Peter Pan Me, Please

Oy vey.  I must say, I've been much more focused on new summer clothes, fashion, fragrance, fine food, and finally, FINALLY having enough money to pay off my credit card (yay!) to think much about the world of books this month.  I have still been reading up a storm, though, and that Secret Life review will be coming up quicker than you think (or than I planned).  I've actually already finished the book.  However, I'm making a point this time to read the appendices, as they diverge from the usual list format and are actually giving me more information about the author's sources, and consequently, about Marilyn.

Reading about a woman who is portrayed as never having truly grown up, and with summer fast approaching, I'm in the mood for light, dependable kids' books.  The B/F and I often have rather emphatic debates about age-appropriate reading material: when is it time to bite the bullet and stop reading books written for a younger audience?

The B/F will tell you that as you grow up, it's time to move on to more and more grown-up subject matter.  Like in phases, I guess.  What bothers me is when he tells me you can't go back.

What are you talking about?  Of course you can go back.  I know the way well.  Right back through all the bestsellers, chick lit, fiction, non-fiction, romance novels, fantasy/sci-fi, cookbooks, history, social science, and self-help, to land smack in the middle of the young adult section.  Or maybe even the children's section.  And sometimes even the infants' section!  (Don't deny it.  That bunny tail will always be so nice and soft to touch.) 

Sure, depending on how far back you go, you might look just slightly ridiculous.  But, when I browse those sections, I usually find that people think I'm there looking for a gift.  No need to feel embarrassed.  Sometimes you need simplicity in your head.  I can't think of a better way to get there than to read a children's book.  It's not like no one else is doing it.

So, obviously, my unshakable answer to The B/F's protests?  Never.  You are never too old for a kids' book.  Look at the success of Twilight among adults -- or Diary of a Wimpy Kid.  Heck, are you going to tell me you wouldn't sit down to read the first Captain Underpants from cover to cover if you had the chance? 


Kids' books are great because they don't hide anything.  You know exactly what you're getting.  There is not much guessing, not much reading between the lines.  This might sound backwards, or incredibly lazy, but every once in awhile, it's just so refreshing to have everything spelled out for you.  It's like therapy. 

The feeling of nostalgia I get when I re-read a FAVORITE kids' book is the BEST.  Oh, there are so many.  The Rough-Faced Girl.  Ramona the Pest.  The Pinballs.  Henry and Mudge.  Clifford the Big Red Dog.  Clifford the Small Red Puppy.  Charlotte's Web.  The Stupids Die.  Strega Nona.  The Store-Bought Doll.  Thundercake.  The Baby-sitters Club.  Spider Saves Easter.  The Sweet Smell of Christmas.  Oh, The Sweet Smell of Christmas.  That book was amazing.

Last fall when we took a trip with my family down to our favorite beach vacation spot, The B.F. and I ventured into the local bookstore (I still have no idea what it's called, even though I've been inside it at least once during every trip of the 9+ years my family has vacationed there), and THERE IT WAS.  An entire display of children's books, stacked with literally most of my favorites.  I wanted to ask how much for the whole five shelves.  The B.F. just stood, shuffling his feet, watching me melt, prodding me to leave them.  But how could I?  How could I leave Hats for Sale?  And Frog and Toad?  And Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus?  And Babe the Gallant Pig (way better than the movie, btw)?  And Stone Soup?  Seriously, you want me to put down Stone Soup?  With the same cover I remember from my childhood?  I honest-to-goodness got teary-eyed when I could see that The B/F didn't understand my feelings for those books, when they didn't touch him in the way they touched me. 

Sometimes I think I want to have children just so I can buy books for them, then steal them and read them for myself.  Under the covers.  With a flashlight.  We'll put the hall light on and turn the TV up in the other room just for effect.  When books can bring you to that special place, the one that makes you feel so good and safe, the one you thought was nearly gone, that's when you know they are worth reading.  That's what kids' books do for me.

And that's not so bad, is it?

REVIEW: 'Little Women' by Louisa May Alcott

I must say, the second time around, I was much more involved.  Lots of spoilers here, so look out!

Maybe it's because Mother's Day commercials are popping up more and more frequently, but I want to start by saying the copy of Little Women I read was given to me by my mother.  I cherished reading it even more now that we've got a better relationship than we did when I was a teenager.  My mom is not exactly comparable to Marmee (because she's a MODERN WOMAN!), but she is pretty freakin' great, and only now that I'm grown up can I see that clearly.  *tear* (I know, sorry for the sappiness.)

In all sincerity, reading this book again was like looking back on my relationship with my mom.  Now that I'm an adult, and I've gone through my own transformation, I can definitely appreciate the book that much more.  I'll still say Part I was my favorite: the girls' innocent friendship with Laurie, and the vastness of their imaginations, kept a sweet smile on my face the whole way through.  I didn't feel nostalgia, but again, there was appreciation there for the naivete of childhood dreams and growing life experiences.  I never noticed before all the morals embedded into each chapter: I value more the morals in Part I, because they are the lessons we must learn to thrive as good human beings.  In Part II, the lessons become more targeted -- they are the lessons 19th century America encouraged its women to learn.  I'll admit that living in the 21st century caused the feminist in me to ruffle a little at some of the notions about being a "good woman."  The title even brings out the wryness in me.  But that's another story.

