September Readers Recommend

Hello all,

I've decided to compile a list of all of the books that my bookstarved friends have recommended this month.  I've read some, but not all of them.  However, I can vouch for the fact that they all come from readers with excellent taste.  Here's the list:
East of Eden
Drinking: A Love Story
To Kill a Mockingbird (swoon)
All over but the Shoutin'
The Giver
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name - A Biomythography
A Prayer for Owen Meany
Sense And Sensibility
The Tender Bar: A Memoir (I'm in the middle of this one and LOVING it)
Berlin Noir: March Violets; The Pale Criminal; A German Requiem
Norwegian Wood
A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel

Thanks for all of the recommendations.  Keep them coming!

White Lines

Yesterday after school my daughter and I were playing Go Fish when Grandmaster Flash's White Lines came on the ipod.  She instantly ditched the cards and started to rock out.  I'm pretty sure she's never heard the song before, but she took an instant liking to it, much to my satisfaction.  I know the content is pretty inappropriate for a five year old, but I'm fairly certain she didn't know that Flash was referring to snorting coke.  Besides, his core message is "Don't do it!", right?  Anyway, I wasn't about to interrupt her jam session.  She was especially keen on striking poses to the "Freeze!  Rock!" part of the song.  It was good stuff.

It got me thinking about how lucky people of my generation are to have come up with such great music.  The poor kids of today are stuck with the likes of Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus.  Lame.  We children of the 70's and 80's were fortunate enough to grow up with punk, funk, new wave, proper pop and hip-hop.  The music of my generation pretty much kicks ass.  

All of this reminiscing about the music of my youth got me thinking about Jonathan Lethem's Fortress of Solitude.  What a great book.  Not only is he a ridiculously talented writer, he's obviously quite a music aficionado as well.  You'll be downloading many of the tunes discussed in this book.

Apparently the novel is semi-autobiographical and takes place in the 70's, 80's and 90's right here in Brooklyn (walking distance from my house!).  The main character, Dylan, is one of the only white kids living in an all black neighborhood and becomes privy to a culture that's quite different from his own.  It's got all of the drama associated with racial tensions, drug addiction and familial strain.  There are also a ton of delicious references to the pop culture of this era, complete with a fascinating biography about the advent of tagging and the birth of hip-hop.

It made me go back and appreciate the fact that I was raised in a diverse community myself, though much less so than Lethem's.  I'm proud of the fact that the heritage of my friends pretty much spans the globe.  I'm thrilled that my daughter is in a class with at least a dozen kids whose names I'm not sure how to pronounce.  And they all manage to get along.

Go read the book.  It raises a lot of intriguing issues.  And you'll find that the nostalgia it stirs up is something of a phenomenon, baby.

The Kindness of Strangers

It's been pouring down rain all morning, so my husband and I decided to drive our daughter to school today.  He took her in while I waited in the car, enjoying my new ipod downloads.  As soon as he got back from drop-off and tried to start the engine, we realized our car battery was dead.  Bummer.  He was already late for work and we were parked right next to a fire hydrant, of course.  We managed to keep our cool, however, and somehow even had the foresight to have jumper cables in our trunk.  Eureka!  But the best part of our mini-debacle was that the first car that drove by and saw our hood up stopped and asked us if we needed a jump.  The first car!  In the pouring rain.  At rush hour.  In Brooklyn.

Don't you just love it when stuff like that happens?  I've been replaying that scene in my head all morning and wondering why something as simple as one kind little gesture can set the tone for your entire day. In pondering how to recreate that feeling in my own home, I started thinking about a book I've had on my shelf for years and have read cover to cover at least three times.  It's called Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples, and it's written by Dr. Harville Hendrix. 

It's pretty fascinating and it gives you an inkling as to why you might have chosen your particular mate.  Apparently a lot of us go for patners who somehow resemble a parental figure with whom we have some unresolved conflict.    For example, we might choose a mate with the same anger management issues as our father in an attempt to somehow get the relationship "right" this time.  Often, trying to resolve the conflict with our mate instead of our parent just leads to more relationship trouble. Confusing?  He explains it all better than I can.  

