Shelah Books It

Book Review: The Year of the Boar by Anneke Majors

2012-01-28T20:28:00.000-07:00

Title: The Year of the Boar
Author: Anneke Majors
Enjoyment Rating: 6/10
Referral: I saw that there will be a review in the upcoming issue of Irreantum and decided to read it
Source: Kindle for iPad
Books I've read this year: 3

I was so excited to read The Year of the Boar because it combines my love of "serious" LDS literature with a bunch of stories about Chinese people. We always talk about how we're a world church, but so many of our stories take place in the mountain west, and I loved the idea that there was a book that didn't just take the story out of Utah, but it took much of it out of the United States. I was also intrigued when I heard that the book worked as sort of a fiction/nonfiction hybrid, because I'm really interested in genre-blending.

Majors has set an ambitious goal for herself in juggling the elements of story and a setting all over the world (there are scenes in Texas, Montana, China, Japan, France, and Africa, and I don't think that list is complete). I think her writing is clear and concise throughout, but I ultimately found the stories very hard to follow. If I'd read them as individual vignettes, I think my expectations would have been different, but I was expecting the stories to tie together, to be more novelistic, and I think there's enough evidence that there is supposed to be some kind of cohesive message from the piece as a whole, but it was hard for me to glean what it was. As a very well-written series of family stories, I think the piece succeeds (although I'm not sure the final chapter works, much as I would like to see Majors's vision come to fruition), but as a novel with appeal beyond a small audience, I think the connections between the sections need to be a little clearer. Even a list of characters on the opening pages would have helped me immensely.

I hope this isn't seen as a negative review, because I really, really applaud Majors for choosing to tackle a Mormon history that isn't a Utah history. I love the places that this book points in our shared future as Mormon writers, and for that reason I think it's an important book.

Book Review: Maui Revealed by Andrew Doughty

2012-01-27T20:09:00.000-07:00

Title: Maui Revealed: The Ultimate Guidebook
Author: Andrew Doughty
Usefulness Rating: 9/10
Referral: I can't remember
Source: Ordered from Amazon
Books I've read this year: 2

I recognize that reviewing a guidebook may be pushing the limits of what constitutes "books I've read" but I'm counting it anyway, since I read basically everything. I found the book very helpful in finding a snorkeling trip and in where to stop and what to do on the drive from the airport to Ka'anapali (we took the north lobe drive, which is rarely traveled, one lane, and pretty crazy). I was also gratified to see that the hotel I'd already booked was labeled "a real gem" (and it was one). The restaurant stuff was less helpful, mostly because I was traveling with four kids and we didn't eat out much. I think that if you had a long time to spend in Maui, this book would be even more insightful and helpful. I appreciate the authors' "cut the crap" approach.

Book Review: The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee

2012-01-25T18:13:00.000-07:00

Title: The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
Author: Siddhartha Mukherjee
Enjoyment Rating: 7/10
Referral: This was considered one of the best nonfiction books of 2011
Source: I bought it for Eddie for his birthday and he finally finished it
Books I've read this year: 1

This book has been sitting on my bedside table or Eddie's bedside table, for the last nine months. I gave it to him for his birthday and expected both of us to read it. Reviewers were showering it with praise and I figured that since I'm a reading omnivore and he's a doctor, it's exactly the kind of book we would both really love.

But it sat and sat and sat on our bedside tables, and neither of us picked it up. It doesn't have a sexy cover, it's true, and the subject matter is inherently kind of depressing, but it wasn't the C-word that kept me from reading, it was the fact that the book is 608 pages and the book feels more like a doorstop than like something you want to curl up in bed with. Also, I knew that the book would take me a couple of weeks to read, and one of the downsides of keeping track of how many books I read is that I sometimes shy away from reading awesome books that might require more time and investment because I want to keep my numbers high. Shallow, much?

Then Eddie decided to read the book over the holidays and when he finished, several weeks later he told me that he didn't think I could get through it. I do like a challenge so I decided to start off 2012 by finally tackling The Emperor of All Maladies.

The book chronicles some of the historical highlights in the fight against cancer, as well as some of the more interesting personalities who played pivotal roles. Mukherjee, who began writing the book while he was an oncology fellow at one of the Harvard hospitals, is a fantastic writer who intersperses his own experiences with a roughly chronological account of the history of the disease. The stories he chooses to highlight really are interesting, and the medical terminology is accessible to a layperson. My enjoyment rating reflects the fact that since the story was more about disease, treatment and lab experiments, it's inherently less interesting than a story about people. But Mukherjee did an admirable job making the story less about history than about the significant players, challenges, and successes.

A letter to Rose-- January 24

2012-01-24T14:56:00.000-07:00

Dear Rose,

It's Chinese New Year. Your first. My 38th, but also my first. Last year at this time, we'd just started thinking about adoption, and we switched countries on a weekly basis (China? No, Korea. No, Ethiopia. Just kidding-- back to China). Chinese New Year must have passed when we were in an Ethiopia phase, because we certainly didn't celebrate. This year, whenever I thought about Chinese New Year, I only thought about the delays-- we'd have to wait an extra week for our Article 5 pickup because everyone over in your part of the world would be celebrating instead of working.

And then your brothers and sisters realized that Chinese New Year was just around the corner and they decided we needed to have a party. They've been reading all about the holiday in their bedtime stories and wondered if we had enough people in the family to wear a dragon dance costume. I needed something to take my mind off the fact that we could be in line for our travel approval already if not for all the holidays, so it didn't take much convincing. You also had a party at your orphanage. We saw pictures of all of the bigger kids with cakes and piles of candy. You and your besties must have been napping because you weren't in any of the pictures, but next year we're going to go crazy snapping pictures of you in a shiny red Chinese dress.

On Saturday, I showed Annie a picture of a dragon cake and she got all excited. One thing you need to know about the women in this family is that we're extremely determined and goal-oriented. Annie decided she was going to make that cake, and there was no stopping her. She baked both cakes, made the frosting, and decorated the whole thing. Now that she's got it down, I suppose she'll let you help.

And then, yesterday, the power went out and threatened to darken our party. It was dark all afternoon and when the sun went down, your mom and siblings sat in the cold, dark house and thought we might all have to sleep in the same bed. And then, just when our stomachs started growling for some food, the power came back on. Within minutes, Daddy came home bearing dumplings, wonton soup, beef with broccoli, sesame chicken and kung pao chicken. We ate with chopsticks and laughed over our terrible skills. For some reason I just can't figure it out. Everyone says to hold the bottom chopstick just like a pen, but I hold my pen weird, so that doesn't help. I'm going to need to bring those baby chopstick helpers with me to China. We figured out what Chinese year we're born in (tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, monkey, dog, rabbit) and got ready to cut into the cake when the doorbell rang, and it was my friend Emily, recently returned from Taiwan, bearing Chinese New Year decorations.

So here I sit, eating leftover dragon cake among the red and gold banners. I hope I hung them right side up. I realized how pitifully underprepared I am to be your teacher about Chinese culture, but I hope you don't mind too much. We'll do our best, and from now on, we'll always celebrate Chinese New Year.

Love,

Mommy

A Letter to Rose-- January 17

2012-01-17T20:58:00.001-07:00

Dear Rose,

I'm writing this letter sitting on the lanai of our hotel in Ka'anapali Beach, looking out at the Pacific Ocean. It's lovely. We planned this trip way back before we knew you were YOU, and we've been having a great time. On Saturday we drove around the island, on Monday we went out for a fancy seafood dinner, yesterday we woke up at 3am and stood in the driving, freezing rain as we waited in vain for the sun to wow us, and today we went on a snorkeling and whale watching trip. When we haven't been climbing mountains and hitting the waves, we've been lying around, eating lots of chips and gelato, and lazing around the pool. Sounds like heaven, unless you're nine months old.

This trip may have started out as just another family vacation, but it's turned into a valediction to this stage of our lives. We're traveling without a stroller, snacks or sippy cups. Everyone carried her own bag and I enjoyed a six hour flight with no one sitting on my lap. It's also been a dry run for China-- we used the same bags we plan to use in china, and traveled without a computer to see if we could get by. I haven't figured out how to post pictures on my blog from the phone, which will be absolutely essential for our next trip, but I think we're getting more and more ready.

But you managed to assert your presence on this baby moon. As we were speeding across the water this morning, I pulled out my phone and saw that Elizabeth at WACAP had called. Pretty soon I had an email with an update, including four new totally adorable pictures. So instead of focusing on the fishes, I looked at your beautiful face about a million times I can hardly believe how lucky I am to be your Mom, even of it means no more vacations in paradise-- at least for a while.

Love,
Mommy

You know that little sprinting stretch we've been in?

2012-01-10T20:09:00.001-07:00

It just came to a crawl. Our I800 approval and NVC cable happened just about as quickly as possible (thanks USCIS!), but now I just got in the line behind an 85-year-old lady with a full cart who needs a price check on cat food, uses a hundred coupons, and then pays with a check, at least figuratively speaking. You see, the embassy in Guangzhou takes both the Chinese and American holidays. All of them. I knew my paperwork would sit on someone's desk through Chinese New Year. I thought that the embassy would be closed Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, which is what the website says, which would delay my pickup by three days (four, if you count the fact that it couldn't be dropped off until today because they don't accept Monday dropoffs). But I found out tonight that they're actually closed the WHOLE week and they're closed for Martin Luther King day too, so our pickup will be delayed not by the three days we were thinking, but by EIGHT days.

So it looks like travel the first week of March is out. The second week is better for Eddie, but man, I want that baby ASAP. If we'd traveled that first week, we could have had her at ten months instead of eleven. We'll take her at eleven months, but every day counts here.

A letter to Rose-- January 10th

2012-01-10T15:50:00.000-07:00

Dear Rose,

This having a baby thing is going to be a big change for all of us, including you. It was a huge change when your biggest brother, Bryce, was born. I was in graduate school and working, and Daddy was in medical school, and we were completely, totally clueless when it came to being parents. But we worked hard at it. Bryce was our "trial by fire" baby. He wanted to be held all the time, cried whenever we went in the car, had to be nursed with the water running, and once he started walking, he was running-- off like a shot with so much energy that I couldn't keep up with him.

Of course, part of the reason why I couldn't keep up with him was that I was already pregnant with Annie. I knew two things-- I wanted a big family, and I needed to get started on that big family before Bryce was old enough to scare me off of it. So we had Annie three months before Bryce turned two. Then Isaac was born two years later, and Maren two years after that. We always had one in diapers when the next baby was born, and when Maren finally potty trained, I had a party. Not a real party, but I was partying on the inside-- I'd gone through a whole decade of non-stop diapering.

Over the last few years, we've slowly adjusted to not having a baby around the house. I got rid of all of our baby gear. We started going on actual dates-- even with the kids awake. We can do things like take the whole family out to dinner or go skiing together or even go on family vacations without a stroller.

And then, at just about this time last year, I got this wonderful, crazy, undeniable feeling that wouldn't go away. We needed you. Over the last year we bought all the baby gear (again), baby proofed the house (again), and planned one final last hurrah babymoon for the family (more on that next week). But even as we've been getting the house ready physically, I've worried that we wouldn't be up to the challenge mentally or emotionally. It's a big job to have a baby, and I'm 12 years older now than I was when your brother was born. Are we ready to stay up at night and change diapers and deal with temper tantrums? And those are just the normal, everyday sorts of things everyone goes through-- are we ready to help you through your surgeries and your speech therapy and make sure you're firmly connected to our family? Of course, we believe we are, but I do feel a little tingle of nervousness from time to time.

At Christmas, your Aunt Jilly and Uncle Carl brought baby Sammy to spend his first Christmas with us. The kids were all so excited-- for the first day they swarmed him and got in his face and made him cry. And then, something happened. It clicked-- they remembered how to treat a baby. And it warmed my heart to see them with him, because I could see them falling in love with him, and I know that they'll fall in love with you just as quickly.

So maybe I shouldn't worry. I hope that this mothering thing is just like riding a bike and I won't be too tired and worn out for another ride around the block. And if I falter, your brothers and sisters will show me how it's done.

Love,

Mommy

P.S. We've done the math and it looks like the latest we'll be leaving for China is sixty days from now. We could have you in our arms in two months. Maybe less if the paperwork fairies grace us with quick approvals from here on out. I actually just mistyped "from" as "form." I haven't had to pee in a cup to get you here (well, just once), but I have had to fill out a whole lot of forms!

NVC Cable!

2012-01-06T12:58:00.003-07:00

This morning I came back from my run and an email from the National Visa Center was waiting in my inbox. Our petition has been forwarded to the US Embassy/Consulate General in Guangzhou! This step, called the NVC cable, only took seven days, which is pretty quick, and even quicker when you consider we had a holiday weekend thrown in there. A copy of the letter, along with some other official visa-related forms, will be dropped off at the embassy in Guangzhou on Tuesday. It will stay at the embassy for 10 working days. Usually this is the most predictable part of the process-- if you had it dropped off on a Tuesday, you'd have it picked up two weeks later on a Tuesday and brought directly to the CCCWA for Travel Approval. However, MLK Day and Chinese New Year will throw a wrinkle in those plans, so it will take three weeks for the approved paperwork to get to the CCCWA instead of the normal two.

After the paperwork goes back to the CCCWA, we'll wait for Travel Approval. This usually takes about three weeks, but I've seen it take as few as 12 days and as long as 35 lately. Families generally travel two or three weeks after TA, depending on the availability of consulate appointments.

For the last two steps (the I800 and the NVC cable) we could encourage the process along a little bit by emailing and requesting PDFs. It felt good to think that I could put some nice, gentle pressure on the people at the other end of the approval process. But from here on out, there's nothing for us to do but wait, enjoy the little milestones, wait a little more, chew our fingernails, wait, eat chocolate, and eventually, work ourselves into a frenzy of nesting, packing, and buying plane tickets.

If we work according to the law of averages, here's what our timeline might look like:

Article 5 Drop-Off: January 10th
Article 5 Pick Up: January 26th
Paperwork to CCCWA: January 30th
TA: February 20th
Leave for China: March 10th
Gotcha Day: March 12th
Home: March 23rd

I'm eager to see if my predictions are on target. Of course, maybe I'm too optimistic, but this is a case where I can't be blamed for wanting things to happen quickly!

And yes, I am trucking away at the novel. I think one more chapter might do it. Then revise, revise, revise, defend, go get Rose!

A letter to Rose-- January 3

2012-01-03T15:45:00.000-07:00

Dear Rose,

The kids went back to school today, and I spent all day thinking it was Monday, which is why it's taken most of the day to get around to writing this letter to you. I've also been filling out Visa paperwork this afternoon (seriously-- does this paperwork ever end?). With any luck, I'll be off to get my lovely picture taken (again) tomorrow morning, get a money order, then send a whole packet of papers and our passports off to get the visas.

Anyway, visas are boring. But you know what's fun? Baby showers. Baby showers are super fun. I'd almost forgotten how much fun since I haven't had one in ten years.

And since a picture is worth a thousand words, here are some pictures!

Your Aunt Patience made these dolls and sent them from Alaska. They're to give to your friends at the orphanage, but they're so stinking adorable that we had to keep one. We also used them as a party decoration.

The tower of cupcakes. Mimi made chocolate, peppermint, and gingerbread, in honor of you, our gingerbread baby. We'll be coming to catch you as soon as we can!

The dining room (with some decorations repurposed from Maren's birthday party a few days earlier).

Your big sister Annie painted this on the afternoon of the party. She even looked up the Chinese characters for your name!

Mimi numbering the "Hundred Wishes Quilt" in the laundry room

Mommy (notice the Rose sweater I got for Christmas) with the Jie-Jies and Grannie, who came from Nashville to party with us!

Roses for Rose

Did you see that? A Jane Eyre counting book? Just about the cutest dang thing this English-major mama has ever seen!

Grannie had no idea you were born in the year of the rabbit when she ordered this plate for you. Serendipity!

We put down the camera when all the guests came and somehow managed not to get pictures of any of the people who came to share the night with us (Actually, I think we did get some pictures, but they're on the camera that flew back to Nashville). Anyway, I was delighted to see so many friends and family make the trek. I know it's not easy to make time for a baby shower during the Christmas holidays, so it was really special to see people turn up, and even more special to see the quilt after it had everyone's wishes for you written on it. I hope that people will send us their wishes (in the comments of this blog post or by email) so we can fill up the rest of the quilt-- I think it's about halfway full now. I'm very pleased that we now have a bursting-at-the-seams suitcase full of Band-Aids and markers and the four other dolls Aunt Patience and your cousins made and a whole bunch of good stuff to take to your orphanage, as well generous monetary donations to give to your orphanage director.

All in all, a great night. The only thing that would have been better would be having you here to celebrate with us, but I'm beginning to wrap my head around the idea that we've waited a long time, but we're in the home stretch. In less than three months, we should have you home with us!

Love,

Mommy

2011 Reading Recap

2012-01-02T16:15:00.001-07:00

In 2011 I read 160 books. Yep, 160. Although I've been keeping track the whole way through, I'll admit that it surprised me a little bit. It's a significant increase over last year when I read 138, and I think I can attribute it to being in school for the entire year. For one thing, I had to read school books in addition to books for fun, and I also had two hours in the car to listen to books every time I went to Provo (I probably should have listened to the news or my NPR podcasts-- I felt spectacularly uninformed about current events in 2011). Although I only read 23 of the 35 Whitney finalists this year, that also boosted my total.

Best Nonfiction: There is No Me Without You by Melissa Fay Greene. Back when we were deciding to adopt, this book stole my heart and took it to a place that has changed it forever. I never thought I'd have five kids and certainly never thought one of them would be an abandoned infant from China, but here we are, and Greene can take some of the blame and some of the credit.

Best Series AND Best Audiobooks: Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear. I wish there were more than eight books. I also wish that Winspear would allow Maisie to see that love and career don't have to be incompatible with each other. Orlagh Cassidy is the perfect running companion-- she is a pitch perfect Maisie. I was shocked to learn that she's an American!

Best Book by an LDS author: The Scholar of Moab by Steven Peck. This book was both ambitious and entertaining. I hope to see more work by Peck and similarly strong female characters coming from LDS authors.

Best YA: Wolves, Boys and Other Things that Might Kill Me by Kristen Chandler (ok, I know Chandler is LDS too, but the book is not overtly LDS). My biggest disappointment with the Whitneys this year is that Chandler did not walk away with a prize. I wanted it to sweep all three categories it was eligible for (best YA, best new author, and best overall). I'm excited to read her newest book.

Best Memoir: Bossypants by Tina Fey. I know, it was light and I feel like I should pick Anne Fadiman's Ex Libris or Jana Riess's Flunking Sainthood (both of which are more earnest) but no book made me laugh harder in 2011 than Bossypants.

Top Five Fiction Reads: The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach, A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute, The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom, The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides, and Dancing at the Rascal Fair by Ivan Doig.

Favorite Book of the Year: I doubt this will be a surprise to anyone who knows me because I've been singing its praises all year, but I absolutely loved Ann Patchett's State of Wonder. Yes, it may possibly break my cardinal rule of fiction, but by the time I got to that point, I was so in love with Marina Singh and with the Brazilian jungle that I just didn't care.

Book Review: The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson

2012-01-02T15:38:00.000-07:00

Title: The Family Fang
Author: Kevin Wilson
Enjoyment Rating: 6/10
Referral: This kept popping up in "recommended for you" in Amazon and Audible
Source: Audible for iPhone
Books I've read this year: 159

I know that every child feels that their parents messed up in some way or another. My daughter, sitting at the piano right this minute, just cursed me for making her practice. My son has been in tears working with his dad on a Christmas break science project (now who thought that was a good idea?) due at school tomorrow. But Caleb and Camille Fang messed up their kids more than most, and The Family Fang is basically the book of their therapy, of coming to terms with their childhood and deciding how it will or won't affect the rest of their lives.

Caleb and Camille Fang are performance artists (because visual art is dead and boring, Caleb would say). They set up elaborate events in public places (sort of like Improv Everywhere, a group who famously cheered on a band for what they thought would be the best gig of their lives on a 2005 episode of This American Life). Anyway, Caleb and Camille feared that their art was dead when Camille unexpectedly got pregnant, but they soon learned that Child A and Child B (aka Annie and Buster) were actually their secret weapons. Their involvement in all of the art made Caleb and Camille famous and successful artists. However, Annie and Buster tired of their work, and after C&C set up a scenario in which the two would have to kiss in front of their whole school, Annie decided she'd had enough of her parents. She became an actress, and Buster became a writer, and the two floundered through their twenties. Then, going through rough times in their lives, they returned home, and soon after that, Caleb and Camille disappeared.

The book includes a forward-moving narrative (as Annie and Buster decide whether or not to try to find their parents and how to go about it) and a series of flashbacks highlighting the art they grew up participating in. I think the book is well written, and all of the weird extraneous little details come together well, but it was uncomfortable to listen to at times. Caleb and Camille were too cruel, too clueless and ultimately too heartless to be parents. So while I think the book may deserve a higher rating based on the writing skills, the story was too weird and sad to be enjoyable.

Book Review: Flunking Sainthood by Jana Riess

2012-01-02T15:20:00.001-07:00

Title: Flunking Sainthood: A Year of Breaking the Sabbath, Forgetting to Pray, and Still Loving My Neighbor
Author: Jana Riess
Enjoyment Rating: 7/10
Source: Ordered new from Amazon
Referral: I've heard about this all over the Bloggernacle
Books I've read this year: 158

I've read a lot of books over the last few years where an author devotes a year to a goal, breaks it down into twelve month-long mini-goals, and then writes a memoir about he or she did or did not reach those goals, on both a micro and a macro level. Gretchen Rubin did this in The Happiness Project, and AJ Jacobs has done it multiple times, most notably in his book The Year of Living Biblically, which resembles Flunking Sainthood in many respects. In fact, I couldn't help but compare the two books almost constantly as I read Flunking Sainthood.

While AJ Jacobs sets out to accomplish his goal of growing his beard or not having sex or whatever he had to do for a month, I always felt as a reader that Jacobs was looking for the weird and quirky things that happened to him so he could tell funny stories about it. He wanted to entertain us. Riess is also funny, but it's a wry sort of funniness. The humor comes out of her analysis of the situation, not out of the weirdness of the situation itself. Most of all, Riess is earnest-- almost painfully so at times. I found the title of the book, Flunking Sainthood, to be a little bit disingenuous. Riess sets the bar too high for herself at times. If she only prays the matins 40% of the time, she considers that a failure. At one point, while she's trying to keep the orthodox Jewish sabbath, she comments that she's broken it twice in the first three minutes of her morning and is therefore a failure. By the end of the year, Riess has established lasting spiritual practices and had some important epiphanies, but she chooses to see the experience as a failure because she hasn't accomplished all that she hoped to. Jacobs, on the other hand, would have called the experience an unqualified success if he'd been the one writing about it.

