"Wonder": Wonderful. For Real.

I cried.

Actually, I cried more than once while reading this book.  If it's been awhile since you have read a really great book that made you want to stand up and cheer, you need to pick up the book "Wonder" by R.J. Palacio.

Someone in my old book club wrote this on her list of "books she wants to read" and I remembered it last week while I was at the library picking up a book for my daughter.  After I sobbed three times yesterday while finishing this book, I decided that I really want my daughter to put down her "Dork Diary" series and read this, so I can talk to her about it.

Palacio's book revolves around 10 year old, not so ordinary August (Auggie) Pullman and his first year not being homeschooled.  His mom and dad decided to homeschool Auggie due to his severe facial abnormalities and his constant visits to the hospital for many surgeries to correct complications due to his abnormalities.  It's not just the surgeries or past health problems that keep him home, it's also the fact that people actually recoil when they look at Auggie.  He even says, "I won't describe what I look like.  Whatever you're thinking, it's probably worse."

Fifth grade life can wear anyone down, but Auggie's experiences as a new 5th grader to Beecher Prep school are treacherous.  Without the kindness of the unfortunately named headmaster, Mr. Tushman, Jack Will (a boy who was forced at first to befriend Auggie and later becomes his friend), and Summer (a girl who decides to forgo the popular path and sit with Auggie at lunch because they both have summery names), Auggie's experiences at Beecher could have been downright tragic.  As Mr. Tushman's speech at the graduation ceremony at the end of the book demonstrates, when people place kindness as the measure of success in education, everyone wins.  He includes a quotation from J. M. Barrie's book called "The Little White Bird" in his uncharacteristically short commencement address, "Shall we make a new rule of life . . . always to be kinder than is necessary?" Just re-reading this part in the book made me all choked up again.

Palacio makes Auggie lovable - the right blend of self awareness and an earnest determination to stick it out in school against all odds.  She doesn't stop at Auggie, though.  Each chapter is told from another character's perspective, so we get the full spectrum of emotions revolving around August's entry into school.  Palacio effortlessly captures the voice of Via, Auggie's older, protective and guilt riddled sister just as well as she gives a voice to Jack Will and his nonchalant attitude towards life until he meets August.

I don't want to give too much away because this is one of those books that I believe will eventually be made into a movie, but it's also one of those books like "The Fault in Our Stars" that people can believe in.  After reading it, I had a renewed faith in humanity.  I know this is fiction that I am writing about, but certain books just speak to our hearts and heads, and R.J. Palacio was able to achieve this in her debut novel.  She just rocks.

"The Girls of August": Why do people read books like this?

I caved and got a summer beach read, right as the last breath of summer descended in our area.  I blame the heat and humidity for choosing the schmaltzy book with the beach cover picturing two middle aged women lounging under a huge umbrella with their hands behind their heads in a totally relaxed position.

I needed something that I knew would be quick, and I wanted something more lighthearted than orphans or struggles or child molestation or any of the other tragic tales that I read this summer.  BUT while reading Anne Rivers Siddon's 19th novel "The Girls of August" I realized something.  Most books I read have a purpose.  They have some substance.  They give me something to learn or relate to.  This book, on the other hand, made me question how Anne Rivers Siddons ever became a best selling author.  Who reads this stuff and likes it?

The storyline in "The Girls of August" hurt to read.  It revolves around a group of wives (Maddy, Rachel, Barbara, and Melinda) who all have doctor husbands.  Each August the four wives go on a beach getaway together without their husbands (hence their very creative name "The Girls of August").  They stop going after Melinda dies in a tragic car accident (who the girls all blame on her negligent doctor husband, Teddy), but decide to reunite after being prodded to by Teddy's new wife, Baby, to join her at her family's idyllic beach house on a private island.  Baby grates on all the older women because they view her as childish and a sad replacement for their good friend, Melinda. Mostly it could be because she is only in her early 20s and all these women aren't.  They are petty and jealous and keep eyeing up Baby's hot body and commenting on how free she is with it.

I could go on, but there is really no point, because there was no point to this story.

Like no point.

The novel could have been renamed "The Mean Girls of August" since as tolerant as they viewed themselves, Rachel, Maddy and Barbara acted like gossipy high school girls out of some sort of 1980s John Hughs movie.  None of them seemed even a little bit gracious to be invited to this beautiful beach house or even try to act appropriately.  They openly rolled their eyes at Baby and treated her poorly at her own home.

Siddons tried to thicken the plot by giving each of the women a secret, but even the secrets were so very predictable and underdeveloped.  As a last ditch effort, Siddons even tried to throw in a climactic ending, but it all fell so very, very flat and dull.  The writing was so bad in spots that I actually stopped and read lines aloud to my husband like "Teddy and I were simply a bad fit, like hair spray and fire." For real? Yikes, Anne.  Maybe it's time to retire?

Maybe beach reads are meant to be fast and dull books.  Maybe this isn't a good example of Anne Rivers Siddons who by all accounts seems like a well loved and well received author of many books. Maybe I should stop being lured by pretty covers that have beach umbrellas and women with their bare feet in the sand and stick to the books that I know have something to offer me as the reader.

I know, next time I hit the "Hot Picks" section of the library, that I will choose more wisely.

"We Are Water": A rambling tale with too much tragedy

Darn you, Wally Lamb.

I'm just so disappointed that I didn't like this book that I actually feel angry with Wally Lamb.

I read "She's Come Undone" by Wally Lamb all the way back during my undergraduate classes at the University of Minnesota.  My then boyfriend, Eric, was just starting his first real job as an academic recruiter for the University.  We took a road trip to one of his recruiting conferences in the late summer, and while he was walking the floor touting how awesome the UofM was, I was captured by Wally Lamb's deft 1st persona narrative depiction of Dolores Price and her struggle with life as an overweight teen and woman.  I spent that weekend poolside reading at a fast pace, just wanting to keep going. Lamb's ability to capture the voice of a tragic and comical heroine, left me in awe of his writing talent.  His next effort, "I Know This Much Is True" didn't leave me as breathless, but I still enjoyed it.  It's been awhile since I've read Lamb, but when I saw this book int he library with it's beautiful title and haunting blue cover, I couldn't wait to sink in.

Even after the first chapter, I knew that "We Are Water" wasn't going to rock my world.  The novel centers on the lives of the Oh family, a tragically flawed and messed up bunch of people.  Annie Oh works as an artist selling her angry art installations to famous celebrities like Lady Gaga.  Annie recently ended her 27 year marriage to husband, Orion, to wed her rich, socialite art promoter, Vivica.  Orion suffers from this news and while reeling from the loss of his wife, he also loses his career as a college counselor amidst sexual harassment allegations.  Annie and Orion's three children also suffer from this news, but each deal with issues of their own including explosive anger, disillusionment, prostitution, and loneliness.

Throughout this stream of consciousness novel, the narrator changes with each chapter, but the rambling diatribe seems to be consistent among each of the characters.  They all divulge all of their secrets in waves and waves of confessionals.  From the tormented molester of Annie's youth, to the racist mom of Josephus Jone's "girlfriend," to the seemingly virtuous Ari, all the characters sound almost identical.

I found the endless tragedies in this book a bit much.  Did Orion really need to be wheel chair bound? Did Andrew need to be tormented indefinitely due to his mother's physical abuse? Too much is too much.  I thought that about the narration, too.  There was no subtlety in this book.  Every story line goes over the top with too much (in the case of Kent's storyline, way too much).  It wasn't until the very end of the book while Andrew and his dad have heart to heart talks about life as they walk along the beach, that I saw glimmers of the genius of Wally Lamb's life insights, but by that time it was too late to save the entire book of stream of consciousness ramblings (and what's with the ...... all over the place, Mr. Lamb?).

