Surrounded by Books

I have a very busy day today. I'm hosting The Book Snobs for dinner and discussion tonight. That means I'm cooking dinner for twelve, so I don't have time to write a proper post. Therefore, I'm taking the easy way out.

Last week Katy and Travis were unwilling participants in the large amount of rainfall that fell on parts of Texas. In spite of their new retaining wall, there was just too much rain in too short of a time period for the drains to work properly. They had water in their living room, not for the first time. This led to a decision to remove the carpet.

You may remember that Travis is an English teacher and has an impressive library which normally resides in that room. So, in order to remove the carpet, they had to move the library. While usually beautifully displayed in a very organized and lighted set of bookshelves, it has now taken up temporary residence in Her Highness' room.

I feel bad for them. They have already done a lot of work to clean up the mess and move the books. Now they're planning to stain the concrete floor and then they'll have to replace all the books and shelves. It's a big job. Ultimately they hope to put in wood floors, but first they've got to figure out how to stop the flooding in the future.

The bright side of this story is this beautiful photo of Our Little Princess that is a result of the temporary relocation of the books. Katy took this photo with her cell phone. I think it's gorgeous. I hope she'll always love being surrounded by books.

Have a great week!

Book Review -- The Sombody Who by Katie Gates

Grams belongs to a world-wide group of mostly female bloggers known as SITS. There will be a lot more about the SITS girls in a future post. In a nutshell, SITS features a different blogger every day and members go to the featured blog and leave comments. It's all about supporting each other.

On March 15, freelance writer Katie Gates was the featured blogger. Shortly after I visited her blog and left my comment I received an email from Katie, which wasn't really surprising. In case you're a not a blogger and don't know, blog etiquette dictates that bloggers should respond to each comment they receive. Most of the time that's no big deal. If I get two or three comments on any post I consider that a success. But when you're the SITS featured blogger of the day, you will get hundreds of comments ... meaning, you're going to be a busy girl.

Not only did Katie respond to my comment, she visited my blog and looked around. In her response she took note of the fact that I'm am an avid reader. Then she asked if I would be interested in reviewing her book. Honestly, I almost said no. The thought that immediately went through my head was "What if I don't like it?" Then I remembered that the topic was Alzheimer's and dementia, and I was even more hesitant. I didn't share this with Katie, but, like so many others, I have personal experience with Alzheimer's. My husband's grandfather had Alzheimer's and my own mother had dementia the last several months of her life. I really didn't want to revisit either of those experiences.  But, avid reader that I am, I couldn't resist the opportunity to review a book by a writer that I had actually communicated with. So I agreed to review it and Katie sent me a copy. Even though I received the novel at no cost, I did not promise to write a favorable review.

The Somebody Who is Katie's debut novel. I expected that a novel about a family dealing with Alzheimer's and dementia would be sad and depressing ... a real downer. But it was not that at all. It was intriguing, uplifting and enjoyable.

Every day, Evelyn is dealing with her husband Davy's illness in the best way she can. She has learned that what works for Davy is sticking to a schedule and repetition and Davy has caregivers who help maintain that balance. Davy finds comfort in doing the same thing every day which includes a lot of sleeping in front of the television. Usually, Davy is not able to express himself and there are few signs that Davy is still in there. But, on occasion, the old Davy comes through. 

Evelyn seeks to keep herself busy and finds comfort by undertaking a project. The family's story is told through Evelyn's memories as she sorts through pieces of clothing that she will use to create a quilt. Each piece of clothing she chooses has a special sentiment and memory that goes along with it. Readers also learn that Evelyn and Davy's children each deal with their father's illness in their own way.

Evelyn's story evolves further as she begins to open herself up to new companionship outside of her marriage. Their daughter Joy is supportive.

"I completely understand that you are lonely," Joy begins, intently holding eye contact with her mother. "You've had one of the most awesome marriages I - or a lot of people in my generation - have ever witnessed. And in a way, that marriage is over. You're not divorced. Dad isn't dead. But, Dad is definitely absent."

But Evelyn's foray into companionship brings her and her family face-to-face with danger as late in the book a murder-mystery unfolds. I think that mystery adds just the right touch of creepiness to the story to hold the reader's interest.

Katie's writing style is quick and conversational and her characters are well developed. I felt like I really got to know several of the characters, especially Evelyn and Joy. She also does a great job of showing how different family members, and even caregivers, deal with Alzheimer's and dementia.

All the way through the book I was curious about the title and where it might have come from. I won't spoil it for the reader, and some of you may be able to figure it out, but I was really pleased with the way the story wrapped up and brought the title into focus.

