Summer Book Reviews

Even though I didn't post on here all summer, I did get some reading in. It wasn't as much as I've done the rest of the year (why? I'll blog about my other summer adventures later), so I thought I'd put it all in one post.

The Horse Boy, Rupert Isaacson
I loved this book. I had heard about it a few times and was interested, so I finally made it to the library to pick it up. It's a father narrating the true story of his son Rowan's life with autism, beginning from the time he was born, through his diagnosis and subsequent events/therapies/treatments, and finally the family's journey to Mongolia to find healing for Rowan.

Rupert Isaacson was a writer and human rights activist who had worked as an advocate for a tribe of Bushmen in Africa. His experiences with the shamans of this and other tribes colored his view of medicine and healing. Rupert and his wife, Kristin, and Rowan spent a weekend with many such shamans at a conference, where Rowan exhibited signs of progress and healing when being in their presence. Later, Rowan, who spent much of his time "inside himself", in his own world, as is characteristic with autism, finally opened up around animals, especially horses. It was while riding the horse of a neighbor that Rowan finally began to talk and interact with those around him, including his father, who was ecstatic at sharing his love of horses with his son. Rowan improved so much as a result of time spent with the horse, and had responded so little to conventional treatments for autism, that Rupert began to form an idea to combine these two seemingly healing powers for his son. Thus, the family embarked on a journey to Mongolia, the country where horses were domesticated, and where shamanism is the national religion.

The rest of the tale is a beautiful, sweeping description of the wild Mongolian countryside, the rituals of the shamans, and the joy and sometimes fear in the family's journey of traveling hundreds of miles and riding the Mongolian horses. In the midst of the journey, Rowan begins to make human connections with those around him, showing signs of possible healing for himself and other autistic children.

This book made me think about healing in the context of my own religion. I strongly believe in the power of healing, and the faith to be healed. Of course, as Latter-day Saints we usually hold the belief that healing only comes by the power of the priesthood, and from the faith of the person being healed. This book described a lot of the faith side, but obviously did not included\ priesthood in an LDS sense. However, healing truly did take place and it was interesting to step back and look at the concept of healing with a larger worldview. I would be interested to know others' thoughts on the concept of healing, specifically the thoughts of LDS people who have read about or seen similar healing experiences outside our faith.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Lisa See

This book was recommended by my Aunt Nancy, who has great taste in books and has read many more books than I have! I loved this one as well. It was the story of a young girl named Lily growing up in a remote Chinese village in the 19th century. It was a very compelling description of the lives, trials, hardships, and inequities that Chinese women endured for many centuries, and probably still do to some extent.

Women in China during this period were valued only for their ability to produce sons, who would then become the head and leader of the family. Girls were required to have their feet bound beginning at age six or seven, or their marriage prospects were completely nonexistent. And if marriage wasn't an option, girls would be sold to other families as a concubine, or "little daughter-in-law" when that family's daughters-in-law failed to produce sons. Girls were seen only as liabilities, extra mouths to feed until they could one day be married off to husbands who would then treat them as property, and own them until their deaths, when the sons would then take over as commander of the woman's life and fate.

These women, however, were clever and found ways to enjoy life and even exert their power in their own subtle ways. Many girls were taught from a very young age to use Nu Shu, a secret writing language developed by women that could be used away from men's influence. At age seven, Lily is paired with a "lao-tong", or "old same", a young girl from another village with whom Lily will forge a lifelong friendship, a relationship that in this culture was more sacred, more intimate than marriage in some ways.

The story follows Lily and her lao-tong, Snow Flower, from before the time they meet, throughout the major events of their lives, as they record messages and letters to each other on a paper fan. Each woman's life takes unexpected turns, but the friendship prevails throughout extreme hardship and even changes in personality and circumstance.

I'll stop the description here, as I feel that to say any more would spoil the story. I found this a fascinating look at another culture and the way women's rights and lives have changed in the world throughout the last century or two.

To Destroy You is No Loss: The Odyssey of a Cambodian Family, Teeda Butt Mam

Another recommendation from my aunt, this book was thoroughly enjoyed as well. It was an account of a family's experiences and struggles during the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. The story is told from the point of view of the family's youngest daughter, Teeda, who was fifteen when the takeover began.

The Butt family was a fairly well-to-do and prominent family from Phnom Penh when the Khmer Rouge communist regime took over Cambodia in the mid 1970s. The family, with the rest of the city's residents, was ushered out of their beloved city and back to rural ancestral villages, where people were then arbitrarily moved and transferred at the will of the regime's leaders. The Butt family lost their father right away, but the restof the family stayed remarkably intact throughout the 4-year, excruciating ordeal they were forced to endure. But life went on, weddings happened, babies were born, and the family survived to tell the world of the hell they went through.

The beginning of the book contained a history of the cultures and governments of Southeast Asia. This included comments about Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos, as these countries now exist because of arbitrary borders drawn by foreign governments and have ancient tribal lines that transcend these borders. I thoroughly enjoyed this section, having traveled to Vietnam. It was very interesting to read more about the history of the Vietnam war, the different perceptions of this war as experienced by citizens of Southeast Asia, and the impacts on surrounding countries.

