Review: The Last Ballad

The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a fascinating look into the history of a place I knew well a few years ago. I lived in Gastonia for a few years, and you can't live there without learning something of the Loray Mill. But, once again, Cash takes something that seems cut and dried and makes it into a story, complete with people both moral and flawed.

Ella May Wiggins hadn't planned to be a poster child for anyone or anything. It was all she could do feed her kids on the $9 per 6 day work week she made at a textile mill in 1920's Gaston County, NC. But when members of a labor union convince her that they can force the mill owners to provide better working conditions, she's drawn into a situation that quickly gets out of control. Everyone has their own interests and their own beliefs about what's right, but Ella had no idea that hers might light the initial spark in a fire for social justice.

Ella was a real person, and the Loray Mill strike was a true turning point in the history of the labor movement. I had no idea that the movement was thought to be so closely associated with communism and a desire to destroy the success experienced in the south after WWI. By describing Ella's contribution in a novel, Cash has made the event more personal than it was even when I lived in the town in which it happened 90 years ago. The answers aren't as easy as it might seem. Cash offers perspectives from a variety of the people surrounding Ella to demonstrate that even what seems obvious isn't always simple.

This is not a story of worker's rights, or women's rights, or racial or southern rights, but basic human rights.

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Review: Razor Girl

Razor Girl by Carl Hiaasen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love Hiaasen , but this might be my favorite in a while. He's in tip top shape, funny as ever. Characters seem totally unrealistic at first until you think about it and realize they're THIS close to actually existing somewhere. Clearly that would be Florida. My favorite line:
Buck stared incredulously. "This is the first time you ever fired a gun? And you live in Florida?
If you want, you can read it at a deep level in which Hiaasen addresses environmental and political issues. A subplot involving huge Gambian rats showing up all over the Florida keys comments on animals in their natural habitats and what happens whey they are removed from said home sweet homes. Or you could just fall over laughing at the image of these two huge rats letting themselves out of their cage and making themselves at home in Yancey's house. Either way, Hiaasen has another hit. You want so badly to think all these scenarios (a girl who runs a scam in which she bumps into cars and claims she caused the accident because she was busy shaving her bikini line while driving?) couldn't possibly happen in real life, but they're all just a little too close to the truth to not keep reading. Can any one say "get off your cell phone and drive?!"

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Review: Lily and the Octopus

Lily and the Octopus by Steven Rowley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

4.5. Anyone who knows me knows that, when I read a book, you can kill off any person you want, but touch an animal, and I'm putting the book down. So when I first starting hearing about this, I said, "Oh, I can't do that. I'll cry through the whole thing." The author himself responded in a tweet, "It's okay. I promise. You'll love it." And eventually, I trusted, held my breath, bit my lip, pet my cats, downloaded the audio...and fell in love. The tone of the whole thing is funny and sweet and is a bit of a love letter to all of us out there owned by pets. I mean, seriously folks, the dog talks. And I love that the narrator, the person who loves Lily to the point where she is truly the love of his life, is a man, only one of the stereotypes being busted in this story. Let's not forget that the audio is narrated by the marvelous Michael Urie, who could not have been more perfect as a reader. Yes, there were tears--there's an emotional ride going on here--but there was a smile behind them. I'm only sorry I waited so long to read it.

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Review: A Season of Daring Greatly

A Season of Daring Greatly by Ellen Emerson White
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I first have to explain that I'm a long time Ellen Emerson White fan. Some of my favorite books ever are the first novels she wrote when I was a teenager, Life Without Friends and the President's Daughter series. She writes in a tone that I still don't think I've seen repeated anywhere. Her writing is sharp, funny, smart, and very fast paced, sort of like the print version of The West Wing or The Gilmore Girls. The humor is droll, the dialogue snappy, and while you can probably describe the writing of other authors this way, there's something really unique about how White carries all this off.

Since those early novels, White has written mostly non-fiction, including several biographies, and I will admit to not having read those. I just think she's just a master at fiction.

So I was thrilled to see she's got new fiction coming. Immediately, by the second page, I was happily immersed in another of White's worlds, feeling like someone was writing the rare novel for teens that treats them as smart, intelligent people. Under most circumstances, I probably wouldn't be interested in a story revolving around a sport, but I do know something about baseball--I was a HUGE Braves fan for a while--and really, White is exploring things that could be happening in a number of settings. On a basic level, she follows an 18 year old young woman, Jill, who finds herself as the first female in professional baseball and what it's like to be a girl surrounded by all those guys. Beyond that, she asks the reader to consider whether or not if even matters, or should matter, if a baseball player is male or female. Does it make a difference, despite the reactions of those who think Jill doesn't belong playing with men? And you can follow a theme of teamwork, and what makes a team, especially one put together by other people. Plus also, Jill's alternate plan was to go to college, and she's not completely convinced that college wouldn't have been the better choice. But is she a symbol to all women everywhere when she accepts this opportunity, even if it turns out not to be what she wants? She loves baseball and has been playing most of her life, but that's a huge weight to carry. Would she let down all those little girls who come just to see someone like them play baseball? I think this is probably the most interesting question White asks, especially during this period of watching little girls realize they could be president if they wanted to. Can women really do anything? And should they have to?

