Reading challenge - Part 3 AND Last night's dinner

It's two-fer Tuesday!

The "Something About Me" reading challenge is wrapping up now, and I obviously committed to reading MANY more books than I am going to be able to finish. My original list of the books I wanted to read is here, though I did add I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak to it later. Unfortunately, it is becoming fairly obvious that unless I figure out a way to halt the world around me while I do nothing but read the books that I have yet to complete for the challenge, I am not going to be able to read everything that I had hoped to read. I have read Oh My Goth by Gena Showalter, and will be posting a review soon. I hope to get one or two more read and briefly reviewed this week, but don't hold your breath.

I do intend to read all the books that I selected. I have all but two of them sitting on my dresser. No one has these two listed on Bookmooch and my local library does not have them. They are The Seven Daughters of Eve by Bryan Sykes, suggested by Christina, and Papa Married a Mormon by John D. Fitzgerald, suggested by Suey. They will remain on my Bookmooch wishlist, until I break down and just order them, as I really do want to read them at some point.

The ones I did manage to read up to today:

From Bonnie's list: Booked to Die by John Dunning

From Twiga's list: The Atonement Child by Francine Rivers

From Chasida's list: Good Grief by Lolly Winston

From Dewey's list: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

From Jill(mrstreme)'s list: Christ the Lord by Anne Rice

From Booklogged's list: From the Corner of His Eye by Dean Koontz

From Vasilly's list: East of Eden by John Steinbeck

From alisonwonderland's list: Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

From Becky's list: Ender's Game (Ender, Book 1) by Orson Scott Card

From Stephanie's list: Oh My Goth by Gena Showalter

From Sarah Miller's list: The Giver by Lois Lowry

My favorite of these is The Time Traveler's Wife, no question.

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Have y'all been checking out Beck's Recipes? I've printed every one of them and I'm trying a few this week. Last night I made Enchilada Stuffed Shells. Check 'em out:



They looked less like dog vomit in real life, and no doubt Beck's look much better, but they tasted delicious. I served them up with a wedge of cornbread (store-bought, not homemade, you can only ask so much of me) and a dollop of sour cream. Yes, I know there is a distinct lack o' veggie here, and normally there would have been salad with this type of meal, but I kind of desperately needed to go to the grocery store, since the only veggie in my house was about 5 baby carrots left in the bag to wither. After the kids were in bed, I went to the grocery store, and I will be sure to include a veggie in my next food pic.

The one where the shoulder got stuck

Tessie requested birth stories. I said I'd deliver (Ha ha! Get it? Deliver? I crack me up.), so here is birth story number one.

My first child was due May 25, 1994. My water broke around 1:00am on May 22, 1994. Well, not so much broke as leaked a little. What I heard them call later a "high leak." But, the fortress had been breached, so into the hospital with me. First, though, a shower, because back then I didn't feel like I could function without a morning shower (yes, children had much to teach me). We arrived at the hospital around 2:00am. I had yet to feel a contraction, but according to a nice young man who strapped a monitor on me, I was having them every two and a half minutes.

I continued to not feel any contractions, so around 6:00am they gave me pitocin and went ahead and gave me an epidural so I wouldn't have to feel any contractions. Wasn't that nice of them? Well, my doctor couldn't get the needle in the spinal space because things were kind of swollen back there, so after two *very painful* tries, she called in the anesthesiologist who whipped it right in there, no problem.

Then a totally uneventful 11 hours or so. Lots of news on TV about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis's death three days prior and funeral arrangements. Lots of various people coming in and out to check vitals and probe areas that prior to this day had been fairly private. My favorite was the nurse who came in and said, "Hi, I'm [whatever her name was] and I'm here to swab your vagina." By that point, of course, they could have been bringing in busloads of tourists with cameras requesting to photograph my nether regions and I would have spread 'em and said, "Knock yourself out."