Flunking Sainthood is also a book that I think would have benefited from an introduction. Just a few basic things like-- I'm Jana, I live in Cincinnati with my husband and daughter, and we decided to embark on this experiment for _____ reason. Instead, I had to intuit some of that information in the first few chapters and I felt a little bit unmoored as I worked to figure everything out.

As a Mormon reader, possibly the most interesting and curious part of the book is that Riess doesn't own up to her own Mormonism. I can understand why she would do this-- the book has a larger reach if she doesn't pigeonhole herself as a Mormon, and some readers might feel that she has more credibility if she doesn't self-identify. Furthermore, as a convert with degrees from Princeton Theological Seminary and a PhD from Columbia, she might not be the person you'd pick out of a lineup and say "She's the Mormon." But it was interesting to read a book written by a Mormon that doesn't allude to that fact, especially since she talks about attending church and fasting with her congregation and all that stuff, and we as Mormons tend to be publicly proclaiming our Mormonness from billboards lately. I kept wondering how her experiments were colored by her specific faith, but the book was written to address faith more generally.

Overall, Flunking Sainthood was an interesting read, and a thoughtful approach to a format I generally don't like in books (the one goal per month memoir). At times, I found myself wishing that her chapters were longer, and I definitely wanted her to go give herself more credit for the things she did accomplish, but the end result is a thoughtful and thought-provoking read that has made me want to test out certain facets of spirituality in my own life.

Book Review: The Kingdom of Childhood by Rebecca Coleman

2012-01-02T14:52:00.001-07:00

Title: The Kingdom of Childhood
Author: Rebecca Coleman
Enjoyment Rating: 6/10
Source: Kindle for iPad
Referral: My friend Sara/crazywomancreek said it was a must read
Books I've read this year: 160!

There are a lot of things I want to say about The Kingdom of Childhood, but if I talk about the thing that is most interesting about this novel, then I'll ruin it for anyone who wants to read it. I'll just say that we generally start off with certain assumptions about a narrator-- that the narrator is a decent, stable sort of person who is trying to tell a story honestly, and when that gets twisted around, like it does in The Kingdom of Childhood, that provides some potential conflicts that can be really interesting.

I'm getting ahead of myself. The Kingdom of Childhood is the story of Judy, a kindergarten teacher at a Waldorf School in the DC suburbs. The story takes place in 1999, in the waning months of the Bill Clinton scandals. Judy looks like everything you'd expect from a kindergarten teacher-- she wears jumpers and talks in a gentle voice, but she's also experiencing a deep malaise-- her kids don't like her much, her husband is outright hostile to her when he's around, and her best friend recently died of cancer. So she copes with the problems in her life by seeking out sex, first in a one-night stand with another choir trip chaperone, and later with a junior in the upper school, one of her son's friends.

While the story itself is uncomfortable (as we see Judy and Zach's relationship get more and more dysfunctional), I found myself torn between enjoying the richness of the details of the story and being put off by the style of the narration. Most of the book is Judy in the first person (which has its own problematic elements and requires some reading between the lines on the part of the reader) but we also get Zach's actions in the third person, and it feels like Judy is observing Zach in these scenes, although it's evident that she couldn't actually be observing him, despite her stalkerish tendencies. Furthermore, we also get a third-person view of Judy as a child, and some of those passages are unclear-- was she abused by Rudy? Did she develop pyromania? Is she as troubled as her mother was? I feel that while the book is supposed to feel unsettling, the narrative strategy reflected that unsettled feeling a little too well.

Overall, I feel that The Kingdom of Childhood was a rich, multi-layered, interesting story about a difficult subject. Coleman knows her stuff. But the book was too troubling for it to be an enjoyable read.

This is what Christmas looks like with a dozen people in the house

2011-12-30T19:49:00.001-07:00

I can't wait! I can't wait! I can't wait!

Stockings first

Some time I'll have to tell the story of this plate

You know you're the Mom when you're picking up or helping untie bows in every single picture on Christmas morning

Wimpy

Christmas proved too much for Dr. Miner

Sammy's first Christmas!

Annie was happy to have her own Apple specialist to walk her through setting up her iTouch

At the last minute, Santa came through with a scooter for Miss Maren

Eddie got his Christmas wish-- an NBA season!

Maren helped us open Rose's presents too. This is now our proxy baby.

This is how you get fresh herbs all winter in Minnesota, Dad.

I'm bored by this whole Christmas thing

The 3DS has been surgically attached to his hand since Sunday

Silent Night, Holy Night

2011-12-30T19:19:00.002-07:00

When Bryce and Annie were babies, we started the tradition of having a live nativity on Christmas Eve. In theory, it should be the epitome of everything I like about religious traditions-- it's familiar, we sing good songs, the story is simple but meaningful, and it's over quickly. We have a quick dinner of chili, cornbread and salad (a weird Christmas Eve dinner, I know, but tradition nonetheless), then open up our Pandora's Box of costumes. But as our kids have grown, the even has gotten less, ahem, reverent. This year the wise men presented Baby Jesus with gifts of Coke Zero, Mountain Dew, and a whoopee cushion.

"Atari is basically the oldest gaming system so it works as part of my costume"

Booted from her longstanding role as Baby Jesus, Maren attempts to look angelic

Joseph's ride to Bethlehem was pretty tiring

Wise guy #1

Inkeepers rehearse while Granddad tries to keep a yet-to-be-born Son of God quiet

Red-- it's my color

The inkeepers are now shepherds-- we multitask in this house

Holy Family

Baby Jesus has two Mommies too

The good news is that it's over in about five minutes, which gives us a chance to redeem the Spirit of Christmas. It may not be as quiet and reverent as it once was, but I don't see us giving up the tradition any time soon. We soon sat down near the Christmas tree for the other big tradition of the night-- the Christmas book and jammies. Every Christmas, the kids all get new jammies and we get a Christmas book for the family. This one has a long story including my parents' one copy of a rare Scandinavian book that had one US printing, a sister who is a thief, a search of used book stores over the course of several years, an impulse purchase from eBay, a slow shipment from media mail that made the book arrive after Christmas in 2010, and two sisters spending most of Christmas Eve dividing up their hale and hearty mother's earthly possessions to ward off future thievery on the part of the aforementioned younger sister. That's why I look so happy in the pictures. I made her read my kids every page of the dang book as penance (also, I had laryngitis).

We drugged all the kids and sent them to bed, then got down to the real work of the night-- setting out the presents:

That was way, way too many pictures, but I have a new camera. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Cinq, cinco, wu, funf, FIVE

2011-12-30T19:00:00.000-07:00

The great thing about having a birthday two days before Christmas is that Maren often has family here to help her celebrate. On her "real" birthday, we went to the Nutcracker and then had afternoon tea at Grand America, which was both lovely and fancy, but unfortunately, we left the camera at home. Here are some of the highlights of the princess party, where Mimi played paparazzi while Annie was the cruise director and Mom was crafts coordinator. I think all of the princesses felt that they had the royal treatment.

Grannie made the princess dress

Mimi made the cake-- the princess cake is a tradition!

Barbie as Mother Ginger-- her skirt was an angel food cake and a bundt cake!

Coloring princesses

The girls on a scavenger hunt (with their clue-reader)

Making crowns

All dressed up and nowhere to go!

Playing "Princess Says"

The whole gang (minus the ones who had wandered up to my closet and were trying to get into the Christmas presents)

Princess, princess, queen

"Happy Birthday, Dear Maren"

Mmm!

Behold-- my presents-- aren't they lovely?

Hey-- I thought this one was discontinued!

Just what I always wanted!

Five!

I-800!

2011-12-30T10:45:00.000-07:00

Another step off the checklist! Our I-800 form (Petition to Classify Convention Adoptee as an Immediate Relative) was approved by USCIS this morning. It means we're one step closer to getting Rose. Three steps left until we have our Travel Approval! It takes an average of 20 days to get the I-800 approved, and ours took 14 days, so we shaved almost a week off the projected timeline. Now I feel confident that barring any big obstacles, we'll travel in mid-March and have her home for her first birthday on April 7th.

Now I really need to get serious about finishing that thesis...

A letter to Rose-- December 27th

2011-12-27T16:20:00.000-07:00

Dear Rose-

I thought about skipping a week with the chaos of Christmas and a house full of guests. After all, you're not reading these letters. Even if you knew about our existence, over here, 15 time zones away, you can't read or speak English. But whatever, we all know these letters are for me.

Your baby shower is tonight. Today we've been making cupcakes and filling the dining room with Chinese umbrellas and lanterns. In a few hours, some of our friends and family will come to eat egg rolls and dumplings, fortune cookies and cupcakes. We know that fortune cookies and cupcakes are not traditionally Chinese, but our aim is Chinese American, so I think we're on target.

Since you're baby number five, I'm 36, and it's the holidays and we know people have places to go and people to see, we're dispensing with any and all baby shower games. This is a preemptive move on my part because I'm so competitive I'd win them all, and that's not good behavior for a guest of honor.

Instead of matching the adopted celebrity baby to her parents, we're going to have people leave wishes for Rose on a "100 Good Wishes Quilt." I ran across this tradition when I was checking my email on Christmas morning, so we're not doing things exactly according to protocol, but the quilt is based on a Chinese tradition where friends and families contribute fabric to be sewed into a quilt for a new baby, and that quilt becomes that child's quilt throughout her life. Here in America, adoptive families often have their friends and families contribute two pieces of fabric, one to go in a quilt, and one attached to a piece of scrapbook paper along with their handwritten wish, which eventually becomes part of a scrapbook for the child. Once we came across the idea, there was no time to ask everyone attending the baby shower to contribute two squares of fabric, so we decided to make it easy on them. We'll have people write their wish on the quilt backing. Then we'll collect wishes from other friends and family who can't be here tonight and transcribe them to the quilt. We've picked out a whole bunch of fabrics-- pandas, chopsticks, Chinese zodiacs, Chinese girls, and a plethora of roses, and Mimi's going to sew them all into a beautiful quilt, just for you.

Next week, the house will be quiet again, the dozen people staying here cut in half. The big kids and Daddy will be back in school, and Maren and I will sort through the pictures from the shower and show you what a good time we had. The only thing that could make it better would be to have you here to celebrate with us. The good news is that you'll never miss another Christmas with your family.

Love,

Mommy

Book Review: The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

2011-12-25T15:23:00.002-07:00

Title: The Art of Fielding
Author: Chad Harbach
Enjoyment Rating: 9/10
Referral: One of those buzzy books of the season-- not sure where I heard of it first
Source: Audible for iPhone
Books I've read this year: 157

The Art of Fielding is a book about baseball. More specifically, it's a book about Division 3 college baseball. It's the kind of baseball that, as Harbach says in the book, people end up watching late at night when they turn on ESPN 2 in hopes of seeing reruns of baseball or billiards. In other words, it could be a snoozer of a topic. Except that in Harbach's hands, the story works, even for someone who doesn't know or care a single little bitty bit about baseball. The 528-page book essentially covers one baseball season of the Westish Whalers, a small liberal arts college in Wisconsin. It centers on shortstop Henry Skrimshander, the best player Westish has ever seen, on the cusp of breaking the NCAA record for error-free games. Skrimshander's roommate, Owen, and mentor, Schwartz, make up two of the five central characters, as do Guert and Pella Affenlight, father and daughter, college president and high school dropout, who are dating Owen and Schwartz, respectively.

A couple of things really, really surprised me about The Art of Fielding. The first is that the author, Chad Harbach, wrote such a straightforward, almost classical novel. Harbach, the editor of the journal n + 1, seems to take lots of risks with his journal which spotlights politics, literature, culture, and art, among other things. I would have expected something more postmodern out of Harbach, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that the novel is not dead, at least not here.

The other big surprise is that the reviews on Amazon are so polarizing, which I generally think is a sign of a book with serious potential. Some people say it's the worst book they ever read, others adore it. It's true that the book could have been edited by about 100 pages without losing any of the story, but I loved the way that Harbach sometimes took his time with language or spent a lot of time on someone's thoughts. It helped me see ways that I could flesh out my current writing project to make it richer. I've already pressed it on Eddie and my dad is getting a copy for Christmas. I know, it is Christmas, but if you hurry, you can order a Kindle copy for the baseball lover or the reader in your life.

Book Review: The Scholar of Moab by Steven L. Peck

2011-12-24T10:10:00.002-07:00

Title: The Scholar of Moab
Author: Steven L. Peck
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10
Referral: I read a review on By Common Consent
Source: Ordered new from Amazon
Books I've read this year: 156

I've been sitting here at the computer for a long time, wondering what to say about this book. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not trying to look for a nice way to say that I didn't like this book, because I really did like it. But mostly, I'm impressed with the ambition of the book. Even though its length, at just about 300 pages, isn't epic, it feels epic in scope. I think part of the reason is because the book, which centers on the story of Hyrum Thayne, the high school dropout turned "scholar," encompasses so many different voices. Readers not only get Hyrum's private journal, misspellings and malapropisms and all, but they also hear poems from his wife, Sandra, poems and letters from his gal-on-the-side, Dora, letters from one half of the conjoined twins who worked as cowboys in the LaSal mountains outside of Moab during Hyrum's stint blowing stuff up for the government, notes from the unnamed redactor, and likely letters, transcripts or other written work from other voices. I had so much fun reading all of these different voices, and Peck's ability to write from the perspective of so many different characters was really impressive.

The Scholar of Moab is also a book that manages to walk the fine line between satirizing the people of Moab and embracing them. On the back jacket, Scott Abbott says, "It’s satire of the best sort: biting what it loves, snuggling up to what it hates," and that's an assessment that I heartily agree with. Sandra and her ward members are both ignorant and tender, and my reaction to Hyrum vacillated from hate to love and back again several times over the course of the narrative.

One of the most interesting things about The Scholar of Moab is that it's possible to read it as realistic fiction where an astounding number of coincidences come together to create delightfully weird and tragic situation. But it's also possible to read it as magical realism. I'm not sure that Peck comes down decisively on either side of the issue.

The Scholar of Moab is rich, nuanced, and complicated. It expects a lot of its readers, and I appreciate that there is a growing body of books out there by and for (but not only for) Mormons that are embracing these complexities.

A letter to Rose-- December 20th

2011-12-20T13:22:00.000-07:00

Dear Rose,

It's less than a week until Christmas and after a frantic weekend, I think we're almost ready. I'm hoping that by the time the girls get home from school tomorrow, I'll be able to set my schoolwork aside and just enjoy the next few weeks with our family. And that, our family, is what I want to write about today.

I know that over there in China, most families have one child, two at the most. While that situation definitely has its pros and cons (to discuss another day), here in the United States, it's common to see families with two or three children. Right now, there are four kids living in our house, and every one was welcomed with excitement and anticipation, both by us and by our friends. I know this isn't always the case. People tend to project their own wants and abilities onto others, and back when we thought we were only going to have four kids, I remember looking at families of six or seven and thinking "are they crazy?"

Thankfully, everyone I've talked with about adopting you has been far more generous than I might have been several years ago. While I have friends in the adoption communities whose families are downright hostile to the idea of adopting kids with special needs or from different ethnic backgrounds or going from a "normal" sized family to a "big" family, we're lucky that we haven't experienced that yet. In fact, our families have been wonderful. Whenever we talk to Daddy's family, they always ask about you and ooh and aah over your pictures. Mimi and Grandad included you in their "dozen little cupcakes" (their metaphor to talk about their grandchildren in their Christmas card this year). While I know some families might balk at us adding more kids, I'm pleased to say that they're anticipating your arrival almost as eagerly as we are.

Honestly, it wouldn't change anything from my perspective if people did say we were crazy. You're ours. We love you. And while we're absolutely delighted to know that in March you'll be ours forever, it is a little bittersweet to know that you'll be spending your first Christmas in an orphanage halfway around the world. We're celebrating on your behalf. Your presents are wrapped. Your stocking is hanging by the fireplace. Next Tuesday is your baby shower, and I feel so grateful that so many people who love us are eager to love you too.

Love,

Mommy

A big day

2011-12-14T19:48:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had one of those days so full of good, big, and momentous events that it's almost too much to take in. It's my first moment of down time all day, and I'm not sure I can even process it yet.

I knew when I woke up that it was going to be a big day, and a busy day. Ed was taking a board exam, which is a big deal, and I was taking my last final as a graduate student, both of which are significant events, in and of themselves. Both of the girls had holiday concerts. And I had plans to go to the temple and lunch with a good friend for her birthday. During my run this morning, I kept hopping off the treadmill to write notes to myself so I wouldn't forget anything.

Not only was it a big and busy day, but I was also feeling kind of stressed out. Not about the test or the performances or the birthday, but about the dang letter from China we've been waiting for. Driving down to Provo I called Ed to lament about how the wait was wearing me out. He was getting sick of my whining about how things should go in order and I'd be a super-awesome paper pusher if I were ever in the position to approve people for adoption, and he told me to take a deep breath and go take my final. So I took a deep breath, and the phone rang. I saw the Seattle area code and knew it was our agency and started sobbing before I even picked up the phone. We got our letter on day 62 of the wait. Not the fastest letter ever, but certainly not the slowest. Now we have about three months until we can go to China. It's going to happen!

After I wiped the mascara off my face and we did some quick maneuvers with the scanner, I went to my final, then to Maren's adorable dance performance, then totally flubbed dinner because I was still too jangly and shaky to remember things like adding sugar and spices to the pumpkin pancakes. Who needs to eat on a night like this, anyway?

All in all, a good day. A very good day. We have some other big news (that also happened today) but I don't think I can share that news yet. It doesn't have anything to do with our adoption, other than our need to house our growing family.

A letter to Rose-- December 13th

2011-12-13T13:41:00.002-07:00

Dear Rose,

I just got off the phone with your Mimi. She was trying to write a letter and your cousin Sammy was crying in the background. It seems that almost every time I call Mimi or your Aunt Jilly, Sam is making noise in the background. Babies, even sweet and adorable babies like Sammy, are a lot of work.

A few days ago, one of the families from the Yahoo group visited your orphanage and she got a picture of you. We know from your referral papers that you're "active" and "restless," so it shouldn't come as a surprise that in the pictures she snapped, you're crying, begging to be picked up. I know that I am going to have my hands full once you get here.

Over the next few months, there's nothing I can do to hurry along the process of getting there, of picking you up, of making sure that someone is always there to hold you when you cry or rock you to sleep, so instead of blathering on about it, I'm going to be pragmatic. Here are a whole list of things that I can do now that I won't be able to do once you get here:

1) Sleep in on Sunday mornings. Or any mornings. Maren wakes me up for her cereal and milk, but it's easy enough to do a quick pour and stagger back to bed. No warming bottles, no strapping in the highchair, no feeding bite by slow bite required.

2) Take a shower. I know how hard it is to get a shower at all those first few months, and since I'm not sure if you'll be more baby or more toddler, I don't know if you'll keep me so busy I won't be able to get near the shower, or if you'll just cry at the bathroom door like Isaac did when he was a baby. Either way, the long hot shower will be compromised.

3) Get in and out of the car quickly. As long as I hit the automatic doors on the van, everyone is at the stage where they can get in and buckle themselves (although Isaac did point to the door handle the other day and ask what it was used for). I figure you're at least three years from that point. In fact, when the car seat arrived, I checked it to make sure it was the right color, then dropped it back in the box and stuck it in the garage. Such is my revulsion for the car seat stage.

4) Go places without a stroller. Oh, I have a stroller. If I'd let her, I'm sure Maren would even sit in it. But we rarely go anywhere (including the zoo or other places with lots of walking) with a stroller. Of course, a stroller has its upsides (there's always a place to put your drink, for example) but we're focusing on the positive aspects of not having a baby here.

5) Eat a meal in a restaurant. From the time Bryce was three months until he was three, we were a takeout only kind of family. Enough said.

6) Go to the movies. When you take a toddler to the movies, the older kids sit and watch the movie, while you wait in the hall with the baby, worrying about the aforementioned older kids, chasing the baby, and willing time to move faster.

7) Run. I've run 11 marathons since Maren's first birthday. It's something I enjoy doing and get a lot of personal satisfaction from. And even though I've already signed up for a bunch of spring and summer races, I paid my entrance fees knowing that pulling out would always be an option.

8) Live in a house without diapers. We'll ignore the fact that your older brother and sister wear pull ups to bed. I haven't dealt with poop (other than my own) for at least a year. I like it that way.

9) Actually sit on the bench for an entire sacrament meeting. Oh, wait a sec, I actually appreciate the excuse a kid gives me to go talk in the hall.

10) Write a novel. It makes sense that I'm finishing my MFA, embarking on my dream to write novels, and adopting a baby at the same time. Because those are totally compatible desires, right?

I recognize that I'm giving up a lot of the freedoms I've gained back in the last few years. Of course, I'm writing this letter to you with your sister sitting on my lap, watching a movie on the iPad, so I guess freedom is relative. And I hope you know, Dear Rose, that chronicling this list doesn't mean that I want you any less or want you to come any slower (please, no!) but it just helps me remember that even though you're not here, some aspects of my life are easier now than they will be in a few months.

Love,

Mommy

Book Review: Variant by Robison Wells

2011-12-12T12:02:00.002-07:00

Title: Variant
Author: Robison Wells
Enjoyment Rating: 7/10
Referral: I'd heard about it several times but decided to buy it after Emily Milner talked about it at Segullah
Source: Kindle for iPad
Books I've read this year: 155

When Variant starts, seventeen-year-old Benson Fisher arrives at a boarding school in New Mexico, feeling like it will be the first place he will ever be able to call home. He's a foster kid who has lived in too many places to count, and when he gets the opportunity to apply for a scholarship at Maxfield Academy, he jumps at the chance to have a place to belong.

However, it becomes evident even before Benson crosses the threshold of the school that something is seriously messed up at Maxfield. There are no teachers, no adults of any kind. In order to keep a Lord of the Flies-style anarchy from erupting, the students have broken up into three groups, and Benson has to choose which one to join on the first day (he joins the Vs, or the Variants). While the school has only four rules, no one seems able to tell him what it means to be sent to "detention" (the punishment for breaking the rules). Benson decides it's high time to leave, but he soon realizes that escape will be more difficult than he imagined.

