Get Me Out of Here
Title: Get Me Out of Here
Author: Rachel Reiland
Genre: Memoir/ Psychology
Length: 447 pages
There was no hope for this book – it is so fascinating and so full of raw heart and soul of a person and her mental illness – my copy is obliterated with underlines and notes in margins. I read all 447 pages in less than a 12 hour period, without shirking my life responsibilities, and gave it a five star rating. I recommend it to anyone trying to understand the inner workings of a mentally ill brain.
“One of the saddest facts isn’t that there is still a child within you but that you’re so ashamed of that child. What’s even sadder is that you have always been ashamed of that child, even when you were one.” – pg. 141
The Best of Foodie Memoirs
Title: Lunch in Paris
Author: Elizabeth Bard
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Genre: Travel/Memoir/Cooking
If you are looking for Eat, Pray, Love or Julie & Julia at the bookstore – STOP. Pick this up instead. It’s friendlier, wittier, and far more relaxing.
It was the water color that got me first. That and the fact that I love memoirs with recipes, they pretty much dominate my source of kitchen plans. Then, that first page of that first chapter: Coffee, Tea, or Me and her description of herself – I felt so at home, so in league with a kindred spirit.
She says things like “I stood pressed against the wall, like a field anthropologist caught in the middle of a buffalo exorcism,” when describing a French dance party. How can you not fall in love with a writer that expresses herself like that? I literally started laughing out loud, and I hate using that phrase since all the texters in society have begun speaking how they type, so when I use it I really mean it.
Bard is pleasant and loveable. She has dilemmas that I can sympathize with, as opposed to Gilbert’s laments in Eat, Pray, Love which seemed all a little over the top and self inflicted. I did laugh a few times when she chalked something her husband did up to his being French, a lot of times it just seemed very husbandy to me. But for the most part, I think I was only laughing when I was truly meant to, when she utilized some turn of phrase or told a story that should make the corners of your mouth twitch while you read.
My favorite moment was when a friend tells her she can’t just go to the market for the rest of her life. Before Bard got a chance to say it herself, I inwardly pleaded… why not? It doesn’t matter whether you loathe or love the grocery stores here in the states, Bard will make you fall in love with European markets and long desperately to go make purchases at a butcher shop in Paris and linger over vegetables in the streets.
Go. Buy. Enjoy. I know you’ll love it.
Nowhere Near Almost There
Title: Almost There
Author: Nuala O’Faolain
I love reading for holidays. Around Christmas, I choose appropriately wintery titles. For Valentines Day, even though I am not a fan of the holiday, I’ll read a short cheesy love story that I would probably otherwise not pick up. Earth Day in April calls for all things naturey and Halloween is for spooky-ness. So of course, once a year in March, I pick up whatever I have on hand that seems the most Irish.
This year’s choice was Nuala O’Faolain’s Almost There. It was a crappy trade paperback I got for free that I remember picking up out of a recycle bin somewhere and thinking, I would read that for St. Patty’s sometime. Memoirs are generally quick reads too, perfect for a weekend in March. Even more perfect, I thought, because I just finished Sheridan Hay’s The Secret of Lost Things and in the thank you’s Hay thanks O’Faolain. I like streaming my reading along these sorts of vague connections. Reading Almost There would be the most awesome St.Patty’s 2013 book, I thought, everything just fell into place.
Except not.
I am 29 years old. I may have not done as much as I would have wanted by my 29th year, but I don’t feel like I’ve wasted my time either. I have 15 years of experience as a Kung Fu instructor. I was briefly in a crappy band, my singing years better spent in a high school choir. I have waited tables, been an emergency bartender for an evening, become a “bra expert” at a lingerie store, and earned a Bachelor’s degree in Marketing and Management. I am married, I have a child, I have worked in the book industry for six years (and have loved every minute of it) and done all kinds of book related jobs, and I am currently in the midst of publishing my first title. In all that I have been blessed to have the opportunity to make time for my reading habits, and oh do I love to read.
I’m not bragging… there’s so much I have NOT done (like leave the country, ever!); but, in my 29 years, I’ve been busy.
I am desperately trying to get into Nuala O’Faolain’s memoir, but I can’t. 30 pages in, all we have established is that she is an older woman who feels like she has accomplished nothing. She has no significant other, she writes a column but hasn’t done anything great in her opinion, and frankly… I just don’t get it.
Maybe I am not old enough. Maybe I see my world in a glass half full sort of way and keep trying to figure out why being famous for an opinion column in Dublin is a bad thing. Maybe I am sad that even though she delights in her dog, she is busier being sad about the way things ended with her ex. 30 pages or so in, I have decided that for this year, I am done.