I loved the link to the title (which also comes close to the end) that “We are like water, aren’t we? We can be fluid, flexible when we have to be. But strong and destructive, too.” And something else, I think to myself. Like water, we mostly follow the path of least resistance.” 

I may have loved "She's Come Undone" but this book is one that I would recommend leaving on the shelf if you see it on the new fiction section of the library, especially if you are looking for a book to capture you poolside during the last remaining days of the summer season.  

"Yin, Yang, Yogini": Don't let the title turn you away

I fell in love with this book.

Not only did I fall in love with the story, but Kathryn E. Livingston's 'Yin, Yang, Yogini: A Woman's Quest for Balance, Strength and Inner Peace' made me fall in love with the power of yoga all over again.

I first must confess that I am a yogini, and I intend to take my practice to the next level this fall and go through yoga teacher training.  Non-yoga people might be totally turned away by the title (it's not the best title to make non-yoga people want to read it), but it's more a story of finding yourself in a dark place and discovering the power within to gain healing and lightness in your own life.  It's a story that yoga people or non-yoga people can relate to, and Livingston's writing style and stories make you want to know her and read more about her experiences.

I didn't know anything about Kathryn E. Livingston before reading this book, but I feel like she is my friend now.  She is insightful, funny, honest, and smart.  Before this book, she wrote columns for parenting magazines and Working Mother magazine, and she has co-authored books about parenting. In this memoir, she turns her keen life observations from parenting to her opinions and experiences as she ventures into the world of yoga.

At the age of 51, Kathryn feels stuck.  Stuck by fear of living.  Stuck by the grief over her mother's death.  Stuck by the unknown of her three sons who embrace life and are at the crossroads of adulthood.  She goes to a therapist who suggests Kathryn tries yoga to help her reach a more peaceful place in her stressed out existence.  Rather than turning to anti-depressants or medication to help her through her anxiety, Kathryn decides to try the yoga studio that recently opened just a block away from her home.  Her experiences are transformative and she discovers that maybe just as yoga philosophy preaches, there are no coincidences in life and that yoga can help her through some of the most difficult moments she will ever encounter with a peaceful awareness and calmness that she has never possessed.

Each vignette that Kathryn shares about her yoga classes and her inspirational teachers made me think of all my wonderful yoga instructors who have each taught me so much about myself and the world.  I think of Pat and his Thursday night classes that I called "Thursday night therapy" and how each class would start with Pat's take on the atmosphere of the room.  Some nights were about change and growth, and how even though periods of change bring uncertainty, we can reach out and say, "Why not?" and enjoy the changes we encounter.  Some nights were about acceptance.  Some nights were about challenge.  I think of gentle Dayna and her ability to make me really aware of the space I created in my body through my movements, and how each breath allowed me to lengthen and elongate.  I've changed through yoga as a person, and seeing it through Kathryn's experiences was a huge validation for how much love and appreciation I have for yoga and all my fellow yoga devotees and my instructors.

Kathryn's insights in the two years that this book spans are inspirational.  Through her growing love of yoga, she starts to see the interconnectedness of things around her and she starts to have some huge realizations about life.  As she works through her feelings about her breast cancer diagnosis and treatment she realizes, "I always thought it totally unnecessary for bad things to happen to appreciate what we have; but the truth is, we do sometimes need to step into the darkness to understand how bright our light really is." I think about that from all of the hardest times in my life.  After going through the dark period, I realize how strong I really am.

I also really related to her ability to see that she receives exactly what she needs, exactly when she needs it.  It's like in the book 'The Alchemist' by Paulo Coelho where the main character just needs to be open to the universe for the universe to open up to him.  Kathryn's yoga instructor, Jill, gives her class the message that "We get what we need." It's like that Rolling Stone's song.  We can't always get what we want, but we just might find that we get what we need. Kathryn adds, "If we need to be awakened, something will open our eyes."

By the end of the book, Kathryn waxes philosophical on the two overarching life lessons that yoga and her bout with breast cancer taught her.  "The first, that when you're in the darkness, know that the light will come.  We are light and dark, sun and moon, male and female, yin and yang; life is composed of opposites, in a continuing cycle of change. The second, when you are in the light, don't step back into the darkness. Live in the light, and breathe it in fully."  I took deep breaths while reading this book and felt that it was like oxygen or like ujjayi breath in yoga.  It helped me to feel alive and invigorated by life's possibilities of balance, strength and inner peace.

"Orphan Train": Searching for home

At my new library there is a section titled "Hot Picks" by the new fiction and non-fiction.  "Hot Pick" selections mean because the book is so hot with the library patrons that only  a 7 day check out period  is allotted with no chance for renewal and a $1 a day fee for being overdue.  When I browsed for books to take on vacation, I came across 'Orphan Train' by Christina Baker Kline in the "Hot Picks" section, and although it looked great, I knew that I'd be looking at a $5 fine because we'd be gone longer than 7 days.  Thankfully, my awesome neighbor bought "Orphan Train" and before she even finished reading it leant it to me. How awesome is that?  I finished it in two days because #1) It's short AND #2) It's very good, so I wanted to finish it quickly and give it back to my neighbor.

"Orphan Train" recounts a time in history that I knew nothing about, but now I plan for sure to research.  In the book description it says, "between 1854 and 1929, so-called orphan trains ran regularly from the cities of the East Coast to the farmlands of the Midwest, carrying thousands of abandoned children whose fates would be determined by pure luck.  Would they be adopted by a kind and loving family, or would they face a childhood and adolescence of hard labor and servitude?" The orphan in question for this story is Niamh, a young, red-headed Irish immigrant who loses her entire family to a fire in their tenement building.  Thrown into the Children's Aid system, she is one of the countless orphans who board the orphan trains like cattle.  She morphs into a new life as Dorothy and then Vivian as she is shuffled from foster home to foster home, even if the first two are far from anything anyone would call home.

The present day narrative that frames the historical story of Vivian's search for home revolves around another girl in her own foster care dilemma.  Molly, the 17 year old, whose hard exterior is just a cover for her hopes and dreams, gets in trouble for stealing a copy of 'Jane Eyre' at her library.  Her foster mother shows nothing but disdain for her and wants to send her away for committing another act of insubordination.  Because this isn't Molly's first offense, she could face serious penalties, but her dreamy boyfriend, Jack, hooks Molly up with her mom's employer, an old woman named Vivian who lives in a huge mansion and needs help cleaning out her cluttered attic.

As Molly and Vivian clear out box by box, they both face their own dilemmas of the past and present and piece together a meaning of home.  They partnership is mutual and they both grow and learn from each others' stories.

Although at times, the Molly narrative rings false, Vivian's story of immigration, separation and salvation save everything and make this book more than worthwhile to read.  It's also fast as the narrative moves at a solid clip.  The details fade a bit at the end of the narrative and I was left wanting to have more information about Vivian's adult life, but just like life moves in fast forward and stop action motion, this book does as well.

The ending feels like a Hollywood sort of wrap up.  I can almost hear the surging music, but I shed real tears for Vivian and all that she went through in the course of her orphan experience.

We are all on a journey.  Some of us have longer more painful travel experiences than others, but hopefully we can all get to the peaceful place of acceptance of the past to move forward in the present and welcome the future. Near the end of the book Molly, while sitting in a rocking chair in Vivian's kitchen thinks that "for the first time she can remember, her life is beginning to make sense.  What up until this moment has felt like a random, disconnected series of unhappy events she now views as necessary steps in a journey toward . . . enlightenment is probably too strong of a word, but there are others, less lofty, like self-acceptance and perspective."