All that sounds very serious, but Jill's story is told in a way that will amuse readers as they smile and nod. I have to add a bit of a caveat to my review, the reason I only gave it four stars. I will say that I would have liked some better resolution at the end of the novel. I actually had to check a couple of times to make sure I'd reached the end, because I didn't feel like we'd reached any conclusions for Jill or these issues. But then, they haven't reached conclusions in real life, so maybe that's okay. There's not a lot of action, other than perhaps a touch too much description of baseball plays, and a little more of a plot would have appealed. I was really counting on a more decisive ending. I haven't seen a sign of a sequel, or that this is beginning a series, but the somewhat abrupt ending makes me wonder.

Teens, and adults, who are smart and sharp and want their novels the same will love A Season of Daring Greatly, whether they like baseball or not.

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Review: Magpie Murders

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

So good I don't even have words.
********************
Okay, I found some words.

As made clear by others, and even the publisher's description, this clever book is really a novel within a novel, and it all pays homage to the great mystery writers--Agatha Christie, Ian Fleming, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The intricate, complex plotting, and the ways in which everything comes together, is amazing.

I had the privilege of meeting Anthony Horowitz ("only my son calls me Tony") at a dinner (thank you Harper Collins!) recently, and I admit that the experience added to my love of the book. I really only knew him by reputation, and I had only just started the book at the time (although it really grabs you from page one). He's incredibly sharp, super-smart, and wonderfully knowledgeable about books and writing. It turns out, he had the idea for Magpie Murders years ago. Horo witz developed several British mystery series like Foyle's War and Midsomer Murders, and he shared that in the second episode of Midsomer Murders, way back, you can see a character reading Magpie Murders. He was not a reader early on but came to reading as something of an escape, and I love that he now has a huge interest in getting kids to read. And, he told us that the answer is on the first page. Figure that out.

Having the opportunity to meet the author definitely enhanced my enjoyment of the book, but I would have loved it anyway. It's gentle but smart, easy to understand (once you get the concept of the novel in a novel and a few characters straight) yet intricately plotted, displays depth to the characters without distracting from motivations. I was right there, in a small, English town, meeting quirky people who all had something to hide.

Agatha Christie would have been proud.

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Review: The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life

The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life by Anu Partanen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was fascinating, and whether someone agrees or disagrees, it gives the reader a lot to think about.

Partanen did her research and backs up her unique perspective, having lived in both Finland and the U.S., with data. She believes the U.S. does a lot of things as the Nordic countries did years ago, and that we haven't advanced our policies to match current needs in society. As a result of deliberate policy decisions in Finland and other Nordic countries, the people are taken care of, and despite the opinion of those who call them "socialist nanny states," it is actually citizens of Nordic countries that are less reliant and more independent than those in the U.S. Their taxes and other shared contributions provide health care, education, day care, end of life care, none of which is dependent on your job or income. In Partanen's opinion, that gives them the freedom to pursue what makes them happy without worrying that they won't have funds for retirement or can't go home at night to have dinner with their children. They've designed things so that children are a priority and will always receiving schooling and health care. She contrasts this with life in the U.S., where it was hard to wrap her mind around paying her taxes, or where she had to do hours of research to choose an insurance plan. A Finnish student she knew was applying to college in the U.S. couldn't understand why he kept being asked about his parents income since, in Finland, his parents would have nothing to do with where or how he goes to college.

Certainly Partanen makes an excellent case for why the U.S. should consider moving towards some of the policies being used in Nordic countries. I would have liked to have seen a bit more objectivity and acknowledgement of the qualities that have made the U.S. a world power, producing some of the world's most educated, creative, inventive, compassionate, and forward-thinking people. And I think it would have been fair to examine some of the difficulties of like in Finland and other Nordic countries (she says taxes really aren't very high, but I suspect there's more to that). They tend to have depression and alcoholism problems (probably due to the environment), they learn to be so self-sufficient that they can be a bit cold and detached from those around them, their population is aging, and society teaches them to treat everyone the same way so much that they have difficulty seeing anyone (including themselves) as being special in any way.

But she made her point, and I learned a lot of things that have me thinking. This could be a great book club book for those who enjoy non-fiction (or a Scandanavian mystery book club that wants to put some background to their suspense!). You can't read this and not come away thinking more critically about you personally believe these issues should be addresssed.

