What's in a Genre?

I am trying to span all the genres in my recent readings. Not really but it feels like that. I just read what can only be called chick lit, followed by middle grade fiction, and am now halfway through a book that is labeled Religion/Christian Life/Spiritual Growth, although I think the author may protest.

First Frost

Novel by Sarah Addison Allen

I picked this book completely by the author. I didn't even glance at what it was about. Sarah Addison Allen is almost a Maeve Binchy, though not quite as classy or maybe just not as British Isles, so it's an easy choice for me. I really enjoyed her first book, Garden Spells, but not as much her second book, Lost Lake (which I think I wrote about here but can't find) so I was excited to find that this is a sequel to Garden Spells. It's the sweet story of four generations of Southern women with a variety of mystical gifts, mostly connected to cooking and their mysterious garden. As is often true, the sequel is a bit of a let down when you find the characters changed too much or not enough, or the glamour or surprise of the first book is missing. But for the most part, this is another sweet study of human nature with some interesting bits of magic and a little suspense thrown in. Again, a lot like my friend Maeve.

The Honest Truth
Middle Grade Fiction by Dan Gemeinhart

This is exciting to me because the author is a local school librarian! Teachers can write books, and even get published! Yay! It's so encouraging. It took me a few pages to get into the book and I think that's a result of switching genres as rapidly as I have been. I have readers' whiplash. But once I got into it, I whipped right through this story of a young cancer patient who runs away to climb a mountain on his own. I liked all the characters, especially his chance encounters along the way. I LOVED that this is very real story that shows how full of hurt kids' lives can be and the realities our children face today, but without anything that I couldn't recommend to my own daughter or students. No swearing, sex, or scary stuff. Just real hardship and real hope. I also like that it's set in Wenatchee. It got me thinking about the settings of my two manuscripts.


Searching for Sunday

Religious Memoir by Rachel Held Evans

I'm not actually done with this book but since it's non-fiction and therefore won't devastate me with a terrible ending, I think it's fair to say I will keep liking it.  There was more of the genre-confusion at the beginning and again it took me a while to get into it, but now that I am, I'm really interested. This more than the others on this page makes me want to talk to other people about it (in person, I mean, not just in my head here). I've said before that I don't read many self help books or religious books because they make me feel more guilty than helped. That is so not the case here. That's why I said I think Rachel would question the genre label on this book, and why I re-assigned it in my sub-title. I think this is more a memoir, a kind of story that Rachel is telling about how she came to question the church and question God and BE OK WITH THE QUESTIONS. She also wrote her story in Faith Unraveled, but this time there is more a bent on why other young Christians are leaving church, and why some are coming back but in a different way. At a time when church is coming to mean many different things, I'm finding a lot of "me toos" in the book. And I think that's what it's meant to be about. Having a conversation about how we understand God today and being able to find someone to say "me too" with.

Mother's Day Twofer

I, like most modern moms, have a choice to make every day. After my MUSTS are done-- going to work, taking care of my family, keeping the laundry and dishes from piling up and flowing out the windows--I have a choice. I am very blessed to have this choice, considering so many moms or dads or grandmas don't have any free time at all. But every day I choose what to do with my approximate hour and a half of time to myself. 

My choices generally include: 

1) Writing. I love to write. This blog, my novel, diaries of my kids' antics, funny facebook posts; most are not a chore for me . 

2) Exercise. A chore, definitely a chore. I know some people who love to exercise and I know they are not crazy, but the day I say I love to exercise, you might want to check which vitamins I've been taking and which country they were made in. 

3) Spending time with friends. This is a rare choice since my friends are all as busy with above mentioned things as I am, so this takes months of planning and happens maybe once a month. 

4) Spending time with my husband. See #3. Ok, this happens more often than once a month, because we live in the same house, but since we're tired, it usually includes #5

5) Watch TV. This happens often. We binge-watch Netflix series. Right now we're on Season 7 of Friends. I miss those guys. 

And we come to number 6, the big winner, which usually happens above all else: reading. It's just the best. I love my friends and my husband (many of whom are reading this, I hope) but, sorry guys, my book is more available than you are. And the people in my book understand when I fall asleep on them in the middle of a sentence. So yes, most of what I've been doing these days is reading. These books, as a matter of fact. 

