Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake

Thoughts by Anna Quindlen, Random House Trade 2012, 205 pages

Challenge: What’s in a Name: Celebration category

Genre/Theme: Essays, Family and Motherhood, Aging, Feminism

Type/Source: Tradeback / Second Hand Bookstore Purchase

What It’s About: Anna shares her thoughts on aging. She is so insightful and hopeful.

“At age 60 I find myself poised between the inevitable and the possible, the things I know and understand and the things I hope to learn and perhaps unravel. But it’s still a bit of a mystery, the yet to come, with that greatest of all mysteries, mortality, at its very end.”

Thoughts: She talks a lot about family and her place in the progression of time. Also her timing into the American workforce balanced with the progression of the women’s movement. And, considerate of being thankful that she lived past the age her mother died, and in the realization of how much her mother missed by dying young, and also the perspective of how her mother’s death impacted her appreciation of life ongoing. I was especially thankful and admiring of her essay on religion.

Rating: I don’t think I was cognizant of her use of the the title in the text, nor do I think she ever mentioned pie. Five slices of pie because I love her. And the cover makes me happy.

Copyright © 2007-2023. Care’s Books and Pie also known as and originally created as Care’s Online Book Club. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care. It should not be reproduced without express written permission.

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Poetry 2020 Edition 5

Poetry Goal 2020:  to read a poem* every day.

Collection #9 break your glass slippers by Amanda Lovelace, Andrews McMeel 2020, 136 pages

sometimes the only difference between not
being meant for something & being meant for
something is the necessary journey it takes for
you to get there.

—replace your self-doubt with patience.

Rating: 3 slices of pie. No pie mentioned. (I am not the ideal audience, methinks)

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Collection #10 by Kieran Furey, Longtooth Books 2011, 120 pages

An Old Routine

Trying not to think
what it might mean,
he goes once a week
unbelievingly to Mass,
and once a week too
disbelievingly to another funeral.

At his age, these things are routine.
With one good ear he’s always listening
For the bells to toll for him.

I found this book in the apartment complex shelves. YAY! and they’re good. Lots of poems about family, ancestry, memories, place. I will have to assume it was the right poetry book for the right time in my 2020 poetry adventure.

I’m finding that I really enjoy poems about words and poems and about writing of poems.

Rating: Four slices of pie. No pie mentioned.

*Or more. I’m not tracking, I’m just reading. I’m not limiting this experience to one poem a day – that is only the minimum.

Copyright © 2007-2020. Care’s Books and Pie aka Care’s Online Book Club. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care from Care’s Online Book Club.  It should not be reproduced without express written permission.

The World According to Garp

Thoughts  by John Irving, Random House Audio 2006 (orig 1978), with epilogue read by author dated 1998

Narration by Michael Prichard, 20 hours 26 minutes

Challenge:  Classics Club

Genre: Contemporary Lit

Type/Source: Audiobook / Audible

 Why I read this now: Finally, its time had come.

MOTIVATION for READING: I have wanted to read this for a long time. Funny, I can’t really remember why I didn’t read it right away when my occasionally demanding father forbade me to read this book. This book in particular. No other books were included nor was a reason given that I recall. And by ‘occasionally demanding’, I mean that he didn’t often tell me what to “do/not do” but when he did, it always seemed random and interesting in comparison to other similar things he didn’t tell me I couldn’t do.

The funny thing to me, is that I don’t think this book was ever on my radar as a teen or young adult (Odd? I would have been 13 when this book was published and 17 when the movie came out — which I also have yet to see). In fact, for a long time, I thought this book was written by John Updike. So, you see, I really didn’t think it was a book for me anyway and rather than rushing to read it to find out why I wasn’t supposed to like any other normal teenager, I filed it away in my head. Wrongly, but still it sat there waiting for me. In fact, it was Dewey, I think, who corrected or suggested that I was probably not referring to John Updike as an author likely to be the degenerate influence I had presumed. I have never read Updike either. Should I?