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Review: Circling the Sun

Circling the Sun by Paula McLain
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is one of a several books I've read recently or am reading where I don't completely agree with myself about how I feel about it. I very much enjoyed this overall. I knew nothing about Beryl Markham, but I heard Paula McLain speak as this book was on the verge of being released last year, and I've rarely seen someone so passionate about her topic. It shows in her writing, as I felt like I knew Beryl as a best friend by the end of the book. The description of life in colonial East Africa was amazing, and I don't think the reader could avoid the feeling of being there in Kenya themselves if they wanted to. Beryl was hard to pin down, a fiercely independent person who lived in a time and place on the verge of major change when people women were just beginning to demonstrate that they could bring home the bacon AND fry it up in a pan...and definitely never let someone forget he's a man. I was both fascinated and a bit horrified at the degree of infidelity that was common among the British colonialists in Africa (sometimes known as the Happy Valley set), especially the fact that it was so accepted and even expected. McLain's portrayal of Beryl serves to make us sympathetic to this aspect of her life, minimizing it even. Beryl's relationships with the men in her life, starting with her father, were doubtless part of the foundation of her personality, the inspiration behind her need to explore fields normally reserved for men and even be the best at them. Her relationship with Denys Finch Hatton, and even Finch Hatton's longtime love Karen Blixen, was complex and complicated (and naturally, I now want to go read Out of Africa, which I never had interest in before, to get Karen's side of the story). And, of course, once I finished, I immediately went to read up a bit on Beryl and how her life might have been different from McLain's fictionalized version...and I came away a bit disappointed. I'm not sure I like the real Beryl very much, while I'd sort of admired the fictional version. I also have to note that I listened to the audio, and while the narration was okay, I didn't think it was great, especially the depiction of the male characters. But overall, this is a wonderful tribute to a person, a woman, who broke a number of glass ceilings before we even knew the term, alongside a bit of a love letter to the early days of the country we now know as Kenya. And it was lovely.

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Review: The Opposite of Everyone

The Opposite of Everyone by Joshilyn Jackson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fans of Someone Else’s Love Story will welcome Jackson’s newest novel, in which a minor character gets the opportunity to tell her own story. Paula (the best friend of SELS’ William) is a sharp and successful Atlanta divorce lawyer who knows exactly where she’s going…but her past is about to catch up with her. The woman who had to learn to take care of herself early in life finds that she might just have more of a family than she thought.

Jackson is a master of language, using long and luxurious sentences that are truly poetic to describe character and setting, but always with a snappy sense of humor. She arranges otherwise ordinary words into an intricately weaved story with a slow reveal that will make the reader want more. Paula is complex, scarred. Flashbacks expose a difficult relationship with her mother that began with the folktales Kai told her as a child and is now unfolding into a new understanding of family. In many ways, the South is a character itself, described as only a true Southerner could, and the reader understands that Paula’s early travels play a great role in making her the person she is.

As with all Jackson’s novels, I became close to her characters, not wanting to leave when I reach the last page. Jackson, also a voice actress, narrates many of her novels, and even after having read an advance copy of The Opposite of Everyone, listening to the audio is a treat still to come. Fans of Marisa de los Santos, Sarah Gruen, Sarah Addison Allen, Ann Patchett, and Fannie Flagg will love the journey as they watch Paula find her family and herself.


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Review: Gods in Alabama

Gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Really, a 4.5. It's amazing to me that this is a debut novel, as the way the story weaves together over time is complex but accomplished masterfully in Jackson's hands. Not everyone can combine otherwise ordinary words into beautiful sentences, lovely language reminiscent of rivers that you could watch move along for hours on end. Yes, this is a story of the South, and those who are not Southern may not recognize the truth behind the characters that Jackson draws. I find them to be people who reflect the time and place in which they live, and I would love to find myself living with them, if for just a while. They may not be perfect (though Burr comes pretty damn close), but most of us aren't. I just love getting to know them anyway--even Lena's mama, who never recovered from her husband's death--and being part of it for as long as I can. I've had the pleasure of meeting Joshilyn and learning about how she lives with her characters for years before she attempts to tell us their story, and that totally shows in her writing.

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Review: Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things by Jenny Lawson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Jenny Lawson is hilarious...that's the first thing to know about her. The second thing is that she's full of differences--and who among us doesn't have some?--but she's brave enough to share hers. She deals with anxiety and depression issues along with rheumatoid arthritis and a host of other issues that I don't even remember. I don't remember them because they're simply a part of who she is, but those things don't define her. They're part of her, she owns them, she is open and up front about them. But she's also funny, smart, knowledgeable about human psychology, a mom determined for her child to have the best of her childhood without the pain, and owner of some pretty funny cats and dogs (who else would name her cats Ferris Mewler, Hunter S. Thomcat, and Rolly, and her dog Dorothy Barker?), who she dresses up for Halloween. And she has a mouth to beat the band. I'm grateful that she would be out there saying "yeah, I have issues, and I'm okay with that" but mostly, I'm busy laughing. You can't read her stories and not laugh as well. The audio isn't available yet, or I totally would have listened to it, as Jenny's narration of her first book made it even better. One note: This is Jenny's second book, and it focuses on her experiences with all these issues. Her first book, Let's Pretend This Never Happened, is more of a memoir, describing her childhood in Texas. She lived in a small, rural town and is the daughter of a taxidermist, so there were parts of this memoir that were entirely too honest about things that happen to animals, and I had to kind of move quickly through those. I think she herself is kind to animals, but fair warning that there are some graphic descriptions, particularly in the first book, that are difficult for people like me who are extra sensitive about animals.

