Curse You Bookclub!!!

Now that The Hobbit is officially on this year's book list, I CANNOT wait to read it, and also I MUST REREAD the ENTIRE trilogy. Except our very wonderful bookclub person who puts our list in order, put The Hobbit in AUGUST. That is very much far-ness from now. Also, I resolved to read The Simarillion thanks to m friends' low opinions of it at New Years, and I would like to start that, but can't decide if it should go before or after LOTR, which clearly can't go until after The Hobbit.
Also, my TBR list has now reached such epic proportions I'm not sure it can be completed in one life time. It can't even be contained by one source anymore. There's 52 book titles saved to my phone, approximately 97 books I've never read on my bookshelves, 200 unread books and/or documents on my Nook and 178 books on my official Goodreads TBR. How do other people have such managable book lists?!?!?!

Four Lowbrow Reasons I Love Bookclub

As you may know I attend a monthly bookclub. I love my bookclub because it is awesome, and because I have met some of my closest friends there- including the fantastically awesome Leah, with whom I now live. That, however, is not the point. The point is last night's meeting was AWESOME. We read The Immortal Life of Hennrietta Lacks (which I strongly recommend, for more information you should probably check out my goodreads review).
At one point we were discussing the generational reaction to doctors- while one generation people would never have thought about questioning a doctor, two generations later we go to the doctor loaded with information from WebMD and assume the doctor is on crack, And my friend J said "Sometimes I think about, like if my friends were vampires and their powers were diluted through the generations...Leah is more powerful than Tina."
Mere moments later someone said that we're all immortal now because secretly the HeLa cells have taken over the world, and we all only THINK we're different (because for awhile it turned out all cell lines in the world had been contaminated by the unusually resilient HeLa cells). So Leah said that I could have a shot with Mr. Darcy, if only he were real (I don't think that's true, since he existed before HeLa cells, but whatever...). I responded that he was on the list of should be real characters with Batman, which somehow led to the invention of BatDarcy- half Batman, half Mr. Darcy, one hundred percent awesome.
Later, for some reason a lawyer friend mentioned a story he had heard on the news about a woman who...did not have ACTUAL sex with her boyfriend, but did "receive a gift" which she used to spit into a cup and impregnate herself- leading to a man who had never had sex with her owing her child support.
And the final lowbrow and awesome thing that happened at bookclub? Totally out of context, I shall only share with you the quote-
"Ahh, I found a whooo-maaan...you know if I were hunting them." Bet you can't guess who said that one (hint- it's not me!!!).

Book Club (and 30 Days of Song)

Tonight was book club night, which was great because I really needed some time with my friends. And although, I define the word "friend" more strictly than most people, I do have some friends that I really only see at book club. I didn't finish the book, although I will by the end of tomorrow night. Next week I'm leading the discussion on "Mansfield Park" at my Jane Austen Fan Club (totally different than book club-honest) so I prioritized that over book club's Band of Brothers. It turned out okay. Although my book club has a strict policy of discussing the book during book club, it's not a great book for discussion. You can't really ask something like "Artillery fire on fox holes- for or against?" and the book was really focused on broad sweeps of factual information, no more detailed than a grade schooler's social studies text. Sad!
30 Days of Song
Day 12. A song by a band you hate- yeah, sorry to punk out on this one, but I don't listen to music I don't like, so I literally don't know anything to put here.

Christmas Eve and Other Stuff

So here’s the thing. Back in October (I think??) my bookclub read The Monk, which was so ridiculous that I had to love it. Anyhoodle, one of my bookclubbers read to us from a review of The Monk he had found online and it was so funny that we made him email all of us the link so we could go read the whole thing. Except it was so great that I started reading all of the reviews, and totally using the reviews to pad my (already quite long) to-read list over at Goodreads. Today I had nothing much to do, so I totally worked on that all day. And my to-read list went from 28 to 39 when I added all next year’s bookclub picks to 98 when I started reading Books I Done Read and I’m only on the letter M as I write this. People, I am never, ever going to finish my to-read list. Especially when you find out that I have two other to-read lists which have none of the same books (one on my phone and one on a notebook I keep in my purse).
Also, I was going to tell you about Chicago.
I love Chicago. Also, I love holiday traditions because I don’t really have any. My best friend, however, does. One of hers is a trip to Chicago every December to look at the windows in Macy’s (except it used to be Marshall Field’s and was apparently much better back in the day, but this story is not about the un-Chicago-ing of a Chicago landmark, so moving on…). Except this year her family didn’t go and she didn’t think she was sad about it (due to the apparent sucki-ness of Macy’s compared to Field’s) until I told her that if she wanted to go on Christmas Eve I would go with her. So, Friday off we went to Chicago, and it was awesome. There was cheesecake made out of Frango Mints (which are pretty much the best way to eat chocolate-they are magic candy). There were very few crowds and there were very many “Oh crap, Christmas is tomorrow and we still have whole tons of Christmas stuff!” sales. I bought two gorgeous Christmas ornaments (a wine bottle because of my wine touring this summer and a new topper) for less than either one of them cost full price. The only thing that would have made it better was if her brothers (who were invited) had decided to come, I know she regretted that they weren’t there and she wishes she spent more time with them. Also, they are both very polite young men who don’t make me want to slap them in the face every five seconds like my brother. I took some pics, but there are mostly of glittery things for me to admire, or of sparkly Christmas lights, which I already showed you like forty-seven pictures of, so I won’t include them in this post.
Anyway, that’s all I wanted to tell you about Christmas Eve. Hope your holiday was a wonderfully sweet and comfortable as mine was.