I did, however, pick up one of her novels. I think I’ll try that next and come back to the memoir later. I like her writing, but starting off with her Low Point has kept me in a foul mood. I was all too happy to set it aside for M.G. King’s Fizz & Peppers and had no desire to pick it back up again. If that’s not a sign to stop, I don’t know what is.
Have you read anything by Nuala O’Faolain? What were your favorites? Where do you recommend I begin?
A Life With Poetry
Title: God’s Love
Author: Calvert Tynes
Genre: Poetry/ Religion
Let me premise by saying I don’t review a lot of poetry. I actually didn’t read a lot of poetry outside of what was required of me for school and pieces my friends wrote until my daughter was born. It was then, rocking a sleepy baby back and forth in a glider, that I really started to enjoy the genre in its full capacity. Kiddo and I spent a whole year reading Edna St. Vincent Millay and it was very comforting.
Calvert Tynes is not comforting. He’s raw, but not in a crass way or anything. Tynes’ poetry has very few soft rhythms, instead I imagine his work being best presented in person in a performance setting. There are a few kids at the Poetry Nights in Humble that could read some of these pieces and rock an audience’s socks off with them… I’m not so talented and my kid asked me to hush when I tried to read this to her. So though my kiddo didn’t much care for the book, she’s two and there are some things she just doesn’t have a say in right now, whether or not Calvert Tynes is a good poet is one of them.
God’s Love is indeed a testament to the love Tynes has found in Christ, but from where I’m sitting it reads more like a memoir than a spiritual guide. I’m probably biased in saying this, as I’ve never been a fan of things with pictures of Jesus on them… probably a narcissistic issue after the emotional damage of drawing the worst stick figure of Jesus ever on my leather bible when I was seven and getting in a lot of trouble over it; I wasn’t upset I was in trouble so much as I was upset that my mother couldn’t tell that my stick figure was my portrayal of Christ. But still, knowing what I know about the crucifixion it seems a little grotesque to immortalize the moment in graven images. For that reason, I was a little turned off by the front cover, although a lot of people I know would find it beautiful – it’s just me and I get that. Tynes may have turned me off with the cover, but he won me over with his poems.
I particularly liked I See You, Love and Theodora. Nope, I’m not going to print them here, you have to buy the book for that! But I will share my favorite quote from I See You, Love:
“If your love was land, then I am its sea,/because your love exemplifies/ the completion of me.”
Of course I adore the sappiest line in the whole book… of course.
I also adore how God is clearly a part of every aspect of Tynes life, but I think this book of poetry (if true) is as much about Tynes as it is about God. In my perfect book world, the front cover should reflect that in some way. The thing I’m finding I love about poetry, that you don’t always get with fiction, is how autobiographical a writer’s book of poems can be. Poetry is so personal. Especially touching are Tynes pieces on fatherhood and the stories he shares about his children, something I’m not sure I could have appreciated as much three years ago.
In God’s Love Tynes shares a full life with God, a full life with poetry, and well, a really full life. He has a lot to offer the world and I’m glad I have a little piece of that offering in my library.
If These Walls Had Ears
Title: If These Walls Had Ears
Author: James Morgan
Publisher: Warner Books
Length: 275 pages
“A house is man’s attempt to stave off the anarchy of nature. Ripping up that floor had allowed a disturbing glimpse into the house’s secret life. It’s more comfortable not to know about such things.” – pg. 88
James Morgan may have been speaking about Billie Murphree’s floor rot from undercover water, but no words used in description of a house have ever hit me harder or rung so true.
Barely two years into owning our own home, my husband ripped up our living room carpet. We had lofty ambitions of laying tile or hardwood floors. We had tiled the living room of a town home once and it had turned out quite nicely for the low cost of $400. Those were the days when we thought home repair and renovation fun. Now, it’s just a necessity. No sooner had the carpet been pulled up, we discovered what we un-lovingly refer to as The Grand Canyon in our foundation.
Upon further inspection, the enormous crack ran from one end of the house to the other, from the outer wall where my rose and herb garden touches our driveway, through the kitchen, under the bar, across the living room, down the hallway, into the bathroom, and right out the outer wall against the side yard where I hope to make a courtyard one day.
We were devastated. We had bought our dream home, except for the master bathroom which will forever irritate and haunt my poor husband, only to find that it wasn’t a dream at all. Our dream home was a wreck, a fixer upper, a money pitt – it kind of still is.