Teeda and her family lived in rural jungle villages for most of the story, forced to perform hard physcial labor 12 to 14 hours a day, no matter the age, condition, or gender of the person. The Khmer Rouge maintained a nameless, faceless, power that rendered the citizens of Cambodia helpless to do anything about the terror of the situation in which they were placed. When the regime finally collapsed, Teeda and her new husand of four days and the rest of their extended family began the long journey on foot to the Cambodian-Thai border where they hoped to finally find freedom. The spent a few weeks in a refugee camp, where Teeda's sister Mearadey wrote to every relative abroad she could think of, asking for sponsors to help their family emigrate to America. Finally, Mearadey, her husband, and three children were put on a bus and given the necessary means to make it to the US. Shortly after, Teeda and the rest of her family, including her frail mother, were put on a bus as well, but before they could breathe a sigh of relief at being able to escape, the bus turned around and took them back to Cambodia, which meant certain death.

With extraordinary courage and perseverance, Teeda's family once again made the trek across Cambodia, the dangerous crossing into Thailand, and survived the refugee camp long enough to settle in America. This heartbreaking story was fascinating for me to read, as I learned of events and gross human rights abuses that were going on in the world so recently. In fact, Teeda and her family made their second escape into Thailand right during the time I was born.

I would suggest this book to anyone looking for a story of human courage that is beyond the so often told or read Western stories of the Holocaust, etc. This story is comparable but, much more recent and with a different angle. You won't be disappointed.

Calling Limbo

An interesting thing happened the other day...our ward was dissolved. I haven't experience this before, and it's a little unnerving. I mean, we've only been in the ward a little over a year, but I didn't realize how attached I'd gotten. All of the wards in our stake are small, but we had one of the smallest, situated geographically in an area where it could easily be split and absorbed by the two surrounding wards. And that's what happened. Yes, our small ward struggled a bit, there weren't enough people to fill all the callings, and it was hard dealing with lots of inactivity when trying to fill said callings. But the calling I had here was unforgettable to me. What started out feeling like one of the most daunting callings I'd ever received, turned out to be my very favorite. I connected with my young women more than I ever thought I would. I know everyone always says that in a "teaching" calling like this, you end up learning more than those you actually teach. I think it became true for me here. I learned to observe, listen, speak, lead, serve, and much more. I feel that I truly learned, for the first time, how I personally receive inspiration and saw how that worked in my life and the lives of others. There was just something about our little group, struggling, learning, laughing together, that I'll miss. Now it's on to a new ward, and most likely, a new calling. I'm excited to see what I'll learn this time, but a little nervous too. I mean, how could I possibly love my next calling as much as I loved this one? It kept me busy in a way that I love to be, and kept me distracted from a job I don't love, and abated loneliness in my new found free time during this stage in my life when most of my good friends live in other states. It's truly been an experience to remember. Now, I guess I'll have to learn to attend Relief Society again, something I haven't really done in nearly 3 years. Anyone else had a similar experience? Or am I total sap?



Love these girls.

May Book Reviews

When You Are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris
This was another D.I. book! My sister introduced me to David Sedaris several years ago, and he has also been a regular contributor on NPR. He writes mostly of his own life experiences, somehow putting a twist in the telling of every day events to make them hilarious. This book was as funny as anything else I've ever seen from him. If you are going to read this book based on this review, then let me just warn you (Nancy's mom, are you reading this?) about some explicit content. Some chapters have it, some don't. My favorite chapter was the last one, called "The Smoking Section". It chronicles Sedaris's quest to stop smoking and his several month-long trip to Japan with his partner. He has a gift of telling about mundane experiences in a way that makes them seem hysterical. I loved the way he contrasted Japanese culture with Western culture, and especially the English translations he observed. A thoroughly funny book, just watch out for some of the explicit content if you aren't wanting to be exposed to that!


The Wednesday Letters, Jason F. Wright
Yet again, D.I. This one I didn't feel quite as lucky to find once I read it. Yes, it was heartfelt, blah blah blah. It was about a family in rural Southern Virginia who owned an inn and raised their three children there, and about the things that drove them apart and ultimately brought them back together. Anyone smell predictability? The book opens one night near the end of the story, and then flashes back through time to tell the story of the parents' marriage and their life together raising their family through weekly letters that the husband, Jack, wrote to the wife, Laurel. In the opening scene, Jack and Laurel both die within 20 minutes of each other (I'm not spoiling, it's written on the blurb on the jacket), which forces the children to reunite for their parents' funeral. In doing so, they find boxes and boxes of letters that Jack has written to Laurel over the years. As they read through the letters, they discover a *gasp* FAMILY SECRET that threatens to destroy what they know and love...

Okay, so the story was fine, it was just predictable. The characters were okay, but also predictable and not that well-developed, in my opinion. The writing was trite, and the setting and supporting characters were just a little too convenient. I know lots of people love books like this, that tell a good wholesome family story, but it was just a little too much for me. If you read it and disagree, feel free to tell me what you thought.


