February 8, 2010 – 9:03 am
The Book: Handle with Care, by Jodi Picoult
The Story: During an ultrasound at 27 weeks, Charlotte and her husband Sean are told that their baby has a disease that makes her bones very, very brittle. She already has seven broken bones and if she doesn’t die at birth will have many more. They are heartbroken, but push on. Willow is born. More bones are broken, but she lives.
The story in the book takes place when Willow is five years old. She has had sixy-something broken bones. She is smart and capable and adorable. She falls and breaks both of her femurs on vacation and Charlotte and Sean are arrested on suspicion of child abuse. When everything clears up, Sean decides to file a lawsuit because of all that they went through. While the lawyer tells them that they don’t really have a case in this incident, but that they could possibly file a “wrongful birth” lawsuit saying that their doctor didn’t catch Willow’s disease early enough to allow for them to terminate their pregnancy. All they have to do is say that they would have terminated, given the information earlier.
The decisions that are made based on this little tidbit and all of the fallout make up the rest of this story.
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February 5, 2010 – 6:00 am
I remember my third grade teacher giving me a nice, shiny copy of this book and telling me that Matilda always reminded her of me. I was immediately sold because: 1- it seemed like a huge, fat book at the time, which I have always loved, and 2- I loved my third grade teacher, Miss Dodson, with an undying passion. I thought she was the gentlest, sweetest, prettiest woman who had ever lived and I wanted to be just like her.
So, it turned out that Matilda was about this little girl who didn’t fit in with her family because her parents were crazy (true of mine, at the time) and her brother was dark and mean (also true of mine at the time). She escaped by reading. Her school principal was a complete nut and marched around glaring at kids. All true of my life. And then there was Miss Honey. The gentlest, sweetest, prettiest teacher in the world. And she loved Matilda and helped her fight all the evils in her life. In fact, Matilda even ended up living with Miss Honey. Was Miss Dodson saying she wanted me to live with her?! Did she want to adopt me?! To this day, I still picture Miss Dodson’s house just how they described Miss Honey’s- a little cottage with a pretty garden all around it.
I think that I would have loved this book anyway because Matilda and I really did have a lot in common and nothing beats how Roald Dahl writes for kids- not like they are stupid, but as if, in fact, they are much smarter than the adults around them. The fact that this book had reminded my beloved teacher of me just put it over the top for me. It will always be one of my favorite children’s books.
To participate in Flashback Friday, check out this page then go for it!
February 3, 2010 – 4:25 pm
The Book: Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality, by Donald Miller
The Story: Donald Miller grew up in a vaguely Christian environment, going to church and hearing the stories but never quite wrapping his head around it. This is the story of him fleshing it all out.
He kind of “comes to age” in Oregon and is just kind of this hippy guy and attends Reed college and has friends that he gives strange nicknames to. He goes to a church that focuses strongly on community and ends up living in a house full of guys.
This book is just about that journey. He doesn’t go into the deep or very controversial issues, but more so what the Bible says and what that would look like lived out.
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February 2, 2010 – 10:50 am
The Book: Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, by Ayelet Waldman
The Story: Emilia lives in an amazing apartment with her amazing lawyer husband who was a married man when they met and fell in love. He chose her and they are pretty much living the dream. With just a couple of exceptions. Emilia doesn’t like her husband’s son from his first marriage, William. He’s five years old and too smart for his own good.
Emilia really loses it when William starts asking tough questions about the infant daughter that recently died from SIDS. While the book flap makes it seem like it’s this funny little book about being a better stepmother, most of the book revolves around Emilia dealing with her grief over this baby.
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February 1, 2010 – 5:58 pm
The Book: The Colorado Kid, by Stephen King
The Story: Like a lot of Stephen King books, this one takes place in Maine. There are these two older guys who work for the local paper and they have a young female intern. They are really kind of impressed with her, you can tell from the get go. She asks them if they have ever had a truly unsolved mystery on the island. The story that they answer with is the story of The Colorado Kid.
Every town has these local legends, these stories that people tell each other with a little glimmer in their eye. The men explain to the intern that this isn’t really one of those stories. There are too many unknowns for it to be ”glimmer in the eye” kind of story. It’s hard to even speculate as to what happened.
Here is the gist: A man is found dead on a beach. He has no jacket and it is early April. He has steak stuck in his throat, and he has also suffered some kind of stroke. His identity remains a mystery for over a year until a small clue leads them to Colorado. From there, the list of unknowns more than doubles.
As they are telling this story, the two newspaper men are making the intern ask the hard questions and try to get to the bottom of this. They are really feeling her out and seeing how well she would do working on the newspaper full-time.
