book club friday

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Book Club Friday: Comfort Reads

Friday, October 14, 2011

I've posted about comfort food before. (Mmmm, oatmeal.) But today, I'm thinking about comfort reads.

Yesterday, we had an entire day of rain. Although the inch + of rain we got was much needed right down to the very last drop, the grey, chilly weather signaled a decided turn in the weather. Good-bye sunshine and balmy highs in the lower 70s; hello autumn's windy gusts, chilly rain and highs in the low 40s.

Drizzly weather always makes me think one thought: time to make some warm beverage (preferably mint tea, cocoa or cocoa and Baileys) and cuddle up with a good book.

Granted, when I say "good book," let us not get that term confused with "great literature." Rainy days are good days for books I like to refer to as "fluffy puppies." Kind of like how whenever I was sick when I was little, the only books I could muster the strength to read during my ailment were The Boxcar Children, when the weather's grey and chilly, I don't want to really have to think about anything while I read, I just want to be transported to whole different place through the turning of pages.

On the way home from the wedding last month, we swung by my parents' house and I loaded up my tote with a bunch of what I call comfort reads.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants quartet. By Ann Brashares
Technically I'm far too old to still enjoy these books. While I didn't much care for the movie renditions of these, (I love you Alexis Bledel but you don't even look Greek let alone like Lena.) I will always have a soft spot for these teenage novels. Through the eyes of Tibby, Lena, Carmen and Bridget, you get an honest look at confusion we feel about a myriad of topics our entire lives: love, family, friends, work, death. Without falling victim to being a solely romance driven novel, I give Brashares big props for talking about the full spectrum of life experiences and taking these novels well beyond the "there's this boy . . ." cliche. Besides, at times these are snort through your nose funny. And I still like to remind people at work of Duncan Howes rules for customer service: "Rule #1: the customer is always right. Rule #2: if the customer is not right, please refer back to rule #1."

The Anne of Green Gables series. By L.M. Montgomery.
If ever there were books that were meant to be paired with a rainy day, some hot tea and maybe a buttery cookie or three, Montgomery's classic Anne books would be it. I've read the entire series of eight novels, not once, not twice, but three times. A couple summers back, I decided to go through the whole series again, but only got through novel #1. (Damn you adulthood!) Anne's life on Prince Edward Island is by no means idyllic -- she comes from a place where you're expected to work for what you have and her life is punctuated by mishaps and tragedies, both big and small. And maybe that's why she's so likeable; because her world seems so very true. I'd like to think Anne and I are kindred spirits. (But apparently I share one love with Montgomery's other main heroine - Emily - that of italics.)

44 Scotland Street books. By Alexander McCall Smith
I've only read these books once and I've only read the first three, back in 2007, when there only were three. Set in Edinburgh, Scotland, the novel covers the antics of the varied inhabitants of 44 Scotland Street which include a University student, an anthropologist, and an overbearing mother. This is fluff at its finest. The plots are never fully realized and the characters are missing that one final touch that would truly bring them to life. But there's good reason for the basicness of the books: although they reads like a novel, the books were first published in serial form in an Edinburgh newspaper. And something about those Dickens-ish roots (or Anne of Green Gables-ish for that matter) makes it all the more appealing.

What's your favorite comfort read?

Guest Post: Book Club Weekend Holly-Style!

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Note from Ada: It's one late Book Club Friday, but I'd like to blame the delay on Blogger, who started eating all posts and comments on Wednesday and didn't stop until yesterday morning. (Epic fail!) I wanted to make sure everyone had a chance to read Carissa's Small Town Traditions post before post Holly's Book Club Friday (weekend?) post. Holly writes over at Wuthered Window and shared some of her favorite childhood reads. Seems we've been talking about childhood favorites on Book Club Fridays a lot lately. Enjoy! P.S. Of Woods and Words regularly scheduled programming resumes on Monday. See you then!