Atonement, Ian McEwan
I have wanted to read this book since I saw the movie previews a few years ago. They just made the story look so interesting! I still haven't seen the movie, but I managed to read the book. It begins with a young girl, Briony Tallis, living at her family's manor in England in 1935. I liked the development of the character of Briony. The reader was allowed into her 13-year-old mind to experience her thoughts and feelings, and it sets the stage for what happens next. One hot summer day, Briony witnesses several encounters involving her older sister, 23-year-old Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, their housekeeper's son and the family's longtime friend. As a budding young writer, Briony has an active imagination and attempts to incorporate events around her into her storytelling. She fancies herself somewhat of a heroine in her stories, and this spills over into her own life, setting off a disastrous chain of events that affects the lives of nearly everyone in her family when she can't separate her imagination from reality and unwittingly implicates someone in a grave crime they did not commit. The story leaves off after the events of this day and picks up again ten years later, in 1945 and the middle of World War II. Briony is now a nurse working in a hospital that takes care of wounded and dying soldiers. She realizes, with adult perspective, what really happened that day in her childhood and she attempts to repair the situation and make amends with those she has hurt. The story then leaves off again and picks up in 1999, when Briony meets with family members for her 77th birthday celebration.

I have to admit, I didn't love it as much as I hoped I would. After watching the previews and reading the book's jacket blurb, I had hoped for a more emotionally charged and fleshed out story. The book jacket says how the author has never "worked with so large a canvas", spanning dates from the 1930s to the present, and how it is his greatest masterpiece. I guess I just had a little bit higher expectations based on what I had seen and heard. The characters were wonderful, I enjoyed their development and getting to know them. The story telling was also wonderful, and in these senses it was a masterpiece. I guess I was just hoping for more - more insight into what life was like for the characters during these time periods, I felt that they were each too short and disconnected. I also hoped to find out more about how the problems were resolved - I suppose this was left hanging on purpose to allow the reader to come to their own conclusions. I guess I was expecting too much. I really did enjoy the book, it was just not what I expected. I would still recommend it.


Of Love and Other Demons, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
This was an interesting book. I had previously read "Love in the Time of Cholera" by the same author and really enjoyed it, so I picked up this little story at the library a few weeks ago. I really enjoy Marquez's writing style. He has a way of wording things that I really like. Of course, it is translated from Spanish, so who knows if it is exactly as the author intended it. At the same time, however, I think it is impressive that a translator could get the author's meaning across so eloquently. This book was the story of a family that was part of the decaying noble class in 18th century Colombia (I think - ? I guess it never really says exactly where the book takes place but Marquez is from Colombia and the other book I read was set there, and this setting seemed similar). Don Ygnacio de Alfaro y Duenas is the father of this family, and he is described as a funereal, effeminate man, as pale as a lily because the bats drained his blood while he slept." Bernarda, his estranged wife, loves no one, even her family members, as she pines for a slave that she fell in love with long ago during her days as a merchant in the slave trade. Their daughter, Sierva Maria, is completely neglected by both parents and raised by the household slaves in their African traditions. The girl is bitten by a rabid dog on her twelfth birthday and begins to exhibit bizarre behavior. Or rather, her parents begin noticing her regular behavior when they pay attention to her for the first time. Ygnacio realizes that he actually loves his daughter, and seeks help from the local Catholic bishop, and also a local Jewish doctor, considered to be a heretic. Sierva Maria is eventually deposited by her father into a convent of Clarissan nuns, where she is kept in a prison cell. The bishop finally turns the girl's care over to his protege, Cayetano Delaura, who begins visiting the girl daily. He eventually falls in love with her, and a tragic chain of events is set in motion, including exorcism of the demons believed to be possessing the young girl, and the subsequent deaths of most of the main characters. This time I was expecting tragedy, and I was fine with it in this book. It seemed in keeping with Marquez's writing style. So does a grown man falling in love, or having a physical relationship, with a young girl. This has happened in both of his books that I have read so far. I don't know if this was cultually and morally acceptable in 18th and 19th century South America, or just something the author adds for interest, but it is a little disturbing according to today's standards. Still, an interesting look at the culture of the time and the interplay of science and religion in the society. And at only 147 pages, definitely worth a read.

It's over

My show is over. Now, I've never been a big TV watcher, and I especially don't like to plan my life around a show, but Lost sucked me right in and I was hooked. I admit, I joined in late. Adam and Kim let us borrow the DVDs for the first two seasons a couple of years ago. Once I watched those, I knew I had to catch up before the next season (#5) started on TV. Then Chase and I made a Wednesday night ritual of watching the newest episode (we watched them online the day after they came out on TV since we don't get TV channels). It was almost comforting to tune in to those people and their crazy island problems every week! Not to mention, it has got to be one of the best TV shows ever made. Lost was an intelligent show, and assumed the viewer was intelligent as well, which was refreshing. I liked the psychological, philosophical, religious, and literary overtones, and the symbolism. It was a show really made you care about the characters, and what was happening in their lives, past and present (and future!). I even liked the finale. I know some people were disappointed, but I felt like it was emotionally satisfying. I know there were questions that were left unanswered, but I felt like that was to be expected. I think one mark of good writing and character development, whether in a movie, TV show, or book, is that it keeps you thinking about the story long after you have finished it. Lost definitely did that for me. Good thing Netflix has all the seasons on instant play...I just might watch them again! What did some of you other Lost fans think of the series finale? Are you lost without it? (he he)

Weekend

Sleeping in. Picnic in the park. Cookie bites from Corner Bakery. Friends over, and grilled pizza on the barbecue. Settlers of Catan. Sunshine. Naps. Getting sent home from work early. Trail running. Movies. It was a good weekend.