And that’s as much as I’m telling you. As with Into the Woods, I don’t want to give away too much. This is a mystery. It wouldn’t be fun if you knew all the twists and turns.
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January 31, 2010 – 8:34 am
The Book: The Help, by Kathryn Stockett
The Story: This is the story of the 1960’s in the deep south. More specifically what it was like to be a black maid during this time of racial upheaval. There are three points of view represented: an older maid who is alone in the world after white bosses killed her son, a younger maid who has a large family and an abusive husband, and a white woman who from the get-go realizes that how these women are treated is just not right.
Skeeter, the white woman, has recently graduated from college and come back home *gasp* without being engaged. What she wants more than anything is to be a writer. A newspaper writer, a novelist, it really doesn’t matter. Moving back home is tough and her mom is completely overbearing. All of her friends are the rich young white women in Jackson, Mississippi, and she is just kind of over them. Over the course of a few bridge clubs and Junior League meetings, she just becomes blown away by the way her friends treat their help. One of the women, Hilly, is worse than the rest and is leading a campaign to get all the white families to build separate bathrooms so they don’t have to use the same toilet as their maids, who have diseases that “only the help carries because it is drawn to their dark pigmentation” or something like that. All of this gets Skeeter fired up.
I don’t want to give too much away because I am so glad that I went in knowing nothing! Suffice to say that a couple maids let Skeeter into their lives a little more and Skeeter uses that as a platform to try and make change. In race relations. In Jackson, Mississippi. In 1964. Eeek.
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January 28, 2010 – 3:12 pm
J.D. Salinger died today.
So sad.
January 27, 2010 – 3:36 pm
I emailed my husband this morning and told him that he could finally order his coveted macbook… if only he got this to go with it:
Isn’t that awesome? I’m totally in love.
I even love that they call it “bookbook”… like macbook…only bookbook. Get it? Awesome.
Unfortunately for my husband and myself, a macbook isn’t in our cards for quite some time.
If you are lucky enough to already be sporting a macbook (under 17 inches), go get one. Then tell me. I’ll live vicariously through you.
January 27, 2010 – 3:19 pm
The Book: Pregnancy Sucks: What to Do When Your Miracle Makes You Miserable, by Joanne Kimes
The Story: The story is simply this: Joanne got pregnant after months and months of trying. Joanne got whiny.
That’s basically it.
This book is set up in a month-by-month format, which is kinda funny because in the start of the book she talks about how pregnant women tend to think and talk in weeks then watch non-pregnant people scratch their heads and try to figure out how far along they are.
The idea behind this book is that women get pregnant all the time and are expected to just be overjoyed. Meanwhile, they are getting fat, puking every hour or so, and peeing even more often than that. But as a pregnant woman, if you mention these things you are kind of treated like a black sheep. So the author mentions them. And mentions them and mentions them.
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January 26, 2010 – 12:46 pm
The Book: That Old Cape Magic, by Richard Russo
The Story: This book centers around Jack Griffin and his relationship with his wife, Joy. It kind of made me think of when my husband and I were going through pre-marital counseling and the pastor asked us about our relationships with our future in-laws. He said that we’re not just marrying each other, that we’re marrying each other’s families too. Jack kind of wants to just write his parents off. Joy wants to be a major part of her family’s day-to-day life. This is a source of contention that started earlier in their marriage but now, 30 years later, has driven a huge wedge between them. Early in their marriage, they made kind of a “life plan” and have worked all these years to obtain those wishes. Even though they have physically gotten there, Jack still finds Joy crying in the shower and they are just overall miserable.
During the first part of the book, they are going to a wedding of their daughter’s childhood friend. Jack’s dad has recently died and he is taking his ashes with him to scatter in the Cape, a very important part of their family’s past. While there, not only do things really come to a head with his wife, Jack really does a lot of reflecting. These are the promised bits of humor in the book. Jack’s parents are these crazy academics, and their snobbiness is really funny at times. Even after their deaths, Jack is still hearing them and being effected by how he was raised.
The second part takes place at the wedding of Jack and Joy’s daughter. Jack is still reflecting and hearing his parent’s voices and by this time, he and Joy are separated. There is this one scene that really capped up the book for me. Laura, his daughter, is asking Jack what she can do to avoid breaking her future husband’s heart. She’s afraid that she just has something inside of her that is mean and wrong and that she’ll hurt him without even meaning too. It’s just easy to see that Jack and Joy’s relationship and effected her in the same way that Jack’s parent’s relationship effected him. The question that seemed to be at the center of this book was, “How long will we keep this up? How long will we make the same mistakes our parents made? How long will we be haunted by them?” They are good, relevant questions and this book is an exploration into the answer.
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