Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

I won an advance copy of Lynda Cohen Loigman’s The Two-Family House several years ago; I can’t remember exactly when, but it had to have been some months previous to its release date in March of 2016.*

There’s a reason for the memory lapse, I promise.

My youngest was born in February of 2015 and was eating well and sleeping through the night by summer; then came the very first of our family’s infamous fall flus.  It hit us all, and it lingered, and for my baby girl, it interfered with an ear infection.  Her ears suddenly got worse instead of better and she ended up on a different antibiotic; what was worse, she threw up what little she ate and had no appetite for days.  When she finally managed to kick all the germs to the curb, she was STARVING, and suddenly I had a 7.5-month-old who was eating in the middle of the night again.  By the time that faded, her sleep habits were shot, and subsequent ear infections meant nothing could be done about that until she got tubes in April of 2016 and then grew accustomed enough to them that I put my foot down about her wanting to fall asleep in Mommy’s (and ONLY Mommy’s) arms.  (Not just at night, mind you, but during the night, any time she woke up, as far as I could tell.  I woke up one night and she was sleeping on my chest; I had NO MEMORY WHATSOEVER of getting her out of her crib, but my husband–who sleeps like the dead–was adamant that he hadn’t done it.  I’m pretty sure I got up, got her, and brought her back to bed with me without ever actually waking up at all.)  Sleep re-training had to happen then in order to save my sanity, but in the meantime, 6-8 months passed by in a foggy blur.  Would you like to guess what I wasn’t doing during that period of time?

If your answer is “as much reading as usual, especially of adult fiction that promised to be emotional,” then congratulations! because you are SO very right.  My to-be-read piles exploded, and I’m still trying to recover.  Honestly, I wouldn’t have made it as far as I have if my treadmill hadn’t died, forcing me to move to the elliptical and audiobooks.  My hubby found Loigman’s book on audio and put it on my phone so that I could listen to it while exercising (and while folding laundry and working on puzzles and so many, many more things), and so I am FINALLY able to review it here for my faithful readers’ benefit.  Wahoo!

I have to say, though, The Two-Family House doesn’t make for an easy review.  It’s hard to tell whether Loigman meant for the family secret that’s the catalyst for the story to be known at the beginning or not; her foreshadowing is heavy-handed enough that it was very quickly obvious to me.  That secret is based on a choice made out of a difficult situation and a lack of true emotional health; it only causes more difficult situations all around and worsening emotional health for at least one character, and yet the good that also comes from it is complicated and might not have occurred otherwise.  Reviews on Goodreads for this one are interestingly mixed, but when I finished listening to the audiobook (complete with accents that definitely helped immerse me in the setting!), my reactions surprised me.

1.  If I’d realized the level of complicated family dynamics and tragedy involved, I never would have read it, because that’s not really my thing.
2.  I’m DESPERATELY grateful not to have read this when I had a newborn.  Emotional roller coasters shouldn’t be ridden during times of serious hormonal   fluctuation.
3.  I was surprisingly glad to have read it, despite it not being my thing.
4.  Some reviewers complained about Loigman’s characterization, but I emotionally engaged with the main characters early on.
5.  I wanted to slide into easy judgments and dismissal of frustrating characters more than once, and yet Loigman gave me just enough for each character that   I couldn’t.  Human beings are complex, and she portrayed that complexity successfully.
6.  I was more satisfied with the ending than I ever could have imagined being.
7.  I think–I really think–that I liked it.  And considering where it went as a story, that’s a pretty impressive thing for me to say.
8.  If my description appeals to you, you should definitely read it.  If you’re on the fence, give it a try.   And if you think it’s not your thing, I respect that–but   remember, it’s not mine either.  And yet…

*Thanks to St. Martin’s Press for the advance copy and the opportunity to give it an unbiased review.

I wasn’t feeling the emotional roller coaster that is my current audiobook today–not on the Sabbath.  Luckily, my hold on Andrew Clements’ Frindle came in this weekend, and so while I got in my elliptical time and then worked on our current puzze–a 1,000-piecer this time–I listened to the whole thing.

It was a pleasure.