The Ghost Map

The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


My dad and I read this book together, and it was amazing. While a bit gross (do you know how cholera spreads? because now I do) it was one of the most interesting history books I've ever (and since my BA is in history, that is saying alot) and it was great to discuss.

**Update**

I just reread this for bookclub, and I enjoyed it way more this time than last. Although I could do without the author’s lengthy epilogue on the hazards of nuclear weapons, the information found within the main body of the book is fascinating. Johnson manages to spin out the suspense of a hundred and fifty year old epidemic by turning the bacteria and the city both into characters (and by pointlessly endangering the life of one of the human characters- but I guess since it’s nonfiction, you can’t really blame him for that). My only real complaint is the total lack of the “ghost map” in a book entitled The Ghost Map. He goes to some lengths to explain why the map made by the doctor was groundbreaking in its time and instrumental in convincing people of his argument, yet doesn’t choose to include a copy of the map in the book or on his website, which I found to be somewhat less than useful. Also, I knocked a star off what was once a five star review because of it.





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Nectar In A Sieve

Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya




I found this book to be moving and lyrical, sorrowful and yet hopeful. However, I think to fully appreciate the book the American reader to place it in historical context first. Rukmani marries Nathan in 1930’s rural India. This is a time and place where there is no such thing as adolescence. The poverty stricken Indian people have to make choices that provide the highest chance of survival to the highest number of people. So, when Rukmani’s parents contract her marriage when she is only twelve years old, the American reader has to understand that not only is this an acceptable age in that culture for a woman (and she is considered a woman by her culture) to be married, her parents are really trying to ensure their own survival (one less mouth to feed at home) and hers (she is the mistress of her own home and although her husband is a landless farmer, she will likely not starve).

Nectar In A Sieve moves through the rest of Rukmani’s life. She sees her family’s prospects grow as Nathan saves money hoping to buy the land he farms, and dwindle as a tannery opens in her town artificially raising prices and destroying the farm land. Eventually her daughter is forced to prostitution to feed her youngest son, who still dies of starvation and they are kicked off the land they’ve farmed for thirty years. Nearly all of their sons are lost to them either through death, because they’ve taken jobs in Ceylon, or through simple vanishing acts. Every day is a struggle, and it’s hard for an American to grasp situations where a family is stretching one meal of rice water to last three days. And yet, Rukmani never gives up. Even after Nathan has joined the dead while they in a distant city far from home, she doesn’t give up. Instead she adopts a leper boy (and saves his life by doing so) and returns home.

This is a novel about hope, the hope that is necessary for people to strive for a better, more secure life, achieved only through gainful employment and a stable income in a capitalist world. Where these opportunities don't exist, or barely exist, you will have thousands of Rukmanis, and Nathans begging in your towns and cities. And thankfully, there will be other "Kamala Markandayas" to document their stories for those who are willing to open their eyes to the world around them.





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Book-club

In my current position at work I get intellectual stimulation. I help my kids with their homework, which I’m pretty sure is the only time I will ever divide fractions in “real life”. My kids ask political and theological questions on a relatively frequent basis. Soon, I will be teaching two year olds. The level of my day to day conversation will go from “Why did God make Satan?” to “What’s a circle?”
That aside, I am so grateful for the opportunity to mingle with adults. Tonight my book-club chair called me. Our town’s newspaper had called her wanting to write about our book-club, and take some pictures of us. The only problem was they want to run the article on Thursday and we don’t meet for another two weeks. Anyway, the chair asked us to meet during her Great Books Discussion Club so the photographer could get his shots, apparently he had threatened to take pictures of just her otherwise. So I went. What made it great was that, the photographer didn’t just want to take a picture and call it a day, he wanted pictures of participating in book-club, so even though we hadn’t read the book my friends and I jumped into the conversation. Intellectually stimulating, and super fun.
You know, I don’t make friends easily. I’m shy enough that sometimes I feel awkward around my best friends, so I just don’t talk to new people easily. But, I talk easily enough at book-club. I have a specific topic to discuss, and I just can’t feel self-conscious. It’s only at book-club that I don’t miss being in school. I love book-club.

A Midsummer's Night Dream

In July my book club is reading A Midsummer’s Night Dream because we always read Shakespeare in July. So when the community college was showing A Midsummer’s Night Dream today, clearly a few of us decided to go see it. First we ate at the country club, because we are fancy. When we got there one other group was sitting down but by the time we got our food we were alone. And remained alone the whole time we were there. So of course we then thought perhaps the restaurant had closed and we were just sitting there making them stay late, but no, we were just the only losers eating lunch at one thirty on a Sunday afternoon. I made Best Friend admire my jewelry, which I made last night and which features some silver and bronze elephants because I have a new sarong with elephants. Anyway, I’ve never seen or read A Midsummer’s Night Dream before, and I am GLAD I saw it before I tried to read it. My experience with Shakespeare is that it’s better seen than read and this is especially true in a bedroom farce. If I was just reading it, I would never have been able to remember both men loved Hermia before Helena and I would have been confused.
Anyway, my mom and I went to the grocery store and completely disregarded her ex-boyfriend’s wants for once. This was nice because she broke up with him almost a month ago and yet he still lives in our house and acts like a jerk. We normally spend (when shopping for all three of us) over a hundred dollars per week. This week we each did our own shopping and while we can’t cook any sit down meals or anything, we will both be fed and happy for less than forty dollars. But ex-boyfriend gets mad about how much the grocery bill is. When that’s the only bill he pays at my house. And clearly, we can do it for less if he ate like one person instead of three. Kind of can’t stand that guy.
Question: How many skirts with elephants can one woman own before its excessive?
Answer: One, and that’s pushing it.