As part of my gap year I haven't been doing much structured written work or reading until a couple of months ago and therefore have not performed to a deadline in a long old time. BIG MISTAKE! (cue quote from Mystery Men)

After a lovely day helping my grandparents sort a new carpet out and watching The King's Speech with them, I drove home and was about to go to bed when I thought, I'm just gonna check my emails (it's something I do to pass and waste time – as I nearly always have signed up for spam). I saw to my horror (at 10:30pm) an email received yesterday from Ada saying very nicely, any time on Thursday would do for getting my guest post. Well I sure hope she meant that.

Books of my childhood (oh lord, what's coming next you say, a drivelling account of the fact you loved to read) is a topic focused on by Jayne Fordham in her post "Memories... books I read as a child.” And whilst a little bit of insight into her choices it opened up great memories for me. These sorts of posts are only ever interesting if you happen to like the same books and can revel in the stories with the writer, or it leads you on a trail entirely of your own reveling.

Such was the case in Jayne's post when she mentioned James and the Giant Peach and writing your name in the front of books. Having seen the film at around the same time (and later discovering David Thewlis was in it all along) as reading the book, it meant I didn't conjure up the world for myself but used the scenes from the film. This is half, if not more, of the fun in reading on your own and as a child, that you are the creator and the characters become your friends as you are drawn in. (I still always cry when my literary friends die – Akkarin!)

And now I have a terrible secret to reveal... I own a first edition paper back of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (you know, the edition before the illustrator realised Dumbledore was an old man), and like every small child, it was mine and I will make sure no one takes it, therefore I will write my name in large letters in the front and colour in the Hogwart's crest (wrongly). Rendering it now worthless to everyone else but myself. Hurray for childhood greediness and love of HP!

They were the first books that began me reading like a maniac every night till stupid o'clock in the morning (meaning I now need glasses, idiot), and the first ones where I had the characters, scenes and world firmly in my head and all as my own creation. It's a good job the films are so great else that would have been ruined.

(Yada Yada stop talking) Finally a quick fire round of other childhood and teen favourites that I will forever love and give to my kids/any child who will listen to my good sense and taste:

Artemis Fowl (I was seriously going to audition if the film had been made, for the part of Holly of course. Weirdly my boyfriend would have done the same thing for Artemis, meaning we might have met completely differently.)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
The Magician's Guild.
Jedi Apprentice (cue laughter).
Wizard Apprentice.
A Series of Unfortunate Events.
Mister Monday series.
George's Marvellous Medicine.

And hand on heart not, never, never will be Twilight.

Holly

What were your favorite childhood reads?

Guest Post: Book Club Friday Betsy-Style!

Friday, May 6, 2011

Note from Ada: This week I'm asking some of my bloggy friends to help fill the Of Woods and Words soundwaves. Last year, my dear friend Betsy from In the Past Lane, suggested I check out Made from Scratch, a book by Jean Zimmerman, after reading my post about baking bread. Instead, I grabbed Made from Scratch by Jenna Woginrich, which fueled my desire to have a backyard filled with vegetables, chickens, and bees and which I have no regretted reading one little bit. But to set the record straight, here's Betsy talking about the book I was supposed to read!

Last fall, I meandered my way to the library of the small-town Minnesota university at which I work, for their annual book sale. Library book sales are a thing of beauty – there’s always some sort of treasure waiting to be picked up for ten cents. That day, I stumbled upon Made From Scratch: Reclaiming the Pleasures of the American Hearth by Jean Zimmerman. The jacket appealed to me – hey, I like crafty things! I like knitting and baking and cooking! Why not?

I thought the book would be an “all girls together” celebration of all things domestic. In a sense, it was – but it was so much more. Zimmerman is an author who has made her name writing books about the challenges women face in the modern world. In this book, she looks backwards – all the way to Ancient Greece, where Hestia, the goddess of the hearth, was the symbol of the strength of housewives and hearth-keepers. She traces the history of domesticity all the way up to the late 19th century. At that time, home economics became A Thing. Instead of domestic arts being consider an art, they were turned into a science, homogenized and sanitized. Instead of making bread the way your mother taught you, you made bread the way your textbook explained to you, because it was healthier and cleaner and neater and my God, don’t you want your children to grow up clean and healthy and neat? This leads into the wild and crazy sixties and the women’s lib movement, which gave women more freedom to look outside the home for fulfillment, at the cost of degrading and vilifying the domestic arts.

