Brooklyn on my mind

I restarted Les Miserables and I wasn't going to pick up another book until I was finished. Until... Halsey Street by Naima Coster showed up in the December Amazon First Reads selection. I wondered, did Halsey Street refer to the street in Brooklyn? I quickly went to read the description.

"A modern-day story of family, loss, and renewal, Halsey Street captures the deeply human need to belong—not only to a place but to one another.

Penelope Grand has scrapped her failed career as an artist in Pittsburgh and moved back to Brooklyn to keep an eye on her ailing father. She’s accepted that her future won’t be what she’d dreamed, but now, as gentrification has completely reshaped her old neighborhood, even her past is unrecognizable. Old haunts have been razed, and wealthy white strangers have replaced every familiar face in Bed-Stuy."

Brooklyn is in the front of my mind lately as I prepare to sell my family home. The home that has been in my family since sometime in 1935. Just from the description, I was drawn in by connections to my own personal life. I (temporarily) moved back to Brooklyn when my father became ill. And the Brooklyn I returned to was not the Brooklyn that I'd left over 35 years ago. (And maybe it's not everyone... but do most people not get the future that they've dreamed of?)

I immediately downloaded the book, scrapped reading Les Miz for the second time and started reading Halsey Street.

I've never actually been on Halsey Street although for some reason that name is etched in my mind. Did I ever know anyone that lived on Halsey Street? I'm not really sure. It's in a neighborhood that I wouldn't have dared visiting alone as a kid growing up in Brooklyn (although I do think a friend's mother took me to that neighborhood more than once or twice). Now, it's just another neighborhood where the folks who have been living there a long time are being priced out of and forced to move. Just like many other neighborhoods in Brooklyn and other urban centers. Adult children of my friends are living there. Most likely, I couldn't afford to live there. So there!

That's a part of the story of Halsey Street.

There's lots of darkness and very little light in the debut novel. My initially reaction was to give it three stars on goodreads.com because of how dark it can tend to be. (It became a little bit difficult to read at some of those points.) I wondered if anyone I knew would enjoy this book. But is that a reason for me to give a book 3 stars when in my gut I felt it deserved 4? I went in and changed my rating this morning.

Rather than give you a straight out review, I'm going to comment on some of the lines in the book that really spoke to me.

The houses where I grew up in California are hardly ever this beautiful. The designs are so garish and cold. But there's so much history in these brownstones. It must have been a magical place to grow up.

My family house which was built in 1910 has so many interesting features. They sure don't build houses like that anymore. I'm sure the people who are buying our house are going to make major changes. Will they destroy the character? They can't touch the history, can they? And about that history. We're not talking about just my history, but my grandparents' history, moving there as young parents. The history of my mom and her sister, growing up in that house. My parents' history. Taking over the house as newlyweds and then inheriting the house when my grandmother died. The childhood history of my brother and me. Was he as anxious to leave Brooklyn as I was? And of course the history of my kids, most especially my son who lived in the house as an adult  for over 2 years.

Was it a magical place to grow up? I know that Penelope doesn't believe Bed-Stuy was magical when she grew up. It's only now as an adult that I can see some of the magic in my upbringing. I compare it to where I raised my children, in suburban New Jersey. But I think about how my upbringing, if more magical, was only more magical because of the time period when I grew up and not because of the location.

Penelope gathered her new set of keys from the floor and left to see her father. The house was just a few blocks over, and Penelope wanted to see if the other streets were as quaint as Greene and Bedford. Ralph had narrated the changes in the neighborhood to her over the phone, five years' worth of losses. His store wasn't the only one that had closed. Lionel Sheckley wasn't the only friend who had died. Almost everyone was gone, he said. He hardly recognized Bed-Stuy.

 

Each time I return to Brooklyn, I need to go for a walk in the neighborhood. I carefully study which streets seem well-kempt, which don't. (I seriously think the homeowners on our block in Midwood took a pact to not upgrade the outsides of their houses. Compared to other streets where bricks have been repointed, vinyl siding has been replaced with some other face. Gardens are not just well-tended but beautifully appointed.

I try to remember what's been changed. On my last visit "home" I was struck by what the schoolyard at the end of my block looked like. It looks like a park. I spent so many years playing on the concrete and dry dirt in the schoolyard. We used it as a park, although it was never park-like! I also walked around the block to examine the construction of new homes taking place behind us. Is that what is going to happen to our house?

And what about the neighbors? I'm fortunate to have many of my old neighbors as friends on Facebook. We're getting reacquainted as adults but take time to remember the "magical" place where we grew up. I'm hard pressed to think of any of my neighborhood friends from growing up that still live in the neighborhood. Or even Brooklyn. Or even NYC. By the time my parents died in 2014, almost everyone they had been friendly with had died. I guess that's a common story.

And she'd thought herself fortunate, compared to her classmates in Bed-Stuy; for the first time, at RISD, Penelope wondered whether she had been poor. She quickly realized she hadn't been, although her mother had, and her father, when they were children.

My experience wasn't quite as extreme as Penelope's. Growing up, I thought we might be rich. We traveled to Miami regularly, took a road trip most summers, and from time to time we'd go somewhere like the Bahamas and California and stay in a hotel. We belonged to a beach club. That's more than many of my classmates did. It wasn't until I got to college and met some real rich people that I realized we fell somewhere in the middle class. My parents' upbringings had been very different from my own. In some ways richer, in many ways more deprived.

They found a table by the window in a cafe on Nostrand Avenue. It was a new restaurant with yellow curtains...

Cafe? Nostrand Avenue? That doesn't really compute. I'm constantly surprised by what previously unimagined businesses have cropped up on what street. In my Brooklyn. In the parts of Brooklyn I didn't dare go to as a teen.