I hesitate to call Variant a dystopian novel, because it's not immediately apparent that anything dystopian is going on. Benson's world appears to be like our world. And even when he gets to the school, it seems pretty draconian, but not necessarily out of the realm of possibility. It's not until three quarters of the way through the book that the dystopian elements emerge, so I can't decide if it's a card well played or if Wells is messing with our expectations as readers. While the story really picks up at the end, the middle third is slow-- we see a lot of paintball, and not much else. I also think that the budding love stories should be built up more to justify Benson's reactions to them.

I'll say this for Variant-- it didn't feel like a trilogy, or even like a "stand alone book with series potential" even after I finished it. I was a little bit confused by the ending, and by the potential love triangle it opened up, but it never felt like it was working its way toward more books. So I'm intrigued that Wells (like his brother Dan, whose first Monster book didn't feel like part of a trilogy) has two more books in the works.

Book Review: The Place of Knowing by Emma Lou Warner Thayne

2011-12-11T10:08:00.002-07:00

Title: The Place of Knowing: A Spiritual Autobiography
Author: Emma Lou Warner Thayne
Enjoyment Rating:
Referral: Emma Lou Thayne was the keynote speaker at the Mormon Women Project salon and I bought the book after hearing her wonderful speech.
Source: Ordered new from Amazon
Books I've read this year: 154

After I listened to Emma Lou Thayne share some of her life experiences at the Mormon Women Project salon in November, I rushed right home and ordered her book. She talked about her life in a way that was both traditional and surprising for an eightysomething Mormon matriarch. For example, she spoke about being on the Young Women General Board and about her long and successful marriage to her husband, and she also said that his approach to their marriage reminded her of his approach to teaching her to waterski-- he gave her enough rope and enough firmness to help her up out of the water. But she also talked about some of the difficult experiences in her life like her daughter's struggle with bipolar disorder which provided the inspiration for her hymn "Where Can I Turn for Peace?" and about an accident she had in the 1980s and the woman who read her aura who revealed to her that she had actually died briefly after the accident.

When I started The Place of Knowing, I wasn't surprised that Thayne used the story of the accident to frame her spiritual autobiography, because she says that she eventually came to realize that her purpose in having that experience was to share it with others, and to talk about her journey to the place of "childness." While the book definitely feels more like an autobiography than a memoir, since it attempts to hit the highlights of Thayne's entire life, it's more reflective and analytical than many autobiographies. The chapters also deal with subjects, not with chronology, so we have chapter four "Living with the Ineffable" in which she talks about sleep, her accident, her need for solitude, her time at writing camps, and trying to meet the needs of her family and her need to write. The chapter also includes half a dozen poems interspersed with the text, which shouldn't come as a surprise to those who know Thayne primarily as a poet.

I came to admire Thayne for her inclusiveness and her ability to see the spiritual in aspects of her life that many of us, plodding from meeting to meeting, checking scripture study and family prayer off our lists, do not make room in our schedules and our hearts for. I had to resist the urge to skip through the poetry-- when I'm reading a story, I want to get on with the story, not stop to read a poem, but I found that when I did take the time to read the poems, I could usually see why Thayne felt that that particular poem said what she wanted to say better than prose would. The book jacket says that the book is for those "who desire a better understanding of his or her divine self" and through reading about Thayne's experiences, I felt that I might be more open to including a greater variety of spiritual experiences in my own life.

Book Review: The Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

2011-12-10T09:53:00.001-07:00

Title: The Rules of Civility
Author: Amor Towles
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10
Referral: This one kept popping up on recommendations from Amazon
Source: Audible for iPhone
Books I've read this year: 153

The best way to describe The Rules of Civility is The Great Gatsby, gone girl. Yes, the book is set 15 years later, and it's the Daisy/Gatsby figure (I can't decide which) who is actually from the midwest, while Katey Kontent, a secretary originally from Brighton Beach, who plays Nick Carroway's role as narrator, mostly benevolent social climber, and adjudicator. When the book opens in the 1960s, Katey and her husband are at a show for portraits taken during the 1930s. When Katey sees two portraits of her old friend, banker Tinker Grey, she launches into a reverie of the year they spent in the same orbit. The book deals with the complications of female friendship (Katey's best friend Evelyn tries to quash any budding relationship between Katey and Tinker by snatching him for herself), the social networks and mentoring relationships of the Upper East Side, and the ways that women could advance themselves socially and professionally in the 1930s.

The Rules of Civility is absolutely beautifully written, full of surprises, and I'm still thinking about Evie, Tinker, and Katey several weeks after finishing the book. It's the kind of book that makes me want to be a better writer, both in terms of the ability to use language and in the way Towles spins a story worth listening to.

Book Review: Portrait of a Spy by Daniel Silva

2011-12-09T11:52:00.002-07:00

Title: Portrait of a Spy
Author: Daniel Silva
Enjoyment Rating: 7/10
Referral: I found this one cheap on Audible
Source: Audible for iPhone
Books I've read this year: 152

Daniel Silva's Portrait of a Spy kept popping up in my recommended list all summer. Eventually, I saw it on a discount page at Audible and bought it. The good news is that it's an interesting read, and fans of Silva will probably like it a lot. When Gabriel Allon, the art restorer/spy, walks into Covent Garden at the same moment as a suicide bomber, he gives up his quiet retirement on the Cornwall coast to bring down one of the major terrorist organizations in the Middle East. The book was interesting, quick paced, had good characterization, wasn't too terribly detailed that I got hopelessly lost if my mind wandered for a moment, and included some really nice insights into world diplomacy in the modern era. The main downside for me, and this is 100% my own fault, is that I bought the book thinking that it was a stand-alone novel. For the first two or three chapters, it was possible for me to persist in my thinking that Allon was a new character, but as soon as he assembled his team of Israeli spies in Washington DC (it's complicated, but not too complicated), it became evident that this was a series piece using the same cast of characters over and over again. That said, it wasn't impossible for me to jump in to the series, but it did make me feel like there were significant gaps when the characters alluded to things that took place in the first ten novels (yes, this is number 11). If I had read Silva's previous novels, I think that I would have enjoyed this one more, but all in all, it was an enjoyable companion while it lasted.

A letter to Rose-- December 6th

2011-12-06T13:20:00.007-07:00

Dear Rose,

One of the great things about adopting in the internet age is that I've gotten to meet lots of people who have adopted kids from our orphanage. One of those families visited the orphanage last week and promised all the waiting families that they'd take a bunch of pictures. Right now, we have only five pictures of you-- one taken at your medical exam when you were three months old, and four taken (I presume) just before your referral. It looks like summer anyway, because you're wearing nothing but a onesie.

I was hoping, really, really hoping, that this family would get a photo of you. So far I haven't been brave enough to bug the orphanage director about updates, and I've been bugging our adoption caseworker about the elusive letter of approval too much to bug her about pictures too. Honestly, seeing your face would go a big way in reassuring us that you're doing well in our absence.

The family got several dozen pictures from their trip. The orphanage looks clean and the babies appear to be well-cared for. Now that it's December, they're all bundled up in layer after layer of winter clothes. And one picture shows two babies with cleft lips cozily sharing a crib. The baby in the foreground as a bilateral cleft, so she's definitely not you. The baby in the back, is she you?

I don't know.

I've spent hours staring at that picture, looking at it from every angle to compare it with your referral pictures. The shape of the face looks right, so do the position of the eyebrows and the angle of the cleft. But the eyes look different, and that baby has so much hair. You were practically bald back in September. The baby in that picture has a tiny top tooth. I get a lump in my throat every time I think that you might be getting your teeth without me. You'll be eight months tomorrow, and I ache for the soft heft of you in my arms.

I know every square inch of your brothers' and sisters' bodies. I know that Maren has a little scrape on the bottom of her left foot. The scar on Isaac's left thigh is as familiar to me as the back of my own hand. I've kissed, scratched, nuzzled and rubbed every inch of their bodies-- even Bryce and Annie, who don't want to crawl up on my lap and be kissed and cuddled anymore.

I may not know if that baby is you, but I do know that one day this spring, as the world turns green and becomes new again, you will be ours. Please indulge me when I want to get to know every wrinkle, freckle, and boo-boo on your body.

Love,

Mommy

A parable

2011-11-30T11:12:00.004-07:00

The first few months of Eddie's mission were tough. He was miserable in the Missionary Training Center, and I spent a lot of time worrying about him. Would he stay? Would he be okay? Would we be okay? Gradually, over the course of the first year, we settled into a routine. He wrote me every week, and I wrote him every other day and sent packages at least once a month. And yes, I was heartbroken the first Christmas when he said he didn't think it would be a good idea for us to talk on the phone, but in general, I felt like I knew what to expect-- a letter once a week, some funny pictures every once in a while, and no promises for the future.

The second summer he was gone, I went to Belgium. I'd planned the trip as a safeguard for our relationship-- if I had it to look forward to the first year he was gone, I wouldn't go off and do anything stupid like throwing myself at some new, available guy. Then, by the time I got home, there'd only be eight months until he came home too, and if I'd already waited sixteen months, I could wait eight more. I took the cultural-sensitivity classes, I got hooked up with a job at a grocery store bakery, I got a room in a student apartment.

Then I got to Belgium and the job was horrible, all the students living in the apartment had moved home for the summer, and I didn't speak French nearly as well as I thought I did when I was back in Provo. I'd go to work in the day, come home to an empty house at night, and feel sorry for myself.

And then there was Eddie. We were closer together, physically, than we'd ever been. I could hop on a train and be in Ukraine in 24 hours, if I'd been more of the rule-breaking type. But he'd gone silent. I'd been getting letters every week, and once I got to Belgium, they stopped entirely. He was writing to me via the missionaries in our branch, and when two weeks passed without a letter, I accused them of hiding them from me. When three weeks passed, I started writing him hysterical letters, wondering why he hadn't had the good decency to tell me if he'd had a change of heart. I woke up every day feeling hopeless about hearing from him, and whenever the missionaries showed up at the grocery store (which was pretty much every day), I'd inevitably have to ask them, and they'd inevitably tell me that they hadn't gotten anything.

This went on for a month, maybe even forty days. I started to mentally write Eddie off. At this point, I'd invested two years of my life in him and had every intention of marrying him and spending the rest of forever with him, but his silence made it seem that he didn't feel the same way.

I'd given up hope when the missionaries finally showed up at the store one day, smiles on their faces, both holding something behind their backs. They held it out to me-- six fat envelopes and a package containing a tape. I don't know what happened, why the mail was held up (is there no reliable postal service between Belgium and Ukraine?) but I do know that when the mail finally showed, when I thought we were over and I'd have to come home from Belgium both chubby from cheese and chocolate and boyfriendless, it was one of the best moments of my entire life. I savored those six, fat letters as I rode the bus back to the house, and then the next morning, I sat in the bathtub and listened to the tape, crying at the sweetness of his voice. You see, during the time that I was having a crisis that he might not want me any more, he was starting to realize how much I did love him, and that I was not going to break his heart, that I was going to wait. That tape was the first time he mentioned marriage (a foregone conclusion in my mind) as something he saw in our future.

So while I wait for this letter saying that Rose is officially, immutably ours, while I whine and complain and disbelieve that the letter will ever come, I feel just as hopeless and impatient as I did that summer when I waited for Eddie's letters. But I also believe, because I've seen it come true in my own life back in that summer of 1995, that I will be happier on the day it comes than I am irritable and sad during the wait.

P.S. One of those Elders did ask me out once we were both back at BYU that fall, so maybe he did hold the mail on purpose.

Book Review: Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper

2011-11-29T09:56:00.002-07:00

Title: Out of My Mind
Author: Sharon Draper
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10
Referral: Annie read it and insisted I follow suit
Source: School book fair
Books I've read this year: 151

Out of My Mind is the story of Melody, a ten-year-old girl who has never said a word. Melody has cerebral palsy, and although her parents and a kind neighbor believe that there's a brain that works inside her damaged body, they don't know how to access it until a fantastic teacher and a helpful aide find a computer that will speak for Melody. Suddenly, everything she has learned and held bottled up over the last decade comes spilling out.

I think that Out of My Mind is probably a pretty good representation of what life might be like for a young girl with cerebral palsy. She knows she's different, but desperately wants to fit in and have a friend. Some of her typical peers are outright mean, others ignore her, and others want to be nice as long as it doesn't compromise their own social standing. Melody is aware enough to pick up on even the subtle slights. As she gains more recognition for her smarts, the stakes become higher in how she's treated.

One thing that I like about Out of My Mind is that there's no saccharine happy ending for the book. Melody's life, even though it's better now that she can communicate, will always be hard. I think that's a bold move for Draper to make as an author of a YA novel. But I think that she unnecessarily complicated the action of the novel by throwing in a dramatic plot device at the end. The story would have been powerful enough without complicating it with tragedies involving other family members. But overall, a great book. I think Annie has read it three times since she got it a few weeks ago. I'd like to see more books written with strong YA/middle grade characters who are learning to live with disabilities.

A letter to Rose-- November 29th

2011-11-29T07:42:00.001-07:00

Dear Rose,

I really want to write a sour grapes letter today. I miss you. I want you home with me. Today was a big day on the forum, and lots of people who got matched with their kids after we got matched with you got to move on to the next step in the process, while the last I heard, our dossier for you hasn't even been translated yet. So I sit, wait, reload my email, walk around, check for voicemail, reload my email, whine to God, whine to anyone else who will listen, and reload my email. Why can't things just go in order? I like lines. I like order. I'm not good with uncertainty, disorder, or waits of any kind. It reminds me of when I was trying to get pregnant with Maren and it wasn't happening as quickly as I wanted, and even though the process was entirely out of my hands (other than the obvious, but we'll talk about that in a few years), I couldn't think about anything else. I wasted a lot of energy that year, and I know I'm wasting it now too. I try to tell myself that it's because I love you and it's not because I'm cutthroat and competitive, but the truth is that I love you and I'm competitive.

But I'm not going to write about that ("Wait Mom, you just did," you say? Are you already taking lessons in smart-aleckery from your older siblings?). I want to show you this picture. It's your big sister, Maren. She's been the baby of this family for almost five years. While everyone's life is going to change when you join us, hers will probably change more than anyone else's. She gets in bed with me at night. She won't let me leave the house without letting her give me a "hug-kiss" where I stand at the back door and she hugs and kisses me until she deems it okay for me to walk out the door. She basically gets whatever she wants, and if anyone gets their wishes catered to, it's our little Mei-Mei (her nickname, from babyhood, is Chinese for "little sister," which now feels like a poetic irony). But pretty soon we'll have an even littler Mei-Mei. You.

One of the things that the kids in our family get, in exchange for making their beds and not giving me too much guff, is either a small allowance or, in Maren's case, a "toy of the month." At the end of every month, she gets to pick out a new toy. This month, she chose a "Chinese Baby Stella" and she hasn't let it out of her sight since she got here. I know that this doll isn't you, Rose, but it still warms my heart to see her cuddled up with your little proxy. I hope that in a few weeks (by Christmas, please? I don't want anything else!) we'll have that all-important letter, and it won't be too much longer until it won't be a proxy baby snuggled up with Maren, but the real, living, breathing you.

Love,

Mommy

Book Review: Jacob T. Marley by William Bennett

2011-11-28T20:55:00.001-07:00

Title: Jacob T. Marley
Author: William Bennett
Enjoyment Rating:
Referral:
Source: Received a copy from the publisher
Books I've read this year: 150

It's been years since I've read or watched A Christmas Carol, but it's one of those stories that's been etched in my mind through repeated exposure during an impressionable time of my life. I don't think I'm unique in this experience, which is why telling the story from Jacob Marley's point of view is such a smart move on William Bennett's part. Much like Ahab's Wife or The Wide Sargasso Sea, Bennett chooses to focus on a relatively minor character in A Christmas Carol, Jacob Marley, aka "the ghost with all the chains," and to see his role in the redemption of Scrooge.

The book spends a certain amount of time chronicling Marley's own downfall, then showing his role in Scrooge's transformation from decent guy to total jerk. But most of the book takes place after Marley's deathbed repentance, and his focus in the afterlife is to reach out to Scrooge and save him from the same fate.

While the book isn't overtly Mormon, there are some interesting things going on here in terms of the idea of eternal progression. Although Marely was undoubtedly a bad guy for most of his life, he still has an opportunity to make things right before the ultimate judgment. Bennett chooses to mimic the writing style of Dickens, which, for the most part, works well, although no proper Victorian would utter the word pregnant, would he? All in all, I think this book, because it's short and deals with characters most people are already familiar with, will be a popular gift book for people who won't be asking for The Marriage Bed or The Art of Fielding this Chirstmas season.

Book Review: The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

2011-11-27T08:59:00.000-07:00

Title: The Marriage Plot
Author: Jeffrey Eugenides
Enjoyment Rating: 9/10
Referral: My friend Lyn read it before going to a Eugenides reading and said it was great
Source: Ordered new from Amazon
Books I've read this year: 149

It's not too uncommon for me to find bits of myself in the main character of a novel. After all, who writes books but people who like to read? But I really identified with Madeleine, the college senior English major at Brown in 1982, writing her thesis on the idea of the marriage plot in Regency/Victorian literature (I wrote my first MA thesis on many of the same authors Madeleine was studying). While Madeleine works on her thesis, she's involved in her own marriage plot-- she's dating Leonard, someone entirely unsuitable (mainly because he's struggling to get in control of his bipolar disorder, which is a bold move on Eugenides' part because it feels totally un-PC to have a character be unsuitable because of a mental illness), while a perfectly suitable boy, Mitchell, pines after her from afar (literally, he spends much of the book in Europe and India).

I didn't read the reviews on Amazon before I read the book, so I was a little bit surprised when I went on the website to pick up a picture to see that readers are only giving the book 3 1/2 stars (on average). All of the Amazon reviews seem to say that The Marriage Plot is too detailed-- we don't need so much insight into what everyone is thinking or to what Paris looked like in 1982. We don't need a twenty page description of what's happening at a party. But I've decided that when the authors have serious writing chops (and Eugenides does) I don't mind going all Victorian with them in terms of the details. I had a similar reaction to Elizabeth Kostova's books The Historian and The Swan Thieves, which people said was similarly mired in description. In fact, I always think these books are fantastic reads because the authors do such a good job creating a complete world. So it you like your description or your access to the characters' minds to be a little more limited, this might not be the book for you. But if you're willing to push through 400+ pages to come to what is really the only satisfying end to this marriage plot, then you just may be surprised at how much you enjoy the ride.

A letter to Rose- November 22nd

2011-11-22T15:16:00.000-07:00

Dear Rose,

Over the last few weeks, I've discovered a new online addiction. I've been involved with online communities, blogs, and message boards since Annie was a baby, so when I found out that you were joining our family, it seemed natural to turn to message boards to get information and support and help pass the time. First I found a great group of people whose children have come from the SWI where you're living. They've been great-- they've reassured me that you're in a place where you're well cared for, and they really know the ins and outs of our specific adoption journey. They've given us advice on where to stay in Nanjing, how to schedule a trip to your orphanage, and they've just been a great group of people.

I've also joined a message board for the families of adopted children with cleft lip and palate. While getting you here is more of a concern to me now than getting your lip and palate fixed, I know that in the future, they will also be a great resource.

Both of these message boards are relatively slow, with only a handful of posts on a busy day. The Xuzhou board, in particular, has been really welcoming, with lots of people emailing me off the board to give me advice. It's really taught me a lot about what kind of mentor I want to be after we get you home.

One of the women on the Xuzhou board introduced me to another message board for families adopting special needs kids from China. It's a busy board, and it sucked me in and has me held tight in its grasp. I reload this board at least ten times a day, mostly to check and see who has gotten approvals, so I can get a sense of how long the wait will be until we get you. The good news is that it's helping me accustom myself to the idea that we won't be there until March or April (before your birthday, please!), but the bad news is that I now feel all competitive about something over which I have zero control. For example, there was a family whose dossier was sent to China at the same time as ours, who got a referral the same day we did, who got their preliminary approval at the same time we did, and whose next step, the LOA/LSC, took only 34 days (the average is 72 days). They're now two steps ahead of us, and it's hard not to be jealous that they'll undoubtedly have their baby six weeks before we will. I'm happy for them, but I want you without any delays or hiccups. When someone gets their letter in 34 days, that means that someone else might wait 110 days, and I've watched those people post and try to learn patience through the process, and it's hard to watch and to worry that I might be there in another month.

I pray for you every day, and pray that your papers won't be lost and the process will go as smoothly as possible. One thing that watching these families wait has taught me is that they're praying and hoping as much as I am. All of us have part of our hearts in China, with our babies. It's not necessarily families with more faith and prayers whose papers get processed faster. That doesn't mean I'll stop praying, but I do have to realize that part of the speed of the process will just lie in the luck of the draw.

I'll try not to go too crazy checking the charts twenty times a day, but I won't stop praying that you're happy and safe and your papers will be processed as quickly as possible.

Love,

Mommy

Book Review: The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom

2011-11-21T20:49:00.001-07:00

Title: The Kitchen House
Author: Kathleen Grissom
Enjoyment Rating: 9/10
Referral: I'm not sure how this one ended up in my Audible account.
Source: Audible for iPhone
Books I've read this year: 148

You know when I've got the earbuds plugged in at the grocery store that I'm listening to something so good that it trumps social niceties. It's ironic that The Kitchen House, where social niceties (or the lack thereof) play such an important role in the book, had me being rude at Smith's yesterday while loading up on milk and Coke Zero. The Kitchen House is the story of Lavinia, a six-year-old whose parents died while immigrating to Philadelphia from Ireland. In exchange for the family's passage, the ship's captain takes her on as an indentured servant, and deposits her in the slave quarters of his Virginia plantation. She grows up unable to understand racial prejudice, and she carries her innocence into adulthood, with tragic consequences.

While the book was beautifully written and wonderfully narrated (that Orlagh Cassidy! I have such a crush on her!), and now that it's done, I'm left with two impressions. The first is stewardship. You'll have to trust me because I don't want to give so much away that you don't read this wonderful story, but it seems that a lot of the problems that the women and the slaves find themselves in in The Kitchen House is a result of men who don't take their stewardship seriously. When the men sleep with slaves and mismanage their finances and keep secrets and worse, everything is bad. When the men work hard and try to do good by the people in their stewardship, things generally go well. I know that's not a brilliant insight, but I was struck by how concentrated the power was in this society, and one bad man could make life hell for so many people.

