housewife will not give its readers advice on American domesticity.  It is, however, loosely inspired by a book entitled The American Way of Housekeeping, which informs newly-married Japanese women how to "keep house the 'American way'" (276).  Margaret Dilloway also found inspiration in her own mother, a Japanese immigrant, who felt she had enough life stories "to make a great book" (276).  How to Be an American Housewife is a candid look into the lives of a mother and a daughter and how they each assimilate into a culture different  from her own.

After marrying an American serviceman shortly after WWII, Shoko moves from her native Japan to San Diego with her new husband and begins a life which is culturally, linguistically, and religiously different from the one to which she is accustomed.  Her abilities to raise a family, clean her home, interact with people and communicate with them are all challenged as she vollies between Japanese and American lifestyles and beliefs.

Shoko's daughter Sue may have recognized her mother's differences from those of her friends' parents during her childhood, but she did not always understand them.  When Shoko's health issues become grave, Sue agrees to fly to Japan with her own daughter in search of her mother's estranged brother Taro.  As Sue absorbs Japan and its rich history and becomes acquainted with Taro, she begins to understand the difficulties Shoko has undergone to assimilate herself into American culture.

How to Be an American Housewife was just an okay read for me.  I enjoyed the book while reading it, but the characters and plot did not leave any lasting impressions upon me.  I don't feel like I connected with the characters on a personal level; although, I could appreciate their struggles for societal acceptance and desires to reconnect with estranged family.  Somehow, somewhere I was looking for more out of these characters.  However, I have yet to put my finger on what that is exactly.  Maybe I was looking for Charlie, Shoko's husband, to stand up and take a more active role in the situations in which they had been confronted.  Or maybe I felt like the ending was too comfortable and reliable for this type of a plot.

What I did enjoy about the book was its unique look into Japanese culture and how it compares and/or differs from American culture.  Specific nuiances and subtleties such as looking someone in the eye when being spoken to, flooding your son with gifts and praise, and leaving food on your plate when you are done eating all affect one's interpretation of the situation.  This may not have been one of my favorite books of all time, but it did provide me with a lesson into Japanese culture.

Other books to note regarding Japanese culture:
     *  Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

I know I'm a little late arriving to this party, but I finally got around to reading Sarah's Key.  Part of my tardiness involves the unavailability of this book in our library; but the other part largely involves my state of mind.  A Holocaust novel will more than likely entail gruesome, graphic, and emotional issues.  I didn't think it would be fair to delve into a topic as great as this without the proper mental and emotional preparedness required.  As predicted, Sarah's Key not only includes difficult-to-imagine and heart-wrenching tragedies; but it also tackles the challenges of keeping a secret and the profound consequences generations endure once those secrets are revealed.

Sarah's experiences as a Holocaust survivor are revealed both through an omniscient narrator and that of Julia Jarmond, a character who finds herself indirectly linked to Sarah's past.  The novel begins in Paris, July 16, 1942.  Sarah and her parents become victims of the Vel' d'Hiv roundup, torn from their homes in the middle of the night by Parisian police officers, to be marched to their certain deaths.  Sarah hides and locks her brother Michel in a secret cupboard with the promise to return for him, keeping the key concealed and on her person throughout her entire ordeal.  It is the first of many of Sarah's secrets to which we become privy, secrets which ultimately make us readers question in what ways Sarah is a survivor.

Julia Jarmond also carries her own secrets.  A present-day American working in Paris as a journalist, Jarmond is asked to investigate the Vel' d'Hiv roundup for its 60th Anniversary Commemoration.  Through her investigation, she not only discovers a piece of history that few Parisians remember or even know about but she also learns of Sarah's personal story and uncovers pieces of Sarah's mysterious past, a past to which Jarmond finds herself associated.  Conflicted with whether or not to reveal these secrets, Jarmond makes difficult choices.  The decisions she makes and the secrets she reveals profoundly affect her personal life and the lives touched by Sarah.

Sarah's Key is a beautiful novel and brings to life a piece of history to which I had not been aware.  I enjoyed the theme of secrecy.  Characters are not the only elements of the novel hiding valuable pieces of their past.  The omniscent narrator has a secret of its own.  Readers do not learn of Sarah's name until the halfway point in the book.  Through her fluent prose and thematic structure, Tatiana de Rosnay led me to think about the motives of people who choose to lock away certain aspects of their lives.  Do we really want or need to know about a person's past?  How will peoples' lives be changed when secrets are revealed?  and How much of a ripple effect will those revelations create?

Other great books to note regarding the Holocaust and World War II:

     *  The Reader by Bernhard Schlink (one of my Top 10 favorite)
     *  Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian
     *  The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Lessons from Literary Monsters

When I was a little kid, I had a book called The Monster at the End of this Book.  Before I was capable of

reading it myself, I wore out my parents, grandparents, babysitters, and any adult within arm's reach with pleadings to read it to me.  Sweating, crying, and clawing at the pages, the main character, Grover from Sesame Street, adamantly begs his readers to stop turning the pages because a terrifying monster threateningly awaits us at the end of the book.  The monster, of course, turns out to be Grover himself.  And when he realizes how irrational his fear has been, he heaves a huge sigh of relief.

No matter how many times this book was read to me and no matter how many times I eventually read it to myself, it never failed to delight me.  I knew it backwards and forwards; and of course I knew the final outcome.  But it didn't matter because it always made me giggle.