"Revitalization. They're revitalizing the neighborhood." He made big swoops with his fingers, quotation marks around the word revitalize.

"It's still Brooklyn, Pop."

"Maybe on the surface. But what about inside, hmm?" Ralph gestured over his shoulder at the rest of the restaurant. Most of the other customers were talking over their lunches, nearly all of them white. They weren't the majority outside on Nostrand but they were in here, congregated around the little tables.

That's Brooklyn!

Penelope felt a charge in her fingertips, her cheeks. "Is that what you see?"

"Penelope, I get it, people have all kinds of romantic attachments to where they grew up, but that's life in this city. You lose everything you love here."

"What have you lost? What has Marcus?"

"At least, the three of us in this room can all benefit from the changes-"

But can everyone benefit from the changes? My neighborhood has changed. I don't remember how long it's been since we haven't fit in. Is there hope, possibilities, for us there? There are now two Starbucks within walking distance, but on the outskirts. It's still not a Starbucks kind of neighborhood. That sounds so shallow. I don't mean it to. We need to keep reminding us that the Brooklyn that we're finally "leaving" isn't the Brooklyn where we grew up. That brings up another internal conflict for another day.

She felt sad not that she had lost something but rather that her mother had - Ramona had loved her life, her pipe and her blue casita and her mountain. Mirella was sorry the old woman wouldn't live any more of the days she had loved so much. She was sorry for Penelope, too, afraid she would be unable to stop crying, the way Mirella had been after her father died. She had cried every day for a year, and then only once in a while, abruptly and for no reason at all, at times that seemed to have nothing to do with her father. And then Mirella learned to put away her sadness, to store it in her body, somewhere out of the way, higher than her stomach, below her throat.

This spoke to me simply because I'm selling the house because my parents have died. In some ways the sale of the house is more difficult than the death of my parents. It's just so much more FINAL. As we age, we kind of assume that our parents will die before we do. That's the natural order. But when you've had a family home, you never stop to consider that once both your parents are gone, the family home will most likely be gone, too. Especially if it's in a changed neighborhood. A neighborhood where you no longer feel you have a place.

If you've stuck with me so far, this last quote is very meaningful to me. It made me smile and get teary-eyed, both at the same time. The final line I'm going to share with you is reminiscent of what my mother said to me nearly every single day when I spoke to her on the phone.

Ralph laughed when Penelope called, asked her about Pittsburgh, and promised her he was "fine, just fine."

That was my mother's exact line. Exactly. Parents lie.

Thank you for reading to the end of this very long post. A few weeks ago, I wrote a post telling you that I felt like writing rather than reading. Reading this book has allowed me to do a little bit of the writing I've been itching to do. Just a little bit. And I was reading at the same time.

Now... back to Les Miserables. I think.

I'm not a rereader

There are just too many books that I want to read to take the time to read over almost any book. Even if it's a book that I liked and I'm going to a book club meeting - tomorrow - and would like to sound intelligent discussing it.

Tomorrow my community book club will be talking about Jodi Picoult's 22nd book, The Storyteller. Until I started googling to find discussion questions to bring along, all I remembered was what I'd written in my goodreads review over 4 years ago: it's a grizzly Holocaust tale; and it's a story within a story within a story. At the moment, I can only remember two of the stories. Maybe if I spend time reading the reviews of others, the third one will come back to me.  

Not that it's really important. Most of those who have RSVPed yes to the meeting invite also read the book shortly after it came out and have only vague recollections of the book. I guess we will muddle through together. It sure doesn't help matters that the woman who suggested the title and agreed to lead the discussion has since dropped out of the book club!

I'll try to post an update on Wednesday letting you know how this book club meeting goes. 

Wednesday:
We had a very low turnout at the meeting yesterday. I'm really not sure why. Craziness of the holiday time?

Of the four of us who attended the meeting, three of us had read this book quite awhile ago. One of us finished the book earlier that morning. We relied on her telling us what we couldn't remember. As usual, we went off topic, talking about Holocaust in general, making personal and literary connections to The Storyteller. We also spent a bit of time talking about Jodi Picoult, the author.

It was a good meeting despite the few members participating. It would have been a great meeting had we had a slightly larger crowd.

My Brilliant Friend - in translation

I chose to read My Brilliant Friend written by Elena Ferrante and translated by Ann Goldstein when I wasn't quite ready for the heft and heaviness of Les Miserables, the Books and Beer (two month) title for January's discussion. I saw that a friend had read it and enjoyed it, it was available from the library when I wanted it so off I went.

I found the book extremely difficult to get into. There were lots of characters and each went by several different names. The language was really rough which made me wonder about the translator's ability. It probably took me until about halfway thru the book before I got into a groove. I knew the characters well enough and I realized that the language was rough and sparse for a reason.

My Brilliant Friend tells the story of two girls growing up in a poor suburb of Naples in the 1950s. The narrator is simply smart but her friend, Lina, is brilliant in every way possible. The relationship is a complex one. One in which they pull together ... until some competition ... in the head of one or both of them (most often in the head of Greco, the narrator) pulls them sort of apart.

Lina is the daughter of the shoemaker. Greco is the daughter of a porter at the government building. After elementary school, Greco has the luxury of continuing her education while Lina goes to work in the family business. As Greco continues her education, their paths grow further and further apart. But still they are connected.

I have no doubt that the picture the author paints of the area and time in which they grew up (and which the author most likely grew up) is pretty accurate. Lots of feuds, lots of violence, lots of grudges. The guys with the cars held the status. The kids with the education were considered outsiders. The language was rich enough, however, that I was able to visualize a lot of what I was reading about. Perhaps because I've spent a little bit of time in that part of Italy? I'm not sure.