Food Revolution

Chase and I watched all six episodes of "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" on ABC's website. (I love ABC's website! They have all the episodes of all their shows, not just the last 5.) You can watch it here, and I would suggest that you do, if you haven't already. I think there is a lot that we can all learn from it. Everyone has probably heard a lot lately about the movement toward eating more healthy, fresh, and local food and generally having more interest and knowledge in where our food comes from. I have personally been obsessed with this lately, with Netflix helping to feed my addiction by offering streaming documentaries like Food, Inc., King Corn, and of course the old standby, that arguably started it all, Supersize Me.

Anyway, Jamie Oliver, of Naked Chef fame, heard about the US government health report that exposed Huntington, West Virginia as the unhealthiest city in the US, in terms of obesity and related health problems. He travels there to see if he can help the citizens of the town to make some changes. He works with the local schools, churches, and even individual families to educate them about healthy eating and lifestyle choices. Most of his time is probably spent in the community's public schools, trying to exchange the frozen, processed, saturated-fat laden unhealthy foods being served in the schools for fresh-cooked, healthier options. Nearly everyone in the town is opposed to him at first, but as he works with people and shows them how easy and worthwhile the changes can be, he slowly gains many followers.

I won't tell the whole story here, because I don't want to spoil it for those who still want to watch it (please watch!), but I will mention some of the things I found interesting. First, Jamie wanted to see how much the children in the elementary school really knew about healthy eating. He visited a classroom of young children (kindergarten or first grade) and showed them a variety of fresh vegetables. There was not one child in that entire class who knew a single vegetable by name upon seeing it. I don't think most of them had even eaten a fresh vegetable before. And these were not all obscure vegetables either - they were potatoes, tomatoes, and such!

Another thing that I couldn't believe was the "nutritional" guidelines that Jamie and the school were required to follow. In one episode, Jamie cooked his own fresh food for lunch at the high school, instead of letting the kids go through the regular hamburger/chicken patty/french fry line. After serving food for a while, the woman in charge of school lunches for the district showed up and told Jamie that his lunch, which was a vegetable-pasta stir fry with seven different vegetables, and a side of fruit, did not meet the fruit/veggie requirements of the USDA for school lunches. So the french fries were brought back out, as those would fulfill the vegetable requirement. What's crazy is that the USDA and US government guidelines are making school lunches unhealthier than they need to be!

Finally, Jamie went to the home of a local family to see if he could help them learn to make choices that would curb their obesity problem. He went through their kitchen and dumped out all the food from their pantry, fridge, and freezer onto the table. By the time he was done, the table was filled with frozen pizzas, corn dogs, donuts, snack cakes, etc. All of it was processed, pre-packaged food - not one thing was fresh! Needless to say, every member of the family was overweight.

This just backs up my feeling that we each need to be more personally responsible for finding out more about where our food comes from. Is our meat industrially raised, crammed into unlivable spaces and injected with hormones and antibiotics and other additives just to make it "safe" for us to eat? Is our produce shipped in from other countries, contributing to massive carbon emissions and other problems that destroy the environment? It shouldn't be that hard, no matter where we live, to find at least some locally grown, in season produce, or locally packaged foods when we do need to buy packaged. Also, we can take a little extra time to make things that we would normally buy, and it is so much healthier! Making the change to foods that are healthier for us and healthier for the world around us can seem like a difficult task, but let's start small. I challenge anyone who is reading this to watch this show, and make some changes in your family's food choices today!

Also, if you feel strongly about this food issue and you want to help improve school food in America, you can go here to sign a petition that Jamie will eventually be taking to the White House to ask for the government's help in providing more nutritious food in US schools. There are at least 1,000 people from every state that have already signed up!

April Book Reviews

The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver
This book ended up being one of my favorite books that I have ever read. There were just so many things I loved about it - the characters, comprising a family of all girls, the true historical setting (although the book itself was fiction), the wordplay used by the characters and the changing narrator. "The Poisonwood Bible" is set mostly in the Congo (Belgian), Africa in the 1960s. It tells the story of a Baptist preacher and his family who travel to the Congo on an evangelical mission. The story is alternately narrated by the mother and the four daughters of the family. Each has a startlingly astute point of view, whether she realizes it or not. In the backdrop of the family's saga are the true events of the Congo's fight for independence from Belgium, the election of their first democratic leader, and his subsequent assassination as part of a coup backed by the CIA and the American government. I was shocked to read about this. Maybe I should have already known this important story, but I guess it's not the kind of thing they teach you in high school American history. It was a sad commentary on the effects of powerful, first-world nations, and the devastating repercussions faced by developing countries, especially resource-rich ones like the Congo. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone. Five stars.