The other thing I want to say is that this book would have been a 10/10, but it broke my number one cardinal rule for fiction (which I think I alluded to a few weeks ago in my Girl in Translation review). Incidentally, I also broke it in a short story I wrote for class this week (but I fully intend to change it in the editing process). Please authors, please give up on the trope of women getting pregnant after having sex one time. I know it's possible, and parents of teenage daughters use the "it only takes one time" to scare their girls into celibacy, but it doesn't happen in real life in one shot with nearly the frequency that it happens in fiction.

Book Review: The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig

2011-11-20T20:47:00.001-07:00

Title: The Whistling Season
Author: Ivan Doig
Enjoyment Rating: 7/10
Referral: Picked it up cheap on Audible
Source: Audible for iTunes
Books I've read this year: 147

I read my first Ivan Doig book (Dancing at the Rascal Fair) earlier this year and I was completely charmed by it. I love that Doig just tells stories and doesn't concern himself with being avant-garde in any way. In The Whistling Season, Doig tells the story of a widower (Oliver Milleron) and his three sons (Peter, the narrator, Damon, and Toby), living on a dry farm on Montana, who have been wanting for clean sheets and a good meal since their mother died a year ago. Oliver decides to hire a housekeeper, Rose Llewellyn.

Okay, so if you're like me, you say to yourself, young widower, young widow, they have to get married, right? For the next 300 pages, that's not what happens at all. Rose shows up with her brother, and the families have lots of everyday Montana adventures as Rose's brother Morrie takes over as the teacher at the one-room school. The adventures are delightful, and as 60 year-old state administrator Paul contemplates closing the one-room schools where he and his brothers were educated, there are some wonderful moments of rumination. Pretty soon I had forgotten all about Rose and Oliver getting together.

And then (spoiler alert!) it happens. The romance almost seems to come out of left field. And then what happens after that, the secret which brought Rose and Morrie to Montana in the first place, which I won't detail here, seems to come right out of left field (the sports metaphor works because Damon is a sports nut, just trust me). Although I enjoyed that something was (finally?) happening in the book, the first 300 pages didn't prepare me for the last 50 pages. I guess life is like that sometimes, but I don't usually expect good fiction to be.

Book Review: Crossed by Ally Condie

2011-11-19T20:43:00.003-07:00

Title: Crossed
Author: Ally Condie
Enjoyment Rating: 6/10
Referral: I read Matched, and I liked it enough to give this one a go
Source: Ordered new from Amazon (mostly for Annie's sake)
Books I've read this year: 146

When I'm reviewing books, I sometimes feel torn. When I've met an author and really like him or her, I want to write a glowing review. But I also feel like it's my moral obligation to be honest. Here's me being honest.

I had food poisoning over the weekend and spent all day Saturday sleeping on and off. I was cranky, and in the moments when I wasn't sleeping, I read Crossed. I could use the state of my intestinal tract and my tired brain to explain why this book didn't really do it for me, but then I think back to when I read Matched last year, and I was underwhelmed by that too.

Really, I don't think it has a lot to do with the writing. I think Condie writes beautifully, and I was impressed by the way she adapted the Southern Utah landscape of her childhood to a dystopian novel. I also love, love, love the way she interweaves great classic poems into her texts. On those two points alone, I want my kids to read this book. I also love the way she includes the cave paintings into this one. The details are fantastic.

The problem for me is probably my own, and it's a lot more basic. First of all, I think that the romance that drives the books gets old. The romance more than the life situation seems to be the driving force in both of the books so far, at least for Cassia, the seventeen-year-old protagonist. Okay, I'll admit that when I was seventeen I was pretty boy crazy myself, and there was no expectation that I should be matched off or married at that age, so I guess it makes sense. The thing that I'm having a hard time reconciling in this series is that I think Cassia is going for the wrong guy. Maybe lots of girls (Cassia, Taylor Swift, Demi Moore) want the bad boy instead of the one who is plodding along within the system (or is he?) but I fell hard for Xander, probably because he reminds me so much of my own lifelong match, that every time she talks about her love for Ky, I want to shake her and tell her to rethink her options.

Does this mean I'm getting old?

After the match

2011-11-18T17:43:00.001-07:00

Don't get me wrong, I love paperwork. There's something totally satisfying about a project that doesn't require me to use my whole brain (unlike schoolwork), that doesn't need to be redone every day (like dinner and laundry and the dishes), and that doesn't talk back. But when we started the adoption process, I naively thought that all of the waiting associated with paperwork was done when the dossier was sent to China back in August. Oh, I knew that we couldn't hop on a plane the next day and I'd still have to fill out a few forms, but I thought I'd spend the four months (because it would be four months, not six, right? right?) between referral and travel making travel plans and buying clothes for Rose. I didn't realize how many steps there were in the process after the referral.

So for all the people asking when we're going to go get her, and asking if we can get special approval to hurry things up because she has a medical need (Answer: no, virtually all of the 5,000 or so kids coming to the US from China this year have special needs, most more severe than Rose's), here's an idea of how the process has gone since the match and how it may go from now until we get on the plane:

What's Happened So Far
September 26th-- We got a call from our agency with the referral of Rose. We wrote a Letter of Intent the next day and emailed it to our agency.
September 27th or 28th-- Our agency submitted the Letter of Intent to the CCCWA (the government office in China that oversees international adoption).
October 12th-- We got Preliminary Approval from the CCCWA.

What Still Needs to Happen
1) We need to get a Letter of Approval/Letter Seeking Confirmation from the CCCWA. These letters usually come in two to three months after Preliminary Approval, although I've seen them take as little as 34 days and as many as 150 days. Here's to hoping we're not in the group of long waiters. As I understand it, the process takes quite a while because the entire dossier (the 50+ stack of papers representing us to the Chinese government) needs to be translated from English to Chinese before we can be approved. While we're waiting, we filled out another big stack of papers for Rose's visa and immigration and stuff like that.
2) After we receive the LOA/LSC, we send a copy of it, along with our completed I-800 form, A Petition to Classify Convention Adoptee as an Immediate Relative, to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services office. It usually takes two weeks to a month to get that form approved.
3) This is where things get hazy. There's something called the NVC cable, which I think involves getting her visa. I know we need visas to enter China too, but I think that's something different. This part is usually pretty quick, about a week I think.
4) Then there's something called an Article 5 letter, which involves the US Embassy in Guangzhou. I think that we don't really do anything here, but someone in China does it on behalf, and it doesn't take very long either.
5) The next long wait is for the Travel Approval. This takes another few weeks after A5, I think.

And then.... the long wait ends. Once we get the travel approval, we make a Consulate Appointment and hop in a plane within 3 or 4 weeks. If we end up going to Beijing (unlikely considering Ed's work schedule), we'll get Rose on the 4th or 5th day of our trip. If we go directly to Nanjing (the provincial capital of Jiangsu province, where she lives now) then we'll probably get her the day after we arrive. We'll be in China for 10-12 days total, about half in Nanjing and the other half in Guangzhou, where the consulate is. We also hope to travel to XuZhou, which is where Rose's orphanage is.

So, there you go. I may be wrong about some things, but I hope this answers some questions. All I know is that the wait is way too long, and there are too many steps where things could go wrong, and where the waits can vary by several weeks.

Book Review: Troll's Eye View by Datlow/Windling

2011-11-18T15:27:00.001-07:00

Title: Troll's Eye View: A Book of Villainous Tales
Editors: Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling
Enjoyment Rating: 7/10
Referral: Annie said I should read it and I thought it might inspire me to write another retelling for my Fairy Tales Class
Source: Our bookshelf-- someone gave it to Annie for Christmas last year, I think
Books I've read this year: 145

I wrote some fairy tale retellings for my short story class this semester, and I've been flirting with the idea of writing another for my fairy tale class final, so when Annie suggested that I read this book, I hopped right on it. I'll admit now that I didn't read every page, but the stories I did read were pretty entertaining. Like the story of Hansel and Gretel from the POV of the witch, who not only lives in a house made out of sugar, but she's made out of sugar too. A lot of the heavy hitters in YA and fairy tale fantasy are included in this collection (Jane Yolen, Gregory Maguire and Neil Gaiman, to name a few), and it simultaneously inspired me to think differently about fairy tale retellings and depressed me because my attempts are so pathetic compared with some of these.

A letter to Rose: November 15th

2011-11-15T10:06:00.001-07:00

Dear Rose,

A week or so ago, Dad and I were at the bank, getting a huge stack of papers notarized. The woman at the bank asked why we needed her services, and I said that the papers were forms we'd filled out to bring you home from China. Then she said something I won't repeat here, that she undoubtedly meant as funny, but it wasn't. It was ignorant and unkind. I didn't know how to respond, so I ended up not saying anything. When you're with me, I promise that I'll find my voice.

When it comes right down to it, I've never faced much prejudice in my life. Sure, there was the time when I was applying to be a writer for a Baptist church in Missouri, and they were really interested in me until they learned that I "wasn't a Christian" because I'd gone to BYU. But let's face it, I'm a privileged white woman, and while I will try to make your life here as easy as possible, by bringing you from China, where you look like everybody else, to the United States, I'm setting you up to encounter the ugliness and prejudice in a way that you might not if you stayed in China. (Of course, that tiny little split in your lip, the one that will be so easy to fix once you get home, would have set you up for a whole different set of challenges in China, but that's an issue for another day).

But because my skin is white, my hair is blonde, and my eyes are blue, I'm afraid that I won't be able to empathize when people treat you differently because of your Asian features. When people see us together, they might not automatically think that we belong together, but we do. I won't know what you're going through from personal experience, but I will always be here to listen, to love you, and to let you know that even though you look different from the rest of us, you are a vital, loved, essential part of our family.

Love,

Mommy

Book Review: A Sense of Order and Other Stories by Jack Harrell

2011-11-13T07:34:00.002-07:00

Title: A Sense of Order and Other Stories
Author: Jack Harrell
Enjoyment Rating: 9/10
Referral: I bought this book a few months ago but only got around to reading it this week because he was visiting campus.
Source: I think I ordered it from Amazon but I can't remember
Books I've read this year: 144

I've read a lot of bad books lately. When I picked up Jack Harrell's A Sense of Order and Other Things earlier this week, I worried that it would be one more thing on my "have to read" list for school. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised, delighted even, at Harrell's stories. In fact, after reading A Sense of Order, I have officially revised my "I don't like short stories" opinion. Sure, there are still short stories I don't like, but I'm not going to pooh-pooh the genre any more.

Jack Harrell's writing gives me hope that the LDS tradition does have room for excellent writing, and that there is an audience for that writing, even if it's a small one. His stories take place in settings as varied as rural Illinois, Rexburg, ID, the office of the prophet, and the lone and dreary world. Not all of his characters are LDS, but many are. Some of the stories contain supernatural elements. But all of the stories, regardless of setting or worldview, feel very real and grounded. They also contain an element of hope and faith. I'm eager to read more of Harrell's work, and hope to become one of the people who can ride on his coattails as a writer.

Book Review: Why Fairy Tales Stick by Jack Zipes

2011-11-12T07:27:00.001-07:00

Title: Why Fairy Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of a Genre
Author: Jack Zipes
Usefulness rating: 6/10
Referral: I picked it for a book review required by my fairy tale films class because I'm writing a paper about how one particular tale has evolved
Source: Borrowed from the BYU library
Books I've read this year: 143

This is the review I wrote for my class:

In the early chapters of WhyFairy Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of a Genre, Jack Zipes seemsto set up a pattern for what he’ll do in the rest of the book. In the firstchapter, he lays the groundwork for how fairy tales became a genre in the firstplace. He shows how there needed to be a critical mass of people, reading andwriting in the vernacular, before the oral folk and fairy tales which had beencirculating for centuries could be written down. While we can’t see how storieschanged in the oral tradition, Zipes attempts to demonstrate how the tales havechanged in the years when they have become part of the print and mass-mediaculture. While Zipes deals primarily with the history of language in the firstchapter, his focus shifts to the history of fairy tales as a whole in thesecond chapter. The most surprising part of these first two chapters may beZipes’ definition of a fairy tale, which is broader than many others I’ve read.While many other fairy tale scholars keep the definition narrow because theyconsider all tales that are fairy tales to come from the oral tradition, Zipesincludes Barrie, Wilde, Andersen, Baum, Tolkien, Salman Rushdie, and even thecreators of X-Men as authors of fairy tale. Zipes says, “Theinstitutionalization of a genre means that a certain process of production,distribution, and reception had become fully accepted within the public sphereof a society and plays a role in forming and maintaining the cultural heritageof that society. Without such institutionalization, any genre would perish”(89). It seems logical that Zipes, who argues that the fairy tale is alive andevolving in the 21^st century, would keep the definition broad,because if the traditional tales fail to speak to those in the future, therewill undoubtedly be other tales to take their place.

Based on these first two chapters, I expected that Zipeswould continue to look at the genre as a whole, perhaps looking at theevolution of various issues or linguistic elements in Western European tales.However, Zipes seems to change the scope of his work quite dramatically as thebook progresses past the first two chapters. In the next four chapters Zipes looksat various tales (Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Snow White, Beauty andthe Beast, Mulan, and Bluebeard) and show how each tale has departed from thetraditional literary versions in the retellings that have been written over thelast two or three centuries. He finds trends in the patterns of retellings(Bluebeard characters after World War II seems to represent some of theanxieties and feelings of emasculation that men felt after the end of the war,Cinderellas in the late 20^th century show trends towardmulticulturalism) and attempts to draw some conclusions about what thosepatterns may say about particular periods of time. Zipes seems to feel that theAarne-Thompson classification index is a too categorical and formulaic to beuseful in the modern era, but his book works best as an extension of thatindex. It would be particularly useful to anyone studying a traditional taleand its many retellings, since he provides exhaustive lists of retellings aswell as more in-depth summaries and analysis of particular retellings whichseem to highlight a certain moment in history.

When I chose this book to review, I was surprised at justhow ubiquitous Jack Zipes seems to be in the world of fairy tale studies. Iwondered how he could possibly write all of the books and articles he does. Inreading Why Fairy Tales Stick, I think I found some of the answer—he reusessignificant portions of his material. This book is only seven chapters long,and at least one of the chapters is a condensation of previously published work(in this case, a study of Little Red Riding Hood). If other chapters functionin the same way, that might explain some of Zipes’s ability to be prolific inhis publishing, but I’m not sure how it reflects on his academic work as awhole. Zipes is at his least successful when he’s catty. He goes on for severalparagraphs about Ruth Bottigheimer’s argument that print culture wasresponsible for the dissemination of the fairy tale, and the attack was somean-spirited that it seemed to veer from the academic into the personal.Ultimately, while Zipes’s book can be useful for researchers who want to findretellings for their own research, I think that because he never announces hisintentions to look at patterns individual fairy tales rather than continuing tolook at evolution more broadly, those reading the book feel somewhatunsatisfied when the book takes that direction.

Book Review: Fairy Tale Films by Pauline Greenhill and Sidney Ann Matrix

2011-11-11T07:23:00.000-07:00

Title: Fairy Tale Films: Visions of Ambiguity
Author: Pauline Greenhill and Sidney Ann Matrix
Usefulness Rating: 6/10
Referral: Required reading for my fairy tale folklore class
Source: Ordered from Amazon
Books I've read this year: 142

I took away two things from reading this book. First of all, pretty much any story can be seen as a fairy tale narrative. Greenhill and Matrix selected essays in which Eyes Wide Shut, Harry Potter, and Edward Scissorhands are considered fairy tales. Secondly, it's almost impossible to talk about fairy tales without talking about gender. While reading these essays was sometimes interesting, I think it would have been a more interesting read if we actually watched some of the films discussed in the chapters. Reading the secondary sources without watching the primary sources was ultimately unfulfilling.

Book Review: A Reason to Believe by Blaise Winter

2011-11-10T07:20:00.001-07:00

Title: A Reason to Believe
Author: Blaise Winter
Enjoyment Rating: 4/10
Referral: I searched for cleft lip/cleft palate memoirs on Amazon, and this was the only thing I found
Source: Ordered used (and autographed!) from Amazon
Books I've read this year: 141

I often talk to people who want to write, but who say to me, "I could never be a writer." As a writing teacher and a wannabe writer myself, my advice is, "Anyone can be a writer who has the desire and works hard enough." Blaise Winter obviously had the drive, he obviously worked hard, and he even had a co-author to help him along, but this book is making me rethink my advice. I had high hopes for this book, because it was basically the only book I could find where someone with a cleft lip and palate wrote about their experience in a memoir (why is there such a dearth of books written about this?), but Winter, despite his protestations to the contrary, tended to write about his life in a way that it was obvious that he had a "woe is me" attitude about life. His dad was abusive. His brother accused his wife of being money-grubbing. His mom was nice, but weak. His coaches didn't believe in him. His teachers held him back. People treated him like he was mentally retarded because of his speech problems. Teams cut him when he didn't deserve it. He seems to say that inner strength and Angie made him the powerhouse of a man he is today. Maybe someone who liked Winter as a football player may enjoy the story, but it didn't do much for me in providing insight on cleft lip and palate.

Book Review: Inside by Brenda Novak

2011-11-09T07:14:00.003-07:00

Title: Inside
Author: Brenda Novak
Enjoyment Rating: 3/10
Referral: I wanted to read a Harlequin romance by an LDS author for an article I was writing
Source: Ordered used from Amazon
Books I've read this year: 140

I read this book at a Girl's Weekend a few weeks ago. I brought it, along with two or three other books, and I expected that with no scheduled activities, I'd whip through this book fast. Instead, it took me the whole weekend, plus a few more days to finish it. The first problem is that the first few chapters were confusing. The premise of the book is that Virgil Skinner served fourteen years in jail for a murder he didn't commit (although he did kill a couple other people while he was in jail). He's been exonerated, but he wants complete freedom, and the people he allied with in prison to stay alive want him to stay true to them now that he's on the outside. In exchange for an entrance into Witness Protection for himself, his sister, and her kids, he decides to hook up with the California Dept. of Corrections to go back inside and give them information on another prison gang. While he's waiting to go back inside, he meets Peyton Adams, the unlikeliest of prison wardens-- she's hot and single and in her 30s. She's also all buttoned up, but she and Virgil quickly end up in bed and in love, so her heart is all aflutter when Virgil goes inside (for a book called "inside," Virgil actually spends about 80% of the novel outside-- it's all lead up).

The book just wasn't good. Maybe some readers will like it, if those readers prioritize romance over believability in terms of plot and characters. Add a confusing narrative and a totally nonsensical psychotic villain, and the book was torture to finish.

A letter to Rose- November 8th

2011-11-08T14:45:00.000-07:00

Dear Rose,

Yesterday you turned seven months! Happy birthday! There's a baby in our ward who is about a month younger than you. Her mom is in the Primary presidency with me, so every Sunday I see how big she's getting and how much she's learning how to do. Now she's sitting up and laughing and putting everything in her mouth, and seeing her makes me feel close to you.

Mimi was here this week, and we transitioned from Halloween right into Christmas. She spent many hours in our dining room, toiling away on your stocking. We all know that there's no way you'll be here for Christmas, Mimi felt it was important for us to have your stocking hanging on the fireplace with all the others. I've even set aside a few things to wrap up and give you for Christmas-- I know your brothers and sisters will have fun opening them in your honor.

We've also been having fun planning your "Good Fortune" shower. While I never expected to have a baby shower for our fifth baby, so many of our friends and family want to celebrate your arrival into our family. So over Christmas break we're going to have a little party with Chinese food and a rose cake. I'm excited that there are so many people who are happy for us and for you to join our family, so I think it's going to be lots of fun.

Your brothers and sisters continue to wish that we could hop on a plane tomorrow and come get you. We filled out a huge stack of papers this week, all kinds of official documents for the American government side of things, and as much as I don't want to wait any more than the kids do, I also know that I want all of our "i"s dotted and "t"s crossed because once you're ours, no one is going to be able to pry us apart. I love you sweetie!

Love,

Mommy

Book Review: The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout

2011-11-08T07:11:00.001-07:00

Title: The Sociopath Next Door
Author: Martha Stout
Enjoyment Rating: 6/10
Referral: I found it browsing a sale at Audible
Source: Audible for iPhone
Books I've read this year 139

I'll admit now that Martha Stout may be right. She asserts early in The Sociopath Next Door that 4% of the population is sociopathic, and she repeats that fact at least once (and probably more like three times) each chapter. But each time the narrator said "one in 25 people is a sociopath" I had the same reaction-- disbelief. Is it really possible that four people in one hundred doesn't have a fully-formed conscience that Stout describes as the hallmark of sociopathy? The DSM-IV suggests that sociopathy is one of several antisocial personality disorders, and that the prevalence of all antisocial personality disorders is approximately 3% of men and 1% of women. Maybe I recoil at Stout's figures because she does such a good job of presenting people who are sociopaths (several of her chapters are stories about sociopaths) and it's creepy to think that if Stout's figures hold, there's a sociopath in each of my kids' classes, three in our Primary, and half a dozen in my ward. It's also a little freaky when she says that most people who aren't sociopaths can't recognize sociopathy in others. I'm also reluctant to buy her numbers because she doesn't seem to present any possibilities for redemption for these people-- the book wants to show that they are devoid of conscience, that they are manipulative, and that you should avoid them. She never talks about how someone can develop a conscience who was not born with one or whose conscience was lost due to traumatic events in early childhood.

Reading The Sociopath Next Door made me think a lot about Dexter. Dexter asserts early on in the show that he is a sociopath, possibly due to genetics, but likely due to early childhood trauma. He only feels whole when he kills. In the first season, he doesn't know how to love, he fakes emotion, he doesn't like sex, and he goes through the motions of all of these emotional aspects of life because he needs to fit in. Most of the villains he encounters in each season are also sociopaths-- his brother, Lila (possibly the best example), Jimmy Smits (Stout says that sociopaths do well in politics, and the Smits character resembles one of Stout's examples quite a bit) and the John Lithgow character. Lumen (in season five) has to turn away from him because she eventually recognizes that she is not a sociopath, but the guy who locked her up definitely was. So if you look at Dexter as a show where a recovering sociopath (that's how I would characterize Dexter, even though Stout doesn't seem to think recovery is possible) encounters other sociopaths. For that insight alone, reading the book was worthwhile.