Any book - a "Hot Pick" or not, that helps me to get closer to self-acceptance and perspective by living the journeys of the characters is worth reading.  A book that combines that and teaches me something about a time in history that I didn't know existed, makes it to the top of my "to read" list.

"The Signature of All Things:" Ambitious, Expansive, and Intelligent

I'm a book gusher.  I always have been.  When I love a book, I want to gush about it to whoever will listen (which is why I enjoy book blogging so much).  One of my favorite parts of being an English teacher was when I gushed about books I loved.  My classroom bookshelf took up an entire wall, so anytime I could recommend books to my students, I would need to stop myself from rambling too much and gushing at an uncontrollable rate.

When I meet another book gusher, I love to hear about their book passions.  The books they can't put down.  The books that make them want to shut out the rest of the world until they finish every last page.

My friend, Kris, is a book gusher.  Maybe she doesn't gush about every book, but when I recently visited  Pennsylvania, she told me that she was in the midst of a relationship with Elizabeth Gilbert's "The Signature of All Things," so her time was limited.  She didn't want it to end, and she said, "Alma is so strong, so very strong."  I asked her if I could borrow it after she finished, and she happily agreed to let me borrow her book.

The last week of my life I've been consumed with the lives of the Whittaker family and their torrid and fascinating history.  The book begins with Henry Whittaker, a poor but very clever boy, who ends up making a fortune by stealing plants and selling them.  When the owner of the plants, Sir Joseph Banks, discovers the thefts, he sends Henry (basically to banish him) around the world on voyages with the formidable Captain Cook to study botany.   Henry becomes an astute botanist, and learns to survive, listen, and practice abstinence while all the other sailors fall prey to indulgences.

Upon his return from voyage after voyage, Henry forges his own fortune and moves to Philadelphia with his equally strong willed wife, Beatrice.  After many miscarriages, they finally have a girl, Alma, who not only survives, but thrives and can hold her own in arguments and discussions with world travelers and astute philosophers at her father's always entertaining dinner table.

Although the beginning of the book revolves around Henry, Alma becomes the center of the rambling plot as she consumes books about botany and revels in all pursuits of the mind.  She learns to live with her adopted (and much more beautiful) sister, Prudence, and even finds friendship with a flighty and ridiculous girl named Retta Snow.  Alma's academic pursuits always take precedence over her pursuits of the heart as she navigates her love for George Hawkes, a fellow scholar who loves Alma for her ideas but does not see her as a romantic interest.  When Ambrose Pike, an angelic traveler who has spent his life drawing the intricacies of orchids arrives at Alma's home, White Acre, the story line diverts in odd and illuminating directions and the truth of the title, "The Signature of All Things" is revealed "namely that God had hidden clues for humanity's betterment inside the design of every flower, leaf, fruit, and tree on earth.  All the natural world was a divine code."

The remaining half of the book follows Alma through her middle ages and her own renaissance of spirit and understanding of herself and her world.  Her studies of mosses and her unique strength and wisdom make her a heroine to be loved and cherished, a warrior to be feared, and a humble innocent who the readers can sympathize with in her darkest moments.  We feel her grief.  We see her strength.  We celebrate her triumphs.  When Alma realizes that she wants to live rather than drown and sees clearly "that the world was plainly divided into those who fought an unrelenting battle to live, and those who surrendered and died" I wanted to stand on my chair and shout to celebrate her existence and her strength to live and fight.

The scope of the book revolves around evolutionary theory and the survival of the fittest - not the most beautiful or the most desirable or the most sensitive.  As Alma discovers in her feverish exploration of mosses and the interconnectedness of the world (which she calls "A theory of competitive alteration"), "the trick at every turn was to endure the test of living for as long as possible.  The odds of survival were punishingly slim, for the world was naught but a school of calamity and an endless burning furnace of tribulation.  But those who survived the world shaped it - even as the world, simultaneously, shaped them."

Each page in Gilbert's sweeping epic novel sings with intelligence and original freshness.  I loved watching Alma's self and world discovery from her baffled thoughts on her beautiful, China doll-esque sister, Prudence, to her befuddlement over relationships.  I loved her interactions with her fiery, titan father, and his doting admiration of her.  I loved the travels to Tahiti and back again.  Although there were holes in the narrative and incredible leaps at times (as well as some underdeveloped secondary characters), I would definitely gush about this book to someone else who wants the challenge of the 500 page epic.

This book restored my faith in Gilbert (much as her Ted Talk did) after her lucrative success with "Eat, Pray, Love" which I found mildly entertaining albeit a bit whiny.  This book is a ferocious journey through love, loss, and mostly the survival of the fittest.

"Life, Animated": Hope in the spectrum

It's hard to review a book that took so much courage for one of my favorite authors to write.  Any author who chooses to reveal the struggles of his or her family in the hopes that their story might help other families dealing with the same difficulties, makes my heart open to that author.  The reason I love memoirs so much stems from this simple fact - sharing your story honestly will make others care. It will connect you to people who have had similar struggles. It will increase empathy and understanding.

That's why it's even harder for me to admit that I didn't love Ron Suskind's book "Life, Animated: A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes and Autism"  about his family's struggles and triumphs with their autistic son, Owen, who started as a relatively normal boy and retreated into autism at age 3 after the family moved to Washington, D.C..  I wanted to love it and wanted it to teach me more about autism, but I found the repetitive nature of the book which explores Owen's eventual connection to Disney animation as a communication bridge a bit tedious (sorry Mr. Suskind).

To be completely honest, I am in awe of Suskind's work.  "A Hope in the Unseen" ranks up there with my favorite all time books.  The story of Cedric Jennings and his harrowing journey out of inner-city D.C. and away from the "dream busters" who didn't believe he would be able to make it to the Ivy League, made me reexamine everything I knew about education and the Oprah "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" mentality that anyone can make it if they just try hard enough.  Knowing that as Suskind wrote "A Hope in the Unseen" he simultaneously struggled with his own version of "dream busters" in his personal life with his son Owen, makes me love "A Hope in the Unseen" even more.

Just like when I read "A Hope in the Unseen," The hair on my arms did stand up in certain points while I read "Life, Animated." In the very beginning after Owen is diagnosed as PDD-NOS (Pervasive Developmental Disorder- Not Otherwise Specified) and before the family starts using the daunting word Autism, Suskind thinks about, "how many wild-eyed expectations you carry around about your kids, especially when they're young. Presidents? Nobel Prize winners? Global celebrities? Super Bowl quarterbacks and prima ballerinas? It could happen" and then thinks further about the "damaged goods" kids like Owen and the "new planet" they have arrived on where expectations shift of your child's future, and where the goal on many days is to find a way to ease the frustrations of both the child and the family members.

I also got teary eyed when the person who Owen idolizes, Jonathan Freeman (a.k.a. the voice of Jafar in Aladdin), calls Owen at the prompting of Ron Suskind's letter.  When Freeman asks Owen what the real meaning of Aladdin is, Owen replies, "I think it's about finally accepting who you really are, And being okay with that." Even the man who did the voice for the evil Jafar gets a little sniffly with that profound statement.

The highlight of the whole book for me wasn't the ending (very unlike a Disney ending where everything works out beautifully since Owen's future still remains uncertain), but when Owen gives his graduation speech from KTS.  Instead of an impressive guest speaker at this monumental occasion, each of the 18 graduates prepared a speech about the lessons they learned at KTS.  "Each speaker simply says the truest thing they know. And that's why there are so many awed faces looking up toward the stage, waiting for their moment to express the truest thing they know: that, yes, each graduate is more than worthy.  When the crowd gets a chance at the end to cheer, they won't stop. They can't."