The book ends very suddenly, with a very interesting cliffhanger. I will definitely add this series to the list of books to go to when I'm not on a self-imposed book club sort of deadline. The book begins in the present and ends in the late 50s or early 60s. So of course I'm very curious about how the "girls" get from there... to here. And I'm curious about the cliffhanger.

I would only really recommend this to a reader who is willing to give time to a book and not drop it when it first doesn't grab you. The chapters are short which made getting to the point where I really wanted to read more a whole lot easier.

Perfectly Undone

I received a copy of this book from HarperCollins/Harlequin US in return for an honest review.

The premise of Perfectly Undone by Jamie Raintree was great. Dr. Dylan Michels is in a long-term relationship with her doctor boyfriend Cooper. When she is turned down for a grant request and he's made partner of his pediatric practice, from the reader's point of view, things start to unravel.

While not the primary focus of the plot as Raintree presents it, I see a major part of the story to be finding the balance between work and personal life, between professional ambitions and personal goals. I see my own adult children dealing with finding the balance between work and "life".

Throw in dealing with the loss of a sibling or a child. I can only imagine how that would impact one’s life. Different family members react differently. Dylan attempts to keep much of her internal conflicts about the loss of her sister from Cooper. And that's where the Dylan's issues spiral out of control.

Keeping internal conflicts from a partner who seems to have a much better relationship with his family reminded me of Pretending to Dance by Diane Chamberlain. Chamberlain's book had much richer characters in a much more developed plot.

Perfectly Undone was engaging enough that I finished it over two rainy days of what was kind of sort of a vacation. The quick finish made me feel like it deserved 4 stars. However, the characters are all so one-dimensional. Even as Dylan’s character developed, she still comes across as very flat. This is not the kind of book I’d recommend to my reader friends. Then again, perhaps this book might appeal to a reader younger than myself. At nearly 60 years old, I don't think I'm the target demographic for this title.

Fish in a Tree

While up in New York, we took a detour to visit with our granddaughters before heading home. Who knew that our 9-year old was such an avid reader? And she's finally at the point where she's reading the type of books that as a fifth grade teacher I enjoyed reading. Her library book, Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt was laying around. I picked it up to look at it and it wasn't too long before I was sucked in.

I think I was so easily caught up in the novel because this is the type of novel that I have written. (Mine is still in rough draft format, but it's similar in that both Fish in a Tree and my draft, working title Dear Learning Log are about kids who feel like they just don't fit in.)

The title Fish in a Tree comes from the following quote:

“Everybody is smart in different ways. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its life believing it is stupid.”

Ally moves from school to school and does a good job fooling her teachers into not realizing that she can't read. That is until her latest teacher goes on maternity leave and she gets a really cool substitute teacher named Mr. Daniels. Not only does he recognize what the problem is, he helps Ally to come to terms with it - and to overcome it - and she is able to accept that different doesn't always mean loser.

The first class read aloud of the entirety of my full-time teaching career was One Thing I'm Good At by Karen Lynn Williams. Same premise. In that book, Abby Dorinsky is the girl who believes she isn't good at anything - until circumstances prove her to be quite talented. There are lots of similarities - and differences - between the two novels. Fish in a Tree has the more fully developed plot. But the message is the same. Just because you're not good at school doesn't mean you're not good at anything. And it is possible to get better at doing the school thing.

Imagine having a learning disability that makes going to school torture. It's not like you can say, I won't go to school, I'll go to work... at 10 years old. You have to go to school. Every day is just one more opportunity for things to go horribly wrong. I've been witness to it, but I really cannot imagine what that must feel like. The kids who would benefit most from this book are kids who wouldn't be able to read it on their own. But books like this will always be needed - and need to be shared with some scaffolding to make Ally's story accessible to those who might benefit from hearing it most. All kids, whether they can read independently or not enjoy being read to, whether they say so or not.

My granddaughter was amazed that I was able to finish this book in one day without impacting the day I was spending with her. We still played several rounds of board games I can't even remember the names of, an overly long game of Monopoly Junior, did some art, watched a sappy movie and just hung out. I was hoping that she'd let me know what she thought of the book once she finished it. I wonder, has she finished it yet?

What Inspired Margaret Wise Brown to write Goodnight Moon?

"In the great green room. There was a telephone. And a red balloon."

Many nights of my young motherhood started with those words. "In the great green room..." Goodnight Moon, the children's classic by Margaret Wise Brown, was a favorite of my two older children and myself. I'm pretty certain that we had the whole book memorized. What a fun book.

So... when I was up in New York, struggling to read, I thought an epistolary novel (one written in the form of letters) would be easy to read, if I could find the right novel. Stumbled across Sarah Jio's "what if" novel, Goodnight June.  In Goodnight June,  30-something June, a ruthless banker, inherits her great aunt's failing Seattle bookstore. She finds a pair of letters between her great aunt and Margaret Wise Brown that leads her on a scavenger hunt to find more letters and to discover the relationship between the two women.

The premise of the book was cute. The execution, not so much so. I thought I'd learn more about Margaret Wise Brown. For that, I think I need to read a biography of her (the most recent one is titled The Great Green Room by Amy Gary). There is some information available on the internet, none of which contradicts any of what I read about in Goodnight June. 

I'm not a fan of romance novels, but I am a fan of book stores, especially small independent book stores, and I think that's what kept me reading Goodnight June until the end. The story was fairly predictable, much of it was extremely sappy, even more of it was unrealistic, but there were several surprises thrown in. (One surprise was the fact that Jio throws in mention of real life people - like Bill and Melinda Gates coming to her book store fundraiser. I wonder how Bill and Melinda feel about that. It really didn't seem necessary. Didn't add anything at all to the story.)

