Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Books! Winter Reading Edition
8:48 PM | 
Posted by
Wide Lawns |
Oh man, I've been slacking on my book reviews for you guys! I've read some great ones lately and I'm dying to talk about them. Y'all know how much I love reading and discussing literature and I haven't done it in ages, so I miss it.
Last month I wrote a post for elephantjournal.com about 20 Amazing Books To Read This Winter, which you can check out if you're interested. I'm currently working on a new article for them about my all time favorite love stories so look for that at the beginning of February. I'll post it on my Facebook and Twitter when it's published.
So in the meantime, I have read some incredible books lately, beginning with the much-awaited, new novel from Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the famous Eat, Pray, Love. The memoir was fine. I mean, I had my personal issues with it in parts, but I just think that Elizabeth Gilbert is a stronger novelist. I mean for real. She is a master. Her fiction is truly, astonishingly flawless and her new novel The Signature of All Things: A Novel
, was absolutely magical. I didn't want it to end because I was so caught up in the world of the characters, which was so exquisitely, fully imagined and drawn for the reader. Reading this book made me happy. The hardest thing to do though, is to explain the plot without making it sound dull. The plot makes it sound like the book is an awful slog: A plain, spinster, daughter of the wealthiest man in colonial Philadelphia, studies plants, moss in particular, for a good 80 or so years. But I swear, it's so much more than that. There's adventure, lots of it, sailing expeditions all over the world. There are themes about slavery and abolition, feminism, wealth and education and social class. The book is steamy and sexy and raw. It's heartbreaking and bittersweet. There is magic and intrigue and oh my God, just read it, please. I LOVED THIS BOOK. But that wasn't obvious was it?After that I read a couple of things that I wasn't all that into and which were rather disappointing so let's not think about them, and then I decided I wanted some very light reading so I found this gentle little memoir called, Mud Season: How One Woman's Dream of Moving to Vermont, Raising Children, Chickens and Sheep, and Running the Old Country Store Pretty Much Led to One Calamity After Another
by Ellen Stimson, about a family who very idealistically picks up and moves to the Vermont countryside, a place very near and dear to my own heart. I liked this book because I can so imagine myself doing the exact same thing with the exact, disastrous results. It was a funny, endearing read - the sort of book you can quickly pick up to put yourself in a better mood. Made me think of my fond memories of my own times in Vermont and reignited my Baby Boom fantasies of moving there and making applesauce.Now for ages, I've had a fascination with the Amish, having grown up around a lot of them. Where I'm from in Delaware you can't go a day without seeing a buggy going down the highway and you'll see the Amish in the grocery store all the time. I read Ira Wagler's Growing Up Amish about his life in an Old Order Amish community. I found it fascinating and I learned a tremendous amount about the Amish from this book. Wagler eventually left the Amish life and after reading about the religion I can kind of see why. I think a lot of us "English" folk maybe idealize the Amish or think that they have some special, old world knowledge about how to live, but you know what? They don't. They're just as big of assholes as the rest of us. Clueless, petty, floundering in their own human nature just like everyone else.
Right now I'm waist-deep in the new Oprah pick by Sue Monk Kidd and holy moly, it's good. The Invention of Wings: With Notes (Oprah's Book Club 2.0)
is based on the true story of Sarah Grimke and the slave Hetty, or Handful. Grimke was "given" Handful as a gift on her eleventh birthday and initially refused and tried to free her slave. Her angry parents wouldn't have it, of course and the two were reluctantly bound thereafter. The novel switches perspectives back and forth between Handful and Sarah and their voices are distinct and very believable. I am currently, passionately engrossed in this story and loving it as much as the Elizabeth Gilbert book. I'm not sure how much of it is historically accurate, but from what I've looked up, a lot of it is pretty darn close to truth. In any case, the novel is beautifully, beautifully rendered from actual historic events. The story is gripping, the characters are very complicated and wonderfully human and honestly, I simply love the language and "flow" of this novel. What can I say? Oprah and I have the same taste and I am all about the stories of southern women. I'll be sad when I finish this one.Next up? Nancy Horan's novel Under the Wide and Starry Sky: A Novel
, also historical fiction based on real people and a real life love affair. I heard about the book on NPR and was intrigued by the story, which sounds fascinating and romantic and the perfect read for the upcoming Valentine's Day. I'm feeling like a good love story here lately and this seems passionate yet unconventional enough of one to hook me. The Amazon description makes me want to read it. "At the age of thirty-five, Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne has left her philandering husband in San Francisco to set sail for Belgium—with her three children and nanny in tow—to study art. It is a chance for this adventurous woman to start over, to make a better life for all of them, and to pursue her own desires. Not long after her arrival, however, tragedy strikes, and Fanny and her children repair to a quiet artists’ colony in France where she can recuperate. Emerging from a deep sorrow, she meets a lively Scot, Robert Louis Stevenson, ten years her junior, who falls instantly in love with the earthy, independent, and opinionated “belle Americaine.”