I wanted the whole book to feel that way - the not wanting to stop cheering at Owen's triumphs over the dream busters (like that horrible kid who threatened him in music class), but I didn't feel like that most of the way through.

Don't get me wrong, Suskind is brilliant, and this book definitely goes to the heart (unflinchingly) of Autism's impact on an entire family.  I just wanted less of it rather than more, which means to me that although I love Suskind and Disney, too much of a good thing can feel over indulgent and a little bit disappointing.

I go back to my original point, though, of how amazing it is when a person opens the vault of their personal lives for the world to see, prod, pick apart and internalize in their own way.  Telling the truth of your life (especially the truths that hurt to tell) takes courage, and that's what Suskind showed in writing the story of his son, Owen who is a true hero.

"The Paris Letters": A Fresh Burst of Wonderful

I'm pretty sure that I need to go to Paris. NOW.

I've been to Paris twice in my life.  Once when I lived in London, my roommate Deni and I hopped on the Chunnel and spent a three day weekend in Paris.  We started together visiting his brother and going to museums.  Deni got bored with that, so I continued on by myself which suited me better.  I reveled in my alone time, popping into cafes and wine stores, stumbling upon my favorite museum EVER, the Musee d'Orsay, a beautiful art museum in an old refurbished train station.  Deni and I would meet for dinner in the evenings, talking about our days of getting to know Paris in our own way.

About six years ago, my husband and I took a five day trip to Paris.  It rained the whole time.  Not just a little bit of rain, but the soaking kind.  It didn't dull our experience at all.  We walked everywhere huddled under one small umbrella, stopping for cafe creme when we needed a break.  While on top of the Eifel Tower, we saw a storm moving in and ran to the bottom narrowly missing the gusty rain as we sought shelter in a cafe.  We went to jazz clubs, and wonderful dinners, museums and parks.  We walked until our feet hurt, got lost on the winding streets and loved every second of it.

After reading Janice MacLeod's "The Paris Letters" the pull to Paris with it's beautiful parks, museums, shops, markets and different pace of life gets hard to resist.  Even more hard to resist is MacLeod's infectious creative attitude towards life.  After realizing that her face paced, LA life complete with stressful career in marketing, does not satisfy her and isn't very fun, she makes a plan to get to Paris and become an artist. How does one begin the process of getting to Paris? Follow MacLeod's ingenious plan to either make or save $100 a day.  She begins by using up the things she already has and stops the endless cycle of buying more and more.  She sells her car, her bike, asks friends to meet her for coffee instead of pricey dinners, and sells paintings on Etsy (the rest of her list appears in the back of her book).

Rather than starting her year with a thin resolution to Lose 10 pounds, she challenges herself to write in her journal every day. She never forgets the saying on the card she bought when she was 20 years old that said, "Write to learn what you know." She needed to know that she was in charge of creating her life (don't we all?).  In her wisdom from her journey to Paris she reflects that, "We must know how to design our lives. We are all artists, and each day is a canvas. Writing in my journal each day was how I redesigned my life.  I became conscious of just how much I disliked my day-to-day existence.  I would get up, react, and repeat. I had created a fast, busy, messy life. There was no one else to blame. I designed it, tried it, didn't like it, and had to erase and redesign."

How many times in your life have you felt this way but didn't do anything to change the "get up, react, and repeat" part? Maybe you are stuck right now in your daily grind and don't know how to make change.

What I love about MacLeod's book is that she used her creativity to find out how to make money by doing what she loves - writing letters and painting.  She combined those two talents and developed her Paris letters concept.  She also found love, found contentment, learned to love herself more, and learned a new language.  Not a bad year.

This book inspired me, and it was another reminder of how important writing is in my own life.  I do make excuses for how I don't have time to do it (when I have plenty of time to watch Master Chef and House Hunters and the occasional episode of Chopped).  We all have the time to do the things that will free us from the lives we created that we don't like very much.  What do you want to do that you have never thought you could do? Why not do it?

It also reminded me that traveling and getting out of our daily grind can make a huge difference.  We build routines of drudgery and don't always know how to break the cycle especially when it is a cycle of necessity or one that revolves around our children, or our spouses, or jobs that we think we need because we are too afraid to take the leap and change.

If you read "The Paris Letters" you might just get the motivation that you need to create a fresh burst of new wonderful in your own world.  And, I bet, you might just want to go to Paris. NOW.

"I Forgot to Remember: A Memoir of Amnesia": Do our memories really make us who we are?

I read memoirs to meet incredible people with incredible stories.  Su Meck's memoir "I Forgot to Remember: A Memoir of Amnesia" tells the incredible story of how at age 22 she was struck on the head by a ceiling fan and suffered a traumatic brain injury.  In her memoir, she pieces together her treatment (which seemed inadequate for the extent of injury), her life at home with two her two small boys after the accident, her marriage to her ever absent husband, Jim, and her survival without any memories and without the thinking ability that she had before the accident.

I will never look at ceiling fans the same (the day I started reading this book, my husband stuck his head under our ceiling fan in the bedroom that was recently installed to check if it was wobbling and I freaked out a bit until he moved his head away from the blades). I will also never take my intact memory or ability to learn or function in my life for granted.  Su Meck's story reminded me that we can really do whatever we want to do in our lives even when we are presented with seemingly insurmountable obstacles to success.  After her accident, Su mimicked those around her without understanding the "why" behind actions.  She would frequently have what she terms "lightening" episodes where her brain would almost do a system shut down when she was presented with too much information or things got too intense.  Sometimes these "lightning" episodes would happen when she was alone with her two boys, and even when she was driving.

As she coped with being misunderstood by her husband (who is brave for allowing his wife to share their story since he comes off as a villain in many respects), her family,  and the medical community's lack of understanding at how severe her injuries were and the extent of her memory loss and functionality, she achieved so much every day.  Even getting breakfast, lunch and dinner together for her family was a huge task for her not to mention that she went on to teach aerobics classes, volunteer in her son's classes, move to Cairo and learn how to function as a mother in a new space, and she even goes on to achieve a college degree even though she basically had to relearn everything including letters, colors, numbers, reading and writing at the age of 22. After applying to be on the Phi Theta Kappa board at Montgomery College, and being selected as an officer, she and the other members were asked to bring in a bag of significant objects to aid in getting to know each other.  Su brought her "Hop on Pop" book and explained to the group that it was the first book she had ever read. She shocked everyone when she told them she read it at age 22.

Because she opened up to that group, her life began to change again.  Being accepted by her fellow Phi Theta Kappa members helped her to see that she people needed to hear her story. Daniel de Vise from the Washington Post wrote a story about her (and eventually went on to help her write her memoir).

Although this book wasn't the best written memoir I have ever read (there are so many exclamation points in this book), but I overlooked the lack of style and graceful writing knowing that the author's incredible story of climbing her way back after a traumatic brain injury led her to write a book about her experiences in order to help others who might be suffering in silence like she did for so many years.  Su Meck's book is a great reminder for me why I love memoirs - they show me that nothing is impossible and they connect me to amazing people who I would have never met otherwise.  Stories truly do connect us to other people, and Su Meck is one person that I feel honored to be connected to after reading her memoir.

"Save the Date": Save your time and read something else

I have attended over 36 weddings, and feel like I am somewhat of a wedding guest expert.  At these weddings, I've been a bridesmaid, a musician, a reader, a greeter, and watched as my husband was a groomsman, an usher, a d.j. or the musician.  I love being a big part of weddings, but being a guest with no responsibilities or financial obligations other than getting there and buying a gift can be pretty great, too.

