Best Sedaris yet!

My entire "immediate' family gathered together - on vacation - in North Carolina right after Labor Day this year. We hadn't been all together for anything but sad and tragic events in over 9 years. It was great.

We were all posting photos on Facebook - of the scenery and of each other. One of my brother's friends recommended Calypso by David Sedaris in response to one of my brother's posts. This latest Sedaris collection of essays is about his North Carolina beach house - and his family. See the connection? We weren't at the beach, but we were in North Carolina - and we were with family.

As soon as I read this guy's comment, I looked up the book, added it to my TBR list... and ended up starting it a few days later. I think this is my favorite of all the Sedaris books I've read.

As much as this book is about family vacations in North Carolina, it's more about aging within the context of being part of a family. It's about loss. It's about watching parents age. I connected with this book on so many levels.

It started with this: ...thinking all the while about my ever-shrinking family. A person expects his parents to die. But a sibling? I felt I'd lost the identity I'd enjoyed since 1968, when my brother was born.

I caught my older daughter getting weepy several times on our North Carolina vacation. She was missing the four members of our family who were no longer with us. Within the past few years, we've lost my parents, my aunt, and a cousin who was more like a sister. My cousin helped me get through the first three losses, and my identity was so tied to hers. I was the little cousin and she was my idol. How many times after my cousin died did I say the exact words that Sedaris used, changing the word sibling to cousin? I expected to grow old with my darling cousin. Now, years later, I miss my parents, but they lived a good life. I expected to live to old age with my cousin. When her life ended, our life together was cut short.

He wrote this about diaries: "After I die, and you read something bad about yourself in my diary, do yourself a favor and keep reading," I often say to Hugh. "I promise that on the next page you'll find something flattering. Or maybe the page after that."

Just the day before, I'd had a discussion about just this with fellow bullet journalers. The question came up about whether or not to keep your bullet journal after you complete a notebook. My thought was, of course keep it! I treasured little things that I found from my parents after they died. I like to think that my kids or grandkids will find my bullet journals a treasure. One of the journalers in my group writes something at the front of each of her journals similar to what David spoke to Hugh. Perhaps I should do the same.

There were some political bits in the book that I thoroughly enjoyed. Then again, we think along the same lines. Enough said. Sad to think that our society is so politically divided right now that some people might not be able to make it through this entire book without throwing it against the wall in disgust. But based on that, I can not recommend this book unconditionally even though I gave it five stars on goodreads.

Books for Living

Books for Living by Will Schwalbe is what I opted to read when I was "between books," whatever that means! I suppose that if I'm not reading a book club book that I'm between books.

I'd read Schwalbe's book, The End of Your Life Book Club, with my book club in New Jersey. I loved the thought that Schwalbe and his mother were able to find something to talk about, besides her illness, when she was at the end of her life.

I always find it interesting to understand better how other avid readers like myself connect with what they are reading. Books for Living did just that. Schwalbe selects books that he felt gave him true life lessons and in some cases, he connects them to personal memories that provided the lesson. In other cases, the books provided the lesson.

This book is an intersection of essays and a memoir. It wasn't great writing. The books he discussed weren't necessary books that anyone else might consider great writing. But I was able to make so many connections. Starting with the introduction where he talks about a dream he has from time to time.

I'm in a busy airport, and they've announced my flight. There is an epic walk to the gate, and I know I have only a few minutes before they will close the door to the jetway and my plane will leave without me. Suddenly, I realize that I don't have a book to read on the flight. Not one single book. I spin around, my eyes searching frantically for a book store. I see none. ... I can't find a single book anywhere in the airport. I start to scream.
Then I wake up.

Schwalbe calls this the Reader's Nightmare. In the days before e-books, that was my nightmare. I can't imagine showing up at the airport without several books in my carry-on bag, but would I have enough reading material to last the flight? The trip? I was once stuck at O'Hare Airport for nearly 17 hours. I ran out of reading material early on. I really can't remember if I bought another book or not. I'm the type that used to bring 10 books for a week-long trip to the Caribbean. I remember the first time I traveled with my current husband. He couldn't believe how many books I was carrying with me. He said he hoped I'd be having too good a time to need to read all those books.

Schwalbe wraps this up by adding:

I don't have this dream about food or television or movies or music. My unconscious is largely untroubled by the idea of spending hours in a metal tub hurtling through the sky without something to eat or a program to watch or tunes in my ears. It's the thought of being bookless for hours that jolts me awake in a cold sweat.

Here's another paragrah that really pulled at me. I'm sure you'll understand why.

We all ask each other a lot of questions: "Where did you go for vacation?" "How did you sleep?" Or my favorite, as I eye the last bites of chocolate cake on a friend's dessert plate, "Are you going to finish that?" (A question memorably featured in the 1982 movie Diner.) But there's one question I think we should ask of one another a lot more often, and that's "What are you reading?" It's a simple question but a powerful one, and it can change lives, creating a shared universe for people who are otherwise separated by culture and age and by time and space.

There's a reason why I named my blog Whatcha reading now. I've made so many connections with so many people that on paper I have nothing in common with because like me, they love to read. They're always reading something. Maybe we've read the same thing and can share that experience. Maybe they'll just throw out a few titles my way that I might want to consider. But it's a pretty deep connection. If you're a reader, you'll know what I mean.

A lesson that the author learned from reading What's Wrong with the World by G.K. Chesterton was this:

 "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly." Sure, it may be worth more done well, but if a thing is worth doing, it's worth doing no matter how well or badly you do it. It's just plain worth doing. ... It would be great to be a great painter, but it's also great just to paint.

I loved the way Schwalbe described his love for reading cookbooks.I used to love collecting cookbooks, but at this point, if I really need a recipe, I'd rather look for it on the internet.

I walked away with three books I have added to my TBR list. (That's a To Be Read list for those of you who are unfamiliar with the acronym.) They are:

• Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
• The Importance of Living by Lin Yutang
• A Tale for the Time Being  by Ruth Ozeki

Schwalbe learned lessons from these books and I think that I could do the same.