I heartily recommend The Somebody Who. It shows that it is possible to deal with these difficult diseases with grace and aplomb and would be an excellent choice for a book club discussion.

LaRue Across America Book Review and Giveaway

Disclosure: I received a free copy of LaRue Across America in exchange for writing this review. Two readers will receive a copy of LaRue Across America in a giveaway sponsored by Scholastic. The review is my own.

From the Publisher
Ike’s plans for a peaceful cruise with Mrs. LaRue are thwarted when their neighbor, Mrs. Hibbins, falls suddenly ill. Mrs. LaRue suggests that she and Ike care for her cats while Mrs. Hibbins is in the hospital, inviting them along on the cruise. But cats aren't allowed, and Mrs. LaRue decides to take them all on a week's vacation of road-tripping. Ike is beside himself and quickly takes up his pen to tell us why!

Join award-winner Mark Teague on this romping road trip across America. Readers can follow along on the maps of the U.S. that span the endpapers. Teague drives us to the story’s satisfying conclusion, and we are left with one profound question: Can cats and dogs really be friends?



My Review
Grams is a little bit in love with Ike LaRue! Ike is a wire-hair fox terrier with a distaste for the neighbor's cats. (To be honest, he reminds me of Minnie, my grand-dog, who is a Jack Russell Terrier.)

When a neighbor falls ill, Mrs. LaRue volunteers to take care of her cats. This forces a change in vacation plan as Mrs. LaRue and Ike embark on a road trip across America with Mrs. Hibbins' cats. The road trip turns ugly fast as the group visits such traditional American vacation spots as the Empire State Building and the Grand Canyon. No matter how hard LaRue tries to make sure that the cats enjoy their trip, most of his actions seem more designed to make them miserable.

LaRue Across America charmed me. I like that the story is told in a series of postcards from Ike. The illustrations are reminiscent of the books I loved as a child of the 1950s. The combination of color and black and white illustrations and the endpaper map of the USA are both beautiful enhancements.  I particularly love Mrs. LaRue's pink station wagon.

I think this would be a great book to take along on summer vacation, especially if you're taking a road trip. You could easily use this book to get your kids interested in writing postcards to grandparents and friends while away on vacation.

Giveaway Instructions
Scholastic will be giving two of my readers a copy of LaRue Across America. To enter simply leave a comment on this post. Please be sure that your comment contains either an email address or a link to your Google profile so I can contact you if you win. Entries will remain open until midnight on Wednesday, May 23, 2010. Winners will be determined by random drawing.

The Women On My Walk #6 - My Book Club

Among the women who are a regular part of my life Grams counts a group of ladies known as The Book Snobs. The Book Snobs meet monthly to have a few drinks, share dinner, and discuss a book. These ladies feed my intellect and nourish my soul.

Grams has always been an avid reader. So much so that when I was a child, my mother used to have to make me go outside and play. I would have much preferred to just stay inside and read all summer long. Often when she chased me outside I would take a book, climb a tree, and sit there and read all afternoon. I learned early in life that books could take me away. In the pages of a book I could go anywhere and be anything.

I discovered poetry in my Childcraft books as soon as I could read. I loved Robert Louis Stevenson's poem, Happy Thought.

The world is so full
of a number of things,
I'm sure we should all
be as happy as kings.

And Adelaide Love's poem, A Book, made me see what a book could teach me about the world.

A book, I think, is very like
A little golden door
That takes me into places
Where I've never been before.


It leads me into fairyland
Or countries strange and far.
And, best of all, the golden door
Always stands ajar.

Those nursery rhymes and fairy tales were followed by The Bobbsey Twins and The Little House Books. Then I moved on to Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys. When we moved to Corpus Christi, I was ten years old and discovered "The Bookmobile" for the first time. It opened whole new world of reading and books for me.

As a young teen I discovered Harold Robbins. I know for sure that my mother had no idea about the contents of such trashy novels as A Stone for Danny Fisher and The Carpetbaggers or that they were extremely inappropriate reading for a 13-year-old girl.

In my twenties and thirties my taste turned to romance novels by writers like Rosemary Rogers, Johanna Lindsey, and Nora Roberts.Those bodice-rippers helped me make it through all the years of diapers, potty-training, little league, and teenagers.

In elementary school I was delighted when the teacher would read a book aloud. I waited with anticipation for the period right after lunch when she would read every day.  And in junior high and high school I absolutely adored English classes. Teacher-led discussions that delved into the depths of a book were my favorite part of school.