You might enjoy this book if you enjoy sappy romances. The letters in the story didn't live up to my standard. They weren't really the a large part of the writing, simply a large part of moving the plot forward. Don't expect to learn too much about Margaret Wise Brown. It will leave you with more questions than answers. I really can't give this any sort of hearty recommendation.

The Tao of Pooh

The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff is this month's Books & Beer Club title. It was a fairly short, fairly easy, fairly commonsense book. Explaining the concepts of Tao thru the characters of Winne the Pooh. The idea was to read the book and pick which Pooh character we're most like. I'm certainly no Pooh as I don't just take things the way they come, but I found little bits of me in many of the characters.

I finished this book on the plane ride up to New York. I plan to add to this post after the book club meeting tomorrow evening. In the meantime, would I recommend the book? I'm not sure. I think it should generate a great book club discussion, but not so sure this is the type of book I'd enjoy reading independently. One of the members of Books & Beer considers it her bible. Now that I've read it, I'd like her to explain what she means. I can guess, but I just don't feel it.

Trying to play catch up

It's been over a month since I last posted here. If you follow me on Facebook then you know that I was dealing with some overwhelming personal stuff. Mostly the sale of the home that has been in the family for 82 years. It's been an almost 4-year cleaning project to get us to this point. I wanted to my "time with words" to be spent writing about what I was dealing with rather than reading something else. I had no computer so pretty much, I did neither. Eventually I did get back to reading... and now I'm attempting to recreate what I've read over the past month. Apparently I don't do the best job keeping my goodreads up-to-date since I have two large spaces of time where it would appear that I wasn't reading anything. And I'm missing one book that I am certain that I read.

I'll attempt to recapture my past month as best I can, to figure out what I read, and to review what I can remember.

We May Not Finish the Book... but we always finish the beer

Tonight was a first. Not only did I not finish Pet Sematary, I didn't ever start it! Yet I went to the meeting and drank the beer.

I've read some Stephen King (Carrie, The Shining, and 11/22/63). I was in college when I read Carrie and The Shining. My reading preferences were different. I loved 11/22/63. But then again, I really enjoy speculative (historical) fiction. When Books & Beer started tossing around Stephen King novels for tonight's meeting, I hoped they'd pick a good one. Pet Sematary didn't sound like something I'd enjoy but I did plan to at least start it.

Came home after the meeting where it was selected and tried to request the e-book from any of the libraries I have access to. Hard to believe that only one of the libraries owns the e-book. I went to request the print book from my local library. They don't own it. I put in the request for the e-book and decided then and there that if I got the book, I'd try to read it. If I didn't get the book, I wouldn't worry about it.I didn't get the book.

I was one of only two at the meeting who hadn't read the book. I probably should have read a summary about the book. I'd only read a little blurb explaining the spelling of the title. I had no clue what anyone was talking about. If there's a next time, I suppose I should at least read a synopsis. I sat quietly, taking it all in. I asked one question and one question only. Did anyone have any idea why the book was so difficult to find? A few people had different thoughts on that so it wasn't a totally stupid question.

I'll be curious to see when I come to the top of the e-book list and receive notification that the book is available for downloading. Otherwise, I'm ready to move on to next month's title, The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff.

When Breath Becomes Air - after the meeting

In August, I read and reviewed When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalinithi back in August. You can read my review here. This was a book I only liked, but I was anxious for the book club discussion which I correctly expected to be excellent.

My community book club had a very small turnout for the discussion of “When Breath Becomes Air” by Paul Kalanithi. This memoir was penned by a physician who received a diagnosis of Stage IV lung cancer at the age of 36. Did people not want to read a book about death and end-of-life decisions? Did people not want to discuss it? Those in attendance were all in agreement that the book wasn’t really a downer. Of the six members attending, two liked the book and 4 loved the book. All agreed that this is a book they could easily recommend to others. 

Dr. Paul Kalanithi was determined to live every moment of his life until he wasn’t living any longer. Everyone determined that the theme of the book was living a purposeful life. Further discussion not only involved determining what Kalanithi’s purpose was and what made his life meaningful, but purpose and meaning in general. How does one live a purposeful life? And how might they, the readers, make meaning out of their lives? Interestingly, Kalanithi always wanted to be a writer. Was this the book he wanted to write?

The group talked about the road that brought Kalanithi to his calling as a neurosurgeon. In his case, it truly was a calling. The facilitator of the discussion brought information about Kalanithi’s education that wasn’t included in his end-of-life memoir.  Kalanithi spent most of his life trying to figure out relationships. That was definitely a help for him in his chosen career and towards the end of his life. Other matters pondered were whether fears of terminal illness are larger than death itself and what place does suffering have both in life and towards death. No conclusions were reached but that was a very thought-provoking time during the meeting.

“When Breath Becomes Air” was on several best sellers lists. It was on the NY Times bestsellers list for over a year. Kalanithi has achieved prominence as a writer. He has reached so many people with his bestselling memoir. One member wondered if he would have reached such prominence as a neurosurgeon. Deliberating that was the conclusion to what all agreed was a very successful, stimulating  meeting.

This is not a political post

I try so hard not to post anything political on my Facebook page. As I finished reading Katy Tur's memoir of covering the Trump presidential campaign of 2016, I wondered how I was going to present the book without being too political.