Book Review: Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok

2011-11-07T07:08:00.001-07:00

Title: Girl in Translation
Author: Jean Kwok
Enjoyment Rating: 6/10
Referral: I saw it on several friends' Goodreads lists
Source: Audible for iPhone
Books I've read this year: 138

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." That's how I'd characterize Jean Kwok's Girl in Translation. On the one hand, Ah Kim and her mother have it hard. They exchange a relatively comfortable life in Hong Kong, where Kim's mother was a music teacher, for a life living in an unheated, rat- and cockroach-infested hovel in Brooklyn, for a job that pays a penny per skirt, for choices determined by Kim's bitter aunt, the one who found them the apartment and the job and feels inclined to keep them in a state of destitution.

On the other hand, Kim has brains. She knows how to work hard. And after a rough start at her public elementary school with an almost criminally unfeeling teacher, her brains are recognized. She goes straight from one of the worst public schools in NYC to one of the best private schools. Still, culture and language continue to make Kim feel foreign. I think that Kwok does a nice job portraying Kim's inner struggles, but the book would have worked better for me if it had been a little more nuanced. Instead, Kim comes off as some kind of Greek goddess, a character where only the best or the worst things happen to her and nothing in between. In the last few pages, I get a sense that Kim might see her overarching ambition as something that has its drawbacks, but her perspective is so singularly focused during the first 90% of the book, that this maturity seems a little out of place.

This next part is a spoiler, so don't read it if you think you might want to read the book. While I know it is possible to get pregnant the first and only time a couple has sex, even if that couple has sex with a condom, it seems like every time a teenager in a book has sex, she will definitely get pregnant. That's a trope that we need to give up. Please promise me that if I ever include a character who gets pregnant after a single sexual encounter, you will shoot me or something. Yuck.

Book Review: A Lesson in Secrets by Jacqueline Winspear

2011-11-06T07:51:00.000-07:00

Title: A Lesson in Secrets (Maisie Dobbs, Book 8)
Author: Jacqueline Winspear
Enjoyment Rating:
Referral: The 8th book in the series (and the most recent one published, sniff, sniff)
Source: Audible for iPhone
Books I've read this year: 137

Dear Maisie,

I know you're a fictional character, but I can't help but depart from my standard format and drop you a little note. I fear that you're about to do something dumb. Very dumb. Even dumber than your poor friend Sandra getting arrested in this book. I know that you're independently wealthy now, but money isn't everything. You would admit that money isn't everything-- you've lived long enough without it. But this last installment of your book was so different from the first seven. In those books you worked hard at your business, you tried to solve life's little mysteries, and you lived an economic, measured life. You were, it's fair to say, sort of damaged goods in the first few books. But you've gotten healthy, and in the last book, I was hopeful that you, a 1930s working woman's Cinderella, was about to live happily ever after.

In this book, I worry that you're taking some aspects of your life too fast (trying to solve everyone else's financial problems, switching to work in secret service) and others not fast enough (are you really going to make James wait? You're not getting any younger, dear). I worry that the first 35 years of your life have made you comfortable only when you're in control, and you have to give up a certain measure of control to share your life with someone else. Can you please try to make that leap of faith, Maisie? Please? I'm not suggesting that you hang up your hat and have a bunch of babies, but don't let James get away. Have a little faith in him that he will be your partner and not your boss.

Love (I think I can say love after all this time),

Shelah

A letter to Rose- November 1st

2011-11-01T16:43:00.002-06:00

Dear Rose,

It was Halloween last night, and you were missed. Your brothers and sisters kept asking, "What will Rose be for Halloween next year?" and "Do you think Rose is trick or treating tonight?" They were disappointed to learn that you probably didn't dress up or go trick or treating. "We'll have to make sure she has an extra-cool costume next year," they said.

They wanted to show you their costumes, as a preview of things to come:

Darth Vader and his Storm Trooper buddy.

Taylor Swift and Olivia the Pig

Maren thinks you should wear a pumpkin costume next year, and Isaac wants you to be the Headless Horseman. Unless you have strong opinions one way or the other, I promise to pick out something sweet for your first Halloween. I'm a little sad that the older three have progressed beyond the cute, but I'm really lucky that I'll have you to be my little doll.

Since we couldn't dress you up and parade you around the neighborhood, we decorated a pumpkin in your honor.

Here's Maren sitting next to her pig pumpkin (I know you're impressed)

Here's yours. We tried our best to make a Rose, but it came out looking more like a Daisy.

This week I found some more fantastic websites to help pass the time until we can get you. I joined a Yahoo group for kids with cleft lip and palate, as well as a message board for parents waiting for kids from China. Both groups have been informative and welcoming, but on the China Adopt Talk board, I learned that instead of being able to come get you in February or March, if things proceed like they have over the last few months, it will probably be late March or April before you are in our arms. Not good news at all! It seems that I keep encountering situations to teach me patience, which I think is funny because I've never possessed much. We also sent you a letter and a little package and are hoping for some new pictures of you soon. If we can't have you, I hope that we can at least see you.

But even if we can't have you or see you, know that we love you.

Love, Mommy

Book Review: Your Cleft-Affected Child by Carrie Gruman-Trinker

2011-10-26T08:22:00.000-06:00

Title: Your Cleft-Affected Child: The Complete Book of Information, Resources, and Hope
Author: Carrie Gruman-Trinker
Usefulness Rating: 7/10
Referral: Found on Amazon
Source: Ordered used from Amazon
Books I've read this year: 136

While A Parent's Guide to Cleft Lip and Palate was a more useful book from a medical perspective, there were things I really liked about Carrie Gruman-Trinker's Your Cleft-Affected Child. Gruman-Trinker's son Aidan (the fifth child in her family) was born with pretty serious bilateral cleft lip and palate, and the book is part memoir, part information resource, and part cheerleader. One of the things I like best about the book is the short set of profiles of other people who were born with clefts (including Tom Brokaw, Jesse Jackson and Joaquin Phoenix). I also appreciated reading about her experiences with Aidan.

However, Aidan was still a preschooler at the time the book was published, and I'd love to hear how a cleft lip and palate affects a child as she grows. Part of the reason why I'm interested in that is because I'm making this research do double duty. In my fiction class we were assigned to write a short story that we had to do some research to write about effectively, and since we got our referral of Rose shortly after we got the assignment, it seemed natural to write about cleft lip and palate. I don't want to write the story from the point of view of a young child, and I'm finding it hard to get information on the lasting effects of this birth defect (is birth defect a p.c. term? Gruman-Trinker uses it in this book). It served my purposes as the mother of a child, (but only hand-in-hand with the more technical books about cleft lip/palate) but not my purposes as a writer.

A letter to Rose- October 25

2011-10-25T12:55:00.000-06:00

Dear Rose,

Tomorrow it will be a month since the first time we saw your beautiful face. It's hard to believe it's only been a month, because it feels like forever. We're completely adjusted to the idea of having you join our family, and if we could jump on a plane tomorrow to go get you, I'd do it without a second thought and I think I'd feel like we had most of what we needed to welcome you into the family. The hard thing is that we probably won't actually travel to see you for another four months.

Mimi has been staying with your Aunt Jilly, watching your cousin Sammy while she's at work. So nearly every day I get an update on Sammy. He's playing with his gym, he's trying to turn over, he's grabbing things, he loves taking walks in the morning. Sammy is just a couple months younger than you are (we're very lucky that you have two cousins, Reuben and Sammy, who were born in May and July, so you have built-in playmates), and on the one hand, I imagine you, all the way over in China, doing the same things. They mentioned in your referral papers that you really liked playing with the toys in the baby gym, so I know that's something you do. On the other hand, I think of the time that Aunt Jilly and Uncle Carl have with Sammy, smiling at him and carrying him around and just enjoying him, and it's hard to think that you need and crave the kind of love I so want to give you.

I spent this weekend up in Idaho with a bunch of girlfriends. We try to get together every year, and a few years ago, Maren and I slept on the floor of a room with about ten other women. The sleeping arrangements were great, but it was really fun to get together with so many friends. This year, we stayed in a lodge where we were completely pampered. I got a massage and a pedicure and every time we turned around someone was giving us delicious food, made from scratch. At the end of the weekend, we were all talking about coming again next year, and as much as I love getting together, I knew it was something I couldn't commit to.

You see, the lodge has a strict "no kids" policy, which I totally get-- we went up there to get a break from motherhood. If we went again next year, you'd be a year and a half, and by the time your older brothers and sisters were that age, I didn't feel too much guilt about leaving them overnight. But one thing I've learned is that we'll need to interact with you based on your "family age." So even if you're ten or eleven months when you come home, you'll be a newborn according to your "family age." I didn't spend the night away from any of my babies when they were under a year, and I don't plan to leave you for one night, let alone three nights, the first you're home either. I imagine that my friends, many of whom have kids who are quite a bit older than you'll be, might get sick of me packing you around in your baby carrier or toting you around on my hip everywhere we go.

But I think that as important as it is to get you into a home and get your physical needs taken care of, my most significant challenge in the upcoming year is going to be to get you to feel connected to us as your family, to feel like our home is a place of safety for you, to feel like you can love us back as much as we love you. I'll be honest-- it's going to stretch me. Your brothers and sisters are older-- they don't need me in the same way that they used to, and getting back to the 24/7 kind of mothering will be a challenge. But I'm up for it if you are.

Love,
Mommy

Book Review: Falling for Hamlet by Michelle Ray

2011-10-25T08:19:00.000-06:00

Title: Falling for Hamlet
Author: Michelle Ray
Enjoyment Rating: 6/10
Referral: Janssen from Everyday Reading
Source: Kindle for iPad
Books I've read this year: 135

The premise of this book sounded so cool-- a modern-day update of Hamlet. Immediately my mind went to the screwballness of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead, and I was prepared to be delighted.

I think my expectations were too high. The book is part Oprah-style talk show, part police interrogation, and part recollection. It's told from the point of view of Ophelia (who faked her suicide in order to get away from the castle), and although the book claimed to be set in Denmark, it felt a lot more like Denmark was a city in Southern California, complete with pernicious paparazzi, and Ophelia was Claire Daines in My So-Called Life, and Hamlet was Jordan Catalano (which took place in Pennsylvania, but there's no paparazzi in Pennsylvania).

The relocation of the novel wasn't what made it problematic. And although I am totally okay with just about everything in a novel for adults, a YA novel where high school kids get drunk, do drugs and have sex bugs me, but that wasn't the main problem of the book for me. The main problem was when Ray tried to translate the soliloquies from Shakespeare's language into ours. Even though she talks in her afterword about how her readers kept encouraging her to rewrite them, I still don't think she gets it right. The book picked up speed in the last third, but the first two thirds of the novel were not that compelling, because from Ophelia's perspective, the first two-thirds of the book could be summarized by listening to Katy Perry's "Hot n Cold." The whole thing left me a little cold, personally.

Book Review: The Connected Child by Karyn B. Purvis

2011-10-24T08:15:00.002-06:00

Title: The Connected Child: For Parents Who Have Welcomed Children
Author: Karyn B. Purvis
Usefulness Rating: It's hard to say until Rose gets here, but I thought it was useful for my other kids
Referral: Terri Coley, an adoptive mom and friend of my godmother
Source: purchased from Amazon
Books I've read this year: 134

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you may have noticed that considering the fact that I have a bunch of kids, I really don't read a lot of parenting books. I used to when Bryce and Annie were little. Then, eventually, I learned to trust myself more than I trusted the advice of some expert and didn't feel like I needed them all that much. But I did notice that I was a more engaged parent when I was reading the books and attempting to put them into practice.

Now that Rose is joining the family, I feel a little bit like I'm starting over. I know how to handle sleepless nights, the terrible twos, and time outs really well. What I don't know how to do is to help a child who didn't spend the first year of her life with me feel connected to me as her mother, since that Mommy-baby nursing, cuddling, gazing thing all just happened by instinct. I need to learn how to recreate it for someone who didn't get it in the first year. And that's what The Connected Child sets out to do.

The book reminds me quite a lot of Parenting Your Internationally Adopted Child-- the idea of connection is central to both, but PYIAC covers a lot of other things too and it's a much bigger book, while The Connected Child feels more focused. When I read PYIAC I felt like I knew I had to come back and read it again once Rose arrived, but with The Connected Child, there were lots of things I felt I could apply in my connection with the kids who are in my family already, particularly the Aspie one who struggles socially. So I'll work on trying out some of these techniques now, and maybe by the time Rose gets here, they too will feel instinctual. If not, I always know where I can go for a refresher.

Book Review: The Mapping of Love and Death by Jacqueline Winspear

2011-10-23T08:12:00.002-06:00

Title: The Mapping of Love and Death (Maisie Dobbs Book 7)
Author: Jacqueline Winspear
Enjoyment Rating: 9/10
Referral: The 7th book in the series
Source: Audible for iPhone
Books I've read this year: 133 (recordbreaking!)

In 2010, I read more books than I'd ever read before, at least since I started counting (and I have a feeling that counting was what made me read so much-- being public about my reading really motivates me). This year, I wasn't sure it was possible to read more books than I did last year, so I was stoked to break that record by the beginning of October. And it felt particularly fitting to break that record with an audiobook, since listening to audiobooks is the primary reason why I've read so much more this year than last, and also the primary reason why I am now woefully uninformed about current events (because I used to spend that time listening to NPR). I was delighted that I broke last year's record with this particular book, because of all the Maisie Dobbs books, this one was my favorite.

Okay, okay, I know that when I read Maisie Dobbs I should care about more important things, like the plight of homeless veterans or whether or not Maisie will ever trade in her black daydress for something more fashionable. As I've said before, I feel lame because I keep wanting Maisie to get emotionally healthy enough to want a man in her life. I mean, the old girl has got to be 35 or so now, so time's a-ticking (this said by someone who is 36). The thing is, I'm not sure Maisie has wanted a husband or kids, and evidence in the books points to the fact that she'd find it difficult to make some of the sacrifices children and husbands require. Also, Maisie sees herself as a bit of an unintentional trailblazer-- she got an education, rose above her low social class, and now she's a working woman with an excellent reputation. But I want her to fall in love!

Way, way back in Book 1, I said something to myself. I said, "I think Maisie is eventually going to fall in love with _______" (I don't want to spoil it for you). Of course, it seemed impossible at the time that she would ever fall for __________-- even more impossible than Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy actually getting together. But lo and behold, in Book 7, Maisie and _________ fall madly, deeply in love. Not really. They fall discreetly and companionably in love, but wildly and madly would be out of character for Maisie. I found myself wiping my eyes when I was running and driving more times than I can count this week-- I was just so glad that Maisie finally found love. Now I just hope she doesn't screw it up!

And, oh yeah, the mystery of this one is pretty decent too. And there's a very sad, very engrossing event in Maisie's personal life. You have to read it to find out-- and I promise, if you're a Maisie Dobbs fan, don't quit because six was a little lame. Seven is worth it!

Book Review: Parenting Your Internationally Adopted Child by Patty Cogen

2011-10-22T14:57:00.002-06:00

Title: Parenting Your Internationally Adopted Child: From Your First Hours Together Through the Teen Years
Author: Patty Cogen
Usefulness Rating: 10/10
Referral: I think our social worker recommended it during the homestudy process.
Source: Purchased from Amazon
Books I've read this year: 132

This book has been sitting on my bedside table for months. I tackled the memoirs about adoption first, and saved all of the hard, serious books, the ones about politics and parenting, for later, when traveling to China and getting our baby were actually on the horizon. I've decided that it's time to tackle the hard books (and besides, I think I worked my way through all of the memoirs), and so I did a cursory reading of Parenting Your Adopting Child. It reminded me a little bit of when I read What to Expect When You're Expecting before the baby actually arrived. It was interesting, but not really relevant yet. I can tell that when it is finally relevant, the book will be useful. So I read all of the early chapters and skimmed through the later chapters (about older kids and teenagers) since I won't be dealing with an adopted older kid or a teenager for many years.

In this reading, however, Cogen did a great job pounding one thing into my brain-- although I'm concerned about Rose's physical needs right now, those will be easy to fix, and the ramifications of losing her parents, then losing her caregivers in the orphanage, and not having opportunity to spend significant amounts of time bonding as a baby will be things that we'll have to work through when she arrives. Even though she'll be a baby who doesn't walk or talk, we'll still have to work through helping her connect and knowing that we'll be her forever family. It made me glad that I'll be done with school by the time she arrives, because she's going to need to have my focus for a while, and I feel fortunate that I'll be able to give it to her.

Book Review: Rewriting by Joseph Harris

2011-10-21T14:54:00.000-06:00

Title: Rewriting: How to do things with texts
Author: Joseph Harris
Usefulness Rating: 6/10
Referral: Required reading for my Fairy Tale Folklore class
Source: Purchased from Amazon
Books I've read this year: 130

I think that if I were planning a career in academic writing, this would be a useful book to read as a graduate student. It contains many of the same ideas about writing that Booth, Colomb and Williams present in The Craft of Writing (which we used last year in the 311 class I taught), but the focus is more on academic writing than on writing research papers. However, the ideas of countering, forwarding, and responding are present in both books, and I think that The Craft of Writing is more accessible and interesting. However, the Harris book is more in-depth in its focus on academics.

I'll just say this-- reading Rewriting made me glad that I'm a creative writer. It's so much more fun to write stories than it is to write about things other people have written.

Book Review: Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

2011-10-20T14:51:00.003-06:00

Title: Invisible Cities
Author: Italo Calvino
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10
Referral: Required reading for my Creative Writing seminar
Source: Purchased from Amazon
Books I've read this year: 129

I really, really wish I had been able to attend my class discussion on Invisible Cities. I drove down to Provo, walked across campus to the building, and sat down at the seminar table when the phone rang. It was Isaac's school calling to say he was sick. And I was super-bummed, not just because I now had to walk back across campus and drive back to Salt Lake, but because I wonder what everyone else thought about the book.

I labeled Invisible Cities a book of short stories, but it feels more like a book of dreams. The premise is that Marco Polo is talking to Kubla Khan about the cities he has encountered in his travels. He recounts visits to dozens of places, but these places are all magical and mystical, and don't feel like places in the Orient in the 13th century. In fact, as Polo and Khan continue their discussion, it's evident that the places are much more in Polo's head than they are in any real place.

The language of Invisible Cities is exquisite-- it's more poetic than poetry. As a result, I felt like I approached it like I approached poetry. I tried to soak up the rhythm and the images, and didn't care too much if I didn't "get it." I think the book worked, and some of the cities were haunting (like the one where a mirror of the aboveground city existed underground and all of the dead were positioned in the underground city, engaged in the kind of work they did while they were alive).

Anyway, I wish I could have heard what other people felt about the book. I feel like 90% of it went over my head, but the 10% that stayed with me was pretty enjoyable.

Book Review: Among the Mad by Jacqueline Winspear

2011-10-19T14:49:00.003-06:00

Title: Among the Mad (Maisie Dobbs, Book 6)
Author: Jacqueline Winspear
Enjoyment Rating: 6/10
Referral: Still plugging along with Maisie Dobbs
Source: Audible for iPhone
Books I've read this year: 128

I like the Maisie Dobbs books least when they seem too issues driven. If you could call Messenger of Truth "the poverty book" and An Incomplete Revenge "the discrimination book," then Among the Mad would be "the mental illness book." Maisie would say that these phases would come into her life through serendipity, but even though I find both Maisie and the books completely delightful, I have to admit that I feel like the themes feel less serendipitous than convenient for Winspear. In fact, sometimes if feels didactic, like she's pushing an agenda.

In Among the Mad, Maisie is nearly killed off in the opening scene, when a disabled veteran sets off a suicide bomb just as Maisie reaches out to stop him (suicide bombs in the 1930s? who knew?). Maisie works with Special Branch to try to figure out first, who the man was, and as she and other important citizens receive threats through the mail, who else out there has a mind to murder. While Maisie and Billy work on the case, they also grapple with the fate of Doreen, Billy's wife, who continues to struggle with depression after the death of their daughter (two books ago). Maisie's best friend Priscilla is also struggling with depression. It feels like a terrible time to be in London, with everyone going off to mental hospitals or threatening to set off bombs all the time.

One of the things I like best about the Maisie Dobbs books is that they're generally kind of understated. By that I mean that as a reader, I'm not really fearing that Maisie is going to be offed in the course of the novel. The only time I was kind of surprised by someone's death was when Billy's daughter died, and she was definitely a minor character, and one whose death provided a lot of the impetus for events in future novels. However, in this book, Maisie keeps ending up in life-threatening situations. In a book that comes in a series, it feels like a cheap shot to have Maisie's life in danger twice in one book, because we know she won't die. I think I have to believe that death is a possibility if someone is in a situation where the character could die.

Despite this being one of the weaker Maisie Dobbs novels, I still enjoyed it and I don't feel like the 10 hours I spent listening were a waste, because what comes next is well-worth putting in the time with this one.

A letter to Rose- October 18

2011-10-18T12:26:00.001-06:00

Dear Rose,

This week we went out and got pumpkins. Maren, my little shadow, who I'm confident will blossom into a wonderful big sister when you arrive, insisted that we needed seven pumpkins, not six pumpkins. She picked out a white special little white pumpkin for herself, and she picked out a matching one for you, too. So in a few weeks, we'll carve it in your honor and wish you were here.

Where we live, fall is a beautiful time of year. The mountains turn red and gold and orange, and the canyon near our house stops my breath it's so pretty. It's a season of pumpkins and honeycrisp apples and cool nights. October is when we pick out our Halloween costumes and start making desserts with lots of pumpkin and cinnamon. We even had pumpkin chocolate chip pancakes for dinner on Sunday. In China, I know that the moon festival just passed, and I expect that next October, we'll have moon cakes alongside our ghosts and goblins. I'm not quite sure how it will all work out, this American-Chinese hybrid, but I'm confident that it will work out.

This Saturday, Annie had a viola lesson. The teacher had the students play a song they knew by heart, then tried to trip them up by asking questions. Annie was doing great-- she'd answered a bunch of questions with no problem at all (that big sister of yours is really smart!). Then the teacher asked how many brothers and sisters she had. I expected that she'd say two brothers and a sister, but she said that she has two brothers and two sisters. Even though you're not here yet, you're already Annie's sister in your heart.

This morning Maren and I were at the grocery store, buying bedtime Pull-Ups. We'll be going back to diapers in the daytime for you, sweet Rose, but at night, you'll be in good company with half of the other kids in the family. Maren was looking at all of the baby stuff, and she said, "Rose is so pretty. She's prettier than the babies on these pictures." I think so too, and I'm glad that Maren, at least, is getting comfortable with the idea of you, and isn't seeing you just as the cleft of your lip.