These are hardly conjectures or speculation on Zimmerman’s part. She backs up her statements with solid research into historical artifacts and documents, along with her own experiences of growing up in the seventies and subsequent abandonment of homemaking. At the same time that she cites studies and anecdotal research that show us how the loss of domesticity has affected us as a culture. We flock to museums that show us how people used to live, with a nostalgia for how “simple” life was back then. The Food Network is one of the fastest-growing cable channels, yet many children have never tasted homemade bread. We refer to the feeling of “coming home” when something makes us feel whole and complete, yet we neglect the art of making a home. We thrive on fast-and-easy fixes – Easy Mac, Homestyle Bakes, food that fills us but doesn’t really satisfy our souls.

This book resonated with me in many ways. I’ve always had a nostalgia for the past, as evidenced by my hobby of living history (or as others refer to it, historical reenactment). I’m what you would call a crafter – I annex crafts like they are territory to be conquered, leaping from sewing to quilting to embroidery to knitting at a rate that makes my mother roll her eyes. A child of the eighties and nineties, I never learned to use a sewing machine until I sought it out myself; when I did, I felt that “coming home” feeling, of something that clicked and felt right.

I used to think I was born in the wrong century, that I should be ashamed that modern Betsy with a college degree would actually rather bake cookies and knit a sweater. Zimmerman’s book showed me that there were centuries of homemaking traditions alive and well today. After reading the book, I was inspired to learn to bake with yeast, a task that had previously given me fits as it was too scientific. I learned to bake a cake from scratch, and when a friend served himself a third helping of my homemade old-fashioned strawberry shortcake, I beamed with pride. I came home.

The best part of it all is that Zimmerman offers no blame, points no fingers, offers no judgment. She freely admits that her own house is messy, she rarely has enough time for everything, and her kids do eat Poptarts for breakfast. As she states, “The only way forward is for us as a society to relearn to value work in the home without falling into reactionary traps about ‘proper’ roles for men and women”. Domesticity isn’t about being perfect, nor is it about stifling one’s potential. “We owe it to ourselves to live our lives fully,” Zimmerman insists, “to reap the pleasures that present themselves to us as humans.” And the most basic and fulfilling pleasure is coming home.

I’m certainly no messiah – I haven’t got further than baking kolaczys and bagels with yeast, and I still have an affinity for the occasional frozen pizza. But when that little domestic voice inside me starts begging me to knit or sew or bake a cake, I can satisfy it with pride, knowing that I’m doing my little part to keep the ancient hearth fires alive. Hestia would be proud.

Book Club Friday Goes British!

Friday, April 29, 2011

End the week with bookish chat. I share what I'm reading, you share what you're reading. If you've written a bookish post yourself in the last week or so, slap the above book club button on it and link up below!

I couldn't resist using the Royal Wedding as an excuse to talk British children's literature. Make yourself cozy and please, won't you have a cup of tea?

But before we go any further . . . Kate Middleton's wedding dress? Yay or nay?

Big, BIG "YAY" in my opinion. Dare I say, it's a little ala Princess Margaret? Nice work Princess Catherine!

Now then . . .

I've been trying to figure out just when I got to be such an Anglophile and while I'm not exactly sure what happened, I'd like to blame books nonetheless.

Specifically, these guys . . .

Actually, now that I think of it, although Pooh and Piglet and the rest of the original A.A. Milne gang (aka not the Disney Pooh . . . what the heck was with Pooh's red shirt anyway?!) were a huge part of my childhood, I think I probably got my first dose of English literature from a Ms. Beatrix Potter. Because of my springtime birthday (aka, the stores were stocked with Easter stuff), I always seemed to receive a lot of bunny stuff for my birthdays and for all the stuffed bunnies and little bunny knick-knacks I once owned, the bunnies who had the most impact on me were Potter's little rabbits.