A few years ago, on our flight to my best friend's destination wedding in Puerto Rico, my husband and I wrote down our memories of each of the weddings we attended either separately or together and gave them a rating.  Just recounting the love and joy as well as some of the wedding mishaps that either we as guests encountered or created lasted longer than when our plane touched down in Puerto Rico, so the entire five days that we were at the beautiful resort and attending wedding festivities, we laid on the sand or by the pool and talked about the favorite parts and our least favorite parts of each wedding.

When I saw Jen Doll's book "Save the Date: The Occasional Mortifications of a Serial Wedding Guest" on a recommended reading list for "hot summer reads," I was excited to pick it up and find a kindred spirit who has seen the wedding circuit and had funny insights into the wedding world.

I'm not sure exactly what I expected from this book, but I know that it wasn't what I wanted.  For something that I thought would be a quick, fun read, I slogged through each chapter which contains a narrative about one of the weddings that she attended.  Besides the first wedding chapter about her very first wedding ever attended as a child, she goes on to tell about her drunk hook ups, her friend drama, her designer dresses, her insights into the world of love and marriage and relationships, and her inability  to stay sober at receptions.

I found Doll's narratives shallow and sad.  I didn't find a kindred spirit or many funny moments to chuckle about or to feel connected to as I read.  I mostly rolled my eyes as she got herself into one drunk situation after another - a volatile outburst, picking fights with friends, a temper tantrum as a friend tried to pry her from a dangerous situation at a wedding after party, or passing out and waking up with a horrible hangover.  Each chapter presented another of Doll's failed relationships and it was hard for me to keep all of her boyfriends straight or to understand why any of them stayed with her in the first place.

It's not that I have never had a drunken experience at a wedding, or that I think wedding days need to be perfect.  I have attended every kind of wedding to those with receptions in the basement of firehalls, to those that are in fancy hotels.  I've been to weddings so beautiful and personalized that I cried and others that were so dreadfully boring that I couldn't wait to get to the open bar at the reception only to find that there was no alcohol available for the guests because it was against the religion of the bride's family.

Doll seems to have attended only one kind of wedding which is one that requires a certain kind of dress and heels (that she describes in each chapter with more detail than the wedding itself).  Although Doll admits to having "kind of a drinking problem" the alcohol soaked receptions that end in uncomfortable moments seem to be the constant through her wedding experiences as well.

At the very beginning of the book, Doll makes a few very important insights about weddings.  She says that "while one might assume a wedding is about them - the couple getting married - a wedding is about everyone.  It's a means through which we guests can identify and reidentify our friends, our enemies, our lovers, and those we no longer love.  Through it we see what we want, what we don't want, what we think we want, and sometimes, dangerously, that we have no idea what we want.  Each wedding we attend, in whatever role we uphold, will highlight some aspect of our own lives, reflecting and reframing the way in which we look at ourselves."  That's what I love about weddings.  Each time I go, I am reminded about the beginning of a love story.  I am reminded that I love to dance, and see my friends.  I am reminded about how much fun my family is.  I am astounded by the depths that some people go to in order to make their wedding uniquely theirs to reflect their love, and sometimes I am saddened by how much money gets thrown away on just one day for the sake of show.

In Doll's "Save the Date" she shows a soft side every once in awhile for the couple getting married, but mostly she dips into the darker side of herself.  I love when people are real and divulge their "not so pretty" personality aspects.  Where Doll comes up short for me is that she doesn't seem to be aware of the flaws she repeats over and over again.  Maybe the audience for her book are the other elite New York City socialites who go to big (and small) fancy weddings to get drunk and hook up.  I'm positive I wasn't the right reader since I found so little to enjoy in this book.

The biggest take away for me, is a reminder that I love going to weddings, and I know there will be more coming in my future since my sister in law recently got engaged. It's fun to be a guest and see the beginning of someone else's love story as I reflect on my own.  My husband and I will be celebrating our 15 year anniversary in August, and it has been more than a tumultuous ride, but absolutely worth it.  The wedding is just one day - maybe for the guests just as much as for the bride and groom, but the future for all of them is forever.  My wish for all the weddings you attend in the future - be a good guest and try to leave your cynicism for love and for weddings aside as you watch the bride walk down the aisle.  And maybe just maybe try to be conscious of over drinking as to not make a total fool of yourself.

"The Gifts of Imperfection": A life guide

"How much we know and understand ourselves is critically important, but there is something that is even more essential to living a Wholehearted life: loving ourselves." - Brene Brown

Brene Brown's Ted Talk is one of my favorites of all time.  Her quality to allow people to feel deeply and take a hard look at the way they live their lives inspires me.  Researching predominately in the areas of shame and vulnerability helps her to guide people to a "Wholehearted Living" revolution. She defines wholehearted living as living with courage, compassion, connection, and deliberate boundaries. Her book "The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are" serves as a guide to wholehearted living and can truly change the way people view themselves and their lives.

Right when I moved to Crystal Lake, one of my very dear friends had a package waiting for me to welcome me to my new home.  Inside she had bubble bath, some tea, a cute towel and the book "The Gifts of Imperfection."  I cried a little when I got the package.  Moving is overwhelming; the most overwhelming part is how much new there is every single day.  New is great and change is important, but getting a wonderful package from home from someone who truly knows my soul made my whole week feel more normal.  My friend's package was another reminder for me to stay open and know that I will find exactly what I need, exactly when I need it if I give myself a break.

Giving myself a break is sometimes easier said than done.  My husband and I are the types of people who want to have everything completed RIGHT NOW, but after a major move to a new state where we know virtually no one, we are learning patience. Patience with home renovations. Patience with finding places. Patience with our daughters' see-sawing emotions as they transition away from everything they know into this new space, and most of all patience with ourselves.  Brene Brown's book helped me to love myself even more through our new life beginning here and recognize that loving myself is the key to success through this journey of change.

Each chapter of her book leads the reader through a series of guideposts (Letting go of what people think, letting go of perfectionism, letting go of numbing and powerlessness, letting go of scarcity and fear of the dark, letting go of the need for certainty, letting go of comparison, letting go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self-worth, letting go of anxiety as a lifestyle, letting go of self-doubt and "supposed to," letting go of being cool and "always in control"). The guidepost titles themselves were enough to motivate me, but Brown's soothing tones and down to earth approach on each of the topics through her life stories helped put everything in perspective for me especially during this huge time of transition in my life.

I don't need to be certain and being vulnerable in this new space is a given, but after reading Brown's lessons, I feel that I can give myself permission to be imperfect like when I tripped and almost did a face plant at the splash pad while trying to retrieve my 5 year old from the too high monkey bars, or when I accidentally hit the bumper of a car in the parking lot as I adjusted my GPS on my dashboard and tried to talk to my daughter at the same time.  All this new takes focus, and I am constantly reminded that I need to concentrate to achieve that focus.

There are bound to be missteps, but I feel like Brown's book gave me even more tools to join the wholehearted revolution.  I might not be perfect, but I am proud of who I am and even prouder of the person that I am becoming.

Each night as we sit down to our family dinner, my daughters, my husband and I all say our "charm" for the day ("charm" was a term that our daughter, Story, came up with when she was 3.  It means to say what you are thankful for from the day). My charms come so rapidly since we have moved to this new community.  I have so much to be grateful for - a beautiful new home, my amazing and quirky little family, friends who send me packages from home, my health, being surrounded by love and for new experiences and opportunities. Most of all I am thankful that I am beautifully imperfect and able to embrace myself exactly as I am.

"10% Happier": Meditation 101

It's been awhile since I've been able to write (so this will be a long entry), because my life has become a chaotic blend of boxes, upheaval, packing, unpacking, letting go, moving on and reentering in a new location.  People move across the country every day, but no one ever really talks about the physical and mental toll that it takes to do it.  Brene Brown included moving as one of the one of the "great unraveling journeys" in her book "The Gifts of Imperfection" (which I am currently reading).

