Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

Hello again…hello. (Thanks to two of my Idaho roommates and the Idaho boy one of them married, I have a smiling fondness for Neil Diamond.) It’s true I missed two posts there, but it does feel like I filled the time purposefully. The day before Father’s Day we did chores and then had a family outing to NPS before our Saturday night movie; on Father’s Day we feted my hubby, I taught a Sunday School lesson, and we went up to my in-laws’ for dinner; the next day the kids and I went to Logan to visit my niece and her newly-two-year-old. That night my girls were both anxious about leaving for Girls’ Camp the next day, and I wrote a 5 1/2 page letter to my 12-year-old about her fears and what she could do about them. (I also wrote a brief note to my 15-year-old and got to bed later than I wanted to.) They left the next morning–Tuesday–and I’ve been taking my littles where they need to go AND working on cleaning out my son’s room with them both(his little sister’s stuff being mostly still in there).

Last night we went back up to Clearfield for birthday pizza and cake, and then to Draper and then Centerville today (not to mention a sojourn at the bank for PTA purposes in the morning). Tonight, however, my son is having a cousin sleepover of sorts at Grandma’s house, and so I managed more time for other things; this included completing a second journey through Sarah Ruhl’s Smile: The Story of a Face, which I received an ARE of sometime last year and first listened to last November. It embarrasses me that I haven’t written a more timely review, especially since it’s such a lovely book; its depth and the power of Ruhl’s ruminations, however, made the prospect of writing this review intimidating. (To be completely honest with you, I’m tackling it now mostly because it’s a convenient time for me to pass it along to my sister to read, and I don’t pass books on without reviewing.)

I suppose Smile is a memoir–it says so on the cover of at least one edition, as well as in at least one of the back-of-the-book blurbs–and yet it also manages to be both deeply introspective (as opposed to simply narrative) and culturally profound. Ruhl made me think about our society’s view and treatment of a woman’s smile; she made me hurt with empathy for motherhood’s more difficult moments; and she did it in a contemplative literary fashion that avoided actual meandering. (Her profession shows there, of course, playwrights of necessity knowing how to make their individual–and collective–words count.) It took a second journey through it to feel like I could review it, and even now I find it difficult to describe. Ruhl herself, near the end, notes that Smile is a book in which “a woman slowly gets better,” and yet–and yet. After finishing it again tonight, I feel as if a woman whose friendship I valued wrote me a letter encouraging me in my own journey by sharing hers. (I am also humbled by the virtuosity of her intellectual AND emotional expression.) This is a book worth having in your life, and Sarah Ruhl is a woman whose voice contributes–in a truly positive way–to our society.

I feel like it should have. I don’t know if it was Covid or just a nasty something, but my hubby and I have been sick all week, as have (to a lesser degree) my 15- and 9-year-olds. I’m feeling close to better at this point, but you can still hear the lingering effects in my voice and the occasional cough. (I’m using that as an excuse for missing Wednesday, by the way.) As a result, our activities have been somewhat curtailed this week.

This morning, however, we thoroughly cleaned and vacuumed the living room, which is why my littles are downstairs taking turns playing Minecraft at the moment, my big girls are sorting clothes and watching “Psych” in the living room, and I’m taking the opportunity to review Anne Perry’s The Cater Street Hangman, which I finished listening to last night. (We actually inherited a mass market copy from Dieter, which is why I was listening to it in the first place.) Here goes, then…

First of all–and Britt, who’s read several more books in this series, assures me this isn’t an isolated incident–there is NO falling action here; you find out the killer’s identity in the last three pages, and the scene in which you find out is the final scene. (I’m apparently too big a fan of more than superficial closure to enjoy that style, but you do you.) Secondly, the book dragged a bit for me. Tension, unease, and unravelling relationships seem to be its primary focus, and yet the relationship that is supposed to be, um, ravelled doesn’t really develop at all. It just sort of–jumps. I imagine part of the problem is first-book-in-the-series syndrome–it’s working on setting the stage–but it still left me wanting more. I suppose if you want a psychological family drama that ends with the unveiling of a murderer, have at this one; for me, I’d rather have watched it on tv and had it take no longer than an hour and a half.