What do you all think? What's everyone been reading lately and what can you recommend?
Monday, January 27, 2014
Diary of a Juice Fast
Saturday night, after eating a shit-load of pasta all weekend, I had this brilliant idea that I was going to go on a juice fast.
I know at least twenty people who are juice fasting now. It is, apparently, the thing to do right now. Interestingly enough, I've also noted that most of the juice fasters I know are also the wealthiest people I know, because the world makes absolutely no logical sense whatsoever. Poor people are fat. Rich people are skinny and rich women love to starve themselves and on top of that, juice fasting is expensive, so it actually costs a lot not to eat anything. How is this even possible?
Most of the juice fasters I know either go to special places to buy eleven dollar bottles of cold pressed, fresh juice (SMALL eleven dollar bottles might I add) or they make them themselves with their thousand dollar juicers and their seventy-five dollars worth of biodynamically grown produce from Whole Foods.
Not me. I'm a slum juicer.
I found a juicer in my parents' garage, which is missing a few parts but works, and I buy whatever damn fruits and vegetables I can afford at the regular grocery store. I figure it's better than nothing. My juice tastes good. I feel fine. The world isn't going to end if the motor heats up my juice a couple degrees. I'm not particularly concerned about the murder of a few innocent enzymes and for the record, I think most of that stuff is bullshit anyway.
Most days, I juice. I also eat. Sunday, I decided, I was just going to juice.
Here is a diary of my juice fast.
Saturday Night
Me - I'm going to go on a juice fast! Juice, y'all. I am going to consume nothing but juice for 24 hours, after which I will be skinny and gorgeous and able to do Standing Bow in yoga and I will take over the world because I did nothing but drink juice for an entire day, woooooooo!!!
(I think I was on the verge of some kind of juice-induced mania.)
Sunday Morning
8am - I spend 45 minutes making several jars of juice to last me for the rest of the day. One of them tastes good and the other looks like I dredged it out of a stagnant irrigation pond. Kale was involved.
9:30am - My friend arrives with bagels and cream cheese and I eat a half a bagel to be polite, because jeez, of course, and they were cinnamon raisin. But I mean, you have to eat breakfast. You are SUPPOSED to eat breakfast.
At this point, early on in the game, I realize that I can justify eating in exactly the same way that an alcoholic can justify drinking.
11:00am - I finish another cup of the stagnant pond water. My friend looks at me with pity and comments that it smells funny. I remark that it will probably make me poop a lot.
1:00 - more juice. I begin to get a splitting headache. I nap until 3 and get up and have more juice and get an even worse headache.
3:00 - I decide that coffee is actually a form of juice, technically. Right? It really is. It's coffee bean juice. So I have coffee and Advil and lie back down and write some more and realize that I have turned into full on Cornholio now because the juice has somehow sensitized me to the caffeine.
7:00 - I'm fucking starving, dammit.
7:30 - My husband decides to make the most delicious looking pot of pasta I have ever seen in my entire life. It involves tomato cream sauce. There is butter. Angels are singing over it. I need it.
7:35 - I eat a bowl of the pasta and it is better than I imagined. But I drink the rest of the pond water with it, which has to count for something. I swear, it HAS to.
7:45 - I need another bowl of that pasta.
7:55 - Screw the juice fast. We have some chocolate in the cabinet.
And so ends my first and only attempt at juice fasting. I have no willpower at all.
I mean, come on. Is it really natural to eat nothing but juice all day? That can't be healthy.
I know at least twenty people who are juice fasting now. It is, apparently, the thing to do right now. Interestingly enough, I've also noted that most of the juice fasters I know are also the wealthiest people I know, because the world makes absolutely no logical sense whatsoever. Poor people are fat. Rich people are skinny and rich women love to starve themselves and on top of that, juice fasting is expensive, so it actually costs a lot not to eat anything. How is this even possible?
Most of the juice fasters I know either go to special places to buy eleven dollar bottles of cold pressed, fresh juice (SMALL eleven dollar bottles might I add) or they make them themselves with their thousand dollar juicers and their seventy-five dollars worth of biodynamically grown produce from Whole Foods.
Not me. I'm a slum juicer.