Somehow through my "great unraveling journey" from our home in Pennsylvania to our new one in Illinois, I have kept a mantra in mind: "I am exactly what I need, exactly when I need it."  Through our epic moving adventure, that mantra has worked beautifully.  We put our house up for sale and got two great offers within the first 48 hours it was on the market.  We found a new home in our new location on the street that we wanted in less than 24 hours.  We made it through the appraisals and inspections, the loans and approvals, the paperwork and the legalities unscathed.  Even our cross country trip with our 10 year old pug who hates cars, our 14 year old cat who hasn't been out of our house in 12 years, our 9 year old daughter, and our 5 year old daughter went well.  We only hit traffic in Chicago the whole 12 hour journey.

So here we are.  In a new home.  In a new neighborhood.  Everything is new.  Everything is possible.  It's scary and exciting.  Frustrating and wonderful.

With each new moment (today I was so proud to find my new grocery store!) I keep my "I am exactly what I need, exactly when I need it" mantra in the back of my head.  I think of all the "self help" books I have read or books like "The Alchemist" that teach when you are open to the universe, the universe opens up to you. That's how I feel about Dan Harris's book "10% Happier." I needed to read a book about someone else's journey to find their calm center in a world of chaos and uncertainty.  It helped as I went through my own "unraveling" by giving me hope that if I just stayed focused and open to the universe that I would be okay.

Dan Harris wrote his book "10% Happier" to explain his experiences and spiritual journey to daily meditation.  Harris co-anchors "Nightline" and the weekend edition of "Good Morning America." After deeming the voice in his head "an asshole" he decided to find out how to get more centered and stumbled into the realm of meditation which he believed was everything that he hated - sitting still, being calm, being present, and even occasionally chanting surrounded by people that smell like feet.  His years of covering various extremist religions left him skeptical about anything remotely spiritual, so his journey really speaks to the every day person who is fed up with feeling stressed all the time but doesn't know what to do about it.

I loved this book from the very beginning.  I thought Harris's narrative of his early news anchor frenetic days and his out of control substance abuse, his journey to spirituality all rang true and pure.  He showed me reasons why meditation works and reasons why he and many others doubt the validity of meditating, but how the tides are turning.  I also loved that he offered practical advice for those just starting out with meditation (there is a nice guide to meditation for beginners in the back of the book).  Mostly, I loved how he met the gurus along the way like Eckhart Tolle and how he explains their philosophies on life and meditation.

I needed this book to help guide me through my "great unraveling journey" and direct me to a calmer place.  When Harris attends a Joseph Goldstein meditation retreat, his thoughts on the days spent in quite meditation really resonated with me especially when he raised his hand and asked how to not worry about things since there are genuine things to worry about like missing planes.  Goldstein answers, "But when you find yourself running through your trip to the airport for the seventeenth time, perhaps ask yourself the following question: 'Is this useful'?"

During my moving journey, I continually asked myself that question.  Is it useful to worry about my buyer's buyer's loan? Is it useful to worry about whether or not we will make our closing date in our new home? Is it useful to worry about how my animals will react to a long car ride? Every time I answer the same thing: It is not useful to worry.  I still worry, but now I remind myself that it isn't useful to do it.

I mostly love that Harris doesn't propose that meditation is the answer to happiness.  He claims in his own life that it has made him 10% happier which is a great percentage.  Who doesn't want to be 10% happier?

I know I do.

'Life After Life': The Author's Power to Create Time, Meaning, and the Perpetual Do Over

"No point in thinking," she said briskly, "you just have to get on with life . . . We only have one after all, we should try and do our best.  We can never get it right, but we must try."

"What if we had a chance to do it again and again," Teddy said, "until we finally did get it right? Wouldn't that be wonderful?"

It would be wonderful if we were able to redo our life's mishaps, tribulations and tragedies - still births, Spanish Flu, falling accidents, drowning, suicide, the death of brothers and sisters, and even reverse the fate of millions by assassinating Hitler.  In Kate Atkinson's critically acclaimed novel, "Life After Life" she toys with the notion that life exists in perpetuity - a constant state of flux and do-overs. Outcomes can change with the twist of an ankle down the stairs, or a slight timing of events.  Even if personalities don't necessarily change, the events of life can.

I wasn't sure when I first picked up this hefty novel if I'd be able to make it past the first 20 pages.  It opens with a scene of Hitler's assassination, but the next very short chapter opens the novel again with the still birth of baby girl, and then the next chapter begins the birth chapter again with slight changes.  I restarted this book three times (thinking I was just to dumb to grasp the concept), and as the saying goes, three times is a charm because on that third try, my brain fixated on the characters enough to move me through the choppy first chapters and into the winding paths of "Life After Life."

Chronology does not exist in this book, but the continuity of the storyline flows.  I latched on to the familiar scenes - this is the part where she drowns, this is the part where she deals with WWII, this is the part that she deals with the fate of her family and the Spanish Flu, this is the part where she can possibly stop the death of her brother, the death of Nancy, the death of herself.  It becomes a dizzying effect of time, space, jumping from storyline to storyline, but following the same family of characters.  Ursula, described as a very intense child with green eyes and an old soul, has the power of reincarnation and she has an awareness of this gift enough that her mother, Sylvie decides that she should see Dr. Kellet who does not flinch at Ursula's knowledge of the future. Ursula both knows and doesn't know that life feels familiar.

What Atkinson created in the pages of "Life After Life" becomes a homage to the power of the author. How does an author decide on the fates of her characters?  How does she decide who lives and who dies?  How does the story connect and teach and create meaning for the readers?  Where does a story begin and end? These questions are also the questions of life, right? We are all a bit like Ursula - maybe not being reincarnated to stop Hitler or to befriend Eva Braun or to save our lovable brother, Teddy's life, or to pick up a stray dog after a bombing and name him Lucky, but we are all wading through the constant ebb and flow of life - making meaning of the past, looking toward the future and finding meaning in our present day.  There are those odd occasions where it all feels like we have been somewhere before or we'll catch ourselves saying "this is meant to be" or "I knew this would be the way things turned out."

For me, the magic in Atkinson's work stemmed from her playfulness even in the face of tragedy.  Her unending literary references (which I loved) made me smile even in the most tragic spaces of Ursula's life. Although Ursula was not the most engaging character I have ever read, I wanted to see her succeed.  I wanted her to live through the tragedies.  I wanted her to "bear witness" to the destruction of England during WWII and be strong enough to carry on.  I never stopped rooting for her to beat fate or to create fate or to be happy.

Atkinson's novel restored my faith in the power of the contemporary writer.  We are all products of our past and all working with what we have in the present state, and hoping that we can make a mark on the future.  "Life After Life" paves a very meandering path for future writers to aspire to.

'The Divorce Papers': Making light of something not so funny

"Marriage is a counter-cultural act in a throwaway society."
—Dr. William H. Doherty, noted marriage scholar and therapist 

Researchers estimate that 40-50% of all first marriages end in divorce.  Even more disheartening is that 60% of second marriages end in divorce.  To find the lightheartedness in this VERY serious situation is not an easy task.  Susan Rieger's debut novel "The Divorce Papers" tries hard to accomplish this very feat.  