Anyway, around 5:00pm or so, I started to feel fairly intense pressure. I sort of vaguely recalled someone saying something to me about feeling pressure and what I should do (which as it turns out, was TELL SOMEONE), but I couldn't remember what exactly she had said. So the next time someone came in to check me, I said, "Someone said something about feeling pressure, and I'm not sure what they said, but I'm feeling pressure." She checked my cervix and declared me ready to deliver. So the doctor came in and we started the whole push, stop, okay push thing. The head delivered, and then... the shoulders wouldn't. I wasn't really fully aware of the situation until later, but one of the delivery nurses (who happened to be a neighbor of mine - raise your hands anyone whose neighbors have seen your hoo-ha) grabbed a stool to stand on so she could push on my belly to help push the baby out. It didn't come to that, because the doctor was telling me to push REALLY hard, and since I figured the doctor knew what she was doing, I did, and the shoulder came free.

My first daughter was born around 6:00pm. I could tell you the exact time if I wasn't too lazy to go find something that lists that particular bit of data, but I am, and it really isn't necessary to the story. The story which is now over, except for the part where I tell you she was a BIG baby, 8lbs, 10oz, and you all cringe and squeeze your legs together.

From the Corner of His Eye

I read From the Corner of His Eye by Dean Koontz for the "Something About Me" reading challenge. It's the story of a boy who can stay dry in the rain by walking where the rain isn't, a man who can toss quarters into other worlds, a girl who can see all the ways things are, a narcissistic killer who suffers terrible physical ailments when he kills, and the ways in which their lives intersect.

I found this novel to be quite interesting and I enjoyed reading it, though I did miss the dry wit found in many of the characters in Koontz's other works, most notably (for me, who hasn't read ALL of Koontz's work) the Odd Thomas trilogy. While the wit and non sequiturs are absent, the novel makes up for it with many diverse characters. In addition to the main characters mentioned above, there are twin brothers obsessed with disasters, one with natural disasters and one with man-made; the twins' sister, also the dry-in-the-rain boy's mother, the amazingly generous pie-lady; a pharmacist who takes to constant walking once his beloved polio-stricken wife dies; the Baptist minister, whose sermon about "This Momentous Day" serves as a common thread throughout the various stories, and his wife and daughters; the doctor who delivers the girl who sees all the ways things are, who had lost his wife and twin sons; Maria, a seamstress from Mexico; a piano-playing landlord-from-hell; a private investigator with perfect teeth; and a lawyer with morals.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. There were a few places where I felt like things may have dragged a bit, where I felt like, "come on already, bring these stories together," but I'm glad that I read it. Koontz has a perspective on good and evil that resonates. The novel makes one think about the ways in which each decision, regardless of its seeming import, a person makes can affect his/her life and the lives of many, or even all, others.

East of Eden

So finally, after a long long time of no book reviews, I am getting around to writing one for the "Something About Me" reading challenge. I still have a bunch to do, so I've got to get crackin.' I finished reading East of Eden by John Steinbeck over a month ago, but being the huge procrastinator I am, I am just now getting around to the review. I decided to read this book for the challenge because I don't normally read classics just for the heck of it, but I always feel that I should read them. So basically, I need a reason. When Vasilly listed East of Eden, a book which I had always thought I'd get around to reading some day, I decided that here was my reason.

East of Eden is about two families, the Trasks and the Hamiltons, their lives and how they intersect and affect one another. There is sibling rivalry akin to Cain and Abel, and love, or its absence, plays a pivotal role. Good and evil, and the measure of each in a person, is a continuous thread through the work. For me, this novel was not a fast read. It was not an edge-of-your-seat, have to know what happens next immediately type of read. It was interesting and satisfying, and at times surprising in its modernity. I'm not sure what I expected from a book written in the 50s and set in the late 1800s to early 1900s, but modern urban slang wasn't it. "Frigging" was used in place of "fucking" in one instance, and the word "crib" was used as a place to live, albeit one run-down and decrepit, whereas today it can mean any type of home. I also didn't expect a sociopath or a gang rape.

What I liked:

I liked the character Lee, the way he faked who he was to be what people expected, but then was able to be himself later, and his humble and wise ways.

I found it interesting that Steinbeck himself is a character in the novel. As a descendant of the Hamilton clan, the book is told as if he is telling the story, which made me wonder if, in fact, this is an autobiographical work. I quick perusal of the Internet, and consensus seems to be semi-autobiographical.