I grew out of bunnies, eventually, and moved onto other British children's literature, the kind without sweet little illustrations. I read my copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses until the book jacket wore out. I got lost in the worlds of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett and the Borrower books by Mary Norton.Who can resist tales about little people living under the floor boards?!

In my teenage years, I discovered Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. The books, with their complicated discussions about freewill, sexuality, and religion, have already proven themselves far too complex to work in movie form. They're best reread over and over again to get everything packed into these books. I think I could reread them every year if I didn't think there were a lot of other books out in the world that also deserved my attention.

I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith (who also wrote 101 Dalmations . . .wait, another culprit in making me a nutty Anglophile!), is another British young adult classic. The story is charming, sweet and very British. What more could you want?

I'm missing a ton of other British classics that entertained and help shape both my childhood and my decisions as an adult, but these are the books that came to mind as I pondered childhood favorites by British authors.

What were some of your favorite childhood books? Any favorite British authors? Happy Friday all!

Book Club Friday! Let's Talk Classics . . .

Friday, April 22, 2011

End the week with bookish chat. I share what I'm reading, you share what you're reading. If you've written a bookish post yourself in the last week or so, slap the above book club button on it and link up below!

I'm still working my way through Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. I'm still enjoying it, but I had to agree with my commenters from last that Italy was the best part of the book. Funny, when the talk turned away from eating, my interest started to wane. Can we please talk about pizza some more? No? Bummer . . . I'm just starting in on the Indonesia section and am finding it much more interesting than her time spent at the Ashram in India. Although there were plenty of important lessons embedded in the India section, I just didn't find it as gripping as other sections.

The other day, I finished up a short story and asked Andy to read it over, to make sure it made sense. "You know what you should read?" he asked when he'd finished reading my latest work. I shook my head. He went over to the bookshelf and pulled out Hemingway's Complete Short Stories. "This!" he said.

Now, I'm not a huge Hemingway fan. While I admire his work, it's never resonated with me. He just more a "boys will be boys" sort of writer and I find men, in general, like his writing way more than women do. Like, way, WAY more. Still, I believe there are lessons a writer can learn from anything they read, so I cracked open a random short story and started reading. I still don't love Hemingway. But I do admire him: for his style, for his storytelling, for his success.

All this talk of Hemingway got me thinking about classic books. Since my junior year of high school, I've been working through the College Board's list of 101 Great Books for the college bound. I'm officially in my fourth year out of college (how can that be true?) and still have 37 books left to read on the list. In that time frame, I have read a fair amount of classics not on the list, but still, 37 left to go? Yikes! For a long time, I was pretty focused on checking off books on the list, but lately I've found I need to mix up my reading a little more (some chick lit, some bestsellers, etc.) to keep both my reading and writing mind refreshed.

Among my classic favorites: anything Austen, Shakespeare, Henry James, Bronte, and du Maurier. Accessible, well told stories are truly timeless.

Do you read the classics? Why or why not? What are some of your favorites? If you don't read the classics what's your favorite book genre?

Happy Friday!

Book Club Friday . . . Eat, Pray, Love style

Friday, April 8, 2011

I'm about a third of the way through Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love, which is to say, she and I have just finished up a wonderful four months stuffing our faces with pasta in a whirlwind tour of Italy and are now just disembarking in India. If you missed the hoopla about Eat, Pray, Love which kind of "re-blipped" last year when the Julia Roberts flop of a movie edition (or so I've heard) came out, the basic premise is this: Elizabeth Gilbert, a successful, published short story author and magazine writer, decides to recover from an emotionally draining and long-drawn out divorce by spending a year traveling and living in Italy, India, and Indonesia. (Her publisher contracted Eat, Pray, Love before Gilbert even set foot on foreign ground . . . lucky.)