My affinities for the March sisters changed for me during this second, full reading, too.  When I first read the book, I was about eleven years old, and my favorite character was Jo.  At the time, I identified most with scrappy young girls who were pretty on the inside, whose best friends often became their lovers.  I think that's part of the reason I became so disenchanted with the second half of the book -- I wanted nothing more than for Jo and Laurie to be married, like a Disney movie.  As I read on this time, I became less and less enamored with her...her independence forced her into a lonely, spinster-like individual.  It bothered me that she completely gave up her writing, and that by marrying, she redeems herself as a woman.  Jo is an enigma, for she finds her calling as a caregiver (that shouldn't have surprised me, as we saw all the passion she put into looking after Beth), but to me, her generosity always seemed rather uncharacteristic, even sometimes self-serving (I imagined her saying, "What shall I do without...?").  Mostly I was disappointed.  I so wanted her to move to New York, have a writing career and a family, too.  And somehow, her Professor seemed all wrong...quite convenient, if you ask me.

This time around, I more identified with Amy.  I can reflect back on myself as a little girl, and realize that she is the one I was probably most like: a desire for popularity and beauty, a wish to be good and unselfish, and a drive to be educated and rich.  Amy is also the one I most admire in the book now, for she overcomes her childhood trivialities and grows into a charming, collected, rational woman.  She also gets to marry Laurie, and I do approve of the match there...although I believe that if Jo had only loved Laurie from the beginning, she would not have been so hard for me to identify with...although I don't believe that Laurie would have turned out as well as he did if that had happened.  What a pickle.

Beth I will never identify with.  Only the good die young, I guess.  Still trying to figure that one out.  Thoughts?

Oh, there is so much about this book I could ramble on and on about...but I think I'll leave the rest of the discussion for the comments.  I did thoroughly enjoy the story, and this copy is getting a very privileged place on my shelf.

How's a tagline for a closer?  "Little Women.  Better than the Vampire Diaries by a million."

 NEXT UP: The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe, by J. Randy Taraborrelli.  I hope to have this hefty hardcover biography finished by June 1...Ms. Monroe's 84th birthday.

Teaser Tuesday!

 We had our first snow this week!  Perfect weather for curling up with a good book.  Or, for doing a teaser!

1. Grab your current read.*
2. Let the book fall open to a random page.
3. Share with us two (2)** "teaser" sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
4. Share the title and author of the book, so we can investigate on our own if we like the teaser you've given!
5. Please avoid spoilers!

*To keep this feature periodic, I will be using both teasers from current reads, and from books I've read before, but haven't discussed on this blog.

**Quantity of sentences may vary, depending on how long it takes to finish the thought within those line parameters. Teasers should still make sense!

I'm feeling Christmasy all of a sudden (Haul out the holly!), and I'm pretty disappointed I'm not going to be able to afford a Christmas tree this year after all.  So, to cheer me up, this week's teaser comes from my most favorite Christmas book of all time.  My grandma bought it for me at a garage sale one summer, and for Christmas two years later she made me a rag doll just like the one on the cover.  The book is called The Christmas Dolls: A Butterfield Square Story, and it's by Carol Beach York.  I lurve it.

Snowflakes flew in their faces, and melted on Florabelle's green glass-button eyes.  Everything looked wet to her after that, as if she were looking at the world under water.

Thanks once again, MizB, for your wonderful meme!  I'm off to decorate the rest of the house!

Celebrity Book Sighting

So I'm sitting and watching the Parks and Recreation episode I missed two weeks ago while I began the first long drive of my vacation. It's Episode # 203, entitled "Beauty Pageant." The plot in brief: Leslie Knope, Deputy Director of Parks and Recreation, serves as a judge for the local Pawnee beauty pageant. The subplot thickens as she discovers the police officer who is interested in dating her is not quite familiar with her real-life female role models -- specifically, Madeleine Albright.

It's the last scene of the episode, and I almost closed my full screen view so I could push on to view The Office episode I also missed, when...could it really be? Yes! It is! What do I spy in the background but a copy of Gail Collins's America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines! My favorite history book of all time!

America's Women on Leslie Knope's bookshelf:



America's Women on my own bookshelf:




I love this book with all my heart. It was the first book I ever read, at the ripe old age of 22, to really get me interested in, and sometimes fascinated with, history. From the era of the very first colonists up to the 21st century, Gail Collins, an editor at the New York Times, explores the common life, struggles, victories, failures, political activism, and overall history of American women. She includes many races, backgrounds, and classes in one of the largest compilations of diary entries, articles, books, and journals I've ever seen. According to Amazon, "...some of these women -- from the justly famous, like Clara Barton and Harriet Tubman, to the undeservedly obscure, like Elizabeth Eckford and Senator Margaret Chase Smith -- will not only make any woman proud to be a woman, they will make any American proud to be American."

