I’ve read a few books lately that I really liked. And I’ve started a few others that I couldn’t get into at all.

Books I’ve Liked Lately

The Man in the Gray Flannel Skirt

I absolutely loved this memoir by Jon-Jon Goulian. He’s an androgynous male who writes about the experience of figuring out what that meant for him and adjusting to the larger world around himself in the face of it. Although at first glance it might seem like a memoir with a limited niche (how many people truly struggle with sincere androgyny, after all?) it’s actually got a wide appeal in my opinion because ultimately what it’s about is figuring out how to learn who you are and how to fit into the world around you. That’s something that we all have to figure out. The author’s incisive, sometimes self-deprecating, wit actually had me laughing aloud which I can’t say I do often when reading a book at home alone. Loved it.

Luna by Julie Anne Peters

This is another story about finding and defining yourself but this one is a young adult novel. I’m not even really sure why I picked it up but I ended up kind of liking it. It’s about a transgender teenage boy during the stage when he’s beginning to dress as a woman. I think what made me like it, though, is that it’s told from the perspective of his younger sister who is the only one at first to know the boy’s secret. This unique perspective made an otherwise “whatever” book a lot more interesting to me.

Divergent by Veronica Roth

This is another young adult book and to be honest the only reason I picked it up is because I needed something to read while I was at the airport and the selection at the newsstand in my terminal in LA was really limited. I ended up liking it, though. It’s about an era in which all of society is divided into five factions that each values a certain virtue (like amity or candor) and at the age of sixteen the members need to pick the faction that they want to be a part of. It’s the story of one main character who makes that choice. So I guess I’m on a theme these days of reading these “how do I define myself?” books!

I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World

This is a collection of fictional monologues about the fiery passion and difficult lives of teenage girls. It touches on topics both small and large. I didn’t like every single part of it. And it’s something that I think would be a lot more fun to see performed on a stage than read in a book. That said, I liked the gist of it and enjoyed reading pieces of it here and there. It was tough being a teenage girl and this book reminded me to celebrate and honor that toughness.

Books I Couldn’t Get Into

Summer Friends by Holly Chamberlin

I picked up this book because I wanted a light summery novel to read on the plane to LA. I actually did read the entire thing so I can’t say I totally didn’t get into it. But I’m pretty indifferent to it. It’s about two friends who were close in high school and then lost touch for twenty years and now they’re becoming friends again. It’s about their journeys through lives, the differences in the choices they made, etc. It’s not a bad book just not exceptional for me.

Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War by Hal Vaughan

This is the story of Coco Chanel and I really, really want to read it because it covers a “secret” period of Chanel’s during the WWII era. It sounds intriguing. However, I can’t seem to get more than a few pages into it before I get bored. It’s too heavy-handed or dense or something. I may try again. We’ll see.

A Stolen Life: A Memoir by Jaycee Dugard

This is the true story of someone who underwent the terrible experience of being kidnapped and then held captive for eighteen years. She was treated horrible, had two children in captivity … it’s a powerful story. And I wanted to learn more about it but I just couldn’t get into the writing. I seem to be really restless with reading lately and if something doesn’t capture me immediately then I move on to something else. I think I’d rather see a documentary on this one than read the book.

Worth Fighting For: Love, Loss, and Moving Forward

This is a book by the wife of Patrick Swayze that shares what it was like to spend twenty months with him undergoing intense cancer treatment and passing away. I just tried starting it this morning and I couldn’t get into it. It actually seems like a good book but for some reason I just can’t get the cheesy Dirty Dancing Swayze out of my head and it makes me not like the story that much. I think I’ll try again before returning it to the library, though, because the bias seems weird and sill.

So, that’s what I’m reading. What’s on your nightstand?

Tags: books, reading

Ebook publisher Hyperink.com asked: What is the best book you read in the last year? Here’s my answer …

Although I’ve read quite a few books in the past year, there is only one that comes to mind when I’m asked my favorite: Room: A Novel by Emma Donahue. Room is a novel about a child born to a woman who was kidnapped and has been trapped in a room since before the child was born. The thought-provoking, heart-wrenching tale is told from the child’s perspective.

Room is impressive because it takes on the task of telling a story from a highly unusual perspective. It is difficult to write a book in the voice of a five year old that will appeal to adults and yet Donahue does this seamlessly. She imagines what the world would seem like if you grew up only in a single room with no outside influence and were then thrust into the larger world. It’s a terrifying prospect that makes for an amazing story about both the internal and external worlds of a child in a rare situation.

Tags: best books, books, emma donahue, fiction, room

I’ve finally started digging into my first book of the year … a terrific book called Sheepish: Two Women, Fifty Sheep and Enough Wool to Save the Planet. More on the book to come but I wanted to share a quote from it that’s attributed to an anonymous source:

“We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.”