I found a juicer in my parents' garage, which is missing a few parts but works, and I buy whatever damn fruits and vegetables I can afford at the regular grocery store. I figure it's better than nothing. My juice tastes good. I feel fine. The world isn't going to end if the motor heats up my juice a couple degrees. I'm not particularly concerned about the murder of a few innocent enzymes and for the record, I think most of that stuff is bullshit anyway.
Most days, I juice. I also eat. Sunday, I decided, I was just going to juice.
Here is a diary of my juice fast.
Saturday Night
Me - I'm going to go on a juice fast! Juice, y'all. I am going to consume nothing but juice for 24 hours, after which I will be skinny and gorgeous and able to do Standing Bow in yoga and I will take over the world because I did nothing but drink juice for an entire day, woooooooo!!!
(I think I was on the verge of some kind of juice-induced mania.)
Sunday Morning
8am - I spend 45 minutes making several jars of juice to last me for the rest of the day. One of them tastes good and the other looks like I dredged it out of a stagnant irrigation pond. Kale was involved.
9:30am - My friend arrives with bagels and cream cheese and I eat a half a bagel to be polite, because jeez, of course, and they were cinnamon raisin. But I mean, you have to eat breakfast. You are SUPPOSED to eat breakfast.
At this point, early on in the game, I realize that I can justify eating in exactly the same way that an alcoholic can justify drinking.
11:00am - I finish another cup of the stagnant pond water. My friend looks at me with pity and comments that it smells funny. I remark that it will probably make me poop a lot.
1:00 - more juice. I begin to get a splitting headache. I nap until 3 and get up and have more juice and get an even worse headache.
3:00 - I decide that coffee is actually a form of juice, technically. Right? It really is. It's coffee bean juice. So I have coffee and Advil and lie back down and write some more and realize that I have turned into full on Cornholio now because the juice has somehow sensitized me to the caffeine.
7:00 - I'm fucking starving, dammit.
7:30 - My husband decides to make the most delicious looking pot of pasta I have ever seen in my entire life. It involves tomato cream sauce. There is butter. Angels are singing over it. I need it.
7:35 - I eat a bowl of the pasta and it is better than I imagined. But I drink the rest of the pond water with it, which has to count for something. I swear, it HAS to.
7:45 - I need another bowl of that pasta.
7:55 - Screw the juice fast. We have some chocolate in the cabinet.
And so ends my first and only attempt at juice fasting. I have no willpower at all.
I mean, come on. Is it really natural to eat nothing but juice all day? That can't be healthy.
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Yes, I'm Alive
Real quick, yes I'm alive and I'm here. I did, in fact, survive the holidays. Miraculously.
I've been busy writing for a bunch of paying jobs! Yay!
Check out my articles at elephantjournal.com. If you like them and think they'd help people you know, please help support my work by sharing.
I've also been working hard on my next book Sun Shower. I'm loving it and it's a lot more lighthearted and funnier than Amateur Night at the Bubblegum Kittikat. I think you all are going to love it. I really do. It's been fun writing it.
Also, I now have a three year old and wow. Damn. Terrible Twos? Nothing compared to this. Parenting a strong willed child when you are a normally passive person is very hard.
Last, but not least, the next few weeks are going to be a very difficult time for my family as we await some hard news. I'm trying to be strong and brave and positive in the face of some really scary stuff, but I need a lot of help and support, so please say a prayer for me and my family as we go through this. It's tough and sometimes the only way I can get through it is by telling myself that this shit is going to make a best-selling memoir when it's all over. But man, it's hard right now. Pray for me to be strong and optimistic. Pray for a good outcome. Send me good energy. I really need it, guys.
I've been busy writing for a bunch of paying jobs! Yay!
Check out my articles at elephantjournal.com. If you like them and think they'd help people you know, please help support my work by sharing.
I've also been working hard on my next book Sun Shower. I'm loving it and it's a lot more lighthearted and funnier than Amateur Night at the Bubblegum Kittikat. I think you all are going to love it. I really do. It's been fun writing it.
Also, I now have a three year old and wow. Damn. Terrible Twos? Nothing compared to this. Parenting a strong willed child when you are a normally passive person is very hard.
Last, but not least, the next few weeks are going to be a very difficult time for my family as we await some hard news. I'm trying to be strong and brave and positive in the face of some really scary stuff, but I need a lot of help and support, so please say a prayer for me and my family as we go through this. It's tough and sometimes the only way I can get through it is by telling myself that this shit is going to make a best-selling memoir when it's all over. But man, it's hard right now. Pray for me to be strong and optimistic. Pray for a good outcome. Send me good energy. I really need it, guys.
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