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

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

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

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 just finished reading a memoir that was a quick read but one that was really interesting. I love memoirs because they give you insight into someone else’s way of life but also tend to provide things that you can relate to in order to make the story feel like your own. That’s exactly the case with this memoir which is technically about growing up in the grips of a spiritual cult but ultimately about learning how to figure out who you are outside of the experiences you had growing up.

The woman who wrote the book, Jayanti Tamm, was born into Sri Chinmoy’s spiritual cult. Because procreating was forbidden but she was born anyway, he determined that she was brought into this world as his Chosen One. Growing up, she held a special place in the cult that placed a barrier between her and the rest of the world. She didn’t ask her parents or teachers for advice or material things; she had to ask her Guru.

As you can imagine, she eventually found herself disillusioned with the cult beliefs that she had been brought up to believe. Most of the memoir is about the experience of growing up in the cult and the transition from being an unquestioning child follower to a confused, unsure, questioning young adult.

Towards the end of the memoir, Tamm leaves the cult for a time and ultimately is kicked out of it. What we see here is the inner turmoil that one goes through when leaving behind the ways of childhood. Of course, most of us have not grown up in situations so extreme as cult life. Nevertheless, many struggle in smaller ways to reconcile their adult beliefs with what they were taught as children. That’s how this book manages to be relatable to us even though it’s specifically about cult life.

Interesting read!

Tags: books, cartwheels in a sari, cult, diary of a smart chick, jayanti tamm, memoir, reading

I try to read books that cover a diverse range of different topics and styles. Mostly I choose books that are relevant to the topics that I am currently most interested in or most affected by. However, sometimes I find myself picking up books that are not related to anything that I’m doing or dealing with it right now. And sometimes those end up being the most important touching books that I read. That seems to be the case with a book I just read called Comfort: A Journey Through Grief.

This is a short book that can be a quick read if you want it to be. It’s the true first-person account of a woman who lost her five year old daughter to a sudden illness. It is about what it was like to live through the three years following her daughter’s tragic death and to come out on the other side of that, wounded and forever changed but still alive and ready to live again. It’s a tough read in the sense that it is highly emotional but it’s an easy read in the sense that it unites the writer and reader through common human emotions.

There are many things that I love about this little book but I think what grabbed my attention most of all was the writing style that was implemented in it. The author uses primarily short sentences and also uses a lot of repetition of the same facts. Sometimes these facts are repeated in the same way and sometimes they are a little bit different. The combination of repetition and short sentence structure ends up being really powerful

One of the things that happens when we lose someone is that our lives become limited to the bare minimum of things that we must get done to survive. We don’t do any extras; we barely even shower or eat. The short sentence structure of the book reflects this minimalization our lives go through during this time. And something else that happens is that we go over and over events in our minds. Sometimes we replay them word for word, again and again, trying to gain some meaning from them. Sometimes we see them through a new lens, repeating them in our minds with a new level of understanding or a new perspective on what happened. The author doesn’t actually come right out and say that these are the things that she is going through but the structure of her story reveals this side of grief.

I am not currently dealing with a major loss. I am not currently struggling with the family issues that arise when such a loss occurs. However I was still touched by this book. I can only imagine how powerful it would be for someone who was going through a tough time. This one is highly recommended!

Tags: ann hood, book recommendation, book review, books, comfort, grief books, reading

My review of The Dangerous Passion (a terrific book about the biology of jealousy) was included in a really awesome Book Review blog carnival. I’ve never seen a blog carnival that was done so well. Instead of mere links, it shows you images of the book and the author with a short snippet of the review. Very well done. There were two dozen books featured in the carnival so there are a lot of great recommendations. Check it out!

Tags: blog carnival, book review, books

I have just finished reading a book called Love Sick: One Woman’s Journey through Sexual Addiction which was written by Sue William Silverman. It is the first person story told as a day-by-day account of her four weeks spent as an inpatient in a sex addiction recovery treatment program. Through each day, she reflects upon the personal history that brought her to this place.

It’s an interesting memoir. Interesting is not the right word. Gripping is a better description of it.

Silverman shares the story of what it’s like to grow up in an abusive home that turns you into a victim of your own desires. She shares the experience of being a sex addict and what it did to her marriage. She shares the tales that pique the interest of the voyeuristic side of the reader.

More importantly, however, Silverman shares what it is like to be going through treatment for addiction. She shares her relapses and her fears about not getting better and her thoughts and feelings about being a person who needs to be treated for this particular problem. It gives insight into the experience of all addiction, not just sex addiction.

Powerful memoir!

Tags: book review, books, love addiction, love sick, reading, sex addiction

I recently picked up an interetsing non-fiction book from the library. It’s called The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is As Necessary As Love and Sex. As you can tell from title, it explores the idea that we have to have jealousy in our human lives. This is unique from most views on jealousy since the general thought on the topic is that jealousy is a bad thing and we need to expunge it from our personalities.

The book presents theories as to why jealousy exists. These theories are mostly rooted in the science of evolution. There have been reasons over time that it made sense to be jealous in order to protect our species. A very abbreviated version of the general theory of the book is that jealousy in the past may have prevented or deterred infidelity which increased the likelihood of successful mating and therefore the reproduction of the species.

The book points to numerous examples of this over time and suggests that this jealousy is ingrained into us at a biological / evolutionary level. It’s an interesting idea. The book takes us through a scientific exploration of what jealousy is, how it manifests itself today and what conclusions we can draw about this emotion. And it reveals the idea that jealousy does have an important place in our emotional lives even though we sometimes deny its validity.

The book can get very academic at times. It cites a lot of studies and statistics which I admittedly sometimes skimmed over because they were excessive. However, it also provides some really interesting information from a scientific perspective. It also provides neat facts about jealousy in different cultures. (I laughed aloud at the description of how Samoan women have been known to approach a woman who has had an affair with her husband and to bite her on the nose to reduce her attractiveness.) Worth taking a gander at if you’re interested in human emotion and relationships.

Tags: book recommendatino, book review, books, jealousy book, kathryn vercillo, reading