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Social Media is Not Always Very Social

In the past week, I have been yelled at by not one, not two, but THREE different people on Goodreads who claim that I have spoiled a book for them, a claim with which I vehemently disagree. Never mind that none of them have actually read the book yet. Evidently, it's perfectly acceptable to do this, what with the whole Internet thing between you and the person you're attacking. I tried responding with logic to the first two, and I'm proud to say I was not nearly as snarky as I was feeling. Yet, still, I got a third comment saying the same thing. If you'd like to see this for yourself, check it out here  
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20604350-not-my-father-s-son?from_search=true

But the whole thing has me thinking about the use of social media in general and how the ability essentially to remain anonymous is eroding our social skills (ironic, isn't it?). I have a Facebook account, but I haven't used it in years. Oh, I didn't stop because I was concerned for privacy or had anybody misbehaving on my wall. I just thought it was a huge time sucker, and I spend plenty of time on the Internet as it is. Even now, I only occasional reconsider my choice, and then just as a means to see pictures that friends have posted. I do have a second, made-up account in the name of one of my former cats that I use on the very odd occasion to get a coupon or something similar. I do have a Twitter account, but it for work more than anything (at least, that's what I tell myself). I use it to keep up with authors and publishers, and I may or may not have posted a couple of cat pictures there. Oh, and I guess I have to fess up to having a YouTube account. The cats need their screen time.

Otherwise, I stay away from social media. That thing about it taking too much time still holds true. But, really, who needs to know all that? I don't need to know that you're on your way to the grocery store. Or that you're about to sit down to dinner (accompanied, naturally, by a picture of your plate). Or that you got 75% on a quiz about world capitals. My brain only holds so much information. I'd rather talk to friends and family in person, asking how they're doing and, you know, having a conversation. Notice that I said friends and family. When did it become a game to see how many "friends" you could have online? Don't get me wrong. I love getting tweets from my favorite authors and learning more about them. But I'm not foolish enough to think they're following me and my tweets. We're strangers. And it would never occur to me to respond to any of their tweets or posts with some kind of rude or negative comment (I might think it--I'm no saint--but I'd never post it in public).

Yet people are doing this all the time. At the risk of being a bit stereotypical, it seems to be mostly younger people. There's been a shift in what kind of dirty laundry is acceptable to air in public. There are large numbers of people who have grown up laying it all out, mostly on the Internet, and they don't seem to have the same sense of privacy or decorum that used to be so common. It doesn't seem odd to make comments, even mean or intimidating ones, to people they don't even know. After all, they're safely on the other side of a phone or computer somewhere else entirely. This does seem strange to me, in part, because it's not the way I grew up, and it's not the way most of the people I know would talk to other people, online or anywhere else. 

But there's another element of this that bothers me but doesn't seem to bother the people who do it. Once something's out on the Internet, it's out there for good. It can't be unsaid, and it won't be forgotten. It can't be torn up, burned, or hidden away in a closet. And it will be there when you apply for school or a job, when that cute guy goes to Google you before asking you out, and when your kids start searching your name to see what comes up. Yes, sites are taken down and postings and pictures are deleted, but we all know they're never totally gone. Perhaps it's the worse kind of computer virus, the kind that lays dormant but could come back to make you ill at any time. I don't understand why that doesn't make people think harder before they write some of the things they do. 

A couple of years ago, an article in the Wall Street Journal asked this question, and posed some interesting theories. One was that we become more aggressive when we don't have to see the person's response face-to-face. Others spoke to lowered self-control and an enhanced sense of self-esteem on the part of social media users, interestingly, especially in those with close network ties. We have a tendency to build up our profiles a little beyond the truth and so take measures to protect that. Maybe it's not just people we don't know. We're even more likely to display poor behavior to people we know if we're doing it from a screen. 

My story is fairly innocuous, just people complaining because they thought I'd given a way something about a book in my online review that you weren't supposed to know until you had been reading it for a while (for the record, that's I didn't. I'm just saying.). But some of the stories out there are horrific. A waitress in Ohio posted to Facebook about her dissatisfaction with the tips she received at her job (and evidently added a few choice names for these patrons). She found herself fired. Another waitress lost her job when she posted a receipt with a note from the customer, a pastor, saying that she gives God 10%, so why should she tip 18%? When did it get to be okay to call people out like this in a public forum? I'm not commenting on whether or not the wait staff should have been tipped (that note was unnecessary), but who goes and makes it worse by embarrassing them in front of an entire social media community? A 14-year old girl was found hanged in her bedroom after receiving hate messages on her ask.fm page where they told her to cut herself, drink bleach, and kill herself. This is not schoolyard bullying but an attack of the worst kind with unthinkable consequences. A student artist in Maryland keeps a Tumblr page where she likes to post pictures of her work and a lot of selfies. But she's received hundreds of cruel comments including things like "You're honestly one of the ugliest people I've seen in my whole entire life." Luckily, she was smart and talented enough to turn it into a whole new Tumbler post called Anonymous in which she's using the hate messages as an art project. It absolutely boggles my mind that people think it's okay to do these things to other people. And what's really scary is that this may eventually become the norm to the point where there are no consequences for these actions.