There are a couple of families in our Yahoo group who are going to your orphanage in the next couple of weeks to pick up their babies. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they might find a way to snap a picture of you, even though it looks from the picture that your crib is up against the wall in a corner.

Your crib here in Utah is all set up and waiting. Annie and I set it up last week, and then the girls each added a doll they thought you'd like. Annie added her Ivy American Girl doll, and Maren added the tiny little Asian Corolle doll that she picked out months ago. So every morning when I walk into the room, I feel a little pang. On the one hand, I'm thrilled that you're coming, and delighted that everyone in the family is excited for your arrival. On the other hand, I want you here. Now.

Until next week, my sweet.

Love,

Mommy

Lego Star Wars Strikes Back (Isaac's 7th Birthday)

2011-10-16T18:07:00.003-06:00

Isaac thinks he's gotten cheated in the birthday party department. Last year we took a van full of kids to the Dinosaur Museum, and the year before that we went to Chuck E. Cheese. I thought that taking them to "exotic" locales was way cooler than just having a party at home, but apparently Isaac didn't think so, so this year we had a Lego Star Wars party at home.

Of course, at my house, there's always a catch. Isaac invited nine friends, plus his cousin. Then I checked the schedule and realized that Ed would be out of town. If you add in my kids and the other cousin, that makes 15 kids at the house for the party. And just one adult. Me. Annie and her cousin Natalie were hugely helpful. We got through it. Then I shut myself in my room and took a nap.

When the kids showed up, Darth Vader greeted them at the door. We got pictures of that, then it got too crazy, and we missed most of the party.

Here's what we did:

* Ate pizza, grapes and carrots. Mostly pizza.
* Had a LEGO relay-- three teams each had to fill up a bucket of LEGOS with a spoon.
* Played LEGO bomb (essentially "hot potato") and we played the John Williams music.
* Had a LEGO building contest (pictures below). Each kid had ten minutes to build.
* Went on a scavenger hunt. That's why they're in the garbage in the pics below.
* Hit a pinata. At least two of them did. Then the pinata broke.
*Ate the cake. It was cute, but the kids were not really fans.
* Opened presents.

Then I sent them back in the house and picked up in a frenzy while they watched a LEGO Star Wars video. By the time it was over, there was only one kid left. Isaac said he had a great time, and I hope I bought myself a few more years of Chuck E. Cheese with this party.

The party ended, and I looked at the pictures and realized that there was only one of Isaac. So when he woke up this morning at 7:00, eager to open his presents, we made sure the camera was ready. He looks a little bleary-eyed, and very long-legged.

We still haven't served the LEGO man cake I made. It's not too adorable, but I think Isaac likes it.

A letter to Rose- October 11

2011-10-11T09:26:00.000-06:00

Dear Rose,

It was a rough morning around here. Isaac was sick in the night, which means I got to spend part of the night on my hands and knees cleaning up vomit, which you will soon learn is my least favorite part of being a parent. Your big sister Annie is not a morning person, so she spent the morning stomping her feet and rolling her eyes, and Bryce was teasing Maren and making her squeal and scream. At one point I went out the back door to "let the chickens out" (didn't I tell you we have chickens?) and I stood in the frosty, dewy morning and just took a deep breath.

I came back and told the kids that on mornings like this, I really question bringing another child into the house. But the truth is, I want you, even if it means more shrieking, more vomiting, more teasing, more noise. Even if it means my morning runs have to come to an end, and I never finish my novel, I want you. I'm telling you that now. Even though you're concentrating now on survival and you might feel alone, we want you, desperately. We need you to come to our family.

What have we been doing to get ready this week? I'm still deep in shopping mode. I think that if I'd had a week or two to get ready after the referral, it would have been better for everyone concerned. Now I feel like I need to pace myself, picking up a few things here and there. I found an awesome jogging stroller for $35 this weekend, and with all the money I saved by not buying a new one, I decided to get your crib and the baby carrier. Annie and I went out last night and got a crib, and she's determined to set it up with me this afternoon, so today I'm taking care of Isaac, doing homework, and ironing the crib skirt. I'm excited to be able to carry you around in the carrier-- I want to keep you right next to me, so we can make up for lost time and I can snuggle you close.

I've also been reading about working on making a connection with you. I thought that since you would be a baby when you came to us, you'd grow up blissfully unaware of what it feels like to be cold, lonely, or abandoned, but I've learned that those things will likely stay with you, and it will be my job in those early months to help you make up the gaps between your actual age and your "family age."

Whatever it takes, my little Rosie, traveling around the world, not running as much, spending my waking hours helping you along, it will be worth it. You will be worth it.

Love,

Mommy

Book Review: A Parent's Guide to Cleft Lip and Palate by Moller, Starr, and Johnson

2011-10-11T08:48:00.000-06:00

Title: A Parent's Guide to Cleft Lip and Palate
Authors: Karlind T. Moller, Clark, D. Starr and Sylvia A. Johnson
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10 (I'd actually call this a "usefulness rating" in this case)
Referral: Amazon search
Source: Ordered used from Amazon
Number of books I've read this year: 127

A Parent's Guide to Cleft Lip and Palate is a useful introduction for people like me who are just beginning to grasp what it means to have a child with a cleft lip and palate. The book covers the various issues associated with the condition, including lip surgery, palate surgery, ear problems, dental issues, speech therapy and social impacts. While I read the whole book, I think that the first part was most useful to me. Right now, I'm not thinking about speech therapy or middle school, I just want to get Rose's lip and palate closed and have her eating well. While the book feels dated (it was published in 1990) it seems that surgeries and the team approach that are used today are very similar to what the authors describe in the book. I found the stories that spotlight kids' experiences were the most interesting and helpful part of the book.

Book Review: Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

2011-10-10T19:21:00.001-06:00

Title: Sarah's Key
Author: Tatiana de Rosnay
Enjoyment Rating: 7/10
Referral: I saw it on enough of my friends' Goodreads lists to decide to tackle it myself.
Source: Kindle for iPad
Books I've read this year: 126

I read Sarah's Key in one evening. When I read a book in one sitting, I usually have this feeling that the book was completely enjoyable but didn't challenge me as a reader very much, and I feel the same way about Sarah's Key. And it's not because the story was light, because Sarah's Key starts out as two stories-- an American journalist living in Paris in 2002 with a daughter and a troubled marriage to a Frenchman, and a ten-year-old Jewish girl whose family is split apart when the French police shows up at their door and carts them off to an internment camp. Eventually, these two stories become one. De Rosnay handles the parallel stories skillfully, and I was very caught up in the plight of both women, so I'm not really sure why I feel like I wasn't challenged as a reader. Maybe it's just my own growing prejudice that good books should be hard in some way. Regardless, I enjoyed the book. In fact, I think it would be a great selection for book clubs-- it's an easy, quick, short read, but it also has some meat for discussion.

Book Review: Just Chris

2011-10-09T19:25:00.002-06:00

Title: Just Chris
Author: Christopher Shiveley Welch
Enjoyment Rating: he's just a kid-- I refrain from giving a rating
Referral: Amazon search memoirs about cleft lip/palate
Source: Kindle for iPad
Books I've read this year: 125 (although this was more of a pamphlet than a book)

After reading Just Chris, I'm convinced that anyone can write a book. Maybe everyone should write a book. But maybe, just maybe, not everyone should make that book an eBook and sell it on Amazon. Especially if they're, like fifteen. And now I feel like a total jerk, because the book is about a kid who has had lots of struggles in life-- he was born with a cleft lip and palate and adopted when he was a week old, then he had lots of other school-related problems as he grew. I feel for the kid. I actually thought the first half of the book, when he was writing about his medical problems, was pretty interesting. But the second half is all about the trips he took with his family. It reads like an incredibly long Christmas card from someone I don't know, that I somehow got suckered into paying $1.99 to read.

Book Review: Fascinating Womanhood by Helen Andelin

2011-10-08T19:17:00.000-06:00

Title: Fascinating Womanhood
Author: Helen Andelin
Enjoyment Rating: 2/10
Referral: It's been on my reading list for years. Some of the girls in my fairy tales class were talking about it and I finally decided to read it.
Source: Ordered used (stinky and falling apart) from Amazon
Books I've read this year: 124

When I was an undergraduate at BYU, there were two books I heard a lot about, but I never read either one. The first was Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique and the other was Helen Andelin's Fascinating Womanhood. In my mind, both of the books were equivalent (I must have equated "mystique" and "fascinating")-- I knew that both had a reputation for being scandalous in some way, and that both had the power to change people's lives. Ha!

I read The Feminine Mystique when I was in grad school for the first time. I was working full-time, going to school part-time, and I had no kids. I thought the women portrayed in the book were total whiners-- after all, I would have given anything to be home with an adorable, angelic baby, devoting my life to my husband and my family, instead of working myself to the bone. I noticed that many of the women in the class, most of them mothers in their 40s and 50s, really loved the book, so I kept my eye-rolling to a minimum. A year later I had my first baby, and I totally got where Betty Friedan was coming from.

Over the years, I've heard more and more about Fascinating Womanhood, but I could never bring myself to read it. I felt like I'd already subjugated myself to my husband enough-- he went to med school, I went to work instead of starting a PhD program of my own. He started a residency, I had babies (which I desperately wanted, to be fair). He did a fellowship, I had more babies. Eventually I felt that all I was good at was having babies. So I didn't want Helen Andelin telling me I had to have babies and wear a dress while I cleaned the house, and put my husband in charge of all the money, and nod my head and smile while he made ridiculous financial decisions (which he doesn't, by the way, I take credit for any misinformed handling of money around here).

But I'm in a better place now. My kids are a little older, I've gained some confidence as a wife, a mother, and a person with a brain in her head. So I read the book, and it was just as bad as I thought it would be. Some of the interesting parts: Andelin's "good" examples of womanhood come from novels- and I'm convinced it's because the feminine ideal Andelin describes does not exist in real life. 90% of the information in this book is total crap and propaganda (letters from people whose lives were changed from reading it. 10% might be good advice (stuff like "find ways to compliment your husband"-- which I'm not very good at doing sometimes), but I find myself trying to discount the good advice because the bad advice is so very, very bad. I was talking to Eddie about the book, and we decided that it might be practical, last-ditch effort advice for a woman who really wants to stay married to a guy who is a total jerk and needs some help in figuring out how not to drive herself crazy, but for most people with healthy self-esteem, it sounds like a complete nightmare of a way to live.

Book Review: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King

2011-10-07T13:15:00.002-06:00

Title: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Author: Stephen King
Enjoyment Rating: 9/10
Referral: Someone in my fiction seminar last winter mentioned it
Source: Purchased from Amazon
Books I've read this year: 123

I've read quite a few books on the craft of writing since starting the MFA program (and I have quite a few more to read in order to make the books I've listed on my prospectus an honest reflection of books I've actually read). In general, I don't like these books. Yeah, I've gotten a few good tips from them, but they basically say the same things-- use fewer adjectives, avoid adverbs entirely, trust yourself, write regularly, blah, blah, blah.

Stephen King says all these things, but he couches the advice in a memoir of his writing life, so instead of feeling like a book I was reading for work, this felt like a book I was reading for pure enjoyment. The funny thing is that I am not a Stephen King fan. In fact, this is the first Stephen King book I've ever read. But after reading it, I feel like I know and trust him as a writer and as a person. He gives great, practical advice, talks about his own strengths, shortcomings, and neuroses as a writer, and isn't afraid to poke fun at himself. I also feel like I learned some things about writing-- particularly about the discipline King puts in at his writing desk (he writes at least 2000 words EVERY day) and about what tasks he tackles in a first draft and what he tackles in a second draft (symbolism, for example, is a second draft element in a SK novel).

Book Review: An Incomplete Revenge by Jacqueline Winspear (Maisie Dobbs, Book 5)

2011-10-06T13:13:00.000-06:00

Title: An Incomplete Revenge
Author: Jacqueline Winspear
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10
Referral: Book five in the Maisie Dobbs series
Source: Audible for iPhone
Books I've read this year: 122

The fifth book and still going strong. I liked this one even better than the last few, and even though I know I should be growing sick of Maisie by now, I can't get enough of her. Yes, there's still too much of WWI (Maisie's modus operandi: If in doubt, go back to 1916 and you'll find your answer), and we suddenly discover in this book that Maisie's grandmother was a gypsy (2000 pages into the series that seems like a convenient plot device, not a natural progression of Maisie's character), but this book had a strong central image (fire, in this case), which brought all of the disparate stories together, and I think Winspear just gets better and better at making a whole bunch of seemingly unrelated mysteries work together in a believable way.

Also, I think I've harped on this before, but in past books, I've felt guilty for being so interested in Maisie's love life (or lack thereof). I found myself rooting for her to settle down and find someone-- she's not getting any younger (she's probably 33 or 34 in this book) and there are far more women than men in her age group, and the time will come soon when men stop throwing themselves at her feet. I hate myself for feeling this way-- just because marriage and motherhood make me happy, I know they come with big sacrifices, and Maisie has made it clear that they're not sacrifices she wants to make. But still, I don't want her to be lonely when the people she's closest too (all in their seventies) leave this world. Thankfully, this book was delightfully free of romantic entanglements, so I could just enjoy the story and not worry so much about how someone so smart about other people's relationships can be so dumb about her own. See what I'm doing here? I'm way too personally invested in Maisie Dobbs-- I feel like she's become a friend over the last few months of listening to her story.

Book Review: Messenger of Truth by Jacqueline Winspear (Maisie Dobbs, Book 4)

2011-10-05T13:04:00.002-06:00

Title: Messenger of Truth
Author: Jacqueline Winspear
Enjoyment Rating: 7/10
Source: Audible for iPhone
Referral: the next one in this series
Books I've read this year: 121

By the time I've read three books in a series, I'm usually so sick of them that I need a break before reading another. My sister had digital copies of all of the Maisie Dobbs books, and even though I have a plan with Audible where I can pick out two books a month, I've listened to nothing but Jilly's Maisie Dobbs books since I started them a month or so ago. They're relatively long books-- probably 12 or 14 hours apiece, but I listen to them for several hours a day while I'm running, driving, or doing stuff around the house, and so far I'm not giving them up. I think that Orlagh Cassidy, who narrates the books, deserves much of the credit-- she is fantastic! Her ability to modulate her voice to do all of the different genders and accents is impressive. When I finally finish Maisie Dobbs (and I'll be sad!) I'll do my Audible searches based on Orlagh Cassidy. If we could get her to do an audio reading of the Book of Mormon, I'd probably be much better at getting my scripture reading done.

Back to the book. In this story, Maisie needs to decide if a suspicious death was a suicide or a murder or an accident. She's drawn into the life of a dynamic, wealthy family of artists, and the book focuses on the nature of art, smuggling, and being forced into situations by one small wrongdoing. Like the other MD books, there's a big focus on class difference in England in the 1930s, as well as on the poverty of the London slums. It felt a little bit preachier than some of the other novels, but I definitely enjoyed it.

Book Review: The Classic Fairy Tales by Maria Tatar

2011-10-04T20:05:00.002-06:00

Title: The Classic Fairy Tales
Author: Maria Tatar
Enjoyment Rating: 6/10
Source: Ordered used from Amazon
Referral: Required reading for my Fairy Tale Folklore class
Books I've read this year: 120

This is another "school" book, and one that I would have been unlikely to pick up on my own. After all, I know the basic fairy tales, right? Well, after reading Tatar's book, I've decided I barely know the tip of the iceberg when it comes to fairy tales. The book gives a bit of history on the genre in the beginning, then includes versions of six different tales (Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, and Bluebeard), then stories by Oscar Wilde and Hans Christian Andersen, then some fairy tale criticism. What it can't include are the early oral versions of the tales, but I've been forced to reframe my thinking so now I see all of the written or film versions as retellings of older versions, or even as retellings of each other. For each tale, Tatar includes at least half a dozen versions, ranging from Perrault and the Grimm Brothers' traditional tales, to Roald Dahl poems based on the tales, to modern short stories by Anne Sexton and Margaret Atwood that use the tales as inspiration, but aren't straightforward retellings. Anyway, it's an interesting book and it's forced me to look more deeply at a subject that I may have dismissed as child's play before taking the class.

A letter to Rose- October 4

2011-10-04T17:29:00.003-06:00

I realize that using the blog format to write to Rose is a fiction-- after all, she lives halfway around the world, the people caring for her don't speak English, and she's a baby and wouldn't care anyway, but I hope that writing to her will help me feel connected to her, so indulge me.

Dear Rose,

It's been a little more than a week since we first saw your picture, and the week has felt more like a year. Waiting twenty more weeks, well, I just can't think too much about it, because it will mess with my head. It's kind of like when I run marathons-- if I think of the race as a 26-mile run, I get overwhelmed. Last month, on the Top of Utah course, I met a new friend, and just when I started to get discouraged, she said, "we only have to run to the next water station." We did. Then we set a new goal-- the next water station. I have a feeling that I'll be breaking down the wait into weekly increments. With your older brothers and sisters I looked forward to the "Your Pregnancy This Week" emails from BabyCenter. With you, I'll be pacing myself. I'm notoriously impatient, so it will be hard (and file that fact away for when you get here).

Only we won't be as alone in this wait as we thought. After we got your referral, I spent the next two days unable to focus on anything except you. I taped copies of your picture over my desk so you'd always be with me, I researched cleft lips and palates, got the next series of shots for our trip, and spent hours on the internet watching videos of Xuzhou, the city where you now live. I found that there's a whole community of people who have adopted babies from the orphanage where you're living right now. The families who have already gone to get their children say that's it's a great place, and that the people who work there have their hearts in the right place and take great care of their kids. That is such a relief, because your welfare has weighed heavy on my mind since the first time I saw your beautiful brown eyes. With luck, we might be able to get new pictures of you from the families who are planning to travel to the orphanage before we can make the trip.

I'm also gaining some confidence that we'll be equal to caring for your medical needs. I've learned that several people I know have kids who have had cleft palates, and they've assured me that we live in a place that has a great team of doctors and specialists who will work with us. Leslie, who has worked for years with Operation Smile, is working to find you a great surgeon. It may be a long path, but we're no strangers to kids and surgeries-- we'll get through it fine.

So how are we going to get through the next few months? I'll be working hard on my thesis, getting ready for Christmas, and shopping. Lots and lots of shopping. I have a weakness for all things frilly and pink, and you already have three outfits, two dolls, and crib bedding waiting for you. With four to six months to wait, I could do some serious damage. I hope that you'll be eating a lot, growing big, and learning how to live in this world. We can't wait to come get you!

Love,

Mommy

Book Review: The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud

2011-10-03T20:00:00.000-06:00

Title: The Magic Barrel
Author: Bernard Malamud
Enjoyment Rating: Some stories 9/10, others 5/10, overall 7/10
Source: Ordered used from Amazon
Referral: Required reading for Creative Writing workshop
Books I've read this year: 119

I'm a little bit embarrassed that I've come this far in life without reading Malamud (I've been too busy reading Maisie Dobbs, I guess). I know he's considered important and he won all kinds of big awards in his day, so I should have had the internal motivation to tackle one of his novels earlier, but I didn't. Now I've been compelled by my professor to read Malamud, and despite my prejudice against the short story, I have to say that I'm finding this book delightful. Malamud has kind of a stock thing in these stories-- they're all about some guy (usually either Jewish or Italian), living in New York (I imagine them in the Brooklyn of the 1950s and 1960s), and they're all impotent in some way. They have dreams that they can't seem to rise above. Sometimes bad luck holds them down, but more often they just can't get their stuff together. And now that I've read about a dozen of these guys, I have a soft spot in my heart growing for them. Malamud's writing is also really engaging-- mostly simple, straightforward sentences, a great ear for voices, and occasionally these zingers of an image that really stand out. While Malamud does some zany things (the black Jewish angel, for instance), I love that his stories seem to focus on conflict and character rather than impressing an audience with his bag of tricks.

Book Review: Design Sponge at Home by Grace Bonney

2011-10-02T19:58:00.002-06:00

Title: Design Sponge at Home
Author: Grace Bonney
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10
Source: Ordered new from Amazon
Referral: I've been reading Design Sponge for years, so I've been eagerly anticipating this book
Books I've read this year: 118

Ever since a friend in Texas made fun of my plaid couch a few years ago, I've tried to pay more attention to what's going on in the world of home design. I've frequently added and dropped design blogs from my Google Reader since then. For example, I love Apartment Therapy, but I start to hyperventilate when my Reader has more than about 20 posts in it, and I can rack up 20 posts just from AT every day. Other blogs seemed lame or repetitive after a few months. But I always read Design Sponge. In fact, it's probably the only design blog where I give at least a passing glance to pretty much every post (not the ones about building a business because it doesn't apply, or the ones about flowers because I have zero floral intelligence and I can't open that can of worms right now).

So the blog is great, and the book captures everything I love about the blog. I have a voyeuristic obsession with Monday's"Sneak Peeks" (and a secret desire to be included one day), and the images in the sneak peek section of the book are amazing. The Thursday "Before and After" is my other favorite feature of the blog, and the B&A section of the book is awesome. I wasn't as big a fan of the two middle sections (DIY and flowers), probably because all of the DIY stuff looks so easy in the book and it scares me that it won't be, and flowers just plain scare me. But if you like the Design Sponge blog, or if you appreciate an aesthetic that involves bringing other stylish, eclectic and personal design, often on the cheap, I think you'll find it in this book. I've already referred back to it several times since I read it a few weeks ago.

Book Review: Birds of America by Lorrie Moore

2011-10-01T07:56:00.002-06:00

Title: Birds of America
Author: Lorrie Moore
Enjoyment Rating: some stories were 10/10, others were 3/10, overall 7/10
Source: Ordered new from Amazon
Referral: My creative writing professor recommended one of the stories
Books I've read this year: 117

As I've loudly proclaimed since I started this blog, short stories are not my thing. I do not like to write them, I do not like to read them, I do not like them Sam I Am. And I've resisted all the "Try them, try them, and you may/Try them and you may I say." Well, this semester I've had no choice but to try them since I'm taking a fiction seminar where we read and write short stories exclusively.

What is it that I don't like, exactly? I guess it's that I don't feel like there's often resolution to a short story-- I feel like it's more a venue for experimentation on the part of the author, which is all fine and good for the author, but often has mixed results for the reader. Some short stories in a collection will be fantastic, but others don't seem to work at all. I also like the chance to spend several days with an interesting character, and short stories are over too soon to develop a real relationship. What can I say? I'm a monogamist.