I liked A LOT of the observations Steinbeck makes throughout the novel. He inserts them seamlessly into the text, yet they easily stand apart from it. There are so many passages that I would like to quote here, but then this review would be entirely too long. So just one particular favorite:

Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.

Okay, one more:

Humans are caught - in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too - in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well - or ill?

There wasn't anything in particular that I recall that I didn't like. It was well-written and interesting. It was obvious why it is considered a classic.

The Time Traveler's Wife

I was staring at my pile of books for the "Something About Me" Reading Challenge and wondering what I should read next. I decided to go with The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, since I had been enjoying the new TV series "Journeyman" and had really liked "Quantum Leap" as well. It was a great choice! The book was absolutely WONDERFUL!!

The novel is about Henry and Clare. Henry, from time to time, and completely outside of his control, "jumps" to another time period in his life or Clare's. Clare meets him when she is six and he is thirty-six, but he doesn't meet her until she is twenty, which is when he is twenty-eight. So when they meet in Henry's "real" time, she knows him very well, yet he doesn't know her at all. I can't talk about this novel in my usual way of what I liked and what I didn't like, because this isn't so much a story with a beginning, middle and end (except from Clare's point of view), as it is a story in which everything takes place simultaneously. So to talk about any particular happening in the story is to possibly give something away, even though for much of the book, the reader knows what is coming, because it already happened from someone's point of view. The only question is from whose point of view and at which point in time the reader will discover the how and why of whatever it was (s)he knows happens. A bit confusing, no? Besides, there was only one thing I didn't like, and it was something that Clare did that, to me, seemed completely out of character for her. I'll have to leave you to figure out what that is when you read this book. Because you should read this book. It immediately became one of my favorites.

I have always had a fascination with quantum physics/mechanics. That is not to say I understand them much, but I find them absolutely intriguing. I think that is why I can't stop thinking about the novel. I keep trying to compare things that happen to Henry in the novel with what little bit I sort of, kind of, but not really understand about quantum physics. Schrödinger's cat kept coming to mind. In what state was Henry at various times in the book? Was he ten, or was he thirty-two? Was he injured or was he perfectly fine? Was he in this state or in that state at any point in time? Well, he was all of the above, all at the same time. Which, of course, makes sense and nonsense simultaneously.

One thing I wonder, and I don't think it gives anything away, is why we never see MORE than two Henrys at a given time. It seems that occasionally, there might be a time when multiple Henrys ended up at the same place at the same time, since he traveled to places and times that held some import in his life.

Although I am not doing my what I liked and didn't like thing, I have to say that I absolutely LOVED the character Kimy. Her complete ho-hum acceptance of a naked Henry suddenly appearing under her dining room table or on her kitchen floor, and the fact that she kept changes of clothes in various sizes for him, and was just exactly the type of neighbor you wish you'd known as a child, or you wish your children had in their lives, and that it's all wrapped up in this tiny elderly Asian woman, was totally endearing and funny. She is a fabulous character.

So to summarize, really only one thing needs to be said: If you haven't read this novel, you should immediately rectify that situation.

Good Grief

I read Good Grief by Lolly Winston for the "Something About Me" Reading Challenge. Before I start this review, I have to take a little break to sing

Lolly Lolly Lolly, get your adverbs here!
Lolly Lolly Lolly, got some adverbs here!
Come on down to Lolly's, get the adverbs here!^**

Okay, that's enough. She probably never got THAT growing up.

As I was saying, I read Good Grief by Lolly Winston, which is about a 36 year old woman, Sophie Stanton, who loses her husband to cancer, and her grieving process over the following year or so. It covers her relationship with her mother-in-law, her relationship with her best friend, depression, grief groups, jobs, dating again, psychiatrists and the wonderful medications they prescribe. Written from Sophie's point of view, the novel seems to me to be a realistic portrayal of the feelings someone in Sophie's situation would have and the actions one would take.

What I liked:

I liked Sophie's sense of humor. She couldn't help the things she was doing, but at the same time could see how her behavior might appear to someone else as the behavior of someone at the very least mentally unstable. That was just funny. And I found it SO easy to relate to being able to see a situation from an objective point of view, but still behaving in the situation as someone with a very subjective viewpoint.