I was a kid who seriously believed that lightening bolts would strike if I was deliberately disobedient. I believed in that far longer than I ever believed in Santa Claus, if I ever did.

All this to say that it took me a long time out of respect for my father’s wishes, I suppose, for me to ever decide I should read John Irving. I have read A Prayer for Owen Meany thanks to a readalong – loved it. And thanks to Owen Meany, I eventually came around to knowing I would someday read and love Garp. And boy did I! I did. (Now I want to reread Owen. Sigh…)

WHAT’s it ABOUT:  OK, back to Garp… This book is about an interesting woman wanting to live life on her terms. It’s about her son, Garp. It’s about Garp growing up wanting to be a writer. He gets married, has children. He tries to protect his family from the all that could happen in a scary life in the scary world. (Maybe that is what my father was trying to do.) It’s about family, life and death, and dealing with death.

WHAT’s GOOD: The imagination. The deadpan humor. The absurdity. It feels to me like Irving is a master at making the absurd totally believable. When I see that quote of Neil Gaiman: “Things need not have happened to be true.“ — I tend to think of Irving. And WOW people! this is a timely book. A reminder that feminism is just getting started and still has a long way to go. A reminder that in some things, we were ahead of the times AND that we have slipped in our understandings. Feminism, transsexuals, rape culture, politics, open-mindedness, what is “family”? Garp was an authentic passionate talented guy who loved fiercely.

Books like this remind me that there were no “good ol’ days”; that humans can be vile, have always been vile, will continue to be vile; and yet still, humans can be kind.

What’s NOT so good:  That even though I never saw the movie (yet – maybe even tonight, most likely this weekend), I still kept seeing John Lithgow as Roberta Muldoon. Not all the time, but often enough to hear his voice and see his face, with lipstick and rouge. That really isn’t a criticism and I probably shouldn’t mention it…

No pie was mentioned that was noticed.

FINAL THOUGHTS: Beware the undertoad.

RATING: Five slices of pie.

 

 

Copyright © 2007-2016. Care’s Online Book Club. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care from Care’s Online Book Club.  It should not be reproduced without express written permission.

Shrill

Thoughts  by Lindy West, Hachette Audiobook 2016, 6 hours 9 minutes

Narrated by the author.

Genre: Memoir, Feminism

Type/Source: Audiobook/Audible

 Why I read this now: I wanted a short ‘something-different’ to follow Germinal. It was a perfect choice.

MOTIVATION for READING:  I had heard this was a fabulous ‘author narration’ and I wanted to try it out.

WHAT’s it ABOUT: These are fantastic essays on some big issues in our culture. Ms. West is helping make the world a little better, by speaking her mind and doing it so eloquently and succinctly. She is doing it FOR other women and is bravely wading in through the murky nasty waters of where the trolls live:  the internet. Actually, that isn’t accurate. She is doing her work – the work she has a right to be working – and it seems to be that trolls really dislike it. She isn’t inviting it or showing up there on a purpose of being where the trolls are, I mean. Where ever ‘there’ is, if you understand. I admire her wit and her ability to put these powerful words together and daring to shout them out loud.

I admire her very very much.

If there is any one thing that was frustrating, it was that I just don’t know all the names she mentions. It’s not like she shows off who she knows, per se, but that I just don’t have a clue who some (cough, a LOT) of people she talks about, mostly comedians — that is all on me because I can be pretty clueless about celebrities. To be honest, I really didn’t know who ‘Lindy West’ was before seeing everyone chat this up in the bookterwebs. Interestingly, I *did* know about the writer who dealt with a troll for an npr segment but I just hadn’t remembered that writer was Lindy West. I know I will never forget her now.

RATING:  Five slices of pie. She mentions pie in her book, bless her heart.

For one of Shannon’s Read This Watch That pairings with this book, read her post at River City Reading.