We had $15k worth of foundation repair done at a discounted price – the company is run by a saint – literally, he’s a Gideon, and I’m quite certain he felt sorry for us. He even gave us plenty of time to pay him off and didn’t charge us interest. No sooner had we paid our bill in full, we discovered the breakfast room was now sliding into our back yard and had to have more foundation repair. Our back fence, our back door, my daughter’s window, nothing in this house is safe. It’s fragile, it’s old, it’s exhausting. We had to dig up our front yard and repair plumbing ourselves, we’ve had work done by professionals under both bathrooms.
Oh, and our insurance company is worthless, they paid for exactly nothing.
Yes, Mr. Morgan, a home is man’s attempt to stave off the anarchy of nature. Nature riots in many ways: mud sliding our from under our apparently unstable foundation, a shake slithering up through the crack in our living room, the rain rotting our fence, the winds of Hurricane Ike displacing our other fence and blowing out a window pane in our back door. Our sidewalk to our mail box sunk into our front yard, a storm took down our light post. It never ends. It’s never over.
Despite the issues, despite the debt, despite it possibly being the biggest mistake of our married lives, I’m in love with this house. We’ve been through ups and downs, trials and errors, hell and we’re not quite back, but it’s my home. Technically, it belongs to the bank, but we live under the illusion that it’s ours, and the illusion has a safe feeling to it, until the next time something breaks…
“In a house you never can tell where the next trouble will erupt. A door knob will suddenly come off in your hand. A heating duct in the belly of the house will lose a screw and pop out of its fitting. Even if you think you know the trouble spots, you’ll be taken by surprise. A piece of upstairs trim will swell up and warp, and the next thing you know, the rain will be leaking in downstairs and two walls away.” – pg. 109
Still, for whatever reason, everyone loves old houses. I remember when we were house hunting I specifically asked for a house in an older neighborhood surrounded by trees. “Nothing newer than the ’80’s,” I told my realtor, “No cookie cutter neighborhoods.” “Why, oh Why?!” I inevitably cursed later when we had to shave down parts of our interior doors so we could open and close them because the house had shifted yet again. “Why?!” we yelled when a brick just came out of our stoop, just slipped right out from under our door and lay across the porch where a welcome mat should have been. “Why?!” we screamed when a board from our deck in front of the garage door collapsed.
Because like Morgan says,
“Old houses look like home to us. They appeal not to our practical side but to whatever romantic part of us traffics in hopes and dreams, or wallows in nostalgia. They’re flirts, old houses. They get painted up real pretty – the way this house was when I first saw it – and they show off a lot of front porch and invite you in for a little French dooring, and the next thing you know, they’ve snared another sucker.” – pg. 180
Morgan’s book is endearing, nostalgic, and beautiful. It speaks to home owners, future home owners, and anyone who has ever fallen in love with a building of any kind. If These Walls Had Ears really speaks to my heart. There’s even an Andi that shows up briefly and takes part in 501 Holly’s biography. It makes you hope that in another fifty or so years someone will write a sequel to this old house’s life story.
The only part I didn’t like, despite a very beautiful quote in it, was the epilogue which summed up the lives (or the divorces and deaths, rather) of all the people who once lived in 501 Holly. It was depressing to say the least.
HPB Humble Spring Book Club Picks!
Julie & Julia – & JJ
Some people are appalled at this, and some find it wonderfully convenient, but I have friend categories. With me, people always know where they stand, because that is what I appreciate most about my own interpersonal relationships. I have a ‘best friend’, a ‘best friend since kindergarten’, a ‘roomie’ (my college room-mate), a ‘sister-wife’ (a very bad long running joke with my bestie of a cousin, no we are not actually sister-wives), and a ‘favorite friend.’ I can proudly say that JJ Golightly, of the Tidbits from Miss Golightly, is my favorite friend.
Favorite friends are those people you can go lengthy times without seeing, but once you see them again they are like crack to your system and you want them more and more. Favorite friends are those friends that if you ever chose to be lesbians (which we are not) you’d spend your life with them, because they are the ones you call randomly and say in the most superfluous and hyperbolic way possible: “I have a longing for you!” Favorite friends are the ones that you’ll hold hands with in public and not care if people look at you funny or take it the wrong way, because like a surrogate sister, your favorite friend is someone you would love to have literally attached to your hip, or in your back pocket if you could keep a miniature of them. They are also the person you happen to see the least of, and maybe that’s why the magnetism toward them remains forever in tact.
I recently had a wonderful visit from both my Roomie (Coffee Cups in Trees) and my Favorite Friend (Miss Golightly). What happens on these trips is this:
Roomie drinks coffee at the table, Favorite Friend bakes and cooks all sorts of goodies and photographs the results, I scurry back and forth trying to decide which I’d rather do, help cook or be lazy and drink coffee. The coffee usually wins.