My favorite realization Sophie comes to:

Maybe she [Marion, Sophie's mother-in-law] needs me to be her basket case. Just as sometimes you need a person to be strong for you, maybe sometimes you need a person to be weak for you. Maybe I am to Marion what Cops is to me. Kooky screwups who help you tell yourself: Hell, I could be worse.

I liked the relationship between Sophie and her 'Little Sister,' Crystal. Actually, now that I think about it, it was a lot like what Sophie says in the above quote about needing someone to be weak for you. It was when Sophie had to be strong for others, Crystal, her best friend and later her mother-in-law, that she really began to heal.

I'm not going to do a 'what I didn't like' section, because there's nothing that I remember that struck me in an overly negative manner. Overall, it was a fairly quick and enjoyable read with realistic characters.



** As a footnote, I miss "Schoolhouse Rock," and really think it should be brought back to Saturday mornings. Along with Mr. Yuckmouth and the little western dude that made the healthy snacks, the wagonwheels and the pineapple and cottage cheese "sundaes" that I think he called "saturdaes."

Booked to Die

I read Booked to Die by John Dunning for the "Something About Me" Reading Challenge. It is about a policeman, Cliff Janeway, who loves books. He spends a lot of time in the old and rare bookstores and knows some of the store owners and bookscouts. When a bookscout gets murdered, he thinks it fits the M.O. of his arch-enemy, whom Janeway knows has committed many atrocities, but the evidence is never quite enough to nail him. Janeway goes after his rival with a vengeance, and something happens between them that causes Janeway to give up his badge and become a bookman himself. He gets himself a store and an employee, and immerses himself in the booking business. But the unsolved murder of the bookscout is never far from his mind. Ultimately, events transpire that cause him to decide to solve the crime himself. I really enjoyed the novel. Mystery is one of the genres I read regularly, so it was right up my alley.

What I liked:

I found the whole old and rare book business fascinating. It made me want to go right out to the thrift shops and see if I could find a rare item myself. I didn't, but I wanted to. It made me wonder about the autographed first edition book I just bought in a junk store when we were on vacation. I hadn't even noticed that when I bought it, but I looked at it and the few others I had purchased there while reading this novel. But I never heard of the author, and apparently no one on the Internet had either, and he's still alive and teaching college somewhere in California. So nothing there. From now on, though, I will always look for a little nugget on the bookshelves in a thrift store or at a garage sale.

I liked Janeway's mixed-up political outlook. I think the self-contadicting nature of it is common to many of us. Here's what he says about it:

Today I'm a mess of contradictory political views. I believe in human rights: I liked Jimmy Carter for that reason alone, though I later came to believe that he had sold out his own cause in the game of pure politics. I think the Miranda ruling has generally been good, though the public will never know what a pain it can be to work with. I believe in due process, but enough is enough: I'm a fan of just and swift execution where vicious killers are concerned. It's just ridiculous to keep a guy like Ted Bundy on death row for ten years. I don't believe it when psychologists tell me the death penalty doesn't deter - take a look at kidnapping statistics in the 1930s, when it was made a capital crime after the murder of the Lindburgh baby, before you start to argue with me. I think justice started collapsing under its own weight when they let shrinks into the courtroom. The plain fact is, for some murderers, I just don't care whether they were incapable of reason, were whipped as children for wetting the bed, or had a mother who bayed at the moon. Gacy, Bundy, Manson, Speck - you'll never make me believe the world is a better place with that quartet alive and kicking. I hate abortion, but I'd never pass a law telling a woman she couldn't have one. I believe in the ERA, find it hard to understand why two hundred years after the Bill of Rights we're still arguing about rights for half our people. I like black people, some of them a lot. I supported busing when it was necessary and would again, but there's something about affirmative action that leaves me cold. You can't take away one man's rights and give them to another, even in a good cause.

What I didn't like:

There wasn't really anything in particular I didn't like.

Overall, it was a good read. It might have been fun to have had Pinky, Janeway's employee, or Ruby, another store owner, or both as the crime-solving sidekicks. It would have allowed the reader to get to know those characters better, exposed us to more of Pinky's sense of humor, which I liked, and allowed for an interesting twist that I can't get into because it may give something away. I liked the book, and if anyone is considering reading it, I'd say go ahead, you'll probably enjoy it.