HANDLE WITH CARE BY JODI PICOULT

Jodi Picoult has the ability to make me shiver when the weather is extremely hot. Just when I think her books cannot get any better, she has to come up with something that blows me away.

Handle with care revolves around a family of four – Sean and Charlotte, the parents of Willow and Amelia. From the outside they might seem perfect and happy – but when one looks closer, it seems that that isn’t the case. Willow has brittle bone disease. Her bones break anytime that she isn’t careful. She can’t grow. Although she is 6 years old, she looks only like a 3 year old.

An incident happens in Disney Land that causes Sean to get angry, angry enough to sue Disney Land. But lawyers knew that it would be a fruitless case but suggested that they sue Charlotte’s doctor for wrongful birth. The thing is Charlotte’s doctor – Piper, is her best friend.

So the story unfolds and shows how this one wrongful birth case affects every one in the family from Sean and Charlotte’s marriage to Willow getting the impression that her mother wishes she was never born to Amelia going through feelings of being neglected. Most importantly, the friendship that Charlotte and Piper has – what becomes of that?

The big question is this – is it right to sue for wrongful birth when you do not wish that your child was not born. Would you do it even if it nearly destroys your family? Would you do it even if it destroys your friendship with your best friend? Is your daughter’s future really worth the broken hearts along the way?

When Charlotte first made the decision to go through with this, I never could see things in her perspective. I never could imagine why someone would sue their own best friend over money. But as I read further, I began to understand Charlotte’s views a lot better. Nothing else mattered to her, because before any of her roles in life, be it being a best friend, being a good wife – she is first and foremost a mother. She’s the kind of mother that would give her life for her children. What she was doing, was just doing her best.

Let’s just say that the ending to me comes as a shock, as if someone stabbed me right through my heart.

This book reminds me of My Sister’s Keeper, just a little bit.

Jodi Picoult’s style of writing is just amazing. She puts so much life into her characters. When reading her book, you don’t just see parts and pieces of her characters, but you see them as whole human beings. Her characters find their way into your soul and stay there for all eternity. Just like how I know that these characters – Sean, Charlotte, Amelia and Willow will stay in my soul for a long time to come.

Noblest Roman

Halberstam, David. Noblest Roman. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961.

Noblest Roman is Halberstam’s first book. It is also one of the only two works of fiction he wrote. He would go on to prefer writing nonfiction after One Very Hot Day. It makes me wonder about the artistic preference. Why switch from fiction to nonfiction - never to go back again? It’s like the musician who prefers classical music after years of performing heavy metal. Or the watercolor painter who switches to pencil halfway through his career.

Okay. I’m off track.

Noblest Roman takes place in the south (Mississippi) and is a sly commentary on state level elections and the crookedness that comes about in small, rural communities - especially when bootlegging and prostitution are involved. I found the plot to plod and character development to be contradictory. Everything moved too slow for my taste and while one might argue that is the southern way, I found myself sleeping at the wheel too often. It is curious to note that Noblest Roman was inspired by true Mississippi events. Maybe Halberstam wasn’t that far away from nonfiction after all.

Favorite lines: “He changed the subject from Little Bilbo’s woman because listening to the old man talk about her was almost as bad as listening to her in person” (p 10). Had to laugh at that one.

“By all rights he should have been tired and unshaven and rumpled, but he looked fresh and rested. The campaign did not show on him” (p 49).

‘”I’m an old man, Angelo. Before I had a wife. Now I have a wife and a doctor”‘ (p 106).

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter, “David Halberstam: Too Good To Miss” (p 112).

The Books That Changed My Life

Last night, after getting home from the hospital and waking up at 3:00 am, I read a great question by one of my blog baby friends named Sher.

What are some books that changed your life and why?

I realized that I barely talk about books here and I don’t even know why.  Books helped me survive growing up ghetto, they made me smarter, and they are the best form of entertainment that anyone has ever came up with, except for maybe a really good Eugene O’neil play on Broadway, because when I saw Long Day’s Journey Into Night with my guy Phillip Seymour Hoffman I  died and went to Heaven that night, but only after getting his autograph on my playbill. 