The memoir was interesting. I wanted it to be fascinating. I had very high hopes for it and on many levels they were met. It was much more about Katy Tur and her career than about the campaign, but that was okay. She spoke with an authentic voice and her writing style was very easy to get through. This wasn't meant to be a historical accounting by any means - although it does cover some pretty important history. It's more about Katy's life during the campaign. I'd recommend it to anyone who got to know Katy Tur and enjoy her reporting during the campaign. She also gives you much of her personal self. It was a pleasure getting to know her.

Prior to reading Unbelievable, I wondered how different correspondents got selected to cover which particular candidates. Turns out that it was probably a little more random than I'd thought about before. That was surprising. I learned why I'd never really heard of Katy Tur before.

What was very remarkable was Katy Tur's upbringing. I'd heard her speak on "Take Your Child to Work" day last spring, about how she had been in a news helicopter over LA during the Rodney King riots. At the time, I was fascinated. This part of the book did not disappoint.

Katy Tur was the embodiment of "fake news" during the last presidential campaign. She was called out often by Trump at rallies. Sometimes it seems like he was flirting with her. Other times it seems as though he was threatening. Even when he wasn't threatening, it seems as though some of the mobs at his rallies did threaten Katy. Reading about her fears was absorbing. A few times she mentioned her mother fearing for her safety. My kids are not much younger than Katy is. Putting myself in her mother's place, there would have been a very fine line between being proud of my daughter for the job she was doing and frantically worrying about her safety at all times. Not to mention what a grueling job it is to follow a presidential campaign from start to finish. She covered the campaign with polish and class.

I think that's all I'm going to say.

Feel free to comment or ask questions about the memoir. Please don't post anything political. Thanks.

My library

I am on the Board of a club whose monthly meeting is held at my local library every month. Many months, I walk into the meeting room and then walk straight out when we're done.

Today, I walked into the library to see if I could find Stephen King's Pet Sematary, the October title for Books & Beer Club that I really have no desire to read. I didn't find that book. I guess our library system doesn't even own it. Oh, well.

I spent some time browsing the shelves and added at least a dozen more books, some old, some new, some fiction, some non-fiction, to the list I have running in my head of books I'd like to read.

If only there was more time for reading...

Miller's Valley

At about 5 o'clock this morning, I finished Miller's Valley by Anna Quindlen. It's the coming of age story of Mimi. It's also the story of a place, Miller's Valley, and it's the story of the Miller family. Mimi tells us her story of growing up from the vantage of "older" age. Can't say old age since my age is pretty close to Mimi's in the epilogue of the novel.

The book was a comfortable read. There was lots in the book that I could relate to. Could easily relate to. I'm happy to report that I had an easier life than Mimi did, at least the years leading up to college and during college. However, there are so many universal themes to coming of age stories of girls who were born in the 1950s.

I expected the book to be a little bit more about water management and how dams can be manipulated to flood low lying areas. I was a little disappointed with the way it was relegated to a very minor sub-plot, after a much more significant build-up at the beginning of the novel. The floods and the study of the dam were more of a vehicle to prove how smart Mimi was as a youngster and as a means to manipulate the lives of some of the characters. 

I wondered what kind of rating I should give Miller's Valley. I enjoyed reading it, but I didn't really love it. The character of Mimi went to the University of Pennsylvania, just a few years earlier than I did. You'd think that would make me love a book. But Mimi was so busy working and studying (pre-med) super hard that there wasn't much at all about the University. Her mother liked to brag that Mimi was at an Ivy League school rather than "State" (which they never referred to ask Penn State - I found that interesting), but otherwise there was nothing that made me feel like that part of the novel was set at my alma mater. As a young married, Mimi and her husband lived in an apartment in Philadelphia that from her description could very easily be my daughter's apartment in Philadelphia today. But again, the Philadelphia portion of the book did not have a Philadelphia feel. I was considering giving Miller's Valley 3 stars. Maybe 3.5 would have made more sense, had there been half stars. But alas, there aren't.

When I turned the last page, I read thru the discussion questions. And that's when something about the book struck me in the head ... and in the heart. All of a sudden, my head was filled of thoughts of my own life... and I knew that this was a 4 star book for me.

1. Miller's Valley begins with an epigraph from James Baldwin; "Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition." Think about what home means to you. What does home mean for Mimi? Do you equate home more with people or places?

10. Think about a time when you had to leave home. Did you go back? Why or why not?

As did this paragraph taken from the description of the book.

Miller’s Valley is a masterly study of family, memory, loss, and, ultimately, discovery, of finding true identity and a new vision of home. As Mimi says, “No one ever leaves the town where they grew up, even if they go.” Miller’s Valley reminds us that the place where you grew up can disappear, and the people in it too, but all will live on in your heart forever.

 I'm in the process of selling the house that has been home to one member of my family or another for over 80 years. I've never really ever had to consider "leaving home" because no matter how far I roamed, or for how long, home was always there. As were my parents. Once my parents died, the house was still there. And strangely, I've always felt closer to them in the house than anywhere else. I miss them less when I'm there.

My brother, my adult kids and I have been having a tough time coming to terms with the loss of "home." Of the 5 of us, only my son lives in the area. It shouldn't feel like such a loss to us. Yet it does.

Different books effect us in different ways. It wasn't until I read the lines quoted above that I started to think about the connections I might have with the book to "loss of home." When you read something counts almost as much as what you're reading.

If you've enjoyed Anna Quindlen in the past, you'll probably enjoy this most recent book of hers.

Outlander #8

Outlander fans who were with Diana Gabaldon from early on had to wait from 2010 until 2014 to read the 8th book in the series, Written in My Own Heart's Blood. I only had to wait 5 months. 