The Museum of Extraordinary Things

Novel by Alice Hoffman

If you don't recognize this book, try looking at the second image. It seems that it's the more common book cover based on a Google search. I'm not sure which I prefer, just like I'm not sure what I think of this book. I wish someone would tell me what to think. It's by the author of The Dovekeepers, which is why I read it (I actually think I gave it to my mom and she gave it back to me and then I may have accidentally turned it in to the library. Sorry, Mom.)

I loved the history in The Dovekeepers and I love in this one the historical look at New York in the Industrial Age, but I don't love any of the characters until near the end. It's a boy meets girl story set against a background of a human wonders museum/freak show, a factory fire and the ensuing 

political and social fall out, the development of old New York, and the coming of age of a lonely girl and an Orthodox Jewish boy. It has all the elements that made Dovekeepers so great, except the female relationships, but is a little slower moving and somehow, even though you don't know the end like you do with the historical Masada in Dovekeepers, it's less climactic. I don't know. Read it and tell me what you think.

Chesnut Street

Short Stories by Maeve Binchy

 

I know what I think of Dame Maeve, though. I adore her. Here is a girl that I would get out of my pj's to spend time with, and that's high praise. I don't think I've read everything by Maeve but only because she's written so very much. When I saw this on the new books list of the library mail service, I was surprised and pleased, because I thought Maeve was dead. Turns out she is, and I am so sad, but I am so glad that her husband scraped the bottoms of her desk drawers for these short stories and collected them into a book for us, her grieving readers. 

I just get so much comfort from her writing. It's earthy and real, with twists you come to expect and characters you come to love. Even though the short stories don't always have happy endings, they leave you thinking the world is an ok place to be. I need that kind of story when so many of my students' lives are terrible and the news is terrible and apparently most of our favorite foods are terrible. This is about people, with faults, who eventually make good or bad decisions but they turn out more or less okay, told with a sense of humor. It's my go-to, feel good, kind of book. 

Please tell me, what do you read when you need to feel good? Because Dame Maeve is gone and I can re-read her forever but I may need a new go-to now and then. Thanks!

All the Light We Cannot See

Novel by Anthony Doerr

I feel a little inadequate here. I'm not sure I even need to be writing about this book, which it seems everyone has read, and loved, and already talked about with their real book clubs.

But I'll just put in my little piece anyway.

Yes. Yes to all of it. I loved this book. I actually don't really want to have loved it as much as I did, because it was emotionally exhausting, and a little slow at times, and not a happy-happy ending, but Doerr won me over anyway, and in a big way.

This is a tale of two intersecting lives on opposite sides of World War II. A German boy and a French girl both have extreme obstacles in their childhood: he is a poor but brilliant orphan and she is the blind but cherished daughter of a museum locksmith. Interspersed with the stories of their early lives is the narrative of the day they meet, a day of battle between Allied and German forces in a small town in France.

I'm usually a character girl; it's the people of a book that usually grab me and keep me coming back and then make me miss them when it's over. Case in point: I watched the last Harry Potter movie with my daughter tonight and cried when it was over because I was sad to say goodbye again to Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny (Ginny's my favorite). But anyway, strangely enough, I didn't truly love any of the characters in All the Light. They are too real, too flawed as humans. I also didn't love the ending, but I respect it greatly because it's also real. Doerr gave a very honest treatment to everything in the world that he created. What I did love about the book are the intersections, of the two parallel timelines and of the characters's experiences and development. Marie-Laure and Werner are on opposite sides of a war but are so very similar in their ideas and both so broken and fragile that when they come together, it's as if they save each other. It feels magical and other worldly to me. I could almost hear the music that would be playing if it were a movie.

Isn't it interesting, why we love certain books and stories? I think it's amazing that so many different people love the same books, that books can reach us in many different ways and for a variety of reasons, but they do reach us all the same.

Book Mash Up

All Joy and No Fun
Nonfiction by Jennifer Senior

Remember that book I said I was probably going to quit? Well, I didn't. As infrequently as I read non-fiction, I find that the ones I have read recently are better than I expected. Maybe I'm getting smarter. Or older. Either way, this book turned out to be super interesting, so much so that I keep bringing it up in conversation (ok, maybe that's partly because I want credit for reading smart people books).

The premise of this book is that while innumerable studies have been done on the effects of parenting on children, none have ever been conducted on the effect of parenting on parents. Senior set out to conduct her own interviews and research about that idea, as well as including tons of other relevant studies and a great deal of history of parenting and childhood experience.