I was talking to a colleague about the comments I received on Goodreads, and she noted that as awful as it is, the attitude that it's okay to make these kind of comments prevails, and I'd better get a thicker skin if I'm to continue using it. She's right, of course. It may not be fair, or good, or appropriate, but it's the way it is, and if you're going to participate in social media, you'd better get used to it.

Who knew it could be so dangerous to recommend a good book?

After I Do by Taylor Jenkins Reid

This is a different kind of love story, one in which the participants have already walked down the aisle, bought the house, and adopted the dog. But the romance that starts off as a fairy tale may not have a happy ending.

Lauren and Ryan have that relationship that we all want but doesn’t seem to exist in real life. Their meeting in a college dining hall is accompanied by quips and snappy flirting because they immediately know they’ve just met the love of their lives. The fall madly, deeply in love and embark on an intense partnership in which the walk down the aisle seems to represent the beginning of the perfect life, body and soul.
But eleven years in, the relationship has soured. Somehow, Lauren and Ryan have arrived at a place where they can’t stand to be around each other anymore. Not ready to give up entirely, they agree to a year apart, no communication of any kind allowed, to see if they can remember what it was that brought them together so many years ago.

As with Reid’s earlier novel, Forever, Interrupted, it’s impossible to read this book and not feel the emotions of the characters to the point of joy or pain. I had to put the book away one night simply because I couldn’t read through the tears anymore. Reid’s talent for pulling the heart strings is astounding, using just the right language to evoke the sentiment she desires. The dialogue is some of the most romantic most of us will ever hear. There is a sense of longing that cannot help to speak to a longing each of us have had at some point. I’ve read some reviews that find this writing style a little sappy, unrealistic, or dramatic. And maybe it would be, if it wasn’t done so very well. Lauren and Ryan’s story isn’t meant to be our own, or the story of the couple down the street who broke up last year. I don’t think Reid intended to depict the familiar, but rather the wishful. What would it be like to want someone so fiercely? What would it be like to fall so far from that pinnacle? What would it take to climb back there again?

So Lauren—and the story is told from Lauren’s point of view—spends the next year trying to understand what went wrong and what she wants now. After I Do is at least as much about Lauren’s journey of self-discovery as her exploration of her marriage. She never imagined that she could live without Ryan, and she certainly never imagined that she might not want to. She is surrounded by people who all have something to say about sharing your life with someone. Her Mom loves having a boyfriend, just not enough to want him to move in. Her sister, still single, appears to get uncomfortable whenever she’s surrounded by other couples. Her brother does his own thing and vacillates between being Lauren’s rock and being a jerk. And her friend from work isn’t sure what her relationship with her partner is anymore outside of parenthood. Lauren observes them all over the next year, but eventually, she’s going to have to decide for herself whether or not her future includes Ryan.

If there’s anything I would have liked to have seen done differently, it might have been to hear more from Ryan. Was he going through the same kind of trauma as Lauren, or was it something else entirely? But if Lauren had to go through this year by herself, without being able to talk to Ryan, it makes sense that the reader does as well. Ryan does seem to wear his heart on his sleeve, so what we see of him supports Lauren’s telling of the heat behind their connection. But this is Lauren’s telling, and I don’t think the reader can understand the process that Lauren went through if the reader is also in Ryan’s head.

The magic here is that Reid’s writing reflects our cravings for a romance that seems like it could withstand anything it encounters, yet there is some element of reality that draws us in, makes us feel like we could be Lauren. Reid takes an everyday occurrence, the separation of a couple, and builds an extraordinary relationship that evokes a strong empathy by any reader. I’m telling you…make sure the hankie is nearby. Recommend to fans of Julie Buxbaum, Claire Cook, Juliette Fay, Gigi Grazer Levangie, Christina Baker Kline, and Liza Palmer.

Meet Poppy and Penny

I do still have a list of things I'm wanting to blog about, but this weekend, a new one has risen to the top of the list--the introduction of Poppy and Penny into my household. 

Poppy, formerly known as Tossa, appeared with a litter of kittens on the doorstep of the person who runs the Dixie County Humane Society last August. She was aged to be around 6 months at the time--quite a young mama. Since then, she's been living on the sun porch of the person who runs that group. Other cats there as well, but her rescuer told me that she's not been particularly friendly with them. However, Poppy's still pretty young, about a year and a half years old now, maybe closing in on two years, and with some close attention, could learn to become a good companion to me and another cat.