So, I got to thinking, what books really influenced me, inspired me, changed me, created me, etc? 

And then, my favorite author during the seventies and eighties instantly came to mind, Judy Blume.  I know there isn’t a soul out there under the age of 45 who doesn’t love her.  I first read Staring Sally J. Freedman as herself and I believe this was the book that began my life long fascination of the plight of the jews.  Sally was a smart and sassy girl as I was so I really identified with her.  I adore this book to this day and have reread it many many times.  By first grade, however I may have read Wifey, brought it to school, hid it behind a textbook, and read it over the course of many lunch hours to a table full of kids.  Yeah, I know, I was bad, but I was only trying to teach everyone about sex and love and adulthood.  Its crazy to think I read Wifey before I read Are You There God, Its Me, Margaret.  However, the more I think about it, the more I remember that Tiger Eyes taught me to begin overcoming my fears.  Even though I love the line “If you don’t have dreams, what do you have?” this book inspired my life quote, first read in spanish in the book Tiger Eyes which also became the t-shirt  I helped design as our camp counselor t-shirt the first summer I spent away from my ghetto.  Oh, are you wondering what that quote is?  My life quote is Life is An Adventure.  If it wasn’t for Judy Blume, I think I would have never had the courage to escape the ghetto, go away to college, and end up working my dream job as a camp counselor.   All this from the girl who desperately wanted to join track but was terrifed that she ran funny because she was realyl clumsy so she never became the jock she wanted to be. 

I read an unknown book about time travel back when I was 14 and sick w/mono.  My extremly dysfunctional mother who was afraid to drive actually went to the library for me every week and just picked out random piles of books. All were crazy fun choices, but there was one that was about time travel and teens. I would KILL to know the name of this book. It was the summer of 1985, and it was a paperback book, so it is an old one.  It started me off on my quest to learn how to time travel myself which eventually lead me to loving the tv show LOST.  I’ve read everything from A Brief History of  Time by Stephen Hawking to A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court by Mark Twain to movies like Somewhere in Time, and Donnie Darko.  

I read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath as a high school senior and loved it. My high school librarian (Not the stinky one that smelled like boogers, crotch and Primo, the off brand colone that was supposed to smell like Georgio, but the nice one whose daughter went to Russian and she did the slide show for us in Ms. Smith’s class) loved me, as I was a former assistant in ninth grade, so each week she’d bring me classic literature to read. She introduced me to a lot of good books but The Bell Jar was different from the rest of her recommendations.  It was as if she was saving it for me for the end of school, like she knew I was suffering from something, which I was, but I’m saving that shit for my book.  The book deals with madness and suicide, both topics that are close to my heart.  

I LOVED both the Little House on the Praire books and the tv show as a child.  I often thought of myself as a Laura Ingals Wilder type of girl. I wore my hair in two braids for most of my early life, wore print dresses most of the time, and even had a chuck wagan os my barbies could go to the prairie lands, which was my rock garden that I had made in the back yard. I was completely fascinated by her. Laura, like I, was poor and had a rich nemisis.  Her book On The Banks of Plum Creek showed me that the embarrassment I felt from being poor white trash was ok, as Laura found friends dispite her social position in life.  Damn you Nellie, you taught me a lot of lessons and this was how I found the courage to spit in my nemesis’s face at age 11 after punching her in the nose before running into my house to safety.  Of course, fate put the two of us in gym class the next year, a fate I never would have survived except for my good silly friend Patty and the forced daily jogging to Eye of the Tiger and Abracadabra which saved me from the daily tormenting and the eventual shame of my tiny tiny breats.  I’m talking semi Carrie moments in the shower here.  Sigh.  Lesson learned, never punch the popular girl in the face if you are two years younger and are flat chested because the bitch will get you back.     

Jane Austen - Dear lord, I adore this woman. Pride and Prejudice really moved me when I first read it in high school. It is hard to explain how I feel so connected to her quickly, so I thought I’d use quote’s from the book instead.  All I can say is that she is just brilliant, funny and very observant, all things I always strive to do myself in my own writing.

“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”

“I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.”