At first I was put off by what seemed to be just a retelling of my own experiences: I don't need a book to tell me that parenting is hard! Senior's interviews seemed to be the same as reading facebook or mommy blogs: crumbs on the couch, middle of the night wake ups, struggling marriages. When she got to the research and history, though, I got interested. By citing certain studies, Senior suggests that the intense and exhausting thing that is parenting today is a product of our recent history of protecting children rather than viewing them as partners in work. It is taken to the extreme, certainly, in the helicopter-Pinterest style of parenting that is popular on social media, but it is necessary based on our changing view of children's roles in the world.

I felt personally relieved to learn that there is a reason why we modern parents are the way we are. The fact that I even think as much as I do about HOW and WHY I parent a certain why (and Senior would also add my use of "parent" as a verb) indicates that I am truly a modern parent, super involved and possibly too reflective. But at least I am not alone! So I guess I did need that re-telling of parenting experiences after all...

Orphan Train

Historical fiction by Christina Baker Kline

Following right on the heels of a book about parents...is a book about two girls who grow up without the benefit of parents. This novel throws into stark relief the differences between historical and modern parenting and childhood.  Two girls in this book become orphans, Vivian in the late 1920's as a recent Irish immigrant, and Molly in contemporary times after the death of her father and breakdown and incarceration of her mother. Neither girl's family was safe and healthy for her before, but their situations after are equally hard or harder. The two meet with Molly is in foster care and needs to do a community service project and Vivian is a ninety year old woman who needs her attic cleaned out. As you can imagine, their relationship develops and Vivian shares her history with Molly eventually.

Vivian's experiences on and after the orphan train and Molly's experiences in foster care have many mirrored events. While this makes the characters seem similar and share connections, it showed to me, just after reading All Joy and No Fun, just why we protect children so very much today. The orphan trains were run from New York to the mid-west under the assumption that families would need these children to work for them. While the adoptive families were expected to put the orphans in school, blind eyes were turned as long as the orphans were not returned to the welfare society. It was also a short step from expecting a child to work for room and board, to over-working and under-feeding and clothing for the child. Vivian's story, while fictional, is evidence of that.

I did find all the characters in this book a little two-dimensional. The orphans are too perfect and innocent, even the one on probation; the foster families are too evil or angelic in turn. They didn't need to be characterized as so completely one-sided to convince me who to sympathize with. Or to make me grateful that I am raising my children in the decades that I am. As much as I may have to worry about, at least it's not child labor or orphanages.

For the young, or young at heart

There's a lazy Susan full of medicines on my kitchen counter, a mountain of laundry in my closet, and a stack of finished books on my nightstand. Yep, I've been sick. For four days, to be exact. With bronchitis. So during all the doctor-prescribed naps and while my kids are watching movies and even while taking my breathing treatments, I've been reading. Sounds ALMOST like a vacation (except I can't breathe, so not so much).

I've been reading along a theme, actually--young adult books. My students just finished performing book talks, which were AWESOME. I loved hearing the kids get excited about their books and seeing their classmates go check out books they'd heard about. I did the same and came up with three to read right away.

Paper Towns
by John Green

This is by far the most adult-y of this list. I would not recommend it for most middle school kids. In fact, it's about high school seniors in Florida who are weeks from graduation. The main character is a boy with a crush on his neighbor, who used to be his best friend but then she got too popular for him. One night senior year she shows up at his window (they're neighbors) and takes him on a wild night of pranking her friends. The next day she disappears. And he spends the rest of the book looking for her. It's a bit of a coming of age story, with some smart literary allusions and a lot of crude boy humor. I didn't love it like I did The Fault in Our Stars, probably because it's just more boyish. I do think John Green does a great job appealing to teenagers and where their hearts are.

The Maze Runner
by James Dashner

This book makes me sad. It's PERFECT for middle school boys --action packed, full of that dystopian stuff that's so popular, even has some swearing but since it's a different civilization they make up the swear words. It's perfect. Except it's not. I skim-read most of it because it was full of little cracks that my attention span would trip over. I don't think most middle school boys would notice, and the ones in my class sure don't seem to, but the writing just isn't good. The descriptions of what could be amazing scenes are kind of blurry. The figurative language is off kilter, leaving me less clear on what something looks like. And the characters truly all seemed the same. That fact bothered me the most and I couldn't put my finger on it until the one girl in the story gets introduced A LONG way in, and she seemed just the same as all the boys. Needless to say, I won't be reading the rest of the series. But your nephew/son/grandson/postal carrier's kid might like it!