So, kicking and screaming, I've been ~~eating my green eggs and ham~~ reading short stories. On the first day of class, my Amazon addiction kicked in (a subject for another post), and I bought two of the collections that included stories that professor recommended. The first was this Lorrie Moore collection, and I bought it on the basis of the story "People Like that are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onc." My professor introduced it in the context that it's a story where the author's life and her character's life are similar, so in a reader's mind it might blend some elements of fiction and nonfiction. For example, Moore was living in Madison, WI and had a child with kidney cancer, and her character is a writer living in Madison, and her story focuses on her son's kidney cancer. Furthermore, the character's husband tells her to take notes and write a story about the experience. It's a brilliant story, and I felt a strong emotional connection to the character, probably because of the things we went through with Isaac several years ago. Anyway, I'd buy the book again just on the basis of that story. The other stories are fairly typical for a short story collection-- some are awesome, others leave me scratching my head. But overall, I've discovered a voice I really like in Lorrie Moore, and I see myself in her characters, who are, in large part, overly educated Midwesterners.

Now I need to go order some of her novels.

The kids' reactions to Rose

2011-09-29T15:40:00.002-06:00

Bryce: "She looks creepy. Like Kwazel Maw."
Annie: "Can we print off pictures right away so I can take them to school to show everyone?"
Isaac: "Are you absolutely sure this is the best baby we can get?
Maren: "Mom says I will still be her most favoritest baby, even when Rose gets here."

Well, one out of four isn't so bad. Maybe it's a good thing we'll have a few months to adjust to the idea.

Book Review: Alone With All That Could Happen by David Jauss

2011-09-29T10:32:00.001-06:00

Title: Alone With All That Could Happen: Rethinking Conventional Wisdom About the Craft of Fiction
Author: David Jauss
Enjoyment Rating: 6/10
Source: Hardcover purchased from Amazon
Referral: Required reading for my fiction seminar
Books I've read this year: 116

We busted through Alone With All That Could Happen in the first couple of weeks of my fiction seminar this semester. You know me-- if the book has a good story and interesting characters, I'm hooked; if not, it doesn't do much for me. For a "craft" book, this one is pretty good, but I'd never curl up with it for fun. Jauss is an interesting author because he lets his biases be known. He also occasionally points out problems in the craft of fiction, but doesn't really try to solve them (for example, he devotes a whole chapter to the problems of the term "point of view" because it can be used to indicate both who is speaking and how much of a character's mind is revealed, and he says that we really need new terms, but he doesn't try to define those new terms). He's the guy who says epiphanies are lazy and present tense should be used sparingly. I appreciated his voice as a writer, and I thought that one of the greatest strengths of the book is how he uses examples from stories to illustrate his points. I also really liked the chapter on how to put together a collection of short stories (how to order the stories) which is something I had never seen tackled in one of these "writing craft" books.

Book Review: Blood, Bones and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton

2011-09-29T07:52:00.000-06:00

Title: Blood, Bones and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef
Author: Gabrielle Hamilton
Enjoyment Rating: 7/10
Source: Kindle for iPad
Referral: A lady sitting in front of me in an endless Suzuki viola group lesson was reading it, so I bought it for my Kindle out of desperation for something to take my mind of all the squeaking
Books I've read this year: 115

I read primarily for enjoyment, and when the school year starts again, I sometimes feel an overwhelming need to balance out all of the boring school reading I'm forced to do with light, fun reading. Blood, Bones and Butter is an example of totally delightful, unabashed food porn, married with entertaining life story. However, the story of Hamilton's life almost feels like three separate stories, and I ended up at a very different place in the final pages of the book than where I expected to go in the beginning. I see the book in three very different sections. In the first, Hamilton experiences a magical childhood in the wilds of New Jersey, where her artist father and French mother raise their five kids in an old castle-like mill and have elaborate parties where they roast lambs. Her mother always has a pot of something fantastic on the stove. Then, when Hamilton is approaching adolescence, her mom splits, and she and the other siblings still at home basically get themselves through their teen years. This section is one part food to one part life history. In the second section, Hamilton cooks. She starts out as a waitress, goes to college here and there, does a lot of catering in NYC, makes the most glorious food I've ever heard of at a Vermont summer camp, gets an MFA in creative writing but finds herself uninterested in and unable to connect with fellow students (all a decade younger than she is) and spends her time hanging out in a friend's restaurant. Then she returns to NYC and opens her own restaurant. This section is one part life history to ten parts food. In the third section, Hamilton, whose long-term relationships up to this point had been with women, suddenly embarks on a green card marriage with an Italian doctor. Pretty soon, they try to make their fake marriage into a real marriage, with kids and two weeks every summer at his family home in Italy. It's evident that Hamilton is much more in love with her husband's family than she seems to be with her husband. This section is ten parts life history to one part food.

Overall, I liked the first two sections better, and now that it's been a while since I finished reading, I've decided it's because Hamilton is still living the third part when she writes the book. The book ends with the family returning to NYC, presumably to make some decision on the state of their failing marriage. I've tried to write about emotionally-charged situations while living through them, and it's hard. It shows in the book, because the focus seems to change a lot, and what made the book charming for me (peeking through Hamilton's food live to get a glimpse of her personal life) is totally removed in the third section, and I feel like she's opened the window all the way and invited us to enter in. I guess maybe that's what Jauss was talking about when he talked about how writers use distance. I've always been one to let it all hang out, but I can now see some of the wisdom about keeping some of the cards close to the vest.

Book Review: Pardonable Lies by Jacqueline Winspear

2011-09-28T19:52:00.000-06:00

Title: Pardonable Lies: A Maisie Dobbs Novel
Author: Jacqueline Winspear
Enjoyment Rating: 7/10
Source: Audible for iPhone
Referral: Book 3 in the series I've been reading my way through
Books I've Read This Year: 114

Oh dang, I've listened to so many of the Maisie Dobbs books in the last month that they're all starting to run together for me. I think that in this book, Maisie returns to France for the first time since she was a nurse in a casualty clearing station during WWI. She's on a case to prove that a soldier who went missing during the war is actually dead, and that case spawns other cases (Winspear always seems to include cases that are almost too similar to be believed, and she writes off the situation saying that there's no such thing as coincidence, just serendipity). And Maisie's almost spooky sense of what people are feeling, which I think Winspear would call intuition, sometimes feels a little overdone to me. Also, I know that my graduate professors would sigh and roll their eyes over all of Maisie's sighing and gasping, and the incredible number of details Winspear includes in the book (like a careful accounting of what Maisie wears nearly every day). But I think that if you can get away with an overabundance of detail in any genre, period mysteries are probably where it works best. Winspear really makes her audience feel as if they're in 1930, and the details are only annoying when I think about what other people would say about the book.

Since Maisie had such shocking and tragic experiences during the war, I guess it's not surprising that she has a nervous breakdown of sorts when she returns to France. She certainly seems more on edge in this book than in previous books, and this shows itself in her relationship with her father, with her mentor Maurice Blanche, and with her boyfriend, Andrew Deane. I recognize that Maisie is too damaged in this book to be in a romantic relationship, and that she's almost socially retarded as a result, and that Winspear is creating her as a soft, well-spoken kind of feminist icon (she doesn't need a man, does she), so I sort of hate myself a little bit for wanting her to get healthy so she can find some love in her life. I don't want her to be lonely. So, despite her sighing and her adjectives, you can probably see that Maisie Dobbs has got me hooked. I've been walking around with my iPod in my ears for months, and she keeps me good company on my drives to Provo, so I guess I'll keep her around for a little while longer.

Rose Huijue Miner

2011-09-27T16:16:00.016-06:00

Ever since we decided to adopt from China, I had a pretty definite picture in my mind of what our daughter would look like. She'd come home to us a black haired, black eyed toddler, and within a few weeks of arriving at home, she'd be following Maren around the house.

On Friday we got the weekly email from our adoption agency, alerting us that the next list of waiting children would be available on the shared list on Monday night. Last month when we got the email, I knew that our chances of being matched were slim. I wasn't sure, in fact, that our file was even eligible for matching since it had just been sent to China two weeks earlier. So I didn't have my hopes up in August, but as the day wore on yesterday, I kept my eye on the clock. Call it a mother's intuition, but I knew that it was going to happen, just like I could predict in advance when the pregnancy test was going to turn out positive.

Last month the "sorry, we didn't find you a match" email came at 9:23, so yesterday, by the time nine o'clock rolled around, I was barely able to sit down. Annie was just as nervous as I was, coming in every two minutes to reload my email (which I reloaded in alternate minutes). Then, right at 9:01, the phone rang. It was Elizabeth at our adoption agency, with the news that we had a daughter! She was born April 7, 2011 and she's living at an orphanage in Xuzhou, China.

Her name will be Rose Huijue. A little word on her name: Annie and Maren both have middle names that are family names. Annie was named Anne Caroline for Caroline Eyring Miner, Eddie's grandma, who was an author and poet, a world traveler, and a beloved teacher for many years at Highland High School. Maren was named Maren Camilla for Caroline's sister, Camilla Eyring Kimball. We liked the idea of using the names of sisters for our two sisters. Also, Eddie has aunts (his dad's sisters, the original Caroline's daughters) who are named Caroline and Camilla, we felt that we were referring to both generations of sisters. Well, in the original generation of Caroline and Camilla, there were many sisters (it was one of the last big polygamous families of the Mormon era), and one of the sisters was Rose. Caroline's other daughter is named Rosemary after this aunt. (Can you follow all that? If not, don't worry, it's taken me 18 years to sort it all out). So when it came time to pick a name for our baby, Rose seemed like the obvious choice, since this will be the third generation of sisters named Caroline, Camilla and Rose. Huijue is the name that Rose was given by the orphanage staff, and we want her to keep it as her middle name. The material we got from the agency explains the rationale of the staff: "Hui means benevolence and smart. Jue means jade. We hope she could become a pretty and smart child and as good as the meaning of jade." I love the idea that the orphanage workers had faith that our little girl would grow up to be benevolent, smart, and as good as jade, which I understand to be quite precious in Chinese culture.

While I may have had a mother's intuition about the fact that we would be matched with Rose last night, I was shocked and delighted to learn that she is five months old. We're getting a baby, not a toddler! Other than a unilateral cleft lip and palate, she appears to be in excellent health. And about that full head of black hair I was expecting? She's as bald as all the other Miner babies have been.

Needless to say, it was a late night at the Miner household. We spent a few hours examining pictures and trying to read the Chinese translation of her medical records and sitting around with silly grins on our faces. Then everyone else went to bed and I stayed up most of the night (something I did every time I got a positive pregnancy test too) thinking about how our lives will change for the better. A baby! I love babies! I hadn't let myself hope for another baby because I thought the chances were so slim and another toddler would be the next best thing. Having a baby instead of a toddler means totally readjusting the vision I had in my mind, buying a crib, and adjusting to naptimes, but I am beside myself with excitement. I'm also completely convinced that this is our daughter. If you'd asked me a year ago, I wouldn't have believed that we'd be traveling halfway around the world to add a fifth child to the family, but I know that Rose is going to be a perfect fit in our family, and we wouldn't be complete without her.

I also have to say that it's been wonderful to watch Eddie warm up to the process. I definitely took this bull by the horns back last winter, and he's called a few times today, each time asking if we'd heard anything more. I think he's as excited as I am (but thankfully, without the insomnia).

I just learned that the CCCWA discourages putting pictures of adoptive children on public websites, so my options are to make the blog private or put pictures on Facebook. Since I don't want to go private, I think Facebook is the best option for now. So once we have our preliminary confirmation from the CCCWA (which should be sometime in the next week or 10 days) then I'll put the pictures on Facebook. She's adorable!

Now comes the hard part-- waiting the next four to six months to get everything in order to be able to travel to China to get her. Up until this point the waiting has just been for some abstract child, but now that I have this sweet face smiling up from my desk, four to six months suddenly seems like an eternity.

Book Review: Birds of a Feather by Jacqueline Winspear

2011-09-26T17:47:00.001-06:00

Title: Birds of a Feather (Maisie Dobbs, Book 2)
Author: Jacqueline Winspear
Enjoyment Rating:
Source: Audible Book
Referral: One of my Study Abroad friends told me about the first book in the series and I was hooked.
Books I've read in 2011: 113

It's now been way too long since I read Birds of a Feather to remember it well, but I found it a completely enjoyable, delightful novel. Once again, Maisie is called into service to solve a mystery (this time she's trying to find the adult daughter of a grocery-chain mogul). It turns out that the daughter's disappearance is related to a host of other deaths and disappearances, and eventually Maisie works to tie up all the apparently unrelated cases. I've been reading Stephen King's writing memoir (review to come) and was impressed by what he had to say about how symbolism can enhance a story. He says (and I'm probably paraphrasing badly) that symbols don't have to be esoteric or elaborate, and that they're often something he sees during the revision process, not during a first writing. In Birds of a Feather, Winspear uses birds and feathers (get it?) as her main symbol, and she does it beautifully. I don't expect to see symbolism in mysteries, and it works here to great effect. In fact, it might have worked a little too well, because once I caught on to the symbols, it wasn't hard for me to figure out who the murderer was. However, that didn't diminish my enjoyment of the book (it just made me feel really smart).

I've been surprised as I've read these books (I'm almost done with the fifth one now) about what a great preoccupation World War I was in England at this time. Although a dozen years have passed since the end of the war, it feels like it ended yesterday. Most of the deep, meaty issues Winspear tackles are directly related to things that happened during the war. If this is a realistic portrayal of England at the time, I'm getting quite an education on the effects of this event, but it seems as if so much hearkens back to the war that it's almost unbelievable. In fact, I'm looking forward to when Dobbs books don't have such a preoccupation with war.

Ugly

2011-09-21T20:30:00.000-06:00

When we visited my grandparents in Florida every summer, there were some things I really looked forward to (Disneyworld! the beach! gorging myself on every chocolate in their very own chocolate store!) and there were other things I hated about the trip (listening to my grandparents watch the news at 5am, my grandma's dentures sitting on the bathroom counter, the smell of the ice in their freezer). While the dentures were pretty freaky, they didn't hold a candle to the freakiness that was my grandma's feet. Grandma always wore orthopedic sandals, her heels were cracked, her toenails were yellowed and long, and her toes (oh her toes!), were permanently bent and disfigured. They were ugly, ugly feet. I remember lying on the floor of her living room, looking at pictures of strongmen and fat ladies through the stereoscopic viewer they had, and hoping that she and her feet would stay far away from me.

I was all grown up and married before I solved the mystery of Grandma's feet. She'd been a nurse, starting in the 1940s, when nurses wore the white uniforms and pumps, and after spending years standing on those feet, they stopped being pretty and started looking like deformed claws. Even though I admired Grandma for how she got her ugly feet, I still wished she'd cover them up.

Now I'm the one with the ugly, ugly feet. One of my toes is in a permanent state of toenaillessness. My second and third toes are bigger than my big toe. They're callused all along the instep. I inherited Grandma's cracked heels, and I always have a blister or two. One of my achilles' tendons has a huge scabby scar from the wart I had burned off earlier this summer. The pretty little size seven-and-a-halfs I had from age twelve to age thirty have expanded to eight-and-a-halfs in the four years that I've run marathons. I don't even have anything noble, like providing for my family or saving peoples' lives, to make these ugly feet noble. They've carried me and my one-track mind thousands and thousands of miles over the last four years, and every mile shows in the calluses and the blisters and the too-long toes.

If I were a more considerate person, I'd probably cover my feet up, or at least prettify them, but instead I show them off. Maybe Grandma thought her feet were a badge of honor too. I'm sure that in another 30 years, my feet will be even scarier, because if I have my way, they'll continue to carry me thousands of miles, and I'll proudly wear my flipflops and take pleasure in freaking out my grandkids.

Book Review: Stay by Moriah Jovan

2011-09-11T13:04:00.000-06:00

Title: Stay (Book 2, Tales of Dunham)
Author: Moriah Jovan
Enjoyment Rating: 6/10
Source: Kindle for iPad
Referral: the only book in this series I hadn't read yet
Books I've read in 2011: 112

In Stay, Jovan tackles the love story of Vanessa Whittaker and Eric Cipriani, the two wards of Knox Hilliard. Since people seem a little bit more comfortable with the idea of keeping love in the family in Western Missouri (at least according to The Proviso, where two sets of first cousins hook up), I guess that readers of Jovan's novels shouldn't be surprised, and honestly, while Knox took care of both Vanessa and Eric during their teen years, they didn't grow up together.

While The Proviso and Magdalene have a strong Mormon core to their stories (although Jovan's Mormons are larger, hotter, cooler and less orthodox than the ones I see in my ward) the Mormon theme in Stay isn't as strong because neither Vanessa nor Eric is a Mormon (Eric did attend BYU and BYU Law as a nonmember but he graduated without taking the plunge). As a result, the story feels less shocking and a little less jarring when the characters start getting it on and talking dirty to each other (I use shocking and jarring as positive adjectives here, don't worry). It also felt a little more like a straightforward romance novel with the guy and the girl trying to get together throughout the book. In Magdalene, the main couple marries in the middle of the book which changes the dynamic, and the three romances in series in The Proviso also change the pace.

I thought this book was an interesting escapist read. I'm not sad that I read it, and I appreciated how Jovan, once again, used another literary figure (this time Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose) as an extended literary metaphor in the book. Who knew that they were some of the major players in the libertarian movement? Not me. While I see the four couples in the other books having the potential to reappear in successive Jovan novels, I'm not sure if Eric and Vanessa will come up again-- and it feels okay to have this book be a little bit more stand-alone.

Book Review: The Proviso by Moriah Jovan

2011-09-10T12:18:00.000-06:00

Title: The Proviso (Book 1, Tales of Dunham)
Author: Moriah Jovan
Enjoyment Rating: 5/10
Source: Kindle for iPad (only $3.99!)
Referral: I read the third book in the series, now I'm backtracking
Books I've read in 2011: 111

Moriah Jovan's Magdalene blew my mind. I'd never read anything like it before-- I'd read clean Mormon romances, and seen a lot of sexy romances at Barnes and Noble (but hadn't read very many), and to read a sexy Mormon romance felt liberating and earth-shattering. But it became evident pretty early on in Magdalene that there was a bunch of backstory that I was missing. So after finishing that book, I went and downloaded the first two to my iPad.

The Proviso is the first book in the Tales of Dunham, and while Magdalene focuses only on a single couple, Mitch and Cassie, The Proviso tackles not just one love story but three: Bryce and Giselle, Sebastian and Eilis (I want to know how to say her name so badly!), and Knox and Justice, all of whom reappear in Magdalene. And while the book is definitely engrossing, there is a lot going on with three love stories in one book. In fact, that's my major criticism of the book and the reason why my personal enjoyment rating was a little lower-- because it's so dang long. At 736 paper pages and over 18000 iPad units, I felt like I was reading this book forever. In fact, my son was walking around the house with a D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths while I was trying to conquer The Proviso, and I had a distinct sense that Mount Olympus had sprung up right down the road from Adam-Ondi-Ahman in Western Missouri and sired the Dunham/Hilliard clan. They're all bigger, badder, meaner, more loving and much, much sexier than the normal humans I know. Jovan even refers to Bryce as Ares and Sebastian as Dionysus in the course of the novel.

I can see that there's an overall arc to the story of Knox and his evil uncle and how all of the romances are tied to that main story, and I appreciate how Jovan weaves together a literary theme (in this case an homage to Ayn Rand) along with her main story. I feel like I should go read The Fountainhead now, but I might need to stick to shorter books for a while in the interim. But as I was reading I kept wondering if it might be better to write three 250 page novels, each focusing on one of the couples.

My last criticism is one that is hard to put into words, but I'll try. When I read most books, I feel like the author sort of disappears for me and I'm immersed in the story. But as I read The Proviso (and to a certain extent, with Magdalene too, although I noticed it less), I felt like Jovan never became invisible. She seemed very present in the story, making decisions about what her characters were going to say, what they'd be doing in bed, and what they'd be saying about Libertarian politics. I wish I could put my finger on exactly what I mean here, maybe the playlists of the kinds of music Sebastian and Eilis might listen to is an example. And come to think of it, I feel the same way when I read a Stephenie Meyer book, but it's hard for me to say exactly why I feel this way.

Overall, Magdalene and The Proviso have convinced me that every once in a while, a good old romance novel isn't such a bad thing to add to my reading list. And if it's a little wild, even better. And if there are Mormon characters getting wild, maybe I'll feel a little more willing to experiment myself.

Book Review: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

2011-09-09T07:34:00.001-06:00

Title: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
Author: David Mitchell
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10
Source: Audible for iPhone
Referral: I can't remember. I think I picked it off some sale at the Audible website.
Books I've read this year: 110

I heard a lot of buzz around The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet last year, and at some point over the last twelve months I bought it from Audible. Then it sat, and sat, and sat in my iTunes. It's a long book-- I'm not sure of the page count, but it was about 24 hours of listening long, so whenever I had to choose between listening to this and listening to something shorter, I always picked the something shorter.

Then one morning I was out in the canyon on a run. The podcast I was listening to had a glitch, and this was the only book I had on the iPod. So I heaved a big sigh and started listening. I was hooked. The first chapter of the book is extremely engrossing-- a midwife, Orito Aibagawa goes to the home of a geisha in Nagasaki in the summer of 1799 in order to deliver a stillborn baby, and the chapter gives a lot of insight into both the thoughts of the midwife and the culture of the place. The story then switches to Jacob de Zoet, a redheaded clerk who has just arrived in the docklands off Nagasaki to work with a Dutch trading company. What evolves is a beautifully written, epic romance. de Zoet loves Aibagawa, she's not sure how she feels about him when she's captured and sent to an evil monastery (too complicated to explain here). Although they spend little time in each other's presence, they are always important in each other's lives.

Mitchell writes in at least a dozen voices here, and the Audible narrators (one male, one female) do an absolutely amazing job adapting to the voices-- educated Dutch, Japanese of many different social classes, English, French, Irish, and many more. It was an unconventional romance, and once that some readers might not find rewarding, but ultimately all of the hours I spent listening were well worth it.

