What would you read....

...if you were going on a week-long cruise for a week with no kids? I figure that with three days at sea, I'll need at least three books. We've never done the cruise thing before, so I might very well hate it and spend the whole time reading. I don't leave for six weeks, but I want to have some good stuff to read while I'm gone. So hit me with your best book recommendations.

I'm wearing a bra today

A real, honest-to-goodness bra. No weird flaps that unhook, no bead in the center to tell me which side I have to use next time. Heck, the bra I'm wearing today could even be from Victoria's Secret (it's not, but it could be). I cut Maren off from her midday nursing yesterday. She's down to nursing only at bedtime and first thing in the morning. She's almost thirteen months, and we're going on a kid-free vacation next month, so it's time, but I'm taking the whole weaning thing so hard this time around, especially since she's likely our last baby. Why, you might wonder, am I sad about this? After all, nursing means that I can never be apart from my baby for more than a few hours (which in a twisted sort of way I like), it means that my boobs droop down to my knees, it means that if she's hungry and I'm in public I run the risk of flashing unsuspecting strangers.

But it also means the end of enforced cuddle time. The end of feeling justified in reading while sitting in a recliner for hours on end. The end of eating cookies without gaining weight. The end of a break from fasting on Fast Sundays. The end of feeling ok about not going to the temple as regularly as is recommended around here. The end of hanging out in the mother's lounge at church (if you've never been there, it's a very strange and wonderful place). The end of feeling needed in such a literal way.

Before I had kids, I always figured that I'd nurse for a year and then be done with it. When Bryce was born, he didn't want to nurse. It took a full month of trying and pumping and working with a very patient lactation consultant to get him to latch on, and for four more months I had to nurse him with water running (the white noise let him focus or something). After that experience, I became kind of passionate about it. I love the bond it gives me to my kids. I know that my babies love me best out of anyone in the whole world, and in part I think it's because they get their milk from me. If I weren't going away, I'd probably nurse Maren for another six months or so, but, alas, it's time.

Soon I'll be free.

I've never been so sad to have my freedom.

I've been bitten...

...by the marathoning bug. Or, some might say, by the crazy bug. Last week at this time, I was cursing my existence on this earth, and I felt like running the marathon was harder that birthing all four of my kids at the same time. But later that afternoon I signed up to run another half-marathon (Surfside Beach on February 9th) and today I registered for Nashville's Country Music Marathon on April 26th. Yes, it's my 11th anniversary, and I'm traveling 800 miles without my husband to run another 26.2. What does that say about me? I'd probably rather not know.

Since I didn't post pictures last week, here are just a few of the race.

The Fifty Book Challenge: Year Three

It's a new year, and I'll once again be chronicling the books I read. My numbers slipped a bit in 2007 (72, as opposed to 85 the previous year) so I'm hoping to see a rebound. My reviews might get a bit shorter. They take a lot of work and no one responds to them (which I totally understand-- I rarely respond to book reviews either), but I know that some people read them to get ideas, so I'm not ditching them entirely.

Book #72: Loving Frank

Title: Loving Frank
Author: Nancy Horan

In my junior year of high school, when I was still taking drafting classes and holding out hope that BYU would add an architecture major, I wrote a research paper on Frank Lloyd Wright. I remember writing about how he wasn't much of a husband or father, but I don't remember hearing about Mamah Borthwick Cheney or her story as I was doing my research. Loving Frank chronicles the ten-year relationship between Wright and Cheney. The couple originally met when he was commissioned to design her house in Oak Park, Illinois. She was married with two children and he was married with six children. After several years of an emotional attachment, Wright and Cheney became sexually involved, and both of them left their spouses to live together, first in Europe and then at Taliesin, the house Wright designed for them in Wisconsin.

Loving Frank presents the story from Mamah's perspective. She wrestles with the idea of leaving her marriage (boring, but not unhappy), her comfortable home and her children for the sake of a great love. Was it worth it? At times Mamah really questions her choice. She turned to the ideas of Swedish philosopher Ellen Key to justify her actions. It was hard for me, as a mother, not to judge Mamah. While I understand leaving an abusive or truly unhappy marriage, it seemed that Mamah's marriage bored her, and as a result she put little effort into it, which exacerbated the problem. Her husband encouraged her to take classes, was proud of her advanced degrees, and adored her, but she gave it up for something bigger. Even though Mamah frustrated me, Horan drew her as a character who wanted to do the right thing, even though she made mistakes. I certainly wasn't prepared for the end of the novel. I wasn't sure how Horan would wrap things up, but history did that pretty effectively for her. Yowza!

Book #71: Run

Title: Run
Author: Ann Patchett

At twenty-one, Tip Doyle has a lot on his mind. Well, fish, mostly, but as a Harvard student, he's feeling the pressure to get back to his books and his thesis, instead of standing on a freezing street corner in Boston, arguing with his father over whether or not he'll go to a reception honoring Jesse Jackson. But when he steps off a curb and an African American woman dives in front of a car to save his life, Tip's life changes forever. Tip and his younger brother, Teddy had been adopted by Bernard and Bernadette Doyle twenty years earlier. But it turns out that the mother who gave birth to them never stopped looking out for them (or following them!) to the point that she was eventually the woman who saved her birth son's life.