Wildwood

by Colin Meloy

This one is just too sweet. In a good way! Maybe another reader won't have the same delicious reaction to this book, but it was recommended by a really sweet student and I kept picturing her as the main character. Prue, a thirteen year old girl from Portland, goes on a wild adventure in a mystical wood after her baby brother is kidnapped by crows. The land Prue discovers reminds me of Narnia in many ways, and the girl she is reminds me of myself, my daughter, my mother, all my favorite girls ever. I love Prue. The book is full of allegory for current social, political, and environmental issues, which may make it over the head of the average middle schooler, or may make it the perfect book for all ages. I will definitely read the rest of the series and may have to buy they all for myself. Love.

My current book could not be further from this list. All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenting by Jennifer Senior is a research based non fiction treatise on how parenting is different today and in many ways harder and yet more wonderful than it ever has been. It reads like every mommy blog but without the humor. I find myself agreeing with every paragraph and then looking up to see my one year old crawling out the dog door. I'm not sure I need a book to tell me about modern parenting.

A Monster Game of Catch Up

Hello again! I have missed our conversations, even though they're mostly one sided. It's okay, I know this blog is mostly me talking to myself, but in a socially appropriate way. I knew I was also missing the writing part of the blog when I started carefully crafting my facebook posts, considering my word choice and leads. Yikes.

Without you all to talk to, I've had some fairly spectacular runaway trains of thought about the books I've read. I end up just milling over the stories and characters until they seem a bit more real to me than the actual children playing in front of me. So let me just empty my head a little here.

Eleanor and Park
Young Adult Fiction by Rainbow Rowell

OMG, this book is amazing. The teenagers featured in it might mock me for using the term "OMG," because they are both very snide and pretty sophisticated for teenagers. But they might also be confused, because they are from the 1980's, before anyone said "OMG." I loved both of these things: snide teenagers and the 1980's cultural references. If you like neither, don't worry, this book could still be for you, because the kids are also heartbreakingly tender and awkward and messed up, and because the story proves that kids are kids no matter when or where, which really appealed to me as a teacher. There's also the Romeo and Juliet element that shines clearly through, a timeless story that makes the band names and clothing choices irrelevant. Love wins and love hurts, in Verona and in the mid-west.

The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving
Novel by Jonathan Evison

I quit this book. You know my trigger: violence against children. I can't say this had violence because I didn't finish, but for sure some kids were going to die, so I just up and quit. All I learned was that it was about a guy in a second career, as a home caregiver to a teenager with a disability, and the guy was not happy. I wasn't finding many redeeming qualities there.

My mom said she liked, so maybe you did or will, too, but my reading hours are too precious to spend them tense and nervous.







Boys in the Boat

Non-fiction by Daniel James Brown

LOOOOOOOOVVVVVVE this book. Is this one a movie yet? I am even more behind on movies than I am on books, so I'm not sure. I know Unbroken, which seems similar and is on my nightstand stack of to-reads, is a movie now. Anyway, non-fiction is definitely not usually high on my list but this read more like a memoir. The author must have practically lived with the families of the boys who rowed in the 1930's UW and Olympic crew, in order to get as much detail as he did. It was riveting in its action and descriptive in its characterization and informative in its non-fictionalness. (Yes, I know that's not a word, but it seemed fitting.) I wanted to call my friends who rowed in college and say, "I get it now!" I really felt like I was IN the boat at times. So maybe I don't need to see the movie. Books are almost always better anyway.

The Dovekeepers
Historical Fiction by Alice Hoffman

Have you read Alice Hoffman? She has an impressively long list of works at the beginning of this one, but none of them seemed familiar. Either I read her and she wasn't memorable until now, or I need to check out some of her other books. This was outstanding. It's historical fiction that comes to life, so like Brown (above), she must have absolutely lived and breathed this book for years. The story of the Jewish fortress Masada holding out against the early AD Romans is apparently well known, but it wasn't to me before now. The culture and history was fascinating to me, but even better was the way Hoffman wove together the lives of five different women before, during, and after the event. The women are the heroes, both as warriors and peace makers, as they hate and love each other and ultimately make the decision about whether their own lives or the lives of those they love are more important. It's harsh and violent and lush and arid and beautiful and all the adjectives.