Truly, I wasn't sure how quickly I'd pick up the 8th book, but when I went to look for Stephen King's Pet Sematary (the next Books and Beer Club book - October is our horror month) in e-book form and couldn't find it, I decided to browse the e-book catalog of one of my libraries and see what was available. When Written in My Own Heart's Blood  was available without a hold (in other words, without a wait), I grabbed it. A sign that it was time to continue with the series.

I finished this book in a record 15 days! I'm not sure if this was my favorite book or not, but I just breezed through it. And now, like everyone else who has made it to book 8, I anxiously await book 9.  Go Tell The Bees That I Am Gone is the title for the next book, but still no word on when it will be published.

I'm not sure what I loved most about this book. Part of the book was set in Philadelphia, a city that is close to my heart. I loved living in Philadelphia and I love visiting my daughter that lives there now. 

A blast of Philadelphia rushed in, fluttering the stacks of paper: smoke from a dozen nearby chimneys, an acrid stink from the manure pile behind the livery stable down the street, and the intoxicatingly resinous scent of leaves and bark and brush and flowers that was William Penn's legacy. Leave one acre of trees for every five acres cleared, he'd advised in his charter, and if Philadelphia had no quite met that ideal, it was still a particularly verdant city.

That wasn't it. Or at least that wasn't only what I really liked about the book. I guess I really enjoyed the way Jamie and Claire's story intersected with Lord John Grey's story (and that of his brother, Hal). I appreciated getting to know William a little better. We got to know Lord John's niece, Dottie, and her brother, Henry a little bit better. Many of the young people have matured and were entering relationships of their own. We got to learn more about Jamie's past through the eyes of Roger. Some of Bree's story in this installment seemed a bit far fetched. As if time travel isn't far fetched enough to begin with.

As I was reading, I tried to remember what I had and hadn't learned about the American Revolution. I realized that I knew more of the big themes rather than the smaller details. Some of the historical names were well known (George Washington, Benedict Arnold) and some seemed familiar. How much of the Revolution did I really have no idea about? A lot of it. I felt a little ignorant, but I never stopped to wonder how Claire might have known so much about the Revolution. She was born and raised in England. Her only exposure to US history was through her daughter attending school in Boston. Then I came to this bit of text, written from Claire's perspective.

"Why didn't I bloody know what was going to happen? I asked myself in frustration - and not for the first time.Why hadn't I thought to brush up on American history when I had the chance? Well, because I hadn't expected to end up in America, was the answer. Just went to show, I supposed. Pointless to spend too much time in planning, anyway, given the propensity of life to make sudden left-hand turns without warning."

That's exactly it! How do we know what we'll need to know in the future, what is important to study and when it's okay to simply go with the flow.

Another line that jumped out at me was about Henri-Christian, the dwarf son of Fergus and Marsali. He was playing with some neighbor children, those of the Phillips family.

"The Phillipses were Jewish, though, and apparently felt some kinship with a person whose differences set him apart."

 I could certainly relate to that as well.

The final bit of text that jumped out at me were some of Claire's thoughts on life in general. I read this section on the afternoon of Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. The sermon at our service was about life. It's never too late to change. Make the most of life. That sort of thing. As I approach the age of 60, I often think that I had so much more time behind me compared to what I have ahead of me - even if I live a good, long life. Daunting to think about. And how often have I looked at my own hands and knuckles and wonder how did my hands get so old looking so fast. But has it been so fast?

'I can't explain,' I said, defeated. 'It wasn't there - or I wasn't looking at it - after I was shot. It wasn't nearly dying that made me look in, see it yawning there. But being so ... so bloody frail! Being so stinking afraid.' I clenched my fists, seeing the knobby bones of my knuckles, the blue veins that stood out on the backs of my hands and curved down my wrists.
'Not death,' I said at last, sniffing. 'Futility. Uselessness. Bloody entropy. Death matters, at least sometimes.'
'I ken that,' Jamie said softly, and took my hands in his; they were big, and battered, scarred and maimed. 'It's why a warrior doesn't fear death so much. He has the hope - sometimes the certainty - that his death will matter.'

Now, like every other Outlander fan, I have to wait for the next book. I'm waiting patiently for a free Starz weekend or a way to get to see Season III of Outlander on TV. Perhaps I'll pick up the novellas that go along with the Outlander series. I believe there are many of those to keep me busy while I wait.

Yes, I strongly recommend the Outlander series to anyone who is a fan of historical fiction. Or time travel. Or both. And if you like romance, all the better!

I finally finished Beloved (with update after Books & Beer Club discussion)

Yes, I finally finished Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Beloved. Yes, I did say finally. I didn't love Beloved. I certainly didn't hate it. Who knows. Maybe I did. I found it an extremely difficult book to read, in so many different ways.

In case you have no idea what Beloved is about.... I had no idea what it was about even though I've seen it on so many lists of books a serious reader needs to read... it's a story that takes place in Ohio and bounces around the years leading up to the Civil War and then maybe 10 years after. It's the story of Sethe, a runaway slave, who is the mother of 4 children. There's her 18-year old daughter named Denver who lives with her. She had two older sons who left home and she has no idea where they are. The fourth one, a girl slightly older than Denver, died (no spoiler, we learn this pretty early in the story). Sethe didn't have enough money for the inscription on the girl's gravestone. She had just enough to get "Beloved" engraved on the stone.