The Last Summer (of you and me), by Ann Brashares
This book was a nice easy read. It would have been perfect summer beach or camping reading. However, Chase and I had just made a trip to the DI for some old-looking books to help fill our built in shelves in the living room. I saw this one for a dollar, and having read the "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" series by the same author, thought I'd give it a try. The back of the book says that this is Ann Brashares's first novel for adults. I'm not sure I'd say it's for adults, but I guess it's not for teenagers. It's about two sisters, Riley and Alice, who have spent their summers for their entire lives on Fire Island, a small island off the coast of New York. Riley and Alice are three years apart in age and very different, yet very close. They have shared many things, including the friendship of their next-door-neighbor on the island, Paul. The summer that the book takes place, Alice and Riley are both in their early twenties and they are spending what they both know may be their last summer on the island. Paul returns to the island that summer too, after being away from the girls for 3 years. Riley hasn't lost any of her childhood wonder, energy, or innocence, but Alice, the younger sister has grown up a bit and is confronted with the realization that she has always loved Paul. The two are faced with how to deal with their new found romance in the presence of Riley, who has always been best friends with Paul. The story follows the three through the summer, the fall, winter and spring of the next year, and into the next summer as they deal with growing up, loss, and love. (No, I didn't copy that off the back off the book, but it sounded kinda cheesy, didn't it?) The story was okay. I do think Ann Brashares has a talent for developing the deep feelings and inner musings of her characters, which I enjoy. This was a fun read that you can easily get through in a day or two. Not amazing though. Three stars.



'Tis, by Frank McCourt
This was another DI find. I haven't read his best-selling memoir, "Angela's Ashes" (not sure why - just haven't gotten around to it I guess), but I couldn't resist this "sequel" memoir by Frank McCourt for 2 dollars. Frank McCourt was born to an Irish family in Brooklyn in 1930. When Frank was four years old, his parents moved with him and their other children back to Limerick, Ireland, where his mother was from as his father was unable to find work in Depression-era America. His eventually found work in England when Frank was older, although he spent most of his earnings on alcohol, rarely sending any to support the family and forcing them into poverty and begging for food and other necessities. When Frank was 18, he returned to American by himself, joined the army, received an education at NYU, and became a high-school teacher and Pulitzer-prize winning author. He himself lived in poverty for many of the years he was in New York, subsisting on his meager teacher's salary and sending any extra money home to Ireland to support his mother and brothers. One by one, each of his family members made their way to America, with the exception of his father, with whom he never really reconciled. "'Tis" tells the story of Frank's adult life against the backdrop of mid-century America. I guess I was surprised to learn that even that recently in our country's history, so many immigrants were being treated differently. Not always badly, but sometimes. McCourt notes many times throughout the book that he wonders why anyone he meets who is Irish and can tell that he is Irish automatically tells him what part of Ireland their parents grew up in, and not to mingle with others who are not like him. Even those who are not Irish among the Americans he meets tell him he's better off sticking with other Irish people. "Stick with your own kind", they tell him. I of course realized that blacks and many other ethnic groups faced and still do face this kind of racism and discrimination, but it was sort of new to me to think of Irish (white people!) as being treated so differently in America, and so recently. Ultimately, though, I think McCourt's "Irishness" very profoundly shaped who he became. This was a sad and also funny and moving true story. Four stars.

Happy Earth Day!

Okay, I know it was yesterday. I didn't have time to post yesterday. But I still wanted to do a post on the 40th anniversary of Earth Day! I think it's great that since 1970, Earth Day has become more accepted and more mainstream. And hopefully, living in an Earth-friendly manner is something we're all considering more and more. I wanted to list a few easy things that we can all do, and that we try to do at our house, to live a more sustainable lifestyle.

1. Use less plastic. Reusable shopping bags are a great start. Plus, they are much cuter than plastic grocery bags. You can get some great-looking ones at Envirosax. They even come in a little case so you can throw them all in your glove box when you're driving to the store. And speaking of driving to the store...

2. Drive less! Combine trips if you can, and ride the bus or the train! Lots of times when I ride the bus, I am the only one on it. If we could fill up the buses, we'd take a lot of cars off the road!

3. Use less power. Unplug your phone charger when it's not actually charging your phone. Plug your TV, DVD player, etc. into power strips that you can turn off when you're not using them. Get dimmer switches for your room lights, and use CFLs. But dispose of them properly!

4. RECYCLE! This one is easy! We put so much less garbage in our landfills when we recyle.

5. Use less water by implementing strategies like using a shower timer to take shorter showers, or turning off the water while you're brushing your teeth. (I'm still working on these ones.)

6. Grow your own food. Plant a garden and get as much food out of your own yard as you can! The only energy used in producing and harvesting will be the calories you burn working in the garden and picking your home grown fruits and vegetables!

These are just a few things that are easy to add into your daily life...I may add more if I think of them. What things do you do?

March Book Reviews

I didn't get as much reading done as I was hoping in March. I did manage to get through two short books though. So I'm a little late in posting them, but here they are.


"Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston was the first book I read in March. It is a novel that is considered the author's greatest work. Zora Neale Hurston was an African American author in the early 20th century. I would actually like to read more of her books, as she was a compelling and stimulating author, who also seems like a very interesting woman. And, Zora is a really cool name. This books is about a young African American girl who has grown up in the South, experiencing the many prejudices faced by blacks and women at that time. Refusing to fit into the mold that society has cast for her, the story follows Janie into adulthood through three marriages (one arranged) and shows how she finds love on her own terms. The story takes place primarily in Eatonville, Florida, the first all-black incorporated town. As someone who was born and grew up after civil rights were in place it seemed like a great glimpse for me into the life of African Americans in the early 20th century. Five stars.


I've had "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" on my shelf for probably at least ten years. I think I had to buy it for a college class once, but then I don't think we ever ended up using it for the class. At any rate, this was the first time I read it. It was a nice inspirational story, I suppose, and it had a good message about working hard to become your best self and help others. I found it a little hokey, though. Maybe it was the grainy black-and-white photos of seagulls throughout the book, or the corny 1970s feel to the story and the personification of seagulls with dignified sounding human names (and middle names!), but it just didn't quite do it for me. It only took me about an hour to read though, so I wouldn't say it was a waste of time. I can only wonder what the film version is like...two stars.

Some more remodeling

We've been slowly working on our house for the last 10 months or so. Some of the projects, like finishing the kitchen, have had to wait because of expenses. We're still trying to catch up since Chase lost his job last fall. But last week, when our garbage disposal broke, we decided we had to do something. We could pay $55 to get our garbage disposal looked at, and possibly pieced back together to work marginally well for another couple of months under our home warranty, or we could pay $70 to get a brand new one. Which we did. However, we knew we needed to eventually get a new sink and counter tops, and it would be silly to install a new garbage disposal in our old sink if we were just going to replace it...you can see where I am going with this. So, we went to Ikea and found a "damaged" (slightly scratched) sink for 40% off and wood countertops that we liked that were pretty affordable. We only got countertops for the counter that has the sink right now, so for a while we will be mismatched. But that's okay, it's starting to look (and function) so much better in there!






This is what the sink area of our kitchen looked like before. Stained, ugly sink, disgusting old faucet, chipped countertops...





This is what it looks like now. Much better, right? We just need to add our colored glass tile backsplash, which Chase scored for $7 for the whole kitchen at a tile store sale!

February Book Reviews

Febraury was a short month...that's my reasoning for only having read two books. Also, they both took a while to get through.

This was a very interesting book that I got for Christmas a couple of years ago. (Yup, I'm catching up on my Christmas presents for the last several years.) It is thought to be an original manuscript written by a black slave woman in the 1850s. It was found at an auction by Henry Louis Gates, and researched and edited by him. There is a lengthy introduction about the acquisition of and the research done on the manuscript, which is what made it take a while to read. The book itself is fairly short, probably less than 200 pages. Gates makes the case that this is the first novel ever written by a female slave, and possibly by a black woman at all. The novel is though to be fiction, but heavily influenced by actual events in the author's life as well as the literary style of the day, namely the gothic and sentimental novels of the 19th century. An interesting read, mostly for its novelty. Three stars.

I just finished this one. This book was very sad, and actually kind of depressing. It's a holocaust story, but not your typical holocaust story. Told from the point of view of a Polish Gentile survivor of Auschwitz and a young American writer, it addresses issues not only of the war and the holocaust, but also of the decade of the 1940s and the feeling and mood of the time. It talks about how Americans, even though we were part of the war, for the most part did not know what went on in Europe during those years. It suggests that the suffering of the Holocaust was endured and experienced by many peoples throughout Europe and the world, not just Jews, and draws parallels between anti-Semitism and the heated racial tensions in the American South in the first half of the twentieth century. The book had a little more profanity and other explicit scenes than I would have liked, but it was a wonderful, sad, heart breaking story that still applies today. Four stars.

The Trip

Last month, we finally went on the cruise we'd been planning for over a year. This was in place of the one we didn't get to go on for our first anniversary, because the boat left without us (how mean!). I won't tell the whole story here - it's too painful! - suffice it to say, we were really looking forward to this one. We both love the warm weather and even though our trip didn't have as much of that as we hoped, we enjoyed experiencing the Caribbean.

This time we flew in on a Saturday, 2 days before our cruise left. This gave us plenty of time to relax. We hung out in our hotel room, watched TV (which is something we only do when we're traveling since we don't have TV at home), went for walks, and went swimming. We took a one-hour bus ride to the port on Monday morning, and there we were, on our ship! It was actually the same ship we cruised on for our honeymoon! We couldn't believe we actually made it on this time and were going to the Bahamas!