“A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment.”

“Laugh as much as you chose, but you will not laugh me out of my opinion.”

Pat Conroy - The Prince of Tides. I read it in Mrytle Beach after I had just faced a huge crisis in my life. Wow, does that man have pain in his soul.  Sadly, I met him and did not have the book in had during the same trip, a move that pisses me off to this day!  Like everyone, I saw the movie when it came out.  My god, I was working at the theatre when it came out, in the concession stand, by myself, making popcorn and working register alone until 2:00 pm and I had a line through the lobby all the way out of the door!  Long before my love affair with dysfunctional family memoirs like Running With Scissors and A Girl Named Zippy, I read all of Pat Conroy’s novels (Except The Boo, self published, hard to find) from this man. Only he, a man who wrote a book called My Losing Season, could make me fall in love about a book that focuses on a sport that I have grown to hate with a passion - basketball.  Prince of Tides has madness and romance and emotions and survival.  Not only did it make me fall in love with the south, but it gave me the answer to the secret I had kept inside me for so long.  I was looking at how to survive, and this book showed me that it was possible anyone could survive a horrible childhood if your will was strong enough. 

John Irving - My god, who doesn’t love him? I actually saw the film The World According To Garp in elementary school and I knew I had to read everything from this man. While I adore both A Prayer For Owen Meany and The Cidar House Rules more, The World According to Garp just took the breath out of me. I love this book because I struggled with wondering who my father was for the first twenty five years of my life. I, just like Garp, also invented fantasies as to who my father was.  He was everyone from Mick Jagger to Steven Tyler, since my mom did grow up in Los Angeles and was pretty enough to have slept with them.  Its also explained my large bottom lip (Which, sadly, is shriking due to old age.)  I guess this is why fate paid me back and had me meet Steven Tyler at my movie theatre just a year before my BFF talked me into finding and meeting my real dope of a father a year later.  I love this quote the John Irving has said. 

“As a child, when something is denied you — when there is a subject that is never spoken of — you pretend it’s for the best. But when I was denied information about someone as important as my actual father, I compensated for this loss by inventing him.”   So did I John, so did I.

So, what books influenced you? 

Share if you care:

Lords of the Underworld Books 1-3

For my first book review, I’m giving you a three-fer. Over the past two weekends, I read the first three of Gena Showalter’s Lords of the Underworld series. They center on a group of immortal men possessed by the demons released from Pandora’s Box. In a nice feminist twist on the tale, Pandora was not actually the one at fault. (Hmm, perhaps I need to write a short story blaming the whole apple thing on Adam. If I can get over my Catholic fear of committing blasphemy. It will be good practice for something to be revealed in the sequel to my current WIP, I guess.)

Darkest Night by Gena Showalter

In this first book of the series, we are introduced to the lords, the demons that possess them, and the truth behind the mythology that we have all believed about Pandora’s Box. The lords are immortal warriors created by the Greek gods to protect them. Pandora was one of the fiercest of these warriors, and the men were jealous that she was chosen by the gods to guard the box that housed the demons. Maddox, the hero of this book, killed Pandora. As a punishment, he was chosen to house the demon of Violence and to relive the same death that he inflicted on Pandora every night. After he is killed painfully, he is banished to hell to be tortured by demons until daybreak.

Maddox meets Ashlyn, who has a special ability to hear all conversations that have taken place in the specific area she is in. Maddox and his fellow lords don’t trust her, but Maddox can’t help but fall in love with her. And Ashlyn finds that the voices she hears go silent when she is with Maddox, and the quiet he brings to her makes her fall in love with him. The couple must find a way to be together, as the lords are hunted by humans and the gods begin to interfere.

Darkest Kiss by Gena Showalter

The second book in the series moves to Lucien, who hosts the demon Death. He meets Anya, the goddess of chaos, and falls in love with her just as the gods order him to take her soul. The two must find out how to remove the death curse before Lucien succumbs to it, all while they are further hunted by the humans out to destroy the lords.