I know not everyone grew up in a small town, in a traditional sort of elementary school, with teachers that had been teaching for years and doing a good job of it, but I was blessed to.  Clements captures the traditional, slightly white-picket-fence growing up experience beautifully, and his students and teachers are the perfect mix of fun and discipline and tradition and innovation and–oh, all the feels.  I am a teacher both by nature and by education, and I was generally an engaged student, and Frindle was a perfect bit of homey, slightly-fairy-tale-ish nostalgia.  Nick is thoroughly likable, Mrs. Granger a teacher to remember, and the birth of a word makes for some educationally entertaining lessons on language.  I’m excited to pass this one on to my son!

AND just as fascinating.  I was lucky enough to win an ARC of Hero of the Empire:  The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill from Doubleday Books before it was released; at the time, however, I had a 1-year-old, and my capacity for concentration on nonfiction was seriously impaired.  (She stopped sleeping through the night at 7 months or so because of all the ear infections.  She eventually got tubes, but it wasn’t a pretty time in our lives!)  I’m finally starting to catch up with my ARCs, however, and Hero of the Empire was an incredible read.  Thanks to 10th grade history and Mr. Bowes, I knew that the Boer War was ‘brutal and bloody’ and that the British Empire had a much harder time of it than it expected to, but Winston Churchill turned out to be even more fascinating of an individual than I’d realized.  His unapologetic ambition, his love of action, his single-minded pursuit of fame and glory to advance his political career, and his chutzpah make his story feel like a legend.  It begins with him escaping his South African prison without his intended companions–who happened to have the map, the compass, and the provisions.  Churchill had some money, 4 chocolate bars, and a crumbling biscuit in his pocket and 300 miles of enemy territory (in Africa!) to cross.  How he ended up in the prison in the first place, how he made it to safety, and what he did next all make for riveting reading; it’s also a testament to the courage of strangers and either unbelievable luck or divine intervention, depending on your point of view.  This is a well-written, well-researched, and well-told story that no history buff should miss.

I woke up this morning with a bronchitis cough.  Other symptoms, not so much, but the cough–ugh.  That being the case, I’m flaking off to go to bed and saving the book I JUST finished to review next time.  Pleasant dreams!

Today I unpacked a bag of hat/scarf/mitten combos–animal ones that are ridiculously cute–that my mother sent me via my sister, who was here (fleetingly) this weekend.  I also unpacked a bag of stuff for me that my sister sent–yay for a cookie scoop!  And a scarf!  And books!  I sent a bag with my sister with books and other random items (at least one of which was for my mother), and then last night I dropped off another bag for her at my aunt’s (with more random items and another book), since my sister-in-law was in town overnight and could take it back to Idaho with her.

I have, waiting to go to my carpool friend, a bag containing clothes that no longer fit my son and a container of hers, now washed, that she gave me yummy leftovers in.  For my friend Britt I have a gift bag with her middle child’s birthday present in it, plus a book that probably needs a bag of its own.  I know for a fact that she’s got at least one item waiting for me at her house, which is likely in a bag already.

Do you know what that means to me?  It means that I’m part of a family–some born, some chosen–of women who think about each other, who set aside things that we know our mothers/sisters/friends might (or definitely do!) want and take what opportunities we have to get them to each other.  Items representing thoughts of one another seem to be in near-constant motion across roads, across miles, and across mountains, on their way to people who want or need or can use them more than we do or can or will.  I can’t seem to access my best writing skills to convey what I want to say, perhaps because–for once–I’m seeing pictures in my head rather than hearing words, and so I think I’ll stop trying for tonight and just reiterate–we are all bag ladies.  And tonight I find myself loving what that means.

Reading Tara Westover’s Educated:  A Memoir was most definitely painful for me, both as a parent and as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  As a parent, I cringed at the negligence and abuse that suffused Westover’s childhood.  I pitied Tara’s parents–her obviously mentally ill father, her slowly dominated mother–even while I wanted to shake them; I shuddered at her violent older brother.  As a member of what Westover refers to as the Mormon church–a nickname commonly accepted at the time Educated was published–I was deeply saddened by the warped view of it that she experienced so frequently.  (She specifically notes that she knew her parents were different from their fellow church members, but at least one of her friends from BYU had some serious deficiencies in his understanding as well.)  As a human being, well–this was a disturbing book to read.