Years later I found myself sweating, crying, and clawing at the pages of a college syllabus for an English Literature class I was required to take.  One of the books we were mandated to read was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.  My initial reaction was, "What???  You have got to be kidding me!"  I don't do science fiction at all; and I certainly don't read science fiction that is particularly difficult to digest; and I definitely don't do mythical or fictional creatures and monsters - unless, of course, they are harmless, furry, little blue ones based on a puppet.  Because of this novel (and the other less than desireable pieces of literature I was going to be forced to read for this class), I immediately wanted to drop the course.  After about an hour of swearing like a truck driver with my face turning red and sweat running down my neck, I decided to own up to my responsibilities.  I hit the campus bookstore and purchased my copy of Frankenstein.

Mary Shelley perfectly summed up my feelings about reading Frankenstein in the very book I began to embark upon:  "I was overcome by gloom and misery, and often reflected I had better seek death than desire to remain in a world which to me was replete with this wretchedness" (183).  Okay, maybe I am being a little overly dramatic here; but I was not feeling good about this one.  Surprisingly, however, as I began to read the book, I found my disdain for the novel to be softening.  While Dr. Frankenstein was creating a monster out of human remains, Mary Shelley was creating a believer out of me.  I was actually enjoying the book!  Frankenstein does not read like a science fiction novel at all.  Yes, the science aspect certainly has it's place in the novel; but I read it as something more than that.  I found it to be a tale about the need to belong and a desire to have a place and purpose in society and about the madness one acquires in the pursuit of success.  And I loved it!

We've all been told not to judge a book by its cover.  But in all honesty, I do it and I can't help it sometimes.  It's part of human nature.  I didn't want to read Frankenstein because I had unfairly judged it too quickly.  I had been told by fellow classmates and peers that it is a terribly boring science fiction novel, and it's impossible to read.  I allowed myself to be persuaded by other peoples' feelings thereby creating my own irrational fears about the novel.  I had feared the monster at the beginning, middle, and end of the book.  I had feared the monster that was this book.  But just like Grover from my old childhood favorite, I too realized how irrational my fears had been.  And I not only heaved a sigh of relief but also a sigh of humility.

The Yellow House by Patricia Falvey

As readers we develop relationships with the characters that we encounter in novels.  We love some; we hate others; and then there are the ones that we love to hate.  It is an author's duty to persuade their readers to become personally invested in their characters lives and circumstances because if we as readers don't connect to the characters on some level, the story falls apart.  We end up not caring about the events or the outcome, and we abandon the book all together.  Why invest time in a novel in which an author doesn't care to create plausible and/or fantastic characters in which we can love, hate, admire, admonish, and fantasize?  We want to empathize and sympathize with them.  Our hearts should break when a character hits a low.  Our hearts should soar when they hit a high.  And at other times, we should feel the urge to want to grab that character by the shoulders, give him or her a good shake, and shout, "What the hell were you thinking!!?"

Eileen O'Neill is that character for me, the one I want to grab by the shoulders and lay into.  We meet this outspoken, brash, self-confident Irish mill worker in Patricia Falvey's debut novel The Yellow House.  Set during a period of political and religious strife in early 1900s Ireland, Falvey creates a protagonist to admire, to scrutinize, and to love.

When O'Neill's family and home is torn apart through tragedy, she vows to reunite the remaining members and reclaim her beloved childhood home, The Yellow House.  She earns a living by working in a spinning mill in hopes to save enough money to accomplish her goals.  However, the choices she makes don't always comply with an honest living.  As she spins fibers in the mill, she becomes entangled in her own knot of difficult and tragic circumstances.  Eileen O'Neill's determined, self-righteous, and sometimes even shy personality allow her to fall in love with two men, both of whom are politically charged in support of opposing views.  Her relationships with these men affect her ability to mend the broken pieces of her family and home.  O'Neill makes tough and often politically, socially, and religiously unfavorable decisions in which she unapologetically speaks her mind.

The Yellow House is a wonderful piece of historical fiction.  Although some of the "surprise" outcomes are predictable, I enjoyed it nonetheless.  I learned about a piece of Ireland's history in which I had not been aware.  I also developed that all-important relationship with the novel's characters.  I did not always agree with Eileen O'Neill's words and actions.  I did feel the urge to shout out to her, "What were you thinking?  Why would you ever say such a thing?"   But I connected with this character and admired her resolve and determination.  Bravo!

Happy New Year! and Happy New Reads!

Books make the world go 'round.  Well, they do for my world anyway.  Yes, I know it's cliche to say I love books and that I love to read because so many other people share this exact sentiment.  But that's just it.  It's a common thread that ties so many people.  Why?  Because books impose a tremendous amount of power over us.

For any of us who have ever gotten lost in a great book, you know what it's like to read with tired and blurry eyes trying to make sense of the words dancing across the page because you can't put the book down.  You just have to find out what happens next.  That's the beauty of a good book.  It captures us, holds us hostage, and allows us to live vicariously through the characters.  Books allow us to become people we are too afraid to be in our real lives.  We live in times and places completely inaccessible to our own reality.  We become war heroes in the jungles of Vietnam or on the shores of Normandy; we become struggling immigrants living on the dirty, diseased-infested streets of New York City during the Industrial Revolution; we discover vaccines for Polio and small pox; we fall in and out of love, raise families who come to love or hate us; we become villains; we live and we die.

The purpose of this blog is to review, recommend, and ramble about the books I've read and am currently reading.  Feel free to peruse, comment, and find a selection for your next reading experience.