Tags: quote, Relationships, weird

Garden at Il Brolino Estate designed by Yoch and Council

One of the books that I got as part of the first set of books for my 3 digit reading project was The Gardens of California: Four Centuries of Design from Mission to Modern. Prior to reading this book I didn’t know anything at all about garden design and now I feel like I have a tiny understanding of what has influenced landscape design in California. This book has also led me to be curious about a new-to-me couple, Florence Yoch and Lucile Council.

Florence Yoch studied garden design, getting a degree in landscape design at a time when this was definitely a male-dominated industry. She opened her own design business and was joined three years later by Lucile Council. The two maintained a presumably-monogamous lesbian relationship from 1921 through 1964 while simultaneously maintaining a creative partnership that resulted in more than 250 different designs. Wow!

I haven’t found a lot written about this couple. I checked my library’s database and there doesn’t seem to be a book written about them although there certainly seems like there ought to be. Most of what I’ve been able to find online is specifically about the design work of Florence Yoch. She was a set designer on numerous movies including Gone with the Wind. And she was the designer of countless California estate gardens. Council is typically mentioned as a footnote although it sounds like she was a huge contributing partner to Yoch’s life and designs. The mystery makes me even more curious!

Sounds like there’s more research to be done here.

Tags: books, florence yoch, garden design, lucile council

To my Twitter friends that know me as CrochetBlogger from Crochet Concupiscence … this is my other blog. This project isn’t specifically crochet but is intended to serve as inspiration for crochet, for writing, for life …

I have been struggling this week, lacking inspiration and motivation, getting ideas and then feeling too tired to implement them. I’m not quite sure what is causing it. Maybe it’s because my sister was here for a great visit and then she left and now I’m a little lonely. Maybe it’s because I’m a third of the way through the draft of a book and that’s when I tend to hit a slump and every word becomes a struggle. Maybe it’s the weather or the season or the time of year … I’m not sure. But what I do know is that the usual tricks aren’t working and I am in dire need of a project that can re-inspire me and re-invigorate me and re-focus my attention. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned over the years it’s that if my mind is going crazy reeling around on itself in unhappiness then what it needs is to be occupied with something.

I do have projects going on (like that book, of course) but I needed something new today, something immediate and different and yet easily do-able. Something that would get me out of the house but not require me to spend a lot of money or energy. So I decided to start a project I’d been planning on starting for awhile – the task of reading new books on topics that I normally ignore. I always get the same types of books (memoirs by women going through some type of major life experience, non-fiction about writing and crochet, selective fiction). While this is wonderful, it’s not really broadening my horizons or challenging my mind or inspiring my life to read the same types of things again and again. I need a fresh spark.

So I headed to Twitter and asked my awesome Twitter friends to Tweet me some random 3-digit numbers. Then I took a list of the ten numbers I’d received and headed to the library. The idea was to head to the Dewey decimal numbers with those numbers I got from Twitter and get whatever books I found with those numbers on them, no discriminating. This served the immediate purpose of getting me out of the house and focused on a little adventure to see what I would find at the library. And it serves a longer-term purpose of providing me with new reading and research material to help inspire new things in my thoughts and my life.

Here’s what I came home with:

1. A book on The Buffalo Soldier Regiment. Thanks @Pomquat for Dewey decimal number 356!
2. History of Japanese Community Party. Thanks to @nerdJERK for #329.
3. Reunion: The Girls We Used to Be, the Women We Became. This one is about the women of Brearley School class of 1968 and how they were affected by being born in the 50′s but going through the 60′s/70′s cultural revolution. Thanks @offgridlife for Dewey decimal number 356!
4. The Gardens of California. Thanks @Lacy61 for #712.
5. Mind by John R. Searle. Relates to philosophy. Thanks @crochetmomma3 for #128.
6. Vindication of Love.: Reclaiming Romance in the 21st Century. About how society has a cynical, jaded perspective and how to bring romance back to our view of the world. Also #128 from @crochetmomma3.
7. Lives of the English Poets. Thanks @jamietoohey for #928.
8. Stargazing with a Telescope as well as Human Vision and the Night Sky. Thanks @CrochetAllDay for number 522.
9. A Smithsonian book all about shells as well as a book called Octopus and Squid. Thanks @adanishheart for #594.

Tags: books, reading, reading inspiration, reading project

The blog Inspiration Morning posted the most lovely thought today and I just really wanted to share it:

“It is our desire that you become one who is happy with that which you are and with that which you have—while at the same time being eager for more. That is the optimal creative vantage point: To stand on the brink of what is coming, feeling eager, optimistic anticipation—with no feelings of impatience, doubt, or unworthiness hindering the receiving of it—that is the Science of Deliberate Creation at its best.”
~ Esther & Jerry Hicks from Ask and It Is Given

They always have inspiring thoughts so I’d encourage you to check out their blog and/or follow them on Twitter @InspirationDay.