Maybe it was because of one of these visits (in which all three of us gain five pounds over night), or maybe it was because Glen at the HPB Humble Book Club meeting brought up Julie Powell in our discussion of The Old Curiosity Shop, or maybe it was because I’d had the book sitting open to page five on my coffee table for about a year, but I finally got around to reading Julie & Julia
Nothing like reading a memoir about a frazzled maniac with a serious obsession for obsessions and sci-fi shows – in the kitchen – writing a blog and book when you too are nearly 29, frazzled, obsessed (but not dedicated), writing a blog, and most recently lost your entire book (again) to a computer virus. It gives hope. It gives motivation.
I will write a book in the next 30 days. Not the one I intended, I’m too crushed right now, but a different, lighter book that is loitering in a journal in my cabinet just waiting to be properly edited and put into a computer. I have 30 days. If Julie Powell can cook 523 recipes in 365 days, get published, and not be a loser by age 30, damn it, so can I. Except I’m not cooking. I’ll be ‘writing’ a nearly already book (from paper to computer) in 30 days and getting it to Smashwords by my 29th birthday. This I do vow.
In the mean time, I will still be reading, writing this blog, eating if I can afford it, and teaching Kung Fu… because that’s who I am, that’s what I do. Funny, that I had to be reminded of that by a memoir about French cooking.
Which is a delightful, by the way, all the way down to her swearing like a sailor, something I wouldn’t have even noticed had she not pointed it out. She may live in Long Island City, but when it comes down to it she’s from Texas, and as a Texan I can say there are two kinds of Texas women… the kind that swear, and the southern belles who don’t.
I appreciate her kitchen woes, I love to eat but have many cooking woes myself. I appreciate her small and outlandish apartment, I have a once lovely home that has just been utterly broken by this recession and a foundation problem. There’s just so much to relate to, and frankly, Julie Powell is down right endearing. She’ll never be my Favorite Friend in real life, as that spot is forever taken and I doubt I’ll ever even meet her, but she is definitely a favorite on my bookshelf.
On Writing, a Review (of King’s Craft)
Title: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Author: Stephen King
Paperback Publisher: Pocket Books
Genre: Non-fiction, Memoirs, Writing Guides
Length: 291 pages
My mother saw me reading Stephen King’s On Writing and scowled at me. “That man is so weird, I don’t know why you would want to read any of his crap.” Says the woman who may or may not have read one of his books. Admittedly, I don’t read much of his stuff. I couldn’t really get into Gunslinger, but I loved Low Men in Yellow Coats from Hearts in Atlantis. I have no desire to read most things published in the horror genre, but On Writing isn’t horror, its not even fiction, it’s an amazing memoir and guidebook to how The King’s mind really works.
On Writing is solid advice from a successful writer to anyone who has ever dreamed of being a storyteller. King is entertaining, down to earth, and extremely informative. He is passionate about his work, and despite many blunt criticisms about typical writing flaws, he offers sound wisdom to budding authors.
I found reading On Writing highly motivating. I’ve always been an avid reader, and I’ve always loved to journal and write tidbits of stories that come to me. But reading this really got me in a dedicated routine. I’d start my day off with a little advice from the master of fiction, write the recommended 2000 words for the day, and then pick up some handy little piece of fiction that took my fancy and read until my daughter woke up from her nap.
Since reading On Writing, I’ve got myself on a more solid path to finishing a complete draft of my novel than ever. King doesn’t offer any kind of magic fix for suddenly getting published; he just reminds you that you already have the tools to do the job. He gives you the confidence to press on and keep writing because you love it, not because someone told you to try to make some money at it once upon a time.
King encourages every writer to keep what he calls a writer’s toolbox. In that box he includes the Elements of Style by Strunk, but I think you’d be remiss not to include On Writing in that toolbox as well.
The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street
A Review of Helene Hanff’s sequel to 84, Charing Cross Rd.
At the end of 84, Charing Cross Rd. when Helene’s correspondence with London bookseller Frank Doel seemingly came to an end – I cried. Now, in Duchess of Bloomsbury Street when Helene first sees Charing Cross Rd. with her own eyes – I cried again. Helene Hanff is simple, witty, clever, and utterly enjoyable every time she takes pen to paper. I enjoy romping through London with her and cannot wait to read what she has to say about life in America when I finally find myself a copy of Apple of My Eye. And, if I ever visit London, I hope I have even half as many wonderful people available like The Colonel and PB to escort me to all the best sites, and then maybe my trip could be almost as perfect.
Anakalian Whims 