We are also introduced to a second group of lords, who separated from the main group many years ago and the search for a set of artifacts that the lords need to ensure that they can find Pandora’s Box. If the human hunters find the box, they will use it to recapture the demons, which will kill the lords. Anya’s contacts in the world of the immortals prove invaluable as they quest for the treasures.

Darkest Pleasure by Gena Showalter

Finally, we move to the story of Reyes, keeper of the demon Pain. His love was introduced in the first book. Danika and her entire family are also under a death sentence from the gods, and lord Aeron, keeper of Wrath, is the lord ordered to kill them. Aeron has grown slowly more and more insane over the course of the trilogy as he ignores the order to kill the women. Reyes and the other lords must look for the key to save Danika, as she and Reyes grow closer and closer.

I enjoyed all three books. The world Showalter builds is believable and involving. The rethinking of the Pandora legend is interesting, as is the exploration of minor gods and goddesses I’d never heard of. The sexual tension between the hero and heroine in each book was believable, as were the relationships between the minor characters.

The only drawback I found was with the introduction of the second group of lords in book 2. I wasn’t quite ready for another large group of new characters, as I was still getting to know the main group of lords.

More Lords of the Underworld books are planned. Visit the series website to find out more.

If You Sing Your Life...

A wondrous tale of the life and times of a young man searching for the tempting and ever elusive ‘normal, happy life’. C. S. Lewis once said “I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.” Danny Gospel is a book worth reading again and again. I imagine many Christians yearn to view life as Danny Gospel did.

Danny Gospel is the name given to the main character by those who had heard him sing with his family in years ago.  He is a mail carrier in a small Iowa town with strong faith, believing the unbelievable and quick to notice the miracles (signs and wonders) that occur every day in the lives of each of us.

He begins his journey after receiving a kiss in a vision prompting him to seek out the ”normal, happy life’.  He encounters many colorful characters which hearken thoughts and recollections of his life from blissful childhood to the rude awakening of the loss of all his family members, save one - his brother Jonathan.

So refreshing were the colorful characters, the vivid landscape descriptions, and the spirited dialogue that I found myself still thinking of this story long after I finished the book.  Extremely well written, the author touches on relationship nuances that you do not find in many novels.  These nuances, expressed at times in lyrics hymns and poems, stir the reader to nostalgia and wonder.

As you read through Danny Gospel’s memories, you will encounter love, romance, yearning, sadness, grief, loss, and tragedy and find yourself in the end reading of redemption and reconciliation.

This book goes in my ‘secret stash‘ of books where I can return to it time and again.

• Author:  David Athey
• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Bethany House (April 1, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0764204440
• ISBN-13: 978-0764204449

TOUCHING FROM A DISTANCE: Deborah Curtis' Book and My Need to Write

Dear Reader,

Touching From A Distance: Ian Curtis And Joy Division (1995), written by Ian Curtis’ widow Deborah Curtis, inspired the movie Control (see my 11/29/09 blog post), explores Manchester, England post-punk singer Ian Curtis’ quickly earned fame as lead singer and lyricist for the band Joy Division, and his immaturity and/or mental illness that may have led to his death at 23. He neglected his young wife and his newborn baby. He carried on an affair and traveled with a Belgian woman. He had an epileptic condition, which led to grand mal seizures while he performed. In May 1980, he hanged himself, leaving behind a wife, 1-year-old daughter, and lots of questions, the most important being Why? Deborah Curtis didn’t have and answer. No one does.

I read Touching From A Distance because I hoped to learn about Ian Curtis’ writing process, specifically how came up with songs like “Transmission” and “Control.” As it turned out, Deborah wasn’t included in his private process, and his band mates were too involved in their lives to care, so there wasn’t much to learn from the book. But I came away with something more interesting than his writing process: my thoughts evoked by this quote from page 121 (paperback 2007).

“The one good thing to come out of Ian’s attempted suicide [several months before his death] was that an appointment was made for him to see a psychiatrist at Parkside Hospital. Amazingly, when the day came for Ian’s visit to the psychiatrist, we went together. On the way there he told me how unhappy he was in the music business. He said that when “Transmission” and Unknown Pleasures had been released, he had achieved his ambitions. Now there was nothing else left for him to do. All he ever intended was to have one album and one single pressed. His aspirations had never extended to recording “Love Will Tear Us Apart” or Closer. As I drove along, he told me how he wanted to leave Joy Division and join a circus.”