 

I picked her up yesterday and brought her upstairs, tucking her in the guest bathroom for a while as a transition site. Thus the picture above in the bathtub with weird bathroom lighting (and, to think, this is the lighting we use to get ready in the morning). She loves people and has been very lovey right off the bat. She is a tortie, so she's kind of snippy and can get some sensory overload happening, but a little of that is expected. She might have a few manners still to learn, but overall, she's really beautiful and very sweet. The one thing she's still got to adjust to is the fact that there's another cat in the house.

Penny came from the Alachua County ASPCA, just four months old as of yesterday. Yes, she looks like Sasha in that she's also black, but she has medium hair and no white locket.  And I think she's going to be a bit of a big girl! She had been taken in to Alachua County Animal Control and was on the euthanasia list until the ASPCA brought her and her litter mates over to see if they could adopt them out. Because you run out of names quickly in this business, they became known as the "X" litter, and she was known as Xandie. That needed to change immediately.

When I went by the ASPCA to see who might be willing to adopt me, the "X" litter was the last one I saw in the kitten room. I sat down on the floor and opened the cage door, and it was Xandie who climbed down to greet me. When I put her in my lap, she immediately sat and started purring. So I didn't have much choice but to go back yesterday and adopt her. She's technically being fostered with me at at the moment until they can get her microchipped (the staff member explained to me that they're in a "it's complicated" status with the microchip vendor). She showed a little initial caution at being in a new place, but her curiosity gets the best of her quickly, and she's become quite comfortable in her new home.

Overnight, they both hopped up on the bed (at different times) and explored the apartment, so today, they seem to be pretty settled in. The last piece to this puzzle is for them to become friends. Penny is a little confused as to what the problem is ("I'm a fun girl!") and would be perfectly happy to have a play-mate. Poppy isn't so thrilled, but she's watching closely, and I hope that tolerance will soon turn to friendship. I'd like them to entertain each other rather than count on me all the time. Interestingly, they both independently figured out that they fit perfectly in the bathroom sinks, so they have more in common than they realize!  I'd like to start taking them places, having them feel good about other people visiting and visiting other people, even my parents' dog. They did really well when a friend came over this afternoon and had great fun with her. One step at a time.

Meanwhile, here's a couple of videos. I'll start a Shutterfly album soon. And I'll get back to writing blog entries about other things!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVk1bQxSXT8&list=UUQfS7Y_rC-CLoSnP6TCbfuw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=as9_KG5MQOc&list=UUQfS7Y_rC-CLoSnP6TCbfuw

The Midnight Plan of the Repo Man by W. Bruce Cameron

What do you get when you mix a former football star turned repo man, a lazy dog, the incredibly literal nephew of the repo man's boss, a best friend who's as naive as he is good looking, a restaurant called the Black Bear Bar, complete with--you guessed it--a bar and a stuffed black bear, a small but quirky Michigan town, and a voice in the repo man's head claiming to be a dead realtor named Alan who needs help finding his murderer? A delightfully entertaining novel not to be missed.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Was More Than The Yearling

Wanting to do something quintessentially Florida, a friend and I recently headed to a former home of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (that's kin-ANN, by the way, for those of us in the know), author of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Yearling. I didn't know a lot about her, but it turns out that she spent a good portion of her life right down the road from Gainesville, and I love checking out historic homes and learning about the lives of those before us. Even when I'm in museums viewing art, I'm drawn to the portraits, wanting to know the life stories of the people I'm seeing and what brought them to have their portrait taken. I like to think I'm being intellectually curious. Some just call it being nosy. 

Either way, one bright Saturday morning, we headed down to an area called Cross Creek near Hawthorne, Florida. It was beautiful--and hot, muggy, and full of bugs. Rawlings farm is now a state park, and the cracker-style house--along with its orange grove, barn, garden, and chickens and ducks--are maintained by the Friends of the M.K. Rawlings Farm, Inc. We walked through the same orange grove that Marjorie cared for during her time, where we arrived at the barn and listened to a ranger explain how Marjorie came to Florida and fell in love with the orange blossoms.

It was accidental, really. Marjorie was born in Washington, D.C., and her path to becoming a journalist and writer took her to Madison, Wisconsin; Louisville, Kentucky; and Rochester, New York. She and her first husband visited his brothers in Cross Creek, and they sorta kinda fell in love with it. There was something about the people there, native Floridians known as "crackers," that she found fascinating, and she and her husband thought it would be a great place to focus on their writing beyond newspapers. With an inheritance, they bought some land seen only by her brothers-in-law. It was primarily orange grove, with a dilapidated house on the property. They weren't particularly interested in growing oranges but saw it as a means to the end of supporting their writing. And so, in 1928, Marjorie and her husband moved to Florida.
 
For a while, they barely got by. Marjorie sold some stories, and as each little pot of money came in, she used it to fix up some part of the house. It was years before it was even painted. One of the most interesting things about seeing her house was hearing about the process of bringing it to what it is today. When she arrived, there were only two rooms. Total. And no bathroom. Over time, a bedroom "wing" was built, two bathrooms were added (the first inspiring a party celebrating its inauguration complete with red roses from Marjorie's uncle in the toilet). For many years, there was no electricity, and when it finally came, Marjorie created light fixtures using some bowls she had on hand and hanging them upside down from the ceiling. There still is no air conditioning or heating, which is why there were beads of sweat running down our backs entire time we were in there.