Naturally, I kept reading after I finished school, but I missed the fulfillment of discussing books. Over the years I've found a few friends who share my enthusiasm for books; most notably, my friends Sandy and Janna. Both of them share my love of reading and discussing books.

For years, Janna and I talked about wanting to join a book club. So when Janna approached me a couple of years ago about joining a new club with some of her friends, I jumped at the opportunity.

The Book Snobs have added variety to my reading list. Thanks to them I've read books I would never have read on my own. We started with Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, a really great read about a depression-era circus. We've read everything from Victorian novels to bestsellers to banned books. We've discussed a wide range of topics including medical ethics and mental illness. We've read some chick lit, some new age, and some classics. We even tackled Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet and read it in one month. The Book Snobs have seriously broadened my reading horizons. You can see our reading list on our blog, The Book Snobs.

The women of the Book Snobs share my love of books and reading. Reading with The Book Snobs has made me a more active reader. I still can't bring myself to write in the margins or highlight my books; but now I read with a stack of post-it notes to mark passages that I want to discuss. The Book Snobs provide a place to discuss books and all that's contained in them. That one night a month when I know that I can kick back with "The Snobs," have a glass of wine, a good dinner, and talk about books is something I look forward to every month.

Eat, Pray, Love

Grams has just finished reading Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. This book was the March selection for my book club, The Book Snobs.

Grams is an avid reader and is not too particular about books. I enjoy a wide variety of books and am enthusiastic about reading almost anything. There are a couple of exceptions. As a general rule I don't enjoy reading horror because it keeps me up at night. I read at night and since Grandad sometimes travels for his job, sometimes I'm sleeping alone. Stephen King books scare the heck out of me. I'm game for almost anything else except "Christian" fiction. I absolutely detest this genre of literature. It's contrived and preachy. And, while I'm willing to concede that many people actually strive to live their lives this way, it's not something I care to read about.

Even though several people I know have read Eat, Pray, Love and have recommended it with varying levels of enthusiasm, I was less than enthusiastic about reading it. But, in my mind, being a member of the Book Snobs means I have committed to reading each month's selection, I borrowed the book from my daughter and reluctantly began reading.

Surprisingly, I really enjoyed this book. I was able to relate to Elizabeth Gilbert's search for balance in her life. Elizabeth took a year off to recover her life after a nasty divorce. This year off is a luxury that most of us don't have.  She was able to take the year because she got an advance on the book. She spent four months each in Italy, India and Indonesia (Bali). 

During her sojourn in Italy she comes face to face with her own depression and loneliness. She goes into some detail about her use of mood-altering prescription drugs and how they helped her cope with this difficult time in her life and then her ultimate decision not to continue their use. I was impressed by the fact that she found her own internal voice of wisdom and learned to channel it and use it to overcome her own challenges. I also enjoyed her lust for Italian food and the Italian way of life. My favorite quote from the Eat portion of this book is "Ours is an entertainment seeking nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one."  This is a distinction that I had not consciously thought about before, but I really agree with the assessment.

In the Pray section of the book she travels to an ashram in India and focuses on meditation and prayer. Quite a few of the people who recommended this book reported that they struggled with this section of the book and many of them didn't finish the book from this point. I was fascinated by her efforts to learn to calm her mind. Elizabeth struggles to find her own mantra and eventually decides to impose a period of silence on herself. I related to this because sometimes I too struggle to turn off the thoughts that run through my mind. I personally have learned to meditate using the prayers from the Rosary as a way to calm my mind. My favorite quote from the Pray section of the book is when she realizes that she must be vigilant about her own thoughts and vows many times daily "I will not harbor unhealthy thoughts anymore." I find that very often we limit ourselves by what we think.  There are also some interesting insights on the world's religions and how God is bigger than our limited religious doctrines have taught us.

Then she travels to Bali in her search to understand and open herself to Love. I thoroughly enjoyed the information about the Balinese practice of "happy" meditation. Her Balinese healer teaches her to meditate by smiling. He tells her she must learn to smile "even from her liver." My favorite quote from this section is when the Liz and the healer are discussing how people argue about religion. He tells her "I have good idea, for if you meet some person from different religion and he want to make argument about God. My idea is, you listen to everything this man say about God. Never argue about God with him. Best thing to say is, 'I agree with you.' Then you go home, pray what you want. This is my idea for people to have peace about religion."

This book is entertaining, fun and has a great message. Liz discovers the power that is within her. Near the end of the book she says "We get seduced by our own mantras." That is so powerful. Negative thoughts become self-fulfilling prophesies. If we constantly think "I'm a failure ... I'm lonely" over and over again, those thoughts dominate our actions and become our truth. We become what we constantly think. Words have so much power that we must learn to control them ... both spoken words and the words we think. Just as negative words have negative power, positive words have positive power. The power to stop suffocating ourselves with negativity is within us.