This epistolary novel relies only on court documents, office memos, email correspondences and letters to tell the story of a marriage and family crumbling.  The story revolves around 29 year old, New England, criminal lawyer, Sophie Diehl who by doing a favor for her boss gets inadvertently roped into taking on her first divorce case.  Because Mia Meiklejohn Durkheim, the daughter of a VIP client of Sophie's firm, likes Sophie she decides very forcefully that although Sophie has no training in divorce law, that she is indeed the right lawyer for the job.  Sophie protests wildly to no avail.  If Mia wants Sophie, Sophie she will get.

Because Sophie has no divorce experience, Rieger is able to educate the reader about divorce law and documents as the story (and the myriad paper trail) evolves. Stories are told within the stories about Sophie's own troubled relationships with her parents who divorced when she was young.  She also divulges her crush on her boss, a tricky relationship with a handsome director, and an eventual probable romance with another lawyer.  We meet Sophie's best friend, Maggie, who is an actress and confidant, always helping Sophie to see the best in her parents and herself as Maggie tries to divert her from making horrible professional and personal mistakes.  

The main story of the Mia's divorce from her husband, Dr. Daniel Durkheim and their custody battle of their 10 year old daughter, Jane takes precedence over the backdrop story lines and the drama Sophie creates in her own life.  I don't know about you, but divorce isn't funny to me, and the story of the overprivileged Mia and Daniel and their spoiled tantrums about trust funds, inheritance, $10,000 annual gifts from Mia's wealthy father, and a $3,000,000 vineyard property didn't make me giggle once.  Seeing the heartbreak and devastation that the feuding parents inflicted on their daughter made me sick to my stomach.  In divorce, the fight becomes more about damaging the other person, making them hurt either in their heart or in their financial future and neither of those things is very appealing or funny.  

As I read this book and waded through the documents that laid out financial assets and tried to divvy up a life in dollars and cents, I kept telling my husband, "We are never getting divorced.  EVER." The divorce procedure is common if by estimates almost half of all marriages end with a split, but the sadness of the dissolution of what was once a bond made me more angry at the two adults who acted like children.  I didn't rally for Mia.  I didn't care about Dr. Durkheim's future with the dermatologist.  I mostly just felt disgusted that they took so long to figure out that neither of them would be in any kind of financial necessity from the divorce.  Mia continually says that money is no object and that she is willing to pay double to have a criminal lawyer with no divorce experience represent her.   

Mostly divorce is sad.  I've seen my friends go through the battles.  I've watched them worry about money, worry about splitting up custody of children they love, worry about their prospects for happiness in the future.  I can't see many of the 50% of people who have gone through the battle want to read court documents again or giggle about spouses blowing up at each other in front of their child.  

I did read this book quickly and I was mildly entertained even if the epistolary style seems to be the M.O. of YA novelists mores than adult fiction writers. Mostly, I was reminded of the work that goes into marriage to keep love alive.  It isn't easy to stay in love, but this book was more of a warning to me to never end a once solid marriage in an endless paper stack of court documents, office memos and emails.  

'Little Failure': Coming of Age as a Jewish Russian Immigrant

It took me some time with this one. I don't know what my barrier was to Gary Shteyngart's memoir "Little Failure."  It has everything I love - humor, an almost unbelievable coming of age tale involving immigrant parents and the less than perfect son, wanting to please and separate from parents all at once, embarrassing moments in elementary school and middle school, underachieving in high school and college, and then the quest to become a writer and lover and human being.  I love that stuff.  I love memoirs that are raw, honest, and ache with the quest to find one's truth.

It's all there, but something stopped me from jumping up and down every time I picked up this book.  Something stopped me from laughing out loud in the funny sections (and there were so many that sometimes it's easy to overlook just how funny this book is). Now that it's over, I can appreciate the journey of the book even more as it meanders from Gary's Russian roots to his family's immigration to Queens, New York. From there it travels beyond his childhood to Gary's high school and college years where he decides he wants to be a writer and even beyond that into his adulthood of failed relationships and failed decisions.  Finally it travels back to where it started, in Russia, as Gary sees new aspects of his father's life and puts together pieces of his own.  This book truly is a triumph of a memoir even if I felt like I had to slog through it in order to finish it.

There is no doubt in my mind that Shteyngart possesses an amazing writing gift.  These essays have been strung together in dizzying literary heft.  At times the writing is dense with details and others light with humor and then back to a dark sense of self-deprecation.  That self-deprecation (as the title suggests) stems from Gary's childhood.  His mother's nickname for him was "Little Failure" (how sweet) and his father's lovingly called him "Snotty" due to Gary's serious asthma issues.

I loved portions of this book like when his family receives the Publishers Clearing House that they won $10,000,000 and they believe it until they "find out the truth quickly and brutally"and he ponders that "In Russia the government was constantly telling us lies . . . but we cannot imagine that they would lie to our faces like that here in America, the Land of This and the Home of That." I also loved his descriptions of The Solomon Schechter School of Queens and his painfully funny retelling of his circumcision at age 8 ("In school, my penis is trying to put on a brave face. It can't tell anyone what happened or they'll make fun of its owner, Igor, or Gary, or whatever").

At times, though, the writing felt a bit too dense with too much meandering back and forth and then the repetition of some details due to the essay format being pieced together into a memoir.  The self-deprecation part of the memoir gets a little old, but honestly, that's just Gary coming to terms with himself.  He isn't all that likable, but at the same time there is a quality of sincerity in "Scary Gary" at Oberlin College where he spends most of his days drunk and high and underachieving as much as possible as he listens to Beatles records for college credit.  He's brutally real about his shortcomings and his life disappointments.

What I ultimately can take away from this book is that even our little failures (and in Gary's life there are many) can become huge successes when we are real about them.  I learned Jewish Russian history and saw a side of New York City that I never saw before - the plight of the modern immigrant, the hopes and dreams of his family, their struggles, their failures, their intimate moments as a family trying to discover their new identity while retaining their culture and history.  Gary sees himself as a flawed human being (as we all are) and can also recognize his own talent as a writer.

Did I laugh the way that I do when I read David Sedaris? No.  Did I emote the way that I do when I read Frank McCourt's immigrant experiences? No. Did I feel that I had read an amazing literary voice that will be considered one of the greatest contemporary voices.  Absolutely.

'How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk': A Parenting Savior

After a particularly tumultuous day of sibling fighting, parent frustration, a few tantrums, and lots of tears, I decided to call a family meeting.  I invited my daughters and my husband very formally, and we all sat around the kitchen table.  All of us wore serious expressions on our faces.  "We had a bad day, family," I started the meeting, "but that doesn't mean that we need to continue to have bad days. This meeting is a way for us to air out our frustrations and come to some good solutions to what could help ease those frustrations."

I started by listening to everyone air their grievances which ranged from potty language (yes, my four year old, Story, loves to use the word "poop") to bossiness and surrogate parenting (my nine year old, Raina, sometimes believes that it is her place to parent her little sister which enrages both her little sister and her parents).  I wrote down what everyone said, and wrote down workable solutions to each problem.  I repeated what my children said and no idea was deemed wrong or bad. We talked very civilly for almost an hour, and even though Story squirmed a bit by the end of the meeting, she very much enjoyed raising her hand and offering solutions to the problems we discussed.  The best part of the meeting was when my husband and I both looked at Raina and said, "Rain, you have the best job of all in this house.  You get to be a big sister.  You leave the parenting to us."  With tears in her eyes, she looked at all of us and said, "But, how do you be a big sister?" As a family we wrote down what an ideal big sister would be (helpful, fun, loves to play with the little sister, shows the little sister how to do things), and what a not so great big sister is like (bossy, bully, a parent).

After we finished with everything and everyone had a chance to talk, share and offer solutions, we concluded our meeting.  We left the table smiling and hugging, and I felt great knowing that Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish once again provided me with great tools of how to be a better parent and how to help my daughters be better communicators and overall better people.  The classic parenting book "How To Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk" helps. PERIOD.  I can honestly say that as I was reading the book, I felt better knowing I had new skills to help my children (and myself) stay sane in arguments and conflicts.