  

 Marjorie saw inspiration and beauty in her surroundings, coming to love the smell of the orange blossoms and developing close relationships with her neighbors. A lot of the setting and culture can be found in her writing, and she even stayed with a moonshiner in Ocala for a while to add realism to her work. Her husband, however, was not as enamored of Florida, and they soon divorced. As far as I could tell, this seemed to be fine by Marjorie, who spent her days writing on the front porch at this very table and typewriter, surrounded by her oranges, chickens, and ducks. According to the ranger who toured us through the house, she ate her breakfast on the porch, staying out there all morning to write, so intensely that the neighbors passing by the main road in front of the house knew not to stop and chat. The porch is even furnished with a bed on the opposite side from the writing table so she could nap through the afternoon heat.  

The volunteers who manage the house have worked really hard to maintain it in the style that Marjorie put together over many years (right down to the closet that became a bar). They continue to grow oranges and take care of the garden she kept outside her kitchen window. Her second husband allowed them to use much of her original furniture, right down to this adorable juicer in the kitchen. The beds are hers as well, and we were told some fascinating stories of the people who slept there while visiting Marjorie, including Zora Neale Hurston, Margaret Mitchell, and Robert Frost. They said that Gregory Peck also stayed there, but if you saw the length of that bed in the guest room, you'd share my serious doubts. Her cast iron stove also remains, and in the winter, the rangers and volunteers cook recipes from Marjorie's cookbook, Cross Creek Cookery. A copy of the book is propped open in her kitchen to a recipe of hers the volunteers like to make for an "utterly deadly southern pecan pie," which I've already decided I must return to the farm for in December. There's another, supposedly less-deadly, recipe on the facing page, but why would I be interested in that? There's another porch off the kitchen facing the side of the house, where Marjorie often received visitors of prepared food on its way into the kitchen. There was a very cool icebox out there, filled by trips to Hawthorne for fresh ice. I will add refrigeration to my list of things to appreciate about the time period in which I live.


The house itself is darling, with a kitchen window overlooking the garden and a dining room table overlooking the outhouse (which explains, the Ranger told us, why she always sat at the head of the table, refusing to let anyone else sit there at her dinner parties--she didn't want them to have to eat with a view of the outhouse). 

It took years for Marjorie to pull all this together, buying and improving things a little at a time as she sold her work. But she was this close to having to throw in the towel when she sold The Yearling. Oh, she wrote other novels and many stories, but The Yearling won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1939 and was made into a movie a few years later, earning her a permanent place in literary history. Only then was she financially comfortable on her farm. And what a beautiful farm it is.

Marjorie certainly wasn't any more perfect than the rest of us. She had a long-time companion named Idella Parker she called "the perfect maid," but theirs was a complicated relationship, despite how much she decried the state of race relations among Southerners. When Zora Neale Hurston visited Cross Creek, she was made to stay in the tenant house with Idella. Marjorie was sued by a friend she made the very day she arrived in Florida, Zelma Cason, for the way she described Zelma's son in one of Marjorie's stories. Her second husband, who owned a hotel in St. Augustine, didn't much care for Cross Creek, and Marjorie didn't much care for his hotel (which is now home to Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum). So they pretty much lived apart half the year and used a place she'd bought at Crescent Beach as their "permanent home." No, she wasn't perfect but she certainly was interesting.

Our tour ended back outside, and we walked around the property a little bit. It really is beautiful. Marjorie lived life a little hard and eventually, it caught up with her. She spent much of the last years of her life at a place she bought in New York where she completed what turned out to be her final novel. She was back in St. Augustine, distraught over the recent death of her editor and friend, Maxwell Perkins, getting ready to start a new book she she died of a cerebral hemorrhage. She left the farm at Cross Creek to the University of Florida to be used as a writer's retreat, but I can't imagine anyone was surprised to find that college students don't take the same care with historic places as other folks, and eventually, it was given to the state and turned into a state park. 

Visiting Rawlings' farm made me feel like I was truly getting a taste of something that was uniquely Florida. That might seem odd, considering she wasn't from Florida, but her fondness for native Floridians and their land is reflected in her writings, and visiting the farm made me a part of it.

Marissa Meyer Encourages Teens to Battle the Books

Many libraries around the country participate, in their own way, in a Battle of the Books program. It usually involves teens reading a few selected young adult books and then competing in some way to see who knows them better. There are judges, time keepers, and coaches. The kids really take this seriously (not to mention their parents), and it can be a very intense event.

