Broken For You, by Stephanie Kallos

With a haphazard cast of characters, Broken For You tells the story of an elderly woman who has been diagnosed with brain cancer, and her growing friendship with a young woman who was abandoned as a child. It also tells a complex story of forgiveness and creativity: the young woman makes mosaics that document images of grief and love—and of the Holocaust—out of the broken bits of the thousands of rare antiques the older woman inherited—originally stolen by Nazis from the Jews in Europe. The first half of the book was slow and indirect. It took me weeks to read. But as the plot unfurled amidst a gleeful smashing of plates, I became glued. I couldn’t put it down. Switching back and forth from simply narrating the story to a voice that speaks directly with the reader Kallos’ writing is bright, delicate and hopeful. She is brave enough to take up a dialogue with death and loss, and changes it with the beauty of the images she imagines and conveys. A wonderful, joyous read.

“Loved ones whose presence once filled us move into the distance; our eyes follow them as long as possible as they recede from view… Maybe we chase them…Maybe we stay put, left behind, and look for them in our dreams. But we never stop looking, not even after those we love become part of the unreachable horizon. We can never stop carrying the heavy weight of love on this pilgrimage; we can only transfigure what we carry. We can only shatter it and send it whirling into the world so that it can take shape in some new way.”

Literary diet.

After a morning of silver gray skies, rain came down, filling up puddles and freckling my sweatshirt on the way to dinner at the local vegetarian cafe. We talked about classic literature versus modern popular literature over our plates of pasta. Modern literature, we agreed, often seems to be targeted at a specific audience. Chick lit. Sci Fi. Environmental lit. Action. Fantasy. The scope of traditional genres has expanded almost exponentially--creating micro genres that custom fit each population pigeon hole.

Classical literature by comparison (and by classical we were referring to the heady works of Plato, Homer and Aristotle) encompasses a great deal more, it seems. It was the human archetypes that those first authors were after, not readership. IDEAS mattered more than popularity or a pretty book jacket.

It's interesting to reflect how we've changed as readers and human beings both since Socrates was widely read. I squirm a bit realizing how little I know of these great works compared with my great grandparents, or my father, even. But I also feel like the readership today has gained something from its perpetual quest of self-examination. Despite our loss of common ethics that the archetypal heroes once provided, I think we are learning something new about simply being human, in all it's varied peculiarity, from this flood of market specific media.

The blogosphere I've been bouncing around in is like this: windows into other people's daily bubbles. Lives on tap. Real time. Installment by installment we discover how across the world we've got things to say to someone who we won't likely meet in person over Sophocles in a cafe. And though I love this, because like most people I'm a horrible snoop---eavesdropping is my chosen addictionâ€--I've started to feel diluted this week. My literary diet has grown sparce.

I've got a whole stack of books on my shelf that I've been meaning to read: meaty stuff (no Homer this time though) that requires me to do more than click for comments.

Being well read has always been on my long list of "To do this lifetime" items, and this past month I;ve barely gotten through the front page of the Wall Street Journal most mornings, when we sit together DH, Bean and I on a bench downtown, with our iced coffees and bagels.

Of course this has much to do with the fact that Bean is truly crawling now, suddenly and with fierce determination towards electrical cords and the cat's water bowl, than it does with anything else. But it also has to do with self discipline.

This is not a new topic for me. The terrible internal struggle to focus, to say more than what's just at the surface, to delve into the issues is one I am constantly waging.

Winter is coming, the few scattered orange leaves on the sidewalk tell me so, floating vein-side up in the puddles. In just a few short months the trees will be bare, the sky raw gray, the water cold. It is time to refocus, gathering myself towards my own embering center. Starting now.

Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family, by Catherine Newman

Before I knew about blogs (holy moly, was there really such a time?) I eagerly devoured Newman’s weekly installments on babycenter.com which were later compiled into this book. When I was gigantically pregnant and my stomach looked like a huge gibbous moon, I'd read excerpts from her weekly post to my husband over dinner. He thought she was making the stuff up. "Three year olds say stuff like THAT?"