Leaving Time
Novel by Jodi Picoult

I am an early Jodi Picoult fan, but after a while her stories all seemed the same to me. Take a controversial issue (organ donation, school shooting, autism, pick your headline) and look at the story from the point of view of five or so characters, with super well written voices and an intricate plot, and then bam, add a twist ending. Despite the twist, it got a little predictable. So I took a break, but coming back to her with "Leaving Time" was kind of nice. Same type of story and characters, but actually with a bit of a throw back in topic. Remember when it was all about elephants for a while? "Water for Elephants" and "Hannah's Dream" and so on. They were all the rage and then it died down, but Picoult seems to be bringing them back. Throw in a troubled adolescent seeking her missing mother, a PI, and a psychic and that's this book, plus the twist ending. The charm (other than its comfortable familiarity to me) is the elephants. As my three year old likes to point out, elephants are my favorite animal and the elephant characters in this book made me love them more. In fact, my only complaint is that some baby elephants die (not a plot spoiler) and it was super close to violence against children for me. I couldn't read it at night for a while without having nightmares. I'm a softie.

The Freedom Writer's Diary

Memoir-ish kind of book

Compiled by Erin Gruell

This has been on my to-read list for years. I haven't seen the movie, either. So in a dearth of much else to read, I picked it up and gave it a try. It was interesting for a while to think about my own students and classes as I read about the struggles that these students, who wrote most of the journal entries in the diary, had in their lives. It made me contemplate how I can better understand and connect with my kids. But it was also frustrating because the teacher featured in it gives time and resources to her students that I don't have. So after gleaning several insights, I stopped about half way through in favor of something that gives me more of a break after grading papers on a Saturday night.

What's next? I'm currently reading "Paper Towns" by John Green (of "The Fault in our Stars" fame) and I also have "All the Light We Cannot See" and "Unbroken" and something else I can't remember). Cheers!

A Jumpstart to your Shopping List

Ladies and gentlemen, Christmas is 66 days away. For some of you, that's 65 days to put off shopping, but I get the feeling that others may be making your lists now. Let me help you out!

Me Before You

Novel by Jojo Moyes

Did you read The Fault in Our Stars yet? If you're buying for a mature teenager, check that one out. This is the adult version. The premise is a little dreadful--a young British woman goes to work as a daytime helper for a wealthy quadriplegic. Her employer was once an important business man and world traveler, but now wants to die because his life is so limited. You know it could end so badly but you just fall in love with all the characters, as unlikely as that is, and end up crossing your toes under the blankets that it will turn out ok. Reading it is a bit like watching an old favorite tear jerker movie, like the scenes in "Sleepless in Seattle" when all the women are crying over "An Affair to Remember." A modern classic, really.

The right to die issue is getting some new press right now with the woman in Oregon who wants to end her life due to the pain of her brain tumor. This book brings another interesting perspective on it, and keeps you wondering who the "me" in the title really is. I also think of the arguments surrounding Robin Williams's death and those who called it him brave to face his depression versus those who called him selfish to kill himself. I wonder if any of us can really say what we would do, since we are not in the same circumstances, can never be in exactly the same circumstances as someone else. The two main characters in MBY have this argument again and again, with more information about each person spiraling out until you agree with them both, and love them to the core.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette
Novel by Maria Semple

For the snarky person on your Christmas list! The writer of this novel used to write for sitcoms like "Mad About You" and her sharp wit transfers super well to this type fiction. She totally skewers Seattle society--the uptight parents and private schools but supposedly casual culture, the Microsoft drive for success and the bureaucracy it creates, the focus on arts in a bit of an artistic vacuum. The stabs are delivered subtly because the story is told by an eighth grade girl via her mother's and others' emails and testimonies. It's not confusing at all, though. It's actually completely clever, just like the humor.

The main story is that the title character is a SAHM (stay at home mom, for those not up on their suburban lingo) who has a supposed break with reality, in conjunction with several minor crises, and disappears. She leaves behind her daughter (the 8th grader) and her husband (the Microsoft exec) and a falling apart mansion (the crumbling artistic endeavors) and angry PTA members (the uptight parents and private schools) struggling to both find her and understand who she really is. Part of the cleverness is that you, the reader, are also figuring out who Bernadette is, not in a Sherlocky way but in a "Is she crazy or isn't she" way. I loved the characterization and psychology as much as the humor and Seattle culture.

Side note: My three year old is super interested in what things say right now since he's learning that letters make sounds and words. He asked the title of the book I was reading and then walked around repeating "Where'd ya go, Bernadette" in a creepy monotone every time he laid eyes on the book. Fun times.