The Alachua County Library District held it's annual Battle of the Books tournament this past weekend. Seven teams, each representing their home branch library, competed to see who could correctly answer the most questions correctly about:

All of these are excellent books that could be enjoyed by teens and adults alike. The teens in our branches have spent the summer reading these books and studying them, with librarians serving as coaches. They've quizzed each other, created flash cards, done dry runs...there's no doubt these kids are out to win. Oh, and they have fun, too.

A couple of months ago, my boss asked me if I might be able to help bring in a children's or young adult author to speak at ACLD in order to spend out some funding by the end of our fiscal year. I am lucky and grateful to know the adult library marketing folks for the major publishers, and I'd talked to some other librarians at a recent conference about how to make an offer to come speak appealing to your favorite authors. Maybe I could use some of these connections and techniques to convince a youth author to come to Gainesville, at which time our fantastic and incredibly creative children's staff would take over the planning.

I once again have to send virtual flowers to the fine folks at the Macmillan Speaker's Bureau, who responded to my query with a list of  possibilities. Several were intriguing, and I was rather impressed that I might actually have a chance to meet some of these awesome writers. I showed the list to our youth services manager, who immediately pointed to one. "Oh, look," she said casually, "Marissa Meyer. She'd be my choice. You know, with Battle of the Books coming up."

I paused. How did I miss this? Of course! How amazing would that be? To have the author of one of the Battle of the Books actually AT the battle? OMG. But could we actually pull it off? The battle was only about six weeks away. Bringing in an author involves contracts and money and arrangements at the local bed and breakfast during wedding season. I wasn't sure we could do it, but it was definitely worth a try.

And sure enough, it worked. Marissa graciously agreed to come cheer the kids on during the afternoon of August 2. I had the great pleasure of telling the staff member coordinating Battle of the Books that Marissa would be attending, and even better, seeing the lit up face of a teen she was working with at the time, get the news. These kids were going to be SO excited, and it's thrilling to be a part of that. Several of us poured over flight possibilities, as Marissa was coming all the way to Gainesville from Seattle, and she needed to be back the afternoon after the contest. The Macmillan folks were fantastic, turning over paperwork and arrangements immediately. Erin, the youth services manager, agreed to drive an hour and a half to Jacksonville to pick her up from the flight that ended up working best. Contracts were signed, brunch with the teen librarians was had, and Marissa arrived for the battle with a huge smile on her face.

Her smile is truly the first thing you notice about Marissa, as it's big and wide and genuine. It didn't take long at all for the kids to start crowding around her, asking for autographs and pictures (in fact, she signed the back of a couple of the teens' team shirts). Booksamillion sold books, and the rep ended up leaving early because he'd sold everything he brought. Marissa mingled for a while as we talked with a couple of reporters and got everyone signed in. She asked if I'd put her purse away somewhere, to which I readily agreed, only to spin around in a circle trying to decide the safest place to store it. Finally, I decided to take it back down to my office. Walking past the children's desk, I caught the attention of the one chidren's staff member not upstairs and pointed at the purse. "It's Marissa Meyer's purse!" I mouthed, pointing to the bag in question. She nodded, no doubt agreeing that this was exciting, but possibly wondering why a purse was the most important part of this visit.

I made my way back up to the conference room, where Marissa began a presentation to the teens. It can be hard to engage teenagers, but these guys and their families were at full attention. Marissa had prepared a PowerPoint presentation in which she described the process she went through to get to a place where she had a completed novel she was proud of and thought could be successful. It seems that Marissa pretty much always wanted to be a writer, and despite being certain she could be published and making money off her writing by the time she graduated high school, she showed us a long list of novels she started but which, for various reasons, weren't completed or weren't something she wanted to submit to an agent. It was a great message for the teens to hear that, when you really want to do something, it's worth continuing to try and learn to do it better but not let failure stop you from trying again.

And then the competition began! I was serving as one of three judges, and I'm not sure I wasn't at least as nervous as the teens. I found myself wishing I could be sitting with each team, giving them advice, making sure they understood what the question as looking for. Marissa helped us with some pronunciation, and how many people can say the author herself told you how to say letumosis? After each round, we took a break. We had planned that Marissa would make her way to each team's table to chat with them personally, but I don't think she actually made it to any of them because they all came to her first. She was quite generous and animated with the teens, parents, and staff members who were all having fan-reader moments. 

But the end had to come, and when the final numbers came in, our team from Tower Road branch came in first. They, and the second place team, won signed copies of Marissa's newest book in the series, Cress. Truly, all the teams were great, and it was a lot of fun to see them talking so intensely as they agreed on the answer to write down. If there was a favorite, it might have been the team of one, who chose not to join up with another team, but worked diligently through the whole thing, holding her pen over her answer board thoughtfully before finalizing each answer. Her mother told me she was a little shy, but I saw her getting to talk to Marissa, and I can only hope that's a memory she holds on to for a long time.

The end of the day was filled with last bits of signing and picture taking, including this one of all the participants. I had walked around to each table, taking pictures and asking the teens which of the three was their favorite books. And even after I pushed back at them a little disbelievingly, they all said the same thing: Marissa Meyer's Cinder.