"Firefly Lane": Before The Nightingale, this one was considered her best

Sometimes I wonder what's wrong with me that I don't love the books I am pretty sure that I SHOULD love.  I've been called a "book snob" before, and I know that it's true.  In the summer, though, I generally love a good sappy romance, and I thought I would find it with Kristin Hannah's 2008 huge hit "Firefly Lane." This book, touted as her best before "The Nightingale," intrigued me.  It sounded like a perfect summer book - love, friendship, loyalty, loss.  Yum. I LOVED "The Nightingale", so I thought I would be just as enchanted by "Firefly Lane" and I was even more happy that it included nothing about WWII, but I was sorely disappointed by Hannah's lack of writing depth in this straightforward and often cliched book.

To be fair, the story is a good one.  "Firefly Lane" follows the friendship between an unlikely pair - innocent, ugly duckling, Kate whose family bonds are strong and dependable, and beautiful, rebellious Tully who moves next door with her burn out mother for a short span of time in the summer of 1974.  They become TullyandKate, inseparable best friends, and forge a bond that transcends the ravages of time, motherhood, love gained and lost, and jealousy both buried and apparent.

There is much to love in this story of friendship.  The cultural references throughout struck a cord with me.  With each decade came new challenges.  In the 70s, the girls struggled with their own forming identities, but found solace in summer bike rides.  In the 80s, the power struggles of college where Tully wanted them to stick together and enter the world of journalism as a pair, and Kate's ever growing sense of disinterest surfaced.  Tully's quest for t.v. stardom continued to grow through the 90s and early 2000s as she gained more and more fame and notoriety and Kate's priorities shifted to motherhood.  Each of the women long for what the other possesses and each feel pangs of regret over their chosen paths, but always remain friends. I could relate to the changing styles, the changing priorities, and the ability to stick to a friend even after betrayals.

The friendship was sweet at first, but something shifted for me when the girls entered college.  Tully's sense of entitlement and her blind ambition made me sad.  Kate's devoted loyalty to her egomaniac friend made me sad, too.  And that pattern continued their whole lives.  It was hard for me to understand why Kate remained so faithful to Tully who clearly was out for herself for most of the story.  It was just as hard for me to understand Kate's inability to take care of herself EVER. My feelings shifted in the last few chapters of the book when Tully and Kate returned to the sweetness that defined their early friendship.  They needed each other, and loved each other like sisters, frenemies, life-long rivals and besties.

The writing was eye rolling worthy in many instances, and then sweet in others.  I cringed at the cliches and the predictability of the story line.  Some of the dialogue was dreadful and campy.  The thing is, though, that Kristin Hannah is a prolific writer with a devoted following for her 20 novels.  She writes for women who don't want a complex novel, but want something straightforward with conflicts of friendship and love intertwined.

I don't think I'll be reading any of her other earlier books, but I do know that I loved "The Nightingale" and it has many of the same elements that "Firefly Lane" possessed like one driven female character who rebels against society and another who is a headstrong mother. Hannah knows how to craft memorable female characters that modern women can relate to in many ways and she knows how to draw in readers, it just depends on how deep of a read you prefer and now, it seems with her latest bestseller "The Nightingale" that readers have a choice between substance free writing and something with a little more grit.

'Carry On, Warrior - Thoughts on Life Unarmed': The best girlfriend you will ever have

Sometimes in life we find exactly what we need, exactly when we need it.  That's what happened to me when I found 'Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed' by Glennon Doyle Melton. I've never read Glennon's wildly popular blog Momastery.com.  Instead, I first encountered Glennon's ideas while searching for TEDTalks about Mental Health and Mental Illness for Stageoflife.com's latest writing contest.  In Glennon's TEDTalk called "Lessons from the Mental Hospital" she shares her truth about how she learned to feel her feelings and then share those thoughts with others when she had a mental breakdown and spent time in a mental hospital.  She explained that she sees her feelings as the guides in our lives and said, "I honor my feelings as my own personal prophets . . . I've learned to be still and receive the gifts." Although her voice quivered while she spoke from nerves and emotional energy, her ideas worth spreading resonated with me.  Oddly, the day before I happened upon Glennon's TEDTalk, I just picked up her book from the library - I liked the title and the bright lettering on the cover (whatever, I know you pick books by the covers and titles, too).  Serendipitous perhaps? I'm not sure.

I do know that since I cracked open Glennon's book which is a collection of her most loved blog posts from Momastery.com and other material not previously printed, I have already recommended Glennon's book to three of my friends.  Before I get into what I took away from the book there are a few things about Glennon you need to know:
1) She had a pretty messed up life before she got pregnant with her first child.  Drugs, alcohol, bulimia, self-loathing, depression . . . she is very upfront about this fact, and explains how those low moments shaped her.
2) She talks a bunch about the role of religion in her life and the presence of God.  For some, this might be a complete turn off or make them squeamish. For others, it might make them like her even more, but just be aware that God talk is VERY present in this book.
3) Glennon makes no excuses for the person she used to be or the person she is now.  She is flawed (for example she doesn't know how to cook - she doesn't even own pans NOR does she clean.  Her vacuum seems like an alien to her, but she taught her daughter to use it as a baby carriage, so her daughter now vacuums the house).

Because I didn't know anything about Glennon other than watching her TEDTalk, I approached her book with an open mind, and it was the first time in awhile that I laughed out loud while reading a book about parenting (right now I'm reading 'All Joy and No Fun' by Jennifer Senior and it is depressing the heck out of me).  When Glennon talked about her trips to Target and the officer telling her girls that they were disturbing the peace, I felt validated for those not so great mom days in grocery stores or retail store check out lines.  We've all been there, but when we see other people going through it, we generally turn the other way or feign superiority.  Why do we do that?

I also wrote things down in my journal about her deep connection with her children.  She doesn't really give advice, but her stories of her own life are so open and honest, that it helps.  One of my favorite chapters was "Don't Carpe Diem" where she explains the two types of time.  Chronos time is regular time. "It's ten excruciating minutes in the Target line time, four screaming minutes in time-out time, two hours until Daddy gets home time.  Chronos is the hard, slow-passing time we parents often live in." The other type of time is Kairos time which is "those magical moments in which time stands still." Like when you really see your children for the beautiful human beings that they are.  You actually see the length of their eyelashes or the curve of their cheeks.  It's the Kairos moments that Glennon tries to hold onto throughout the Chronos days of parenting and living.  "Carpe a couple of Kairoses a day. Good enough for me." I've been calling my awareness to those Kairos moments when Raina and Story hug each other and say, "I love you, baby" just because they felt like it, or how beautiful Story is when she sleeps.

She also offered this tidbit which I wrote down on its own page in my journal: The most important job as a parent is "to teach my children how to deal with being human." I guess I never thought of it like that before, but I am glad that Glennon wrote it, and glad that I'll remember it.  Being human isn't easy, so teaching my children how to deal with life is an important job.

Mostly Glennon's book reminded me to offer myself grace and kindness.  To forgive myself and know that life and parenting are permanent do overs.  If you screw up one moment, the next is a do over.  And that is okay just like not liking vacuuming or having a really bad afternoon with your children is not the end of the world.  My biggest take away lesson is to "embrace being human rather than fight against it." "Carry on, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed" was exactly what I needed to read at the exact right moment in my life because Glennon's truthful thoughts on her life helped me find truth in my own life.  To me, that's Chronos time well spent - reading a book that validates being messy and being human.