Ian Curtis said all he wanted to do was release one album and one single. He didn’t intend to record more music, but he did. Why? Did he expect it of himself? Did other people push him? Could he have stopped after just one success? If he’d quit, would he still have been considered an artist, a genius? Did writing past his initial desires deplete him, cause his death? I don’t know.

I wonder how many talented writers also strive to publish that one book, story, or poem, and once they do, they shut away their talent. (Or painters, actors, and so on.) Do they consider their job done? Do they ever feel like they’re wasting their talents? When I was a dance teacher I choreographed dozens of dances for my students but never managed to do the same for myself. Until I did. Terrified, I performed my dance for hundreds of students and their families, and I succeeded beautifully. The audience loved me. And as I carried my box of congratulatory bouquets to my car I thought I’m done. There wasn’t anything left to do. I didn’t need dance anymore.

So I left dance, but I didn’t join a circus. I joined writing. And I expect I’ll be there a long time. I can’t imagine there’ll come a day when I’ll no longer need writing.

Book Review: The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century by George Friedman

I read non-fiction intermittently when a good title catches my eye or I hear about a book on NPR. This book came to my attention while I was browsing the New York Times best seller list. It reminded me of the type of forecasting I learned about during the Mid-Atlantic Library Future’s Conference in May 0f 2007. Ray Kurzweil and Bob Treadwayspecifically touched on processes similar to those used by Friedman to predict future events.

Friedman begins by closing the door on the European Age and the dawn of the American Age (the 21st century). His mantra: Expect the unexpected. China will fragment and therefore exclude it from being a major player in the 21st century. Japan, Poland, and Turkey will emerge as threats to the United States and require monitoring. The battleground for late 21st century war will take place in space.

All of Freidman’s geopolitical forecasting is founded on a handful of statements. First, that “the inherent power of the United States coupled with its geographic position makes the United States the pivital actor of the twenty-first century” (p 5). The U.S. has access to both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans with naval bases around the world as well as a presence in space.

Secondly, “the United States doesn’t need to win wars. It needs to simply disrupt things so the other side can’t build up sufficient strength to challenge it” (p 5).  The current U.S. - Jihadist war, for example, has effectively kept the Islamic world fragmented. A unified enemy is much harder to defeat.

And finally, the United States owes much of its current power to its well armed and advanced global navy. The future of its power will reside in advancements in space. “Where humanity goes, war goes. And since humanity will be going into space, there will be war in space” (p 183).

Backing Friedman’s forecast for war in space and the use of robots is P.W. Singer’s presentation (Military Robots and the Future of War) on the current state of robotics in military use or prototype stages during the TED convention (filmed February 2009).

This book has challenged much of what I thought I understood. As I read it, I often thought, “I don’t know what I don’t know.” Of course, anyone who has read Ursula Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” will understand the concept of ‘utopia’ (industrialized countries) based up on the abject suffering of others (third and even second-world countries). As the United States exerts its will to remain the global superpower, other countries will be forced to keep to themselves, to keep quite (though many will not), else risk the subtle wrath of an economic, political and militaristic giant (and so be chastised). After reading The Next 100 Years,I am put in my place, if you will. It is humbling and humiliating to realize what our position has cost us morally and what it will continue to cost but I am not so hypocritical as to denounce our actions. Nor do I see droves of the religious walking away from Omelas.

Perhaps our comfort and complacency will lead to our eventual collapse, but, according to Friedman, it won’t happen in my life time, nor that of my children’s. And there is no guarantee that our successor will be any more judicious. In fact, Friedman’s mise en scene slants toward Machiavellianism.

Now, what does this mean for Libraries? Equality within an unequal and chaotic system? Truth with a corrupt system? Compassion within a cruel system? Because Freidman’s forecasting is based on one more important truth: history repeats itself. Countries that have fought will fight again. Countries that have crumbled from within will do so again, and this time, their vulnerability in a global society will spell almost certain doom for them.