Unlike most slaves, Sethe's last owners at Sweet Home were kind. They allowed her to "marry" a fellow slave, Halle. As is rare with slaves, all 4 of her children had the same father. Her owner never had his way with her. The slaves that were the property of the Garners were treated pretty fairly or as fairly as slaves might be treated. Halle was able to work outside and buy his mother's freedom for her. Until Mr. Garner died and Mrs. Garner sends for a relative referred to as "schoolteacher" to run the place and who is the complete opposite of kind. The slaves talk about running away, they make a plan. In the end, Sethe sends her three children alone with someone to her mother-in-law in Ohio. She follows shortly behind, giving birth to Denver with the assistance of a white woman while she is in the process of escaping. That's probably enough of a recap of the story without giving too much away.

I still haven't reviewed Beloved on goodreads.com. I have no idea how many stars I feel that it might deserve. I have, however, read through many of the reviews online since finishing yesterday. Based on reviews, Beloved is the type of book that people either love or hate. It's got a lot of 5-star reviews and a lot of 1-star reviews. I honestly don't know how I felt about the book.

Things I do know:

• The picture painted of slavery and of being a free black in the north is probably one of the most horrific that I've ever read. And I've read a lot of books about slavery and the time leading up to and after the Civil War. This was gut wrenching, stomach churning and frightful beyond words. I'm surprised I didn't have nightmares.
• Toni Morrison might be this amazing writer but I found her writing very slow to get through. Especially once the story went from being a narrative to a collection of words (stream of conscience??) somewhere in the middle of the book. The narrative was difficult to follow and I found myself reading the same words over an over. When it was no longer a narrative, I just kind of flew through that section since what was the point in struggling over what Morrison was trying to tell me? Then it goes back to being narrative. Maybe I got used to her writing. Or I figured out a way to make sense with it. I finished that chapter more quickly than the first two.
• Because of the previous two points, no matter how much time I had to read on a given day, I couldn't read more than a few pages. The atrociousness of the tale combined with the difficult language (not the individual words but rather the way Morrison strings words together in sentences and paragraphs) made it a book that I couldn't lose myself in.
• I don't like books that are over 300 pages long and only have three chapters. I felt like there were no ending points, no obvious places where it made sense to take a break.
• I kind of lost track of who some of the peripheral characters were. 
• I was confused about whether a few characters were white or black. Ordinarily that wouldn't make a difference but in a book about a runaway slave and free blacks, I think it probably was more important than in most other stories.
• I know that the book club discussion about the novel will be a good one. We'll be able to talk about the characters, the plot, the "fantasy" aspect of the storyline and about Toni Morrison's way with words.
• In a ridiculous way, even though I can never get back the time I devoted to reading Beloved, I can now proudly say that I read it. (Remember, it's on a lot of those lists of books that any serious reader should read before she or he dies.)

This will probably be one of the books where I feel the need to come back and share with you how our book club discussion goes.

Update: I was one of only two people at Books & Beer Club last week that didn't love Beloved. The other woman who didn't love it likes to read happier things. She didn't like Everything that Rises Must Converge, the collection of Flannery O'Connor short stories that we read last month. And I loved that. One woman said she sat down and read the book in one sitting. I truly can't imagine.

The book club discussion was, as I expected, a good one. One of our members came with lots of information about Toni Morrison which was very interesting. We spoke about the book longer than we do with most books. Did it give me a better appreciation for the book? Not exactly. It made me realize that I did appreciate the strength and power of Toni Morrison's words. By not loving it, I didn't appreciate it any less than those who did love the book. I still believe, though, that this is a book best read when you know you'll have someone to discuss it with.

No concentration for reading

Reading is my comfort. My escape from the real world. Until it's not...

During the wait for Hurricane Irma to arrive, I never even thought to pick up a book. We had power... and I wasn't sure for how long. I figured I'd stay glued to the TV as long as I could. Plus, I'm still reading Beloved on my iPad which I'm kind of struggling with. (The language makes reading slow and the content is brutal so I can only read in small doses.) Didn't want to waste iPad power if we were going to lose power eventually. (We never did lose power.) Additionally, I had too much nervous energy so when I wasn't just sitting on my chair staring at the TV, I was going around the house tweaking our pre-storm preparations.

We certainly dodged a bullet. We never lost power. Never lost water. Only had minor damage in our yard.

Hurricane Irma came ashore for the second time on Marco Island as a Category 4 storm. And it was heading straight towards us. Was downgraded to a 3, still heading straight towards us. Then it jogged a little to the east and was expected to be downgraded to a Category 2. Then it turned west again, heading straight towards us. It was still being categorized as a Category 2... but came in over us with wind gusts in the Cat 1 range. All along, our local meteorologist was saying categories don't matter. That Irma is a big bad storm.

The wind and rain were battering last night. I couldn't sleep... nor could I read. Exhausted today, with warnings to stay off the road and too exhausted to undo my hurricane prep, I managed to lie down for a nap, still couldn't sleep but was able to read.

Two more storms are in the Atlantic. Hurricane Jose looks a little like he doesn't know what he's doing. And Lee... you don't really want to be a hurricane, do you? I just want to be able to read in peace!

The Accidental Tourist

I've been so focused on what Hurricane Irma is and isn't doing that I totally forgotten I'd never reviewed The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler. It was recommended to me by several members of my community book club when we discussed A Spool of Blue Thread last month.

Before I forget, The Accidental Tourist became a movie in 1989, 4 years after it was published as a book. And while not major characters, there was a neighbor named Sue and a niece named Susan. It was also National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction that year.

Macon is a reluctant travel writer. He hates to travel and writes travel guides for businessmen whom he presumes don't like to travel either. His son has been murdered and his wife has left him. Macon was also born into a family that likes to keep things very routine. Macon and his siblings put the "quirk" in "quirky." This makes his entrance into single-dom after marriage quite entertaining.