Book #109: One Day

2011-08-28T15:30:00.000-06:00

Title: One Day
Author: David Nicholls
Enjoyment Rating: 5/10
Source: Kindle for iPad
Referral: Anne Hathaway's interview with Jon Stewart

One Day is the kind of book I probably wouldn't pick up on its own and the kind of movie I might catch on HBO on a night when Eddie was on call, but probably wouldn't see in the theater. But last week when the Salt Lake Tribune came out with its movie reviews, I was really surprised to see this movie get 3.5/4 stars. I'd assumed that it would be one of those sappy romances aimed at teenage girls and not something I'd want to see on my own.

So I decided to read the book. It's no fun to go to a movie based on a book if you haven't read the book first. Because then if the movie is good you can talk about the "fine adaptation" and if it's bad you can whine about how movies about books are never as good as the books themselves (which I think is true as a general rule, but there are some definite exceptions). Anyway, I bought the book and read the book, and it pretty much met all of the expectations I had for it before I read the Tribune article. It was an okay book-- a little sappy I guess, but what do you expect from a book where the story follows two college friends (Emma and Dexter) who almost hook up on the eve of their graduation, and then checks in on them every year on that anniversary for the next twenty or so years. They go through high points and low points in their relationship with each other. Both are quite unlikeable at various times in the story, and both struggle professionally, which I guess makes them realistic characters, but also made their love story a little more prosaic and less romantic than I thought it was going to be. And then the end was sort of a shocker. That's all I'll say about that because I've been known to give away more than I should.

Book #108: The Red Thread

2011-08-27T15:32:00.001-06:00

Title: The Red Thread
Author: Ann Hood
Enjoyment Rating: 9/10
Source: Purchased new from Amazon
Referral: My godmother Annie recommended it

In my mind, the only true and living church time is 9am. The morning person in me loves getting up and out the door, and I've never understood people who have a hard time getting their families ready to be sitting in the chapel at nine. In our last year at BYU, we lived at Wymount Terrace, which was a very strange experience in many ways, but I loved that we had church at eight o'clock. Eddie loved it because he could be home for the kickoff of every single NFL game, and I loved it because I could read my scriptures, go visiting teaching, write in my journal, and listen to Michael McLean for the rest of the day. Okay, there may have been some of that (except the Michael McLean), but mostly I liked to crawl back into bed and read books for the rest of the day. There were lots of Sundays when I'd start a new book after church and finish it before bed that night.

For me, The Red Thread was a book that reminded me of those simpler Sundays when I didn't have to make dinner for anyone or change sheets on beds or wrestle with the Primary for two hours. I read the entire thing in basically one sitting on Sunday afternoon and Sunday evening. I hesitate to give the book a 9/10 rating, because I think that anyone who isn't in my position as a potential adoptive parent would rate it lower, but I freaking loved this book. I knew that I would like it when I heard about a contemporary novel (my favorite genre) about the adoption process. To be sure, there were things that annoyed me about the book. For example, by my closest approximation, the book took place around 2006, because it became significantly more difficult to adopt healthy Chinese girls after that time, and in this book the families are adopting healthy girls. However, Hood mentions several times that the families are taking pictures with iPhones, and iPhones weren't released until 2007, so one fact or another in the book didn't work for me in terms of chronology of events.

Another quibble is that although it seems that Hood tried to capture a range of situations in which people might choose to adopt, I was surprised at how complicated (maybe even damaged) the relationships in the book seemed, and at how no one in the book had a situation like mine (because it's all about me, you know). Hood's book follows five couples in America, five birth families in China, and Maya, the adoption coordinator who brings them together. All of the couples seem to be adopting because of infertility or genetic disorders in their biological children, and all of them seem conflicted, at best, about their adoption journey (which is actually something I liked) but honestly, it seemed like all five couples were more likely to end up in divorce court than they were to end up waiting for a baby in a Chinese hotel lobby, so the "happy ending" felt a little bit clouded by what could happen with these couples in the future.

Maya, the central character, also has a backstory involving a daughter who died as a baby (incidentally, the author adopted a baby girl in China after her daughter died in the early 2000s), and I did feel moved by her story. I wish that I understood whether or not she came to a resolution with that baby's father (which felt a little sketchy to me, but she really got my heart as a character. I'll freely admit to crying a little bit in the McDonald's playland while I finished up the last few pages at lunch today. I wish this book hadn't been written yet so I could write it. I don't know that it compares exactly with Anne Tyler's Digging to America because the adoption journey drives the plot here a lot more than it does in Tyler's work, but both books left me with a similar sense of hope.

Book #107: West Meets East

2011-08-26T15:21:00.000-06:00

Title: West Meets East: Americans Adopt Chinese Children
Authors: Richard Tessler, Gail Gamache, and Liming Liu
Enjoyment Rating: 4/10
Source: Personal copy, bought used through Amazon
Referral: Our adoption agency profiled the book in one of its weekly emails.

One of the things I like best about adoption memoirs is that they're often so colloquial and engaging. I'm the kind of girl who likes to look into windows at night when the shades haven't been drawn. Does that make me a peeping Tom or merely a curious person? (I don't climb through the bushes or anything, if that's what you were thinking). Anyway, it's the personal stories that make adoption memoirs interesting-- the conversational style, etc... West Meets East is part adoption memoir, part report of a sociological survey, but it's written in a formal, scholarly life-sapping style. So in other words, an adoption memoir with all of the fun parts taken out. Tessler (the author who actually did the adopting) writes about the nuts and bolts of his experience (including such details as a powerwalk through the Chicago airport on his way to China) but not many of the anxieties and joys of what he was feeling. So it wasn't as much fun as much of what I've read in other books.

Furthermore, West Meets East was published in 1999, and a twelve-year-old book might not seem that old, but Chinese adoption experiences and requirements change all the time, so it was hard to use this book as a reliable source of information. Back in 1999, it was relatively easy for American couples to adopt healthy baby girls in a matter of months. That's not the case any more, by a long shot. So there's practically no discussion of adopting kids with special needs, which is one of the things that keeps me up at night when I think about our upcoming adoption.

The greatest strengths of the book is twofold: it talks about different ways that our Chinese-born children can be socialized once they arrive in the US, and it also presents lots of information about the attitudes of adoptive parents, based on a survey with about 400 adoptive families. I'm encouraged that these families feel that their daughters have done well adapting to their new families and homes and also that the families feel that their experience in China was a positive one.

The early bird

2011-08-26T08:51:00.001-06:00

It's always hard when the alarm clock goes off and the bedroom is still dark. I can say this with absolute confidence because during the school year, I greet the day at 5:30 six days a week. I don't hop out of bed with a smile on my face-- I grumble and groan and try to make excuses to get back in bed.

Yesterday I met Suzanne for our first Wander Lane run of the school year. I run with Suzanne two or three mornings a week for most of the year, but we've been hit or miss (mostly miss) this summer, so it was great to catch up with her and wave to all the familiar faces we see on our regular runs. But I'm sure that we'd both admit that we were a little tired, and if pushed hard enough we'd probably even admit that we'd rather be in bed (if these darn bodies would just stay skinny without exercise!).

Then we turned around a corner and caught a break in the trees and saw this:

Suddenly I was glad to be up early, glad to be one of the fortunate few who could witness this beautiful sunrise, glad to have a healthy body that feels strong, glad to have good friends to share the moment with.

The Third First Day

2011-08-25T08:48:00.000-06:00

Maren was alternately very excited and not so very excited about going back to school this morning. She's excited about seeing her friends again, but not so excited about being separated from Mommy. She was very excited about picking out this new dress to wear on the first day (she insisted that it had to be pink-- ALL pink) but not so excited about the prospect of eating lunch at school.

I understand how she's feeling. While I was excited to send her off to school today because I know she learns a lot there and has fun and it helps her with her anxieties, I also drove out of the parking lot wondering, "Now what do I do?" It feels really indulgent to be sending her off for a whole day when I'm home, especially when I know she'd rather be home with me.

So I guess that means that I won't climb back into my jammies and read a book. I won't crank up the iPad to finish Season 3 of The Wire. I'd like to do both of those things, but when I think of Maren, trying to hold back tears, it makes me feel like I have to do something productive. I know that means I should get cracking on my MFA project again, but right now I'm procrastinating by blogging.

Book #106: The Redeemer

2011-08-25T07:08:00.000-06:00

Title: The Redeemer
Author: Jo Nesbo
Enjoyment Rating: 6/10
Source: Ordered used from Amazon
Referral: the next book in the series I've been reading

The other day we were all sitting around the table eating dinner. "This corn is like manna," Eddie said. In truth, it was just a bag of frozen Schwan's corn steamed in the microwave, but my man is easy to please. Then Bryce (not a corn lover) said, "Didn't manna taste bad? I mean, the Israelites were begging God to send them different food. They even ate quail because they were so sick of manna" (our neighborhood is filled with quail, so the idea of eating those cute little birdies is not a popular one around here). Eddie explained that even though manna probably tasted pretty good, you'd get sick of eating any food, even good food, for three meals every day for forty years.

The point of this long introduction is that even though I really like Jo Nesbo, I've gotten to a point in my life where I can't read four 600-page Nesbo books in a month without getting sick of them. Annie read all of the Harry Potter books this summer and started back into reading The Sorcerer's Stone before her tears for Tonks and Lupin were even dry. I remember summers where I read all of the Anne of Green Gables books multiple times, but either I've changed or Nesbo is just too gritty to read serially.

That's not to say that The Redeemer isn't a good book. I still think that Nesbo does a good job getting in the mind of Harry Hole, of the killer, and of the other characters in this book. In The Redeemer, a contract killer has been hired to make his last hit before retirement, and it goes horribly wrong (think The American taking place in Oslo and a protagonist much less handsome than George Clooney). I did figure out some of the layers of the mystery before they were revealed, which doesn't diminish my pleasure because it makes me feel smart. I'm also not sure I buy the whole idea that the killer was a redeemer, but I can see how Harry Hole would feel that way.

If The Snowman is truly the best book in the Harry Hole series, I can see that Nesbo has set it up well, because this book ends with Harry experience both loss and a hope at a better future. I'm eager to read The Snowman, in about six months. I need a little break from Hole and his depressive, alcoholic, smoking, cycling, trying-to-do-gooding ways.

Book #105: Choosing to SEE

2011-08-24T07:07:00.001-06:00

Title: Choosing to SEE: A Journey of Struggle and Hope
Author: Mary Beth Chapman
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10
Source: Purchased new from Amazon
Referral: My friend Donna suggested it

Reading Choosing to SEE was an interesting experience because one of the people I talked to first when Eddie and I were in the "thinking about it" stage of the adoption process was my godmother's daughter, Beth. Beth grew up in Nashville and got a master's degree in International Adoption, so she was a great resource. And she got interested in adoption because when she was in high school she had a friend, Carrie, whose family had adopted five kids in addition to their four biological kids. My godmother, Anne, has told me several times that if I have any questions during the process, I should reach out to Carrie's mom. Well, who should appear in the pages of Choosing to SEE but Carrie's mom and her family. What a small world.

Long before we decided to adopt, we knew that singer Steven Curtis Chapman's family had adopted several little girls from China. We also read, a few years ago, about the tragic accident that took the life of their youngest daughter. Mary Beth Chapman addresses both the adoption and the loss in her book Choosing to SEE. I'll admit a prejudice against many adoption memoirs (although that hasn't kept me from reading them) and also against reading books where I feel like I'm being proselyted, and although Chapman talks about her faith freely, it feels organic in this book, not like a vehicle for conversion.

Although Mary Beth has kept a blog for years, she and Steven acknowledge in the introduction that she'd never call herself a writer, and she wisely chose to bring in Ellen Vaughn to work on the project with her. The result is one of the best-written, most moving books about adoption (and probably about depression, loss and faith) out there. I loved Mary Beth's perspective on adopting as a busy mom. I'm glad to see that there are others out there who have a little bit of worry, at least initially, that they may be messing up their family as they know it by adding another. I'm not sure I'll ever have the guts to ever call up Carrie's mom and ask her how things have gone, but by reading Choosing to SEE I feel like I'm better educated on how the process might be for me and my family.

The Second First Day

2011-08-23T09:24:00.000-06:00

Despite a four-and-a-half year age difference, these boys are the best of friends and I love that this picture (the only one I could snap before they took off down the stairs) shows this. Despite being BFFs, Bryce and Isaac don't walk to school side by side. Bryce walks head down, determinedly, and wants to be first in line to go into school. Isaac tightropes over the curbs, stops to chat with friends, and is mauled on the playground by his buddies.

The boys both had a great summer-- Bryce loved his camp and gained a lot of confidence there, as well as some of the organizational skills he needs to do well in the school year. Isaac mostly ran around in the back yard with his shirt off, which is why he's ten shades darker than his older brother. They are both my chicken whisperers, and I'm not sure if our three little birdies are going to be sad or relieved to be left to their own devices for most of the day.

Maren and I are enjoying a morning of relative calm. In a few minutes, we'll take off to let her pick out her "first day of school" outfit. Now that three of the four have gone back to school, I may even feel brave enough to hit the mall for a little while.

Call me Simon Cowell

2011-08-23T09:14:00.000-06:00

One of the reasons I resisted assigning the books I've read a particular rating is because I'm a bit of a grade grubber. If I were a published author, I know it would hurt my heart a little bit if I had a three-star book on Amazon, because I'm the kind of girl who fought to make her 95 a 97 when I was in school (and although this has abated a bit now that I'm in my thirties and back in school, if I got an A- in a class I worked really hard in it would probably still rankle). But as a reader, I'm not very easy to please. I finally succumbed to adding a _/10 rating to the books on my blog after many readers have said they had a hard time figuring out if I liked the book or not based on the review (sometimes, this is intentional). So I'm adding a rating system with some caveats:

* My ratings are based on my personal enjoyment of the book, not on how important I think it is or what I think the New Yorker would say about the book. Even if I know it's a cheesy book, I'll give it a high rating if I enjoyed reading it.
* I basically like any book that rates 5/10 or higher.
* I'm trying to rate on a bell curve where most decent books fall in about the 5-6 category. You won't see a lot of 1s or a lot of 10s. In fact, I'd be surprised if you see more than 2 or 3 tens in a year. If I'm reading more than 2 or 3 ones in a year, it's only because I've been compelled by external sources (my classes, the Whitneys, a well-meaning friend) to read the book.

I feel a little bit bad about this rating system, because even though I think it makes sense for the critic in me, the girl who always wants an A has a hard time feeling like she's failing a book that scores 6/10. 6/10 does not mean I only enjoyed 60% of it, it just means that it wasn't the kind of book that kept me up at night reading with a flashlight under the covers, that I wanted to talk about endlessly with my morning running partners, and and that made me reevaluate my entire worldview. There are very few books that do that, but that's what a 10/10 book does for me.

Book #104: Live From New York

2011-08-23T07:05:00.001-06:00

Title: Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Life
Author: Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller
Enjoyment Rating: 6/10
Source: Ordered used from Amazon
Referral: Back cover of the Shales/Miller ESPN book

When we went to Alaska, Ed took Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller's new book Those Guys Have All the Fun to read. He set a goal to read a chapter a day (which sounds pretty wimpy until you realize that the chapters are a hundred pages each), and I felt that by the end of each day, I'd read half the chapter too because he kept showing little tidbits to me. The Shales/Miller method is one where it's easy to show little tidbits, because basically they interview people, and then they string together paragraphs from their interviews in order to construct the text. There's very little actually written by the authors, except for the chapter intros. The work comes in deciding where to put the quotes so they create a cohesive narrative, show conflict, or give insight into character.

Live From New York, is (unsurprisingly for anyone who is familiar with the title) a history of Saturday Night Live. I've been watching the show as long as I can remember (it premiered the year I was born) and we still end up in bed most Saturday nights trying to stay up until Weekend Update. It's definitely an interesting book, and at 600+ pages, I learned more than I ever cared to know about SNL. In fact, Lorne Michaels haunted my dreams for several nights after I finished reading. It's a good book for an SNL fan, but I think you'd have to be a pretty serious fan to get through all of it. Or else you'd have to be someone who loved SNL in its heyday. The book was published in 2002, and reading it made me realize that it belongs to that category of nonfiction books that becomes dated very quickly. There was only one Amy Poehler reference. Tina Fey was quoted just a few times. This was pre-30 Rock, pre-Andy Samberg, pre-Seth Meyers. I missed reading about last decade, but I don't know if I'd want to get through 200 more pages to have the pleasure of hearing about the current story.

The First First Day

2011-08-22T10:52:00.000-06:00

Over the next week, we'll have four first days of school. Annie got us started bright and early this morning, heading off to her first day of fifth grade. She's always been the kind of girl who lays out her clothes the night before the first day, but this year she also laid out her jewelry, had me blow-dry her hair, and she had the straightening iron plugged in almost before she got her alarm clock turned off. Although she protested about how nervous she was over starting a new year, I know this will be a great year for Annie. She's back with the same kids (28 of the 30 kids in her class are returning), she has a great teacher, and after two years in this school, she knows the ropes.

Although I'm the world's worst photographer and it was too windy to take pictures on the front steps like we always do, Annie really liked the funky effect of the sun in this picture.

Maren was sad to see her big sister go off to school, so we placated her by letting her in on the photo action. Notice that her hair is brushed, but her dress is on backwards. Oh well, it's still summer for a few more days for her.

Bryce and Isaac will start tomorrow (6th and 1st grades, respectively) at the charter school down the street. Maren's first day back at the Montessori school is Thursday (and yes, she's already crying about me leaving her). Because I opted not to teach this fall, I don't go back until next Monday. And then, we'll all be in the swing of things for a whole day before Isaac has surgery on his leg and everything gets all turned upside down again.

As far as summers go, this has been a good one. For one thing, it hasn't been a scorcher. I used to dread summers in Texas, where we'd be all cooped up in the house all summer long. I was grumpy with the kids and eager to get out of town to where it was cooler and get the dang summer over with. But this summer, the kids were big enough to occupy themselves for long stretches and the weather was gorgeous so they played outside. And, oh yeah, I spent two weeks in Chicago and Minnesota and another two in Alaska.

The Master Bedroom and Bath

2011-08-22T09:44:00.002-06:00

When we first walked through the house, I didn't think the master bedroom was all that special. Sure, it had a lot of nice windows, and a fantastic bathroom, but the room itself seemed just adequate. It wasn't until we moved in a few months later, and loaded in two dressers, two nightstands, a California King size bed and an old tan recliner that we realized that the room was enormous. At the time we thought we'd make one of the basement bedrooms into an office, but we soon realized that we had room to sleep, do our work, watch tv, and play basketball in this bedroom, so we decided not to have a separate office, and we've divided the room into different sections.

In the center of the room, you have the normal bedroom stuff. Dressers (Three four-drawer Malm dressers from IKEA, all pushed together to look like one unit), a bed, and a ginormous television (one of the few concessions to the fact that Eddie does live in the house). The bed is from Overstock. I made the headboard a long time ago and covered it with a new fabric for this house. The bedding is also from Overstock. We bought the nightstands (Bogart Collection by Thomasville) from several garages around Salt Lake County. The big blue lamps are from eBay. I love them.

When I talk about the books on my bedside table, this is what I'm talking about.

The north side of the room is the reading/lounging/one-of-the-kids-had-a-nightmare-and-wants-to-sleep-in-our-room zone. I didn't want to paint this room a funky color, so I got a big square of fabric and hemmed it and stuck it up on the wall to add some visual interest. Yes, I do have a plan for how to readjust the pictures when we have five kids instead of four. The only thing I haven't figured out is how to get professional 8x10s of Rose at 6, 12, 18 and 24 months if she's living in an orphanage in China at some of those ages. The couch and bookcase are from IKEA, but I drove up to Layton (which is much further north than I thought it was) through a snowstorm to get the couch for less than half price out of some guy's house. The end tables are from the 1950s and purchased from another SLC-area garage. Les found the aqua Star of David bowl at the Salvation Army in Massachusetts and I decided it was way too cool to hang up on the dining room wall.

Finally, here's the business area of the bedroom (not that kind of business). I wanted to take advantage of this big bank of windows by being able to look out at the mountains while I wrote, or paid bills, or wasted time on Facebook. The chairs are Tolix and match the ones in the dining room (we can seat ten at the dining room table in a pinch). Desks are cobbled together from IKEA, the recliner is from Macy's. Shelves from IKEA. Justin Hackworth did the photos of me and the girls. Isaac did the Abe Lincoln art. Annie painted the floral still life. Don't you love the print of Emma Smith? And the little doll we bought for Rose? Have you been counting lamps? Eight. I know, it's overkill, but remember, this room is big enough to play basketball in.

When I saw the pictures of the house online for the first time, I laughed out loud when I saw this bathroom. Who needs a chandelier over the bathtub? Apparently me, I guess. All of the prints are from Etsy. You may notice lots of Asian-themed art. By the time we decided to adopt Rose, the bathroom was just about the only place that still needed pictures on the walls. We may move some around in the future so she doesn't associate being Asian with using the bathroom.

That's it until October. I hope to show exterior pictures, the kitchen and the basement when I can get my hands on Les's camera again.

Book #103: Swim Back to Me

2011-08-22T07:04:00.003-06:00

Title: Swim Back to Me
Author: Ann Packer
Enjoyment Rating: 7/10
Source: Audible.com
Referral: Browsing the Audible website

I really liked Ann Packer's The Dive from Clausen's Pier, and liked her other novel (the name of which is escaping me at the moment) pretty well too. So I ordered the audiobook of Swim Back to Me on the basis of her two previous novels, without reading anything about this one. So the first "chapter" of the book threw me a little bit. Packer delves into the story of Richard and Sasha, two middle schoolers living in Palo Alto who cope with their loneliness and unhappy families by hanging out with each other and smoking dope. It felt like Packer was doing a lot of exploring these two characters, but not a lot of developing a story. One morning during my run, I pulled off my headphones and did a search on the book and discovered that I wasn't listening to a novel at all-- rather this was a group of short stories. Aha! It all made perfect sense now.

In general, I think that the short story format allows a little more experimentation, a little more delving into character without a story arc, and Packer is playing with those conventions. Once I realized I was listening to stories, I really liked them. I particularly liked the story about the husband who does a runner and how his kids and his new wife react to the situation. I also liked that Northern California was a constant in the stories (and two of them dealt with Sasha, only she's in her fifties in the second one, and not nearly as messed up as we might have predicted from the first). I'm glad I read the collection, and glad that I didn't know I'd be reading short stories when I started the book, because I generally don't read a lot of them. All in all, a satisfying read, and it felt like an interesting departure from Packer's other books.