 

Copyright © 2007-2016. Care’s Online Book Club. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care from Care’s Online Book Club.  It should not be reproduced without express written permission.

Death in the Garden

Thoughts by Elizabeth Ironside, Felony & Mayhem Press, 1995, 294 pages

FOR:  Neighborhood Book Club

FIRST Sentence: “Today at half-past two in the afternoon I was acquitted of the murder of my husband.”

What’s it ABOUT:  The story obviously begins with a trial and a murder and probable marital strife; we also get to experience the trauma of the world between and of the two world wars. Here’s what happens and how it is setup:  Diana is having a birthday and she invites a few of her favorite friends – mind you, these friends are not friends of the husband’s. Diana is a very interesting person and it is her husband who is murdered at that birthday party weekend. The year is 1925.

“Fanny herself had no money, no education and only erratic employment, most recently and implausibly in a bookshop. “How can that be?” Diana had once said to her husband. “She doesn’t know how to read.” George’s silence was his habitual response to Diana’s sharpness.”

THEN, we jump to the early 1990s and meet Diana’s great niece, Hannah, a single woman, and thus by default?* hard-working, rising-star attorney in London.

“…those (birthdays with) zeros. Not at 20 perhaps, but at 30 it begins, the casting of accounts, the recalling of doors not opened and roads not taken. Only in noise and distraction, companionship and conversation becoming progressively more sentimental, could it be avoided.”

Diana, referred to as “the Great Aunt”, dies in her 98th year. Hannah inherits the estate, or most of it –Diana has made a point to will lots and lots of money and goodies to all the females in the family. What? She was wealthy?! None of the family members are aware of her fortune and certainly not her past – the fact that she was acquitted of murder. To them, she was just a lovely old lady who tended her garden. It was crazy to think she was once a wild woman who experienced anything dramatic. They decide to find out what really happened.

Hannah has her own secrets…

“He, who had for weeks or days been the peaceful background hum of her existence, suddenly became the only sound in her universe.”

Just like Trish, I am not one to try and guess the whodunnits or even want to spot if any zany twists, forcing any unravelings of plot. I adored this story and how it unfolded! I was, as they say, on the edge of my seat and this was a wonderful way to temper my #SalemAlong reading of ‘Salem’s Lot.

“Edith, she works in order not to think. At home it would be impossible to spend a few days among such people without any discussion of ideas.”

It’s not just the turns, the reveal and the various character studies; it was the analysis of marriage and independence. Of feminism and how women had/have to assert themselves, or not. Of careers and ambition, the balance of power. There is a lot here to admire – in the thoughts expressed and how the author presents all of it in the story.

“For Pia, any weakness or shame, such as that George had inadvertently revealed, filled her with the desire to protect and shelter, to hide the exposed place. George had shown a crack to the base of his soul. He saw himself as a failure. He had married Diana to use her beauty and talent to shore up the gaping fissures in his personality and found that they could not be used.”

What’s GOOD/NOT so good? . . .  SKIP . . .

FINAL Thoughts: I think we will have a LOT to discuss at meeting and I am really hoping that this book charmed the others in club as much as I was charmed.

RATING: There were zero pie mentions (and no lobster ones, either, I’m afraid) but I still give this FIVE slices. Let’s go with MINCE MEAT PIE since Mincemeat Pie Day is October 26.

Vocab

ha-ha – sunk fence

alpinism – climbing the Alps

soubrette – frivolous young woman in comedies

kedgeree – an Indian dish of seasoned rice, beans, lentils, and sometimes smoked fish

danegeld – an annual tax believe to have been imposed originally to buy off Danish invaders in England

Stakhanovite – a Soviet industrial worker awarded recognition and special privileges for output beyond production norms

charabanc – a sight-seeing motor coach

ukase – a proclamation by a Russian emperor or govt having the force of law, edict

*    default: how can a girl/woman of 30 yo not have a husband or significant other? might as well be good at your job since you have no one to take care of…  sheesh…

PLEASE SEEK OUT THIS BOOK AND TALK TO ME!