Some of the most interesting scenes in the story were when Macon was still living home, trying to make things easier - sleeping in a sweatsuit so he wouldn't even need to get dressed. Oh, and yes, he did wash the sweatsuit - while he was wearing it in the shower! He created a crazy kind of laundry chute. At this moment I can't recall why he needed a laundry chute. He sewed sheets into sleeping bags so he wouldn't have to make the bed or change the linens. He washed his clothing in the bathtub while taking his shower.

This book was all about the characters. We see Macon go from unhappy married man and transition several times. We watch Macon's sister, Rose, develop into a full-fledged character. The brothers remain caricatures but they're of real people. My favorite characterization in the book was of Macon's boss, Julian. 'A dashing sailor, a speedy driver, a frequenter of singles bars, he was the kind of man who would make a purchase without consulting Consumer Reports.'  Imagine that!  (My dad wouldn't make a purchase without consulting Consumer Reports but he was not nearly as set in his way as Macon was.

Muriel, Macon's dog trainer, was a character herself. And I mean that in the non-literal sense! What a character! She had another one of my favorite lines.

"Sometimes late at night when I get desperate for someone to talk to I call the time signal," Muriel said. " 'At the tone the time will be eleven...forty-eight. And fifty seconds.' " Her voice took on a fruity fullness. " 'At the tone the time will be eleven... forty-nine. Exactly.'

Do you remember the days of calling TIME? A younger person reading the book - or reading this post - might not have a clue about what that's all about.

The people in Macon's life refer to Muriel as "this Muriel person." That made me smile, too. My mother had a friend that was referred to as "that Doris."

I liked the characters. This novel begs you to think about whether or not it's enough to like the person you when you're with someone and you don't necessarily need to feel love. Who brings out your best self?

As a divorced person - and as someone who loves to travel and in my early years had aspirations to be a travel writer - I liked Tyler's take on what it's like to be newly separated and not yet divorced as well as what it's like to be a travel writer who doesn't like to travel.

I would only recommend this book to people who don't need a lot of action in a story. There's a level of sadness in the novel. A child being murdered, elements of divorce, neglect by a parent. On the other hand, there are humorous warm moments dealing with relationships we have with others and with ourselves.

2017 Reading Challenge - How Am I Doing?

According to goodreads.com, I've read 27 out of the 36 books that I hope to finish this year. They include one book that I dropped (Kazunomiya: Prisoner of Heaven, Japan, 1858) and they've doubled counted After You by Jojo Moyes. So, 25 out of 36 books. And I'm in the middle of reading two more, Beloved by Toni Morrison and Anne Tyler's The Accidental Tourist.

How am I doing with this 2017 Reading Challenge that I found online? Pretty well. Although I'm using several titles several times... which I'm sure isn't the intent of the challenge creator.

• A book I read in school - A Wrinkle in Time
• A book from my childhood - The Hobbit
      It was published in 1937 so I could have read it in my childhood had I wanted to!
• A book published over 100 years ago -   Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson 
• A book published in the last year - Hum If You Don't Know the Words
• A non-fiction book - Hillbilly Elegy
• A book written by a male author - My Reading Life
• A book written by a female author - 1929
• A book by someone who isn't a writer - When Breath Becomes Air
• A book that became a film - A Wrinkle in Time
• A book published in the 20th century - Everything that Rises Must Converge
• A book set in my hometown/region - Best. State. Ever.
• A book with someone's name in the title - LaRose
• A book with a number in the title - nine, ten: A September 11 Story
• A book someone else recommended to me - Lilac Girls
• A book with over 500 pages - Barkskins
• A book I can finish in a day - nine, ten: A September 11 Story; Golf Chronicles; Hum If You Don't Know the Words; Best. State. Ever.
• A book with a one word title - 1929   That counts, right?
• A memoir or journal - The Watchmaker's Daughter
• A book written by someone younger than me - Commonwealth
• A book set somewhere I'll be visiting this year - nine, ten: A September 11 Story
• An award-winning book - The Girl Who Drank the Moon
• A self-published book - Golf Chronicles

In order to truly, legitimately complete this challenge, I need to find - and read - the following books. I'm looking for suggestions.

• A book that became a film
• A book with a character with my first name
• A book I can finish in a day
• A previously banned book - I've got that one covered as I'm reading Beloved for banned books month at Books & Beer Club
• A book translated from another language
• A book that will improve a specific area of my life
• A book set somewhere I'll be visiting this year
• An award winning book
• A self-published book      

Thanks in advance for your suggestions. 

Update: I probably should have taken the time yesterday to check and see which of the books I've read have won awards. Not surprisingly, there were several. With many more being nominees. Here is a list of the award winning books that I've read and what awards each one won.

The Girl Who Drank the Moon - Newberry Medal (2017)
An Echo in the Bone - WABWAHA Romance Tournament for Best Novel with Romantic Elements/Crossover (2010)
The Hobbit - Keith Barker Millennium Book Award (1997); Books I Loved Best Yearly Awards for Older Readers (1997); Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies (1990)
After You - Woman & Home Reader's Choice Award for Book that Made Me Cry (2016)
LaRose - National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction (2016)
Hood - Stonewall Book Award for Literature (1997)
Everything that Rises Must Converge - National Book Award Finalist for Fiction (1966)

I really wondered about the Woman & Home Reader's Choice Award for Book that Made Me Cry as cited on goodreads.com, especially since the apostrophe in "reader's" seemed to be in the wrong place. Shouldn't it be readers'? I looked it up and it is, indeed, an award given out by a magazine based in the United Kingdom. FYI, on their  website, they don't use any apostrophe. Of my award-winning books, I most liked The Girl Who Drank the Moon which made me happy since when I was teaching I tried to keep up with all the latest Newberry Medal winners.