I am absolutely smitten with this book. Admittedly, it took me a whole summer and then some to get through it...the amount of content is just so vast, and I'll confess that not all of the stories held my attention equally. At first, it's even a little befuddling. I thought I'd try to take notes in the margins, but there are so many stories about so many women, I'd already lost track by the 3rd chapter. I had to learn to let some 'characters' go, because they rarely turned up again later. You kind of have to let what stands out to you really stand alone, and let the rest fall where it may. Let me clarify. It's all so interesting; so many of the stories felt...inherent...to me. But I think it qualifies as a great re-read because I'd bet you'd learn something new every time. Really, you have no idea how much she fit into this little 608-page book (yes, 608 pages will seem ridiculously minuscule when you think about how much she probably didn't include).

The book was such an important discovery for me. It really did make me feel closer to my heritage as an American, and as an American woman. When I saw it in the background of last week's Parks and Recreation, I was so ecstatic. I feel driven to share how much I love this book every time I think about it. I'm surprised this whole blog hasn't had at least one mention of it by now. Well, I'm finally saying something. Go pick up a copy of America's Women by Gail Collins, and learn. Endorsed by Leslie Knope.* It's what it was written for.


*Not an actual endorsement.

Where are All Those Reviews??

I know, I promised haughty opinions and pretentious analyses. Don't worry, I'm about halfway through The Forever War, so it shouldn't be too much longer before you see all that goodness posted all up in here. I need to finish reading it by September 29 or 30, because I want to start a new book before my beach vacation in October. Something a little less...heavy.

To tide you over, here is a story about my favorite literary term:

le mot juste: the right word.

I became fascinated with this expression my sophomore year of college, in a class called "The Lost Generation." We studied the expatriates: people like Sylvia Beach, who helped make salons famous, but we also looked at the authors who were writing from the Left Bank of Paris -- Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald...and most importantly, Ernest Hemingway.

My professor, a Hemingway scholar, would use the term le mot juste at least once a class. "Hemingway was always searching for le mot juste," he'd say.

"He was never satisfied until he found le mot juste."
"Without le mot juste, you can completely miss the meaning, wrong the tone, or smother the attitude of a sentence!"
"Did you know Hemingway wouldn't touch a drop of alcohol while he was writing, because he knew it would distract him from finding le mot juste?"

The guy had an (admirable) obsession.

I took all of his stories to heart. Even if it seemed the Hemingway anecdotes were more tall tale than truth, that class really taught me something about writing. "Advanced Composition" and The Sense of Structure only nurtured the seed that was planted during my hours spent in "The Lost Generation."

Now, whenever I write, I painstakingly read back every sentence, edit them one at a time, to make sure my meaning is clear and accurate. (See, accurate. I went back and forth for 3 minutes on that. I almost used genuine there, but I wanted le mot juste -- the right word. And the meaning does change, doesn't it? Even if it's just in what you feel when you see it.) That is why I'm so passionate about the written word. In my own search for le mot juste, I am finding out so much more about me.

Sidebar: Here's something else kind of fun. I found this URL while looking up things to include in this mot juste post: http://www.etymonline.com

You Knew It Was Coming...

What's a book blog without a list of the author's favorites? In a completely non-exhaustive and unparticular order:

• Charlotte's Web
• Children of the River
• The Outsiders
• Blonde
• Gone with the Wind
• To Full Term: A Mother's Triumph Over Miscarriage
• The Sense of Structure: Writing From a Reader's Perspective
• Katharine Kerr's Deverry series
• Drop City
• America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates and Heroines
• The Vagina Monologues
• Ramona the Pest
• Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus
• Le Petit Prince
• Exiles: The Ruins of Ambrai
• The Things They Carried
• If I Die in a Combat Zone
• Not So Quiet...
• The Sun Also Rises

And what determines a favorite, you ask?

I'm sort of biased in this area. Sometimes I feel like I've fallen in love with almost every book I've ever finished. The feeling is especially powerful if I did a really good job picking a book to suit my mood. I adore the feeling I get when I've matched up my mood with the mood of the book. It's what I imagine marriage will be like. Here's another list I'm currently using as a scale. Feel free to rate your own books using it. Again, non-exhaustive:

• A favorite book should wrench your heart, in any direction, if only for 30 seconds.
• A favorite book should make you laugh out loud.
• A favorite book should cause you (at times) to take pause in your reading and regroup, because you realize you've been audibly mumbling the most exciting parts to yourself.
• A favorite book is literally impossible to put down because it's figuratively glued to your hand.
• A favorite book leaves you feeling satisfied, no matter what the ending.
• A favorite book is meaningful enough, and surprising enough, for rereads.
• A favorite book excites you.
• A favorite book invites you.
• A favorite book allows you time to breathe.
• A favorite book leaves you with a new thought.
• A favorite book earns your respect, it never commands it.
• Last but not least, a favorite book just makes you feel happy.

I suggest we all take some time to pull out the ol' favorites, leaf through them, tell them you love them. Ahem, well. Happy reading, everyone!