I don't care what kind of family you have, there are bound to be conflicts, and personally, I don't always know the best way to solve the conflicts that arise.  When my four year old invades my nine year old's space and ruins her toys, my first thought is "Raina, they are only toys - plastic, cheap ones at that.  Story is the only sister you will ever have and if you had let her play with you in the first place, she wouldn't have ruined the toys."  After reading Faber and Mazlish's sage wisdom, I have better tools to help both Raina and Story deal with their frustrations in this situation.  What do I do differently? I acknowledge the situation (Wow, it sounds like the two of you are really upset with each other.)  I observe and report on what I see (I can see, Raina, that you are frustrated that your sister ruined these toys.  Story, it looks like you are very upset that Raina didn't let you play with her and so you got mad).  Then, I let them know that I have faith that they can come up with a solution to the problem, and I walk away.  That's it.  There is no more yelling at Raina to get over it.  There is no more punishing Story for ruining toys.

Is it perfect?
No.
Parenting isn't perfect just like life isn't perfect.  Some of the skills work sometimes, and some of them don't work right now, but I refuse to give up.  As a parent I get the super power of the permanent do over.

Gone are the days, though, when I make my children feel bad about their feelings (Raina, you will be fine.  You're a big kid now, and there's no need for tears).  Gone are the days when I put my daughters into roles (Story, you are always so wild, you just need to calm down.).  I catch myself almost daily doing things that are just old habits.  Like yesterday as we walked home from school Raina told me that she picked a track and field event for her end of school track meet competition.  "I want to try the softball throw," Raina said with enthusiasm.  I thought of the softball throw from the 2nd grade competition and how far some of the girls were able to throw the ball.  I immediately said, "Honey, are you sure? Don't you remember how amazing some of the girls in your grade are at throwing a softball? Why don't you stick with the jumping event that you did so well in last year?"  As soon as I said it, I recognized that I was taking away her hope and retracted my statement.  One of the best parts of the book was how to encourage autonomy and allow children to make their own choices.  The authors explain, "By trying to protect children from disappointment, we protect them from hoping, striving, dreaming, and sometimes from achieving their dreams." I then said, "So, you're trying a new event this year.  Tell me why you chose the softball throw."

Because I didn't discourage her, as soon as we got home, she went out in the yard and started to practice throwing a softball.  "Mommy, I have some big competition at my school in this event.  I'll need to get good practice in before the meet.  Do you think you could help me?"  I felt so proud of her at that moment.  How cool is it that even though she knows she might not win that she is willing to practice and try as hard as she can?

I don't have all the answers, and even Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish admit that things won't go smoothly all the time, but knowing that I have new tools to help my girls deal with their feelings, be more cooperative, and be more autonomous makes me happy.  I now have new tools as well to praise them, to help them to not get boxed into a "life role" and most of all how to come to solutions with them rather than use punishments that don't work.

"How To Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk" was first published in 1980, but the lessons and advice still ring true with parents in 2014.  For over 30 years, it seems that "parents everywhere, no matter how different the culture, [are] dealing with similar problems and searching for answers." In their updated section at the back of the book, Faber and Mazlish admit "There are problems that cannot be solved by communication skills alone.  Nevertheless, we believe that within these pages parents will find solid support - strategies that will help them cope with the built-in frustrations of raising children."

Raising children is the most important job in the world, and yet many of us who are parents don't take time to be students of how to do it.  We rely on past experiences, or we just go with whatever emotion of the day overrides our patience or our knowledge that we could be hurting more than helping our children.  We all need advice from time to time, and the skills the Faber and Mazlish set forth in this book are both practical and easy, and best of all their greatest hope is that we raise good people AND keep our sanity.  What's not to love about that?

'Shotgun Lovesongs': Tribute to small town Wisconsin

Maybe it's been awhile since I've read a book that felt somehow familiar and introduced me to a new place all at once.  Maybe it's been awhile since I read a book by a male author who I felt really understood the complexities of human relationships and who was able to get inside the head of a female character and speak her truths with honesty and believability.  Maybe it's been awhile since a work of fiction captured my interest enough to read it in two days.  Whatever the case, Nickolas Butler's debut novel "Shotgun Lovesongs" felt like coming home, and it was exactly what I needed as I am in the process of selling my home here on the East Coast and moving to a small town in the Midwest.

My new town won't be quite as small as the fictional town of Little Wing, Wisconsin that becomes a character in Butler's book.  Little Wing reminds me a bit more of Foley, Minnesota where the people go to church together, have get togethers in the church multi-purpose room, where everyone could talk about the weather all day long and never tire of explaining the nuances of a winter snowstorm or a spring sunrise, where everyone knows everyone else, and where every once in awhile a small town boy  or girl makes it big in the world and becomes the topic of bar conversations and family gatherings.

Butler's story revolves around five childhood friends who all feel the gravitational pull (but experience it differently) of Little Wing.  Leland (Lee) is the small town boy who made it big by becoming a famous rockstar (rumors exist that Butler based this character on the lead singer of Bon Iver).  Kip also made it big but in a different way by becoming a big shot in the Chicago Financial District.  After making millions he returns to Little Wing to marry his city girlfriend, Felicia whose greatest desire is to have babies much to the chagrin of Kip who only wants to prove to himself and his friends that he actually belongs in Little Wing.  Ronney's success was short lived as a rodeo star after an accident that left him with a brain injury. He longs only to be treated as a peer instead of someone that everyone worries about and fusses over like a child.  The two most seemingly level-headed and salt of the earth characters in the book are the married couple Henry and Beth.  Henry is a kind, hardworking farmer who loves his family, works hard, worries about money, but never complains.  His devoted wife Beth loves him fiercely and although she sometimes longs for more feels complete as Henry's wife and the mother of their two children.

In the complicated way that friendships, love and marriage work, not all is wholesome in Little Wing.  Past secrets cause rifts, as does money.  Yes, hearts are broken and mended.  Marriages happen and fall apart.  Friends leave and return always with the nostalgic past in mind of four best buddies watching sunrises as teenagers with no idea of how their lives will turn out.  Each of them longs for the past in different ways and each of them reach for the future in different ways as well.

Even with the love that famous Lee holds onto from his brief fling with Beth before Beth and Henry were even together, the main conflicts aren't too heavy that they break the reader's heart.  All the conflicts presented could have happened or maybe already happened in all of our lives - we watch as our best friends marry people for the wrong reasons, or as a close friend longs for a baby when her husband isn't ready for that step in their relationship, or they go through bad business decisions or illnesses that we are helpless to fix.

At the epicenter of all of the conflicts is the never changing world of Little Wing with it's harsh winters (that almost claim the life of one of the friends), and unforgiving farm life.  It's winding back roads protect even the most famous people from artificial city life,  and there's no shortage of beautiful sunrises and sunsets, or hometown bars where everyone knows your backstory and everyone wonders about the jar of pickled eggs that seems to have been on the shelf behind the bar forever.

Butler's debut novel feels at once innocent and experienced, purple prosy in spots, and plainspeaking truth in other parts.  The familiarity of it made me think of the universal experiences of life - friendships, love, heartbreak, growing up, getting married, starting and raising families and trying to navigate the uncertainties of relationships. I do know that this book will make me sit up and take notice a bit more the next time I drive through a small midwestern town (which will be happening soon as my family drives the 11 hour journey to our new home about an hour outside of Chicago).  And maybe, just maybe, I'll be listening to the perfect love song and feeling nostalgic for home.