So here I am again, reading another wildly popular book I was initially hesitant to delve into. Honestly, I was even more hesitant about this one than I was with The Help because in Eat, Pray, Love's case, I'd actually heard a bit of negative comments about the book, mainly that it was far too self-indulgent. The fact that it drew comparisons to Under The Tuscan Sun (which I ~~detested~~ didn't care for) wasn't exactly winning it any points either . . . Still, my curiosity was piqued. So I retrieved Eat, Pray, Love from the "to-be-read" stack.

It's no secret that I've been in a funk lately. Eat, Pray, Love may be just what the doctor ordered. Even if I'm not traveling this April, I get to go off gallivanting with Gilbert to mixture of new and familiar places around the world. And obviously Gilbert's mess of a divorce is way worse than any personal dissonance I might be experiencing around or in myself lately and acknowledgments of that nature always cheers me a rather morbid way.

It reminds me of the power of literature to transport us to places far, far away from our everyday existence or stir up memories of places visited a while back.

Rome J-term 2006/2007

The book reads as a bit self-centered, I suppose. Then again, I'm not sure what a book billed broadly as "a journey of self-discovery" is supposed to be and as a blogger, I'm as guilty of overusing the "I" pronoun as the next bloke. Sure the plot grows a little dull when she goes on about failed love affairs (maybe those are only truly interesting to those who have lived through those particular relationships?) but she was such a large, charismatic cast of characters flitting through the scenes that I'll forgive her for maybe harping on about David just a little too long.

If for nothing else, I am falling in love with Eat, Pray, Love for how honestly she deals with the same worries I do, especially when it comes to the "baby, baby not" conflict which seizes all females with a (presumably) working uterus:

To create a family with a spouse is one of the most fundamental ways a person can find continuity and meaning in American (or any) society. I rediscover this truth every time I go to a big reunion of my mother's family in Minnesota and I see how everyone is held so reassuringly in their positions over the years. First you are a child, then you are a teenager, then you are a young married person, then you are a parent, then you are retired, then you are a grandparent -- at every stage you know who you are, you know what your duty is and you know where to sit at the reunion. But what if, either by choice or by reluctant necessity, you end up not participating in this comforting cycle of family and continuity? What if you step out? where do you sit at the reunion? How do you mark time's passage without the fear that you've just frittered away your time on earth without being relevant?

I can't wait to see what India and Indonesia will bring Elizabeth and I. Nothing like some good "armchair tourism" to help the funky days pass!

Book Club Friday! Take Two!

Friday, April 1, 2011

It's Book Club Friday again: the semi-regular feature Of Woods and Words feature where I discuss my most recent read and invite you to do the same in the comment section.

Today's read? Shelter by Sarah Stonich.

Published just last month (no foolin'!), Shelter is the memoir of Minnesotan author Sarah Stonich's adventure of buying land in northern Minnesota and slowly developing a vacation compound. I'm always interested in hearing another person's take on "my stomping grounds" and I was anxious to dive into short (208 page) read.

Stonich, who has read just about every published "up north" Minnesotan author there is, seems well aware of the risk of becoming overly romantic when writing about "living the dream" in northern Minnesota. The land she purchases is not far from the small town where her parental grandparents lived and raised their many children and as such, Stonich must walk the line of being not quite a local, not quite just another Twin Cidiot cabin owner, not only in the community by the cabin, but also through the pages of Shelter.

When she describes her cabin's location on "the butt end of the Canadian Shield,"I kind of wished for a little more romance than I got and I also wondered if anyone living outside of the upper Midwest would get what she was talking about. She makes it clear that this is no charmed summer cabin where funds are unlimited and the sun always shining. She writes of the various building project on the property, the largest of which is a 10 x 12 cabin, a far cry from the usual new cabin and so teeny I couldn't help but think "omigod, that sounds awful." No one should ever have to call a cousin of the Shack (homey as it was) their vacation home. In fact, by the end of the book, it's uncertain whether or not Stonich will hold on to her cabin.