I enjoy the way that Ann Patchett combines literariness and good drama. In her earlier novel, Bel Canto, she humanized a terrorist/hostage situation. Although some parts of Run feel sort of like a string of amazing coincidences, I don't recall finding those coincidences preposterous as I was reading. I read the book quickly and really enjoyed it!
SONGS WITHOUT WORDS
THE GATHERING

Book #70: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Title: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Author: Lisa See

As a six-year-old, Lily, the daughter of a Chinese farmer, is pronounced to have the most perfect feet seen in her province in years. Because of her high arches, Lily's entire life goes down a different path. First of all, she's arranged in laotong relationship, a friendship with another woman which is supposed to be closer and longer-lasting even than marriage. Her laotong is Snow Flower, a girl from a wealthy home in a nearby city. At first, it appears that Lily has hit the jackpot with Snow Flower, but we watch as Lily's star rises and Snow Flower's falls over the course of their lives.

I learned a lot more about foot binding than I ever wanted to know in reading Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, and that part was gross. I was also highly frustrated by the lack of resources that women had in both their natal and marital homes in Lily's society. Many of the women suffered at the hands of their mothers-in-law, but it appeared that years of abuse practically guaranteed that women would become abusers by the time they were in charge of their households. We're reading The Good Earth for our February book group book, and I think the two books are really good companion pieces.

Book #69: Away

Title: Away
Author: Amy Bloom

Here's another immigrant story. Lillian Leyb is twenty-two when she arrives in New York City, after escaping the destruction of her Russian village and the massacre of her entire family. Using her pluck and her feminine whiles, she's quickly able to transition from a seamstress to the mistress of the most famous Jewish actor of his day (and his father!). Just as Lillian begins to feel comfortable in her new life, a cousin from the old country arrives to tell Lillian that her daughter, Sophie, is still alive. So Lillian leaves her new life behind and heads west, believing that it will be cheaper and easier for her to get to Siberia through Alaska. Away recounts Lillian's journey and the stories of the people she meets along the way.

Although some of the Amazon reviewers have reviled Away, I loved it. I was sucked in by Lillian, and loved all of the colorful characters Bloom created. But my favorite thing about the novel was the way that when a character exited the story, Bloom would tell us what happened to that person in the rest of their lives. I found that intensely satisfying, in much the same way that I loved the final chapter of Harry Potter 7. It rounded out the stories well and made each character feel fully rounded, not just a device to advance Lillian's story.

Book #68: The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears

Title: The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
Author: Dinaw Mengestu

Sepha Stephanos has lived in the United States long enough that he's no longer starry-eyed about his prospects. He's no longer out to change the world. He's doesn't dream about sending money home to his family in Ethiopia (in fact, his mother sends money to him). For the last ten years, his life hasn't changed much. He runs his convenience store in an inner-city DC neighborhood and gets together with two African friends to drink, talk about their disillusionment and reminisce.

Then the neighborhood begins to gentrify, and new neighbors move in. Among those neighbors are Judith and Naomi, a history professor and her biracial daughter, and suddenly Stephanos finds that the world looks different. Better, at first, and then maybe not so much better.

Reading The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears reminded me a lot of my days teaching at Rochester Community and Technical College. Many of my students were either Ethiopian or Somalian, newly arrived in the United States and full of enthusiasm, if not English skills. The frustration that many of them felt as the semester wore on was palpable. For centuries, foreigners have come to the United States thinking that it held a better life. For many of them, it probably did. But what about those who found life as hard or harder than in the place that they left? Mengestu's book is beautifully written and allows those of us whose ancestors have been here for generations a glimpse inside what it might be like for those who have arrived more recently.

Marathon report

The short story is that I finished in 3:55. Go me.

The long story... For the last two weeks or so, I've been feeling sort of off. I've had a sore throat and enormous lymph nodes. I've been really tired. I have mono. Now, after the kind of fall I've had, any sane person probably would have taken the mono as a sign from God not to do the marathon. Not me. I guess I need lightning or something. Eddie and I talked back and forth about it and decided there wasn't anything really dangerous about me running with mono, and I knew that my time probably wouldn't be my best. I was cool with that. I didn't even really tell many people about the mono, because what kind of idiot runs a marathon with mono?

This morning, I started the race strong. Too strong. I met up with this cool LDS guy (Steve) from Wisconsin, and we did the first thirteen miles together. He needed to come in at 3:30 to qualify for Boston, and we were both feeling pretty confident that we could do it. I finished the halfway point in 1:40 and was in first place at that point. Around mile 12, I started to cramp. First my calves cramped. Then my quads cramped. Then my bowels cramped (not a pretty sight). The last 13 miles were so hard. I had to stop and walk every half mile or so and try to get the cramping to stop. I tried squatting, stretching, drinking all of the electrolytes I could, but nothing was making them go away. But I finished. And all things considered, it wasn't so bad. I was the 59th finisher of about 400 runners, and I'm guessing about the 15th to 20th woman.

I'm also down a toenail and one of the cramps hasn't completely subsided. Eddie says he's sure that the cramping was a side effect of the virus. Lucky me. But I'm already thinking about the next one and how I'll run smarter next time (without mono, for sure). Yeah, 3:55 was 15 minutes above my goal pace, but considering how I was feeling, I'm just glad I finished.

I'll post pictures when my mom wakes up. They're on her camera. She walked the half marathon and I think it did her in!