But hearing the stuff that I read also made the whole "We are having a baby" bit a tad more real. And later, when the book hit stores during sometime during the gloomy early months of spring when Bean was just bean-sized and mostly just a pooping, wailing little wobbly thing, it helped me keep my sense of humor.

Newman's writing is hilarious, but also self-reflective and filled with little gems that linger in your mind for days: making you want to be that kind of parent. Patient, forgiving, silly, and joyous. Perhaps my favorite quote of all:

"I'm a mean guy!" [Ben] snarled at his reflection, "Because my booty is itchy!" "Maybe that's why the Grinch was so mean," Michael offered---we'd just watched the classic cartoon together---but Ben said, "No, I don't think so," and screwed up his face. "The Grinch was mean because his penis was three sizes too small!" According to Dr. Seuss, the size problem was, of course, with the Grinch's heart, but you can't help wondering if Ben might be onto something ...

White Oleander, Janet Fitch

I' not quite sure how to describe this book. Fierce, maybe, or passionate, or frightening. I read it first before the movie came out, and have never watched the movie--so the images in my mind, indelible and searing, are the product of my imagination and Fitch's sharp, beautiful writing. The story follows the daughter of brilliant poet, imprisoned for murdering her lover, through the foster care system in L.A. Fitch portrays the complicated relationship between a mother and daughter that tangles with the universal question women invariably struggle with when confronted with making choices between their life and work, and their children. Icy, independent, obsessed with the aesthetic, and with outcomes of her poetry, the mother compromises nothing in her life for those she loves, and consequently her daughter is left to navigate through the bizarre world of foster homes, discovering herself gradually through her own art. Bittersweet, and haunting, images from this story have lingered with me for years.

Bean's version of my 'read every day' category

No book review today. Though this IS my copy of Pam Houston's A LITTLE MORE ABOUT ME, which I've been intending to finish reading for over a month now. It doesn't hold me like her other book, which was fast paced, silly and apt. But then agian, haven't had much time to really sink my teeth into it, although Bean clearly has. That is, if he had teeth.

Letters To A Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke

I can't give you any advice but this; to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to the question of whether you must create.

In college, my girlfriends and I would sit around late at night drinking Merlot or green tea and reading excerpts aloud. It spoke to us then about our situation in the world--attempting to love men who were never quite good enough for us, while striving to remain wholly creative and independent. I just re-read it again recently, cover to cover in an afternoon. Now it speaks to the writer in me. Gives me hope that because I can't live without writing, I will write. That comitting myself to this process is a means to an end, and the end both, at once. Rilke's words in this short collection of letters are profound, searing, and yet simple. This is an advice book, before advice books existed. Nearer to the heart, without any of the pretence and promise of success that newer books in this genre bear, nearly every page has markings--underlined scribbles, dog-eared edges. Too good to write about without letting the writing speak for itself.

Operating Instructions, Anne Lamott

The book that made me feel sane, during those early weeks of baby when I could do nothing more than stagger about, nurse, and gasp for water. Lamott is funny, poignant and accurate. My copy (paperback) is dog-eared and marked with pen. And, for the record, it's one of maybe a half dozen books I've ever read twice (once while I was pregnant, and again when Bean was born). Edgy, reverent, and slap-stick, reading this memoir of Lamott's first year with her Sam, is like having someone make you tea and rub your feet while riding a roller coaster. Both comforting and unnerving, she tells the universal story of new parenthood, but makes it uniquely her own.

Eating the Honey of Words, By Robert Bly

I remember exactly when I bought this book. DH and I had gone out to Nantucket the summer of my senior year in college. We went on the ferry and spent the day riding rented bikes around the island. I couldn't believe how quaint it was:shingled houses, gray from the weather and covered with rosebushes, beaches sheltered by grassy dunes, and a downtown full of little shops, including a book store where I fingered volumes of poetry, settling for this one. That night on the ferry back I remember sitting with my back up it's metal hull reading poem after poem, a certain hunger in me quenched. The span of Bly's poems in this collection (as in many of his collections) is huge: he speaks with the deeply personal voice of a man in love, caught up in nature, and then with the voice of a philosopher and activist, watching our country lurch forward, and saying words about it that might make all the difference.