I found myself longing/waiting for a detailed description of what everyday life at the cabin was like. Instead I heard about her internet dating exploits and her now-grown son's travels to Japan. No doubt, Stonich incorporated these details of her life in the Twin Cities to help drive home just what exactly the cabin was meant to provide "shelter" from, but to be honest, I often find memoir authors, bogged down by knowing all the little details of the "whole story," often fail to edit their back story down to barest, most poignant kernel of fact needed to infuse their prose with depth and meaning. Likewise, Stonich's chapter devoted to her immigrant grandparents is probably the book's most compelling chapter, yet seems slightly out of place in the midst of a narrative that otherwise discusses retaining walls, dovetail construction, and the logistics of punching in a road to the property.

Is it cabin construction memoir? A divorced mother memoir? A "my ancestors" memoir? It's all three in one memoir and sometimes the edges of the three themes doing more running into each other than melting down into one intertwined story.

Stonich has lovely things to say about the human need for wilderness, but I wonder if her thoughts are remarkable, or unique, enough to have people shuffling around their bookshelves to squeeze Shelter in next to their Sigurd Olson books. But if you're looking to escape to the north woods, at least in your heart, Stonich's take on the area is both heartfelt and down to earth and her cabin world is one worth wandering through.

Bottom line: A decent read if you're interested in the area, but probably not enough of a story to appeal to anyone without some innate knowledge of life in MN. Perhaps it wasn't meant to.

Do you like memoirs? What are you reading right now?

Happy Reading and Happy Friday!

(Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book, but this review is based on nothing other my true opinion.)

Book Club Friday

Friday, March 11, 2011

Happy Friday everyone! Today I'm introducing a semi-regular Friday feature (aka as frequently as I finish a book worth talking about) called Book Club Fridays! Grab a cup of tea or joe, get your reading glasses in place and get ready to talk books. We're leaving the woods behind and going all words today.

Today's selection? The Help, Kathryn Stockett's debut novel.

I tend to stray away from super popular books for two reasons. One, I'm afraid they won't live up to the hype. Two, there's nothing worse than being told "you have to read" something. I didn't get around to reading Harry Potter until Prisoner of Azkaban was released. Subsequently, it took the last person in my super informal real life book club finishing The Help and mentioning how much they enjoyed it for me to finally decide to borrow the oft-offered copy and give it a go.

Set in the early 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi, The Help follows the lives of three women -- Aibileen, Minny, and Miss Skeeter -- through the Civil Rights era turmoil. Aibileen and Minny are both black maids who work, often for less than minimum wage in white households, cooking meals, tending children, and cleaning house. Meanwhile Miss Skeeter, a recent college graduate with few marriage prospect, begins to question her place in the circle of privileged white women who hire "the help."

While initially turned off by the highly criticized use dialect for Aibileen's narrative, I forgot my "issues" with the dialect by about page 4. By page 50 I was completely engrossed in the world of Jackson (and as result have had Johnny Cash stuck in my head ever since). The novel shifts between the viewpoint of the three main characters, not an easy feat to pull off, and the narratives mesh together beautifully. The story, intertwined with history, humor, love, and heartache, reads like a true labor of love.

I get where people are coming from with criticism for the book; perhaps the book is an overly rosy, simplified look at this historic time. However, calling Stockett out for taking licenses with time seems petty when Stockett fully acknowledges these discrepancies in her afterword. A misplaced reference to Shake N' Bake is hardly enough to undermine the entire integrity of the novel. Stockett does succeed in bringing the uncomfortable reality of Jackson, MS in the 1960s into the living room of many people who would, like that famous Southern belle Scarlett O'Hara, prefer to "think about that tomorrow." Overly rosy and simplified perhaps, but through her fiction, Stockett reaches out to a much larger audience then a stuffy book of sociology about these same facts ever would.

When I was 13, my family took a "Civil Rights" tour of the South, traveling through Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The Help reinforced much of what I learned on that trip as well as opened my eyes to different, less publicized elements of the Civil Rights movement. Not only does The Help contain an important U.S. history lesson, I found it whetted my appetite for some more Southern literature. Queue the Harper Lee and Carson McCullers!

Bottomline: The Help is a satisfying, thought-provoking read that keeps the pages turning and reader engaged and is a true testimony to the power of story.

What book are you reading these days?

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