Copyright © 2007-2015. Care’s Online Book Club. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care from Care’s Online Book Club.  It should not be reproduced without express written permission.

Short Reviews of Two Booklets

Thoughts

Feminism is for EVERYBODY – Passionate Politics by bell hooks, South End Press 2000, 118 pages.

This did not read easy.   For a booklet with ‘for Everybody’ in the title, I assumed it would be accessible but I found it highly academic, boring and dry.    It is a treatise but not one at all to win anyone over if they had any questions about what feminism is and how it could be related to or fit into an everyday regular-mill life.       Maybe (and I admit this fully), I have too perfect a life?     I am not that interested in getting highly and actively involved with politics and this book must assume I do.     Please forgive me if I expected the wrong things.

Per the title, it read the very opposite of passionate!   Not to say that she didn’t bring up many truths; she did make claims that I understand and support but she did not win me over to action.    Frankly, when I purchased this, I expected to praise it and sing out hallelujah with each essay but, alas, no.    I fully expect bell hooks fans to tell me which book I should read; and I invite this whole-heartedly!

Thank you.   My hope is that this is only a book that should be read further in to her oeuvre?

♦

They’re Not Dumb, They’re Different:  Stalking the Second Tier, “An Occasional Paper on Neglected Problems in Science Education”   by Sheila Tobias, Research Corporation 1990

Back of the book blurb:   They’re Not Dumb, They’re Different is a study to determine why students abandon science for other disciplines.

Whatever possessed me to purchase this (for a dime) at a library sale in southeastern Nebraska?   Well, the fact that perhaps I was not a good candidate for the degree program in college that I signed up for.    Hmmmm.   Engineering wasn’t easy but I stuck with it.   Matter of pride, of economics, of belief that I was ‘smart enough’ but that doesn’t mean I found a good fit.

This booklet describes a study of placing students into pre-engineering and science classes to find out why they would or would not MAJOR in these programs.     I found it quite interesting.   It also stirred up memories of people I met as a freshman and why people chose to major in engineering.     I recall a girl who had a one-year full scholarship to the College of Engineering who fully intended to take the money and switch to Business since she couldn’t qualify for any dollars from that college!     She knew she was ‘smart enough’ to get an engineering degree but it was ‘boring’.

I also thought this book would address how we can encourage more women to study for  traditionally male careers.   It touched on it some but its focus was not gender-based.

Anyhoo, what I got out of it was that Engineering schools have (had?) no interest in wooing over anyone who ‘might’ be interested in sciences.  They prefer to scare new students and allow that only the tough should survive.    So if ‘kids’ abandon these programs are they stupid or was it the educational style?    Who says there is a shortage of engineers, anyway?     Supply and demand – if fewer engineers are graduated, than starting salaries remain high.   What’s the problem?    No problem.

Thus, professors need not concern themselves with being excellent EDUCATORS and students only just need to study hard and really want to be scientists and engineers.     All those who pass through this system subscribe to it, endure it and perpetuate it.  Thus,  we breed ‘typical’ engineers;  the stereotypes fit.       Smart kids who could do well if they had classes that appealed to their personalities or styles of learning are not being encouraged and thus miss out on what could be an excellent career choice.   Or not.

Unfortunately, I am not in a position to know much about whether or not this is still a problem nor if any schools addressed the idea of reform pertinent to the results of this study.   The document was published 2o years ago.   I found the study interesting, nonetheless.    And it was no help in my quest to grow up and figure out what I want to do with myself for the rest of my life.    I have a pretty good gig* right now , but I feel like I should ‘do’ something more…

* ‘keeping the house’, caring for and training the dogs, volunteering, reading & book-blogging, practising yoga, tutoring in math, and occasionally substitute teaching…    I am very thankful for my life and appreciate all that I have.  Happy Thanksgiving!

HIdeinWhitetoSkipLine

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