The Sun Magazine, Sy Safransky-Editor

This magazine is responsible for making me want to keep writing. Each month I get this magazine and within hours, I've read it nearly cover to cover. I've met Sy, and several authors including Sparrow and Alison Leuterman. Both the magazine and the people who write for it convey a commitment to mindfulness in daily life, and a dedication to using words to affect change. I hit the "Reader's Write" section first--a self-explanatory section where readers write on a given theme each month--and then dive into the poems, and short stories, saving the longer nonfiction interviews about current events for last. Good through and through, this is as close to a "must read" as I'll ever come, I imagine.

Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, ZZ Packer

A collection of short stories that captures the scope of lives on the periphery of things. Often painful, poignant and well worded, most of the stories left me staring off out the window, imagining more. I was impressed with Packer's breadth of character's and her deftness at making them believable. Often short story collections make for a lurching ride on the reader's part, but DRINKING COFFEE ELSEWHERE, has a certain consistency between pieces that makes it a fluid read. Packer explores risk, sexuality, loneliness and anger in many of these pieces, and several pack a gut-slugging punch of reality. Packer conveys that life is raw, ripe, and dangerous. Something we all feel, I believe, though few of us know how to fit words around it.

Talking to High Monks in the Snow, Linda Minatoya

This is the memoir of Japanese-American woman exploring where she "fits" within her two cultures. It is subtly written, with distilled, accurate observations about people's behaviors and cultural differences. The story deals with developing a sense of "home" and belonging, based on a definition of self, and how selfhood changes based on geographical location, culture, etc. The themes interest me personally, as I've been quite obsessed with how language shapes our sense of self, and in turn the role that culture plays in this process.

The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd

Ripe with the vernacular of honey, and the underlying issues of racial and gender equality, this is one of the best books I've read in a while, and now ranks among my favorites. The imagery is stunning, the characters vivid and the language fluid. I couldn't put this book down. The beauty in each sentence, and the grace with which Monk Kind describes the emotional turbulence of a teenage girl who is seeking connections to her dead mother carried me urgently from one chapter to the next.

Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris

Dry, sarcastic humor, sometimes overdone (especially the part about drug use and 'art as life'). This is a memoir that deals with cultural and sexual labels. Written in a series of vignettes about different groups of people & ideas in different geographical locations, Sedaris celebrates people who dare to be themselves (such as his wacky sister who is always dressing up as someone else, or his father who hoards old food). This is a book that left me smiling, though I felt it was slightly alien to the fabric of my life.

Halflives, Brooke Williams

This is a passionate book that spoke to my soul about finding work that is symbiotic with a life that is whole--connected to nature and in balance. The book shared many small excerpts about nature that I found amazing: about the Shell Trail in Mexico, whale babies, cave art, and water freezing. Brooke's passion and urgency spoke to where I am in my life. It made me want to try harder to be more in tune with my life: to do yoga, run, be outdoors, work in nature. It also made me want to write. The non-sequential style of the book, spiraling forwards and backwards within events, time and ideas was simple and powerful.

Cowboys Are My Weakness, by Pam Houston

I'm hoping to go to a Literary Workshop with several authors, including Pam Houston at the end of July, so I figured I'd pick up a couple of her books. COWBOYS is sharp, delectable, and silly. It rings true, for women at least. (Note to boys: when I read sections aloud to my husband that I thought were screaming funny he just gave me a nice bland smile, and resumed reading Mountain Bike Magazine.) It's a quick read. Each story is tight, short, and packs some kick-ass punch that makes you want to smile and go do things you've kept putting off. Like hanggliding, or roller-blading, or sitting in a field with the man you love and watching fireflies. Which is what I did, last night.