Tags: inspiration

Not too long ago I mentioned a site here on the blog called Book Lovers Never Go To Bed Alone. It’s a photo-rich site of images showing books in various locations. Now I’ve come across another site very similar to this one that I’ll have to add to my RSS feed.

The site I’m loving is very simply called Bookshelf Porn. As the name suggests, it’s a site for people who adore looking at books. It shows images of books on shelves in all kinds of interesting ways. The image above, reposted from the site, is one of my favorites – open a closet door and find stacks and stacks of books!

I’m not sure quite what it is that draws me to these sites. They’re just pretty pictures and take only a moment to look at. I guess it’s that appeal of seeing books out there. You want to know what other people are reading. You want to see if anything in the stack is something that you’ve read before. You want to see what books catch your eye.

Or I do anyway.

Do you know of any other book sites like these?

Tags: book lovers never go to bed alone, books, bookshelf porn, reading

Just a quick share here to say that I only recently discovered the blog Book Lovers Never Go To Bed Alone and I’m adoring it. It’s just a photo blog where each picture is worth a thousand words. The photos are of books on display whether they’re stacked in a doorway or covering the walls of an entire room.

Any reader knows that you can’t see a stack of books like these without wanting to know which books they are. The photos make you curious. They make you long to read. They make you dream of luxurious days curled up with more than one book in hand.

Or am I the only smart chick who feels that way looking at this blog?!

Tags: book lovers never go to bed alone, books as design, smart chick

The Last Goodnights: Assisting My Parents with Their Suicides is an intense book that is definitely worth a read. It tells the true story of a man who helped both of his aging parents to commit suicide separately. It provides a strong argument for euthanasia, an argument worth checking out regardless of what your personal opinion is on the topic because it does give such a thought-out and personal view of the issue. It also provides insight into the degeneration of the mind as it ages and the difficulties that individuals face as they and their loved ones go through this all-too-common ordeal.

The parents of the book’s author both decided when they were younger that they would like to be in control of their own deaths when they got old. They didn’t want to suffer long and drawn out misery due to age. The father was diagnosed with a horrible form of cancer and didn’t have very long to live. He asked his adult son to assist him in committing suicide which they did together at home using the medications he’d been prescribed by his doctors. The process was very short because of the situation.

In contrast, the man’s mother was suffering from Alzheimer’s. She knew that she was degenerating, forgetting things and losing control over both mind and body. She wanted to hang on as long as possible but to never get to the point where she was living beyond what she decided she wanted to live. She also asked for her son’s help. This was a much longer process than the situation with the father and the telling of it gives terrific insight into the issue of Alzheimer’s and what people go through when this happens in their families.

The book mostly focuses on the individual’s right to what the author calls Self De-Termination and the situation surrounding the decline related to Alzheimer’s. However, it does also provide food for thought regarding this man’s own personal choices and struggle to assist his parents and the little-known fact that euthanasia may be placing pressure on adult children since it’s not allowed to be done by doctors. I’m not saying euthanasia is right or wrong; that’s not the point. The point is that the book provides a very interesting perspective.

It’s an emotionally tough read but definitely a fascinating one!

Tags: book review, books, euthanasia, john west author, last goodnights

I recently read a book that I ended up really liking called Shattered Dreams: My Life as a Polygamist’s Wife. As the name suggests, this is a memoir written by a woman who was the wife of a polygamist. She had grown up in a polygamist family although her mother had decided that this life was not for her and left it when the girl was young. Despite her mother’s warnings, she went into polygamy herself. She stayed in it for over two decades, having about a dozen children before her husband died. She was mostly miserable the whole time. Her second marriage was in a monogamous relationship. This book is her story.

The crux of the tale is the age old story of jealousy. Regardless of the fact that this woman chose polygamy … regardless of the fact that she’d grown up in it … regardless of the fact that she was the second wife and never had time in a monogamous relationship with her husband … she was jealous. She was jealous all the way through his marriage to more than seven wives. She never stopped being jealous about not having his undivided attention. She never stopped needing more physical love than she got. And I think it’s interesting and brave to hear this woman admit that this is what polygamy is like.

I have to confess that I’m a fan of the TV show Big Love and that I couldn’t help drawing comparisons between the show and the book as I read the latter. There are differences of course. Big Love is a modern family while this tale dates back fifty years. Big Love is dramatized while this story is just passionate. Big Love is set in the suburbs while this woman’s family was mostly in rural Latin America. But the parallels far outweigh the differences. In fact, I was surprised to see just how accurate Big Love is in many ways in terms of telling the story of what it’s like to live a polygamous life.

Definitely an interesting read!

Tags: polygamist story, polygamy memoir, shattered dreams