I enthusiastically recommend Eat, Pray, Love.  

Technology or Not Technology

Grams loves books! Anyone who knows Grams even a little bit knows that I am an avid reader. I love to read almost anything.

I remember distinctly the first time I could recognize the words "See Spot run" in my first grade primer Fun With Dick and Jane. To be able to see printed words and to understand what those words meant when I saw them on the printed page was pure magic. I was hooked from the very beginning!

Sometime shortly after my first grade year, sets of World Book, Childcraft and Golden Book Encyclopedias appeared at our house. I suspect that my Aunt Nava bought them because I know that such an investment would probably have been too large of an expense for my parents. I spent many hours poring through these books. I especially loved the Golden Books. They were beautifully illustrated and written for children and I wish I had them today. Childcraft was full of fun experiments and good instructions for hobbies and kept me busy many summers. And for several years those were pretty much my only books. I learned nursery rhymes and fairy tales from reading them over and over again. I used those encyclopedias well into my teens.

In 1964 when my family moved to Corpus Christi I discovered something new to add to my reading enjoyment ... the bookmobile. I knew about libraries, although I don't remember ever going to the library before our move. But to a 10-year-old girl in a new city where I didn't know anyone, the bookmobile was a godsend.

That summer, every other week, the bookmobile would drive up to the recreation center right around the corner from my house and open its doors from 9 a.m. until noon. This was when I got my first library card. Before I could borrow books, my mother had to take me downtown to the big La Retama Public Library and get me a library card. Books became my new best friend! The bookmobile introduced me to The Bobbsey Twins, The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. I learned about adventures with The Island of the Blue Dolphins and The Call of the Wild. I don't recall many of the other books I read that summer, but I do remember being consumed by reading to the point where my mother would occasionally nudge me out the door to go outside and play. I can point to that summer as the beginning of my lifelong love affair with books.

As a teenager I discovered trashy novels. I'm pretty sure I would have been in big trouble if my mother had known what was contained within the pages of Harold Robbins' books, and The Carpetbaggers and A Stone for Danny Fisher which I read around the age of 14. After high school I discovered romance novels. I started with Harlequin Romances but soon advanced to such notorious bodice-rippers as Nora Roberts, Johanna Lindsey and Kathleen E. Woodiwiss.

Although I still occassionally indulge in a trashy romance novel, I like to think my reading has evolved. Thanks to the influence of my son-in-law, who is a high school English teacher with very sophisticated taste in books, and the Book Snobs (my ladies book club), I now read a wide variety of books including bestsellers, classic literature, mysteries, Victorian novels, biographies, almost anything.

I love the tactile nature of holding a book in my hand and leafing through the pages. I like the way books smell. I like the idea that other people have read this exact same book and then passed it on for someone else to enjoy. I love walking into someone's house and looking at the books on their bookshelves. I like to pick up a book that was printed more than a hundred years ago and know that it has been read by generation after generation of people. A big part of the joy of reading is sharing books. There is nothing I enjoy more than reading a book and passing it on to a friend or acquaintance for them to enjoy.

Keeping my nightstand from being buried by books is a constant challenge. I'm not even a "book saver." I don't keep most books, I read them and pass them on or sell them at Half Price Books to get more books. But still it would be very easy to turn into one of those people whose house is defined by stacks of books, magazines and newspapers.

A couple of years ago, my kids gave me an MP3 player and a subscription to Audible.com. Since then I do at least half of my reading by listening to books on my MP3 player while I'm driving. I thoroughly enjoy it and have listened to books that I would probably never get around to sitting down and reading.

For quite some time now I've been looking at and reading reviews of the Kindle and now the new Nook. I must admit I love the idea of instantly downloading books to such a device and of having all my books in one lightweight and easy to carry electronic device. I'm attracted to the idea of less clutter. I've considered asking for one for Christmas or my birthday.

Here is the conundrum. It won't feel like a book; it won't smell like a book; you can't share it like a book; and it won't actually be a book. You can still tell your friends about it and encourage them to read it, but you can't hand it to them and say, "I really enjoyed this and I want to share it with you." I think that's at least half the fun of reading. I'm not quite sold on this new technological approach to books. So, for now at least, I'm sticking with my stacks and bags of actual hard-copy printed books. I'll keep my clutter in order to keep the joy of sharing books with my friends.

I'd be interested to know what you think, especially if you already own an electronic device for books. Should I leap into the 21st century or stay safely ensconced in my clutter?