I love that my tween still wants me to read aloud with her, you know? We snuggle up together and enjoy both the story and the time together, and I’m selfishly hoping that she just keeps on wanting it. We finished reading The Stars of Summer together over the weekend–with two sessions in one day because she was absolutely going to DIE if we didn’t find out what happened–and it was a ton of fun. Picking up where All Four Stars leaves off, The Stars of Summer sees Gladys trying to balance her secret career as a food critic with summer camp and getting to know another kid author. Both her swimming and her relationship with her parents improve drastically, but wait–she must also foil a nefarious plot against her AND her editor!

Tara Dairman’s Gladys books are just FUN, folks. We laugh, we wince, and we enjoy the time together; who could ask for anything more? I imagine my tween is super anxious to get the next one, but the rest of us are in various stages of sick at the moment, and so I’m not as excited to read aloud as I usually am. Yesterday I was crazy exhausted and my whole body hurt; my almost 10-year-old son lay down to take a nap today, and my husband’s voice has dropped at LEAST an octave below normal. Thank goodness for cold medicine and Kleenexes! Whether it’s Covid or a miserable summer cold I don’t know, but it stinks. Whichever it is, I hope your household escapes it.

Our first week of summer went pretty well, all things considered–and as long as you don’t ask my son. (He says summer is so BORING. As he said this the night I took him and his siblings to the pool for two and a half hours, where they met friends and had a blast, I was unsympathetic.) We managed four appointments–five if you count my temple appointment–went to the library, to a shaved ice stand, to the park, to Walmart, to the aforementioned pool, and to lunch with my mother-in-law (with whom we also played games!). Oh, and I went to Costco twice. We also accomplished more than one task that need accomplishing, so there’s that, too.

I ALSO finished Lisa Greenwald’s TBH, This Is So Awkward–finished it this morning–and unfortunately, it was one of the lowlights of the week. The concept of a novel in text–an epistolary novel for the 21st century, right?–was promising, especially for my tween, but the execution…well.

1. Too little characterization. If there had been more texts with other people, or more emails, notes, and diary entries, the main three girls might have felt less like caricatures. As it is, read Jennifer L. Holm’s Middle School Is Worse Than Meatloaf: A Year Told Through Stuff for what characterization CAN be in this sort of format.

2. Adult overreactions OR misplaced reactions with no acknowledgement of same. There was no actual bullying in this book, despite what topics it’s listed under on Amazon. There were two instances of (very brief) anonymous texting that crossed into mean, one thoughtless mistake that was unintentionally cruel, and a whole bunch of social weirdness that didn’t qualify as anything else. It’s not mean not to automatically invite the new girl in school into your tightknit group. It IS weird for the new girl in school to contact someone she hardly knows and ask to be invited to his birthday party, and it’s doubly weird for the new girl’s mom to contact the birthday boy’s mom (whom she hasn’t met) to guilt her into having her son invite said new girl to his birthday party.

I won’t go on, except to say that the best middle grade novels are a pleasure for me to read as an adult; this was just annoying. I don’t doubt that a decent portion of the intended audience will be entertained, but there isn’t enough substance here for me to pass this book on to my tween; it falls under the category of ‘if she finds it herself, fine, but I have better books to recommend to her.’ If I were you, I’d skip this one.

Lisa Fipps’ Starfish has been on my radar for a bit in a background sort of way, but when it ended up on our elementary school’s ‘Battle of the Books’ list and my son wanted to start working on said list, I went ahead and checked out a hard copy for him and the audio for me.

There really aren’t words.

On the one hand, you could say that Starfish is about a girl being bullied because of her weight. On another hand, you could say it’s the story of a girl who, with the help of her therapist, begins to recognize and reclaim her worth in the face of a crowd of naysayers, some of whom are in her own family. Perhaps what I want to say is that it’s a testament to the power words and people can have in another person’s life; it made me think harder about who I want to be–and how I want to be–to the people around me.

This is a heartbreakingly beautiful book, and ultimately, a triumphant one; it’s also a vital read in today’s world. Don’t miss it.

P.S. (a word from the tween) An amazingly beautiful and heartfelt book. DEFINITLY a must!!! 6/5 stars.

I stayed up WAY too late reading last night, folks, and I finished my book this morning instead of writing a book review when I was coherent enough to do it. Maybe tomorrow?