The cruise had two stops, Coco Cay (the cruise line's private island) and Nassau, the capital city of the Bahamas, on New Providence Island. We stopped in Coco Cay the day after the ship departed Florida. It was a really fun stop. Everyone on the island was from our cruise, so it didn't seem too crowded and they were able to include lunch with our excursion. We went snorkeling in the crystal clear Caribbean water. It was my first time snorkeling, and it was amazing. I love how you can sort of float along with almost no effort; slightly kicking your feet to move yourself through the water is all you have to do. The bottom of the ocean was beautiful to see. There were so many colored fish, starfish, coral, conch shells, sand dollars, and...WE SAW A MANATEE! I believe wild manatee sightings in the Bahamas are pretty rare, since manatees are endangered animals. Chase and I were the only people that saw it, I'm not sure if the other people that were snorkeling around us believed us, but we kept wanting to tell everyone, we were so excited! It was less than 3 feet from us. It was so friendly and docile. It stopped in the water near us and let us look at it while it looked at us for what felt like several minutes. Then, just as quickly, it swam away and was gone. It was definitely one of the most amazing things I have ever seen! The people preparing us for our snorkeling expedition did not even mention the possiblity of seeing a manatee, or maybe we would have invested in the disposable underwater cameras they had for sale...I wish we had a picture of our manatee! But here is what it looked like:

It was smaller than I expected. After seeing it, we talked with one of the cruise employees working on the island, and she said there was a family of manatees living nearby, a father, mother, and a baby. I am pretty sure the one we saw was the baby, or at least young, manatee.

Here are some more pictures of Coco Cay. It was a beautiful day. I ended up with a sunburn (as usual) even though I used lots of SPF 50. I'm pretty sure I was the whitest person on that beach.





The next day our ship stopped in Nassau. It was actually kind of disappointing. It was raining all day, so even though we were docked and didn't have to be back on the ship until 11 PM, we went back around 1 PM because it was freezing cold, pouring rain, and there really wasn't that much to do there. Nassau seemed like a rather dirty, seedy city that really catered to tourists. Everywhere you walked there were people shouting at you to buy something that they were selling. We took a water taxi over to Paradise Island, hoping that would be a little better. Most of that island is owned by the Atlantis Resort, which has a huge hotel, condo residences, a casino, shops, restaurants, and aquarium, and a water park on the island. Of course, this didn't make things any cheaper there! They owned everything and could jack up the prices. So lunch for the two of us at Johnny Rocket's was $30. And we didn't even get drinks. Also, you had to pay to go on the beaches.

The Atlantis Hotel on Paradise Island


Us on Paradise Island



The aquarium on Paradise Island


Nassau


This one kind of shows how bad the weather was. The islands were beautiful though.

The next day we were at sea all day on our cruise ship. The cruise lines do a pretty good job of coming up with activities to entertain people on days like that. Chase and I won second place on the cruise's ship scavenger hunt, so we are now the proud owners of 6 Royal Caribbean pens. Chase also entered the men's sexy legs contest, and he won a medal for "Best Flamingo Legs"!

Showing off the medal (and the legs)
We had a great time on the cruise. We ate dinner with some fun people that sat at our table every night. There was a honeymooning young couple from Boston, another couple from Michigan, a British couple that lived in France (and entertained us every night with their stories) and a couple from Hong Kong. We all got along really well and even hung out outside of dinner! The last night we all went to the ship's piano bar and listened to the pianist play and sing request after request from people on the ship. It was a great time.

On the day the cruise ended, we decided to go to Disney World. We had free passes from participating in Disney's "Give a Day, Get a Disney Day" program. We spent our day at Epcot Center. I had never been to Disney World at all. Chase had been once to all the parks, and recommended Epcot as the place to go for me. Since he said the Magic Kingdom at Disney World is pretty much just like Disneyland, and I've been to Disneyland tons of times, we opted for something different. Epcot was great! I loved seeing all their depictions of the different countries, with the shops and restaurants located in each one. We ate lunch in "Morocco", and also visited Japan, China, Germany, Italy, France, Norway, Mexico, and probably some others!

Italy


Norway

There weren't as many rides at Epcot, but there were a few really fun ones we did go on. They had a lot of other fun things like films about the environment or the different countries, shops selling things from those countries, and (this surprised me) tons of the Disney characters roaming around! We saw Alice in Wonderland and Mary Poppins in England, Aladdin and Jasmine in Morocco, Beauty and the Beast in France, Snow White in Germany, etc.

There is so much to see in Disney World; if we were ever going to hope to see it all I think we'd have to make that a week long trip in itself. The trip was amazing. It wore us out though (or mostly the traveling wore us out I guess) and we were glad to get home. I think Lucy was glad to see us too, although she had a fun time spending the week in Woodland Hills with Chases's parents. Now she's used to having us home and back to her regular antics.

January Book Reviews

This year I think I would like to post reviews each month on the books I read. It will help me keep track of what I have read so I can look back and recommend books to other people. January was a long month (it seemed). I was able to get through four pretty good books.