On the other hand, it was also a riveting one.  Westover has a gift for bringing to life a world utterly foreign to most of us, and a compassion for her family members that requires both love and maturity.  Her journey is an incredible one, and while I wondered about some of the trivialities–how did she pay for her traveling back and forth to Idaho from her different places of study?–I marveled at the breadth of it.  If I’d known fully what I was getting into, I might have balked–literarily experiencing the wrenching heartbreak of someone else’s pain is emotionally exhausting–but I am in no way sorry that I read it.  Educated:  A Memoir is a book worth reading, a story worth telling, and–ultimately–a journey worth following.*

*Many thanks to the Random House Marketing team, who provided me with an ARE and welcomed my honest opinion of it.

That’s what The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83 1/4 Years Old, was for me–an utter delight.  You know the movies that have entertaining groups of old people–“Return to Me” and “IQ” come to mind, not to mention “Space Cowboys”–that crack you up and steal the show from the romantic leads?  Picture a book about those old people (narrated by one of them) that takes place in a nursing home in Holland.  Add to that a bit of corporate culture vs. the little guy and the formation of an Old-But-Not-Dead club and you get a novel full of humor and yet sharply poignant, one I won’t soon forget.  (And I don’t have to, because I’ve recently discovered that a sequel’s due out this spring!)  I could say more, but it would either be summarizing or gushing, so I’ll leave you with the plain truth–anyone and everyone ought to read and enjoy this one.

I was trying to come up with a dinner plan for tonight when I remembered the recently-thawed corn tortillas languishing in my fridge; my friend Andrea suggested this recipe for “The Best Chicken Enchiladas” from ‘Our Best Bites,’ telling me that they’d be fine lasagna-style (because rolling up corn tortillas was NOT happening today).  She said she really enjoyed them, and so a lazy version of them appeared on my dinner table tonight.  (I was scant with the chili powder, I soured milk because I didn’t have sour cream, my Mexi-cheese blend was the Kirkland brand, and I used a 4 oz can of green chilies–otherwise, I followed the recipe!).  My second girlie gave it a thumbs up, weirdly enough; my oldest liked it more than she thought she would (she’s anti-cream cheese); my youngest doesn’t count because she has a bad habit of “not liking” dinner until you feed her several bites yourself; and my son was mostly offended that I made him have chopped tomatoes on top (it was the veggie!).  I was a pretty big fan myself, I have to say.  The flavor was fabulous, and it wasn’t terribly labor intensive, so what’s not to love?  Try it, and let me know what you think!

I’ve had Dewey:  The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World sitting in my house since my Borders days (may it rest in peace!); I even started it once upon a time, but I didn’t make it far enough in to commit.  (Kids.)  When my hubby found it on audio for me, however, I jumped in with both feet, and found it to be–surprise!–exactly the book it says it is.  It really is a book about a library cat in an Iowa (Iowan?) small town who touched more lives than anyone could have predicted.  (He had visitors from Rhode Island and New Hampshire–he was in a Japanese documentary about cats, for Pete’s sake!)  Dewey’s life makes for an interesting and enjoyable read that feels rather like a love song to Iowa, which I can appreciate.  (If we’re lucky, we do love our home towns.)  I was interested the whole way through, and I suspect that anyone who enjoys memoirs and/or cats will be also (it is also Vicky Myron’s memoir).  I don’t see myself rereading it, however, and I’m not sure if that’s because once you’ve read it, you’ve read it, or because my own cat experiences were so very different from anything in Dewey’s life.  (I loved my cats, but they were outdoor cats.  We didn’t take them to the vet, we didn’t buy them fancy cat food, and most of them did a bit of mousing for their keep.)  Cat lovers and memoir readers, tell me what you think!

I just finished Booki Vivat’s second installment in the Frazzled series–Ordinary Mishaps and Inevitable Catastrophes–and I was completely delighted with it.  Abbie Wu’s aversion to change was me all over, as well as her tendency to panic whenever she is faced with (horror of horrors!) unexpected change.  Her reaction to her school’s first ‘Invention Convention’ would have been mine as well, and learning that you can be friends with people who are incredibly different from you, well–that’s a universal theme, right?  Vivat’s art fits her characters, and her stories are a nice reminder that middle schoolers are still dealing with regular kid problems, even in a world where many of them are forced to deal with so much more.  As Abbie learns to deal with changed expectations, scary assignments, and a (possibly) maniacal cat, you can’t help cheering for her every step of the way.  Latter elementary to middle schoolers, don’t miss this one!