It’s the first week of summer, folks! Today my lovely mother-in-law came down to take my tween to the orthodontist while I took my son to a different appointment, and she stayed to play games and take us to lunch! At the Pizza Pie Cafe, no less, which meant I didn’t bother making dinner–I didn’t know how many people would even want to eat. We had apples and whole wheat bread and then went to get shaved ice from my middles’ former fourth grade teacher’s stand; there was a park behind the stands and food trucks, so the kids played afterward and I chilled on a bench for a while. Now people are taking turns in the shower and getting off to bed, which means I get to sit down and review Lisa Graff’s The Great Treehouse War, which we listened to on Memorial Day while driving home from Idaho.

I have to say, it made pretty great road trip material.

The basic premise is fairly simple–Winnie’s (divorced) parents’ obsessive competition with each other makes Winnie’s life so unbearable that she finally takes to her treehouse and refuses to come down until they talk with her together. Her friends–each with his or her own parental demands, none nearly as reasonable as Winnie’s–come up to join her, and voila! An epic standoff. My tween and I were captivated by the story, and the other three kids paid a good amount of attention to it as well. As a reader, I was completely entertained, even if it wasn’t exactly realistic; as a parent, I quite enjoyed the ego boost that came from comparing Winnie’s parents to myself. (They made me look amazing.) I honestly had issues with the ending–the parents weren’t properly repentant–but given the whole concept of the book, it worked. (If everything is over the top, complaining about nuances of realism isn’t really productive, right?) Upper elementary and middle schoolers–and their parents!–should enjoy this one.

Of a sort, that is. You may have guessed that the kiddos and I were out of town over most of Memorial Day weekend–I got to attend the temple with much of my side of the family, since my brother’s oldest son went through for the first time, and then we got to listen to my sister’s youngest daughter speak in church before starting at-home missionary training. (By the way, she’s currently got Covid, so keep her in your prayers, please.) In between, I went through some boxes and papers in my parents’ computer/sewing/junk room and unpacked/recycled/organized. I confess, there was an initial ulterior motive–I wanted to be able to set up an air mattress in there–but my mother had become overwhelmed with the level of stuff piling up, especially since my father’s last fall resulted in a T12 compression fracture and a need for more of her time. I didn’t finish the job–not by any stretch of the imagination–but I did manage to at least make a difference. We drove home on Monday and I spent the rest of the week catching up on housework and laundry and unearthing and then using my craft desk. I’ve decided that right now, offering some of my time each week for family history work will be more successful if I work on our own family history, and to that end I’ve been putting family and school pictures in scrapbooks, putting extras aside in a labelled envelope, and throwing away the garbage produced by the effort. My family loves looking at the pictures, my pile of clutter decreases, and we have a record of our growth. What’s not to love?

Anyway. I also managed to read Hope Larson’s Salt Magic this week, and when I failed to make a review happen yesterday, I decided I’d better not wait ANOTHER day before doing so and passing it on. (I have that graphic-novel-loving-12-year-old, you’ll recall.) I haven’t read anything else by Larson, but Salt Magic seems different than what I’ve seen of her work. You could call it historical magical fiction, I suppose–the story begins with Vonceil’s brother returning from WWI to marry a local girl and settle down, and Vonceil is NOT PLEASED. She and her brother had a special bond, but now he’s occupied with Amelia and focused on his future. When a glamorous–and mysterious–woman comes to town to see him, however, Vonceil discovers that Elber’s choices have brought magical disaster down on their farm and family; luckily, she has the courage and determination to rescue them all, learning to reevaluate her own priorities in the process. It’s not an unqualified happily-ever-after, but it strikes a deeper chord because of that.

On the other hand, I struggled with the thinness of the world-building. There’s not enough about history to make Salt Magic‘s historical fiction aspect truly meaningful, and yet the magical process and progression felt arbitrary to me. I doubt my 12-year-old will be overly bothered–she’s a bigger fan of realistic fiction and is going to care more about what happens with the characters’ relationships–but fantasy fans may not be so impressed. All in all, Larson’s fans may be the best audience for this one; as for me, I’ll try her ‘Eagle Rock’ trilogy and see if I enjoy it more. If you’ve read it, let me know what YOU think!