I got the book "To See You Again" for Christmas from my dad. He had told me about it before, so I was excited to open it on Christmas. I've always been a sucker for books about WWII, and this one was the true story of Betty Schimmel, a young Jewish girl growing up in Eastern Europe. She and her childhood sweetheart, Richie, were separated during an air raid in Budapest, where their families were living in the ghetto. They vowed they would find each other and get married someday, but after Betty and her family were liberated from a concentration camp, she was unable to find Richie. At the urging of her family, she married another nice young man, Otto, whom she never really loved. They have 3 children and build a life together in America. On a trip back to Hungary later in her adult years, after her children are grown, she has a chance meeting with Richie in a restaurant, and must decide whether to act upon the feelings of love she still has for him after all those years. This story was beautifully told, especially for someone who is not a writer, or even a native English speaker, and simultaneously beautiful and heartbreaking. I give it 4 1/2 stars.

Next I read "The Looking Glass" by Richard Paul Evans. I have had this book for nearly 10 years, and I think I have read it in the past, but it has been long enough that I couldn't remember...I pulled it out again because I knew I could read it in a day or so. This is a fictional story of course, set in 1870s Utah during the gold rush. It involves a man who was once a preacher, who has abandoned his parish and come out west to search for gold and new meaning in his life after his wife dies. It is an interesting historical fiction that covers some of the issues of the time, such as women's rights and racism, that are still pertinent today. It may have been a little trite and predictable, but was still a nice love story. Three stars.

Next on my list was "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch. I received this one last year for Christmas from my Dad, but hadn't had time to read it since I was in school. This was also a quick read, as it is a series of short essays, almost letters, from the author, between a half page and several pages long. Randy Pausch was a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, and was diagnosed with terminal cancer in his 40s. He had a young family and had only been married for ten years or so. Soon after his diagnosis, the university asked him to give a "last lecture", something that professors usually do upon retirement to leave their last bits of wisdom to their students. Randy decided to do this as a tribute to his children, to leave them life advice he knew they would need later on, and as a way to remember him. He writes about many different subjects, including childhood dreams, career, love, and family. He seems to have an exceptional personality and positive attitude, therefore, his life has also been exceptional and full of many great opportunities. Although most people may not be able to apply everything he says, not having had the many great opportunities and advantages he seems to have had, it is still great advice on how to life a good, full life. Four stars.

Finally, in January I read "Dewey: The small town library cat who touched the world" by Vicki Myron. Chase got this one last year for Christmas (thanks again Dad!) and loved it, so I thought I'd read it. This was also a non-fiction about a library in Spencer, Iowa. Dewey was a kitten that had been shoved into the library's book return slot on a cold winter evening, and found the next morning by the librarian. She kept him and he became the cat in residence at the Spencer Public Library. Woven in with the story of Dewey and how he touched the library patrons are scenes from the author's life and views of a small Midwestern farming town and its struggle to survive during the 80s and 90s. The library was a big part of the town, and Dewey became a big part of people's lives. I love reading non fiction, and I love it even more when the true so story is so exceptional that it seems like it should be fiction! The things that happen in people's lives really are better than fiction a lot of times. Three and a half stars here. Also looking forward to the movie version, in which Meryl Streep is rumored to play the librarian.

2009 Year in Review

2009 was an interesting year. Here are some of the things we did:



January - we got a new car. The one we had before was a total lemon. We had decided about six months previously to be a one-car family, so we were very excited when we got our Honda Element! We have loved it.




February - My first niece, Emi was born. What a little darling! We also took our annual family President's Day weekend trip to St. George.






March - After a few months of looking and making offers, we finally found our new house! Actually, it's an old house, built in 1922. It looks a bit different that this now, as we have done some fixing up, but here's what it looked like in March.







April - Chase's birthday, and a trip to Las Vegas/St. George/Kanarraville that was enjoyed with the company of some family and friends. We even saw a Gila monster in the wild!







May - We moved into our house, and we've been working on it ever since then! We also got Lucy. In addition, I was able to travel to Dallas to present two research papers I'd written at a medical conference.





June - I started my final semester of nursing school. I don't have a picture for this one, and it's a good thing, because if I did, it would involve me buried in a pile of books, looking like a crazy woman, wearing some ugly blue scrubs.








July - I don't really even remember July, it was such a blur. We went to see The Fray in concert with my sisters, which gave us a new love of The Fray. I also baked my first pie from scratch. Yum!






August - I finally graduated from nursing school! We also said goodbye to Carrie when she moved to New York, and then hello to her again a few weeks later when we arrived in New York for our trip! We also visited Maine, Boston, and Washington, D.C., where we visited with Brittany, Lumina, Dan, and Aunt Nancy and her family!





September - I started my new job as a nurse. Chase lost his job, and began a 3-month search to find a new one. I began doing things like making home made bread to save money. I also learned how to can jam!





October - I turned 30. I've already written a post on that.





November - Chase found a job at Legacy Preparatory Academy, where he is currently in charge of Special Education at the secondary school. No pictures of that. We also traveled to Price to set up Carrie's art exhibit, since she couldn't do it from New York. We had fun doing that!

December - we finally re-did our kitchen floor! It looks great. Pictures of that coming soon, since we still have to finish the baseboards and the stairs.

Here are some of the things we are looking forward to in 2010: A visit from Brittany, a new baby in my family (Alicia's - due any day!), our cruise to the Bahamas in February (finally!), and much more that I will blog about later!