The crux of the book is more about how you can get the kind of love you want by giving it first.  It all goes back to the old adage about treating others as you'd like to be treated yourself.  If you can do one small thing daily that will help your partner out, it will resonate and often be reciprocated.  It creates a win-win dynamic, and the relationship flourishes as a result.  

It seems so simple, right?  So why is it so hard for some of us to do this?  Why is a show of appreciation or support such a hurdle for some of us?  You may have to work that out with your therapist, but you can start by faking it until it starts to feel genuine.  Anyway, that's my homework for the week.  What's yours?

Heart of Darkness

For the past two weeks, my daughter has been fretting over her school lunch hour.  It's the first thing she mentions when she wakes up and the last thing we discuss at bedtime.  She hates it.  She gives a detailed account of her lunchtime fears every day, starting with the harrowing trek down the dark and crowded stairwell to the dungeon-like cafeteria where hordes of kids are screaming, crying and sometimes, though seldom, eating.

After a half hour of this pleasant experience, they're set loose on the playground.  Sounds fun, right?  Wrong.  There's nothing to actually play with on the playground.  It's just a glorified patch of concrete. They can't even play hide and seek because it's a completely barren landscape.  And to top it off, there are no teachers there to supervise, just three aides who've been there since the dawn of time.  Good God.

So today I hung around after drop-off so that I could train to become a volunteer lunch lady.  I've had Adam Sandler's 'Sloppy Joe' song in my head all day, along with visions of Chris Farley leaping around in a hair net.  Walking down the dimly lit steps to the basement cafeteria, my heart started racing.  It brought back all of the terror I felt at lunchtime when I was a kid.  I hated all of that chaos.  I still do.  I could totally see where my daughter was coming from.

As I descended into the bowels of the school, I felt like Charles Marlow nosing his way deep into the Congo wilderness.  It was rather disquieting.  I was entering my daughter's own personal version of the Heart of Darkness.  Poor kid.

As the three lunch ladies started their presentation about the toil and trouble associated with lunch and recess, I pictured them gathered around a cauldron like the witches in Macbeth.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm sure they're lovely ladies, but they're hard.  These are some seasoned, no nonsense Brooklynites, let me tell you.  After the training was over, I saw them all huddled together smack dab in front of the school smoking their heads off before soldiering back down to the cafeteria to handle the mob of agitated kindergardeners.  For the rest of the day I had Kurtz's final words echoing through my head.  The horror.

Strange Magic

I was just out walking Walter when ELO's Strange Magic came on the ipod.  I love that song.  It seemed so appropriate because New York really is magical this time of year.  The air is cool and crisp.  The golden light on the brick buildings is spellbinding.  The leaves are turning, and there's that back to school excitement in the air.  I'm having one of those days where the possibilities seem endless and I can't contain my excitement about life.  Maybe the full moon has something to do with it.

Whenever I think about a full moon, I think of werewolves, which makes me think of shifters, which makes me think of vampires, which makes me think of True Blood.  Don't even try to pretend you don't like that show.  I'm sick that the season is already over.  I'm more than a little obsessed with Eric.  He can sink his Nordic fangs into my flesh any time he likes. Damn.

Anyway, did you know that the show is actually based on a book series?  I had no idea.  Recently my friend Kendra sheepishly admitted to me that she'd been reading the books and couldn't put them down.  Guess who raced home and ordered them as fast as her little fingers could hit the purchase button?  Can we just talk about guilty pleasure?  What a treat.  And you can't just order the first one or two books.  It won't be enough.  Trust me.  Just go ahead and buy the whole box set (Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set (Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood).  You'll thank me.

Parenting

It's such a gorgeous fall day.  I decided to skip running and took Walter on an extra long walk to the Brooklyn Heights promenade.  All of the tourists were there, smiling for the cameras with the big city and the Brooklyn Bridge behind them.  It's really a stunning view, but I was having a hard time appreciating it. I was walking and stewing at the same time.

Those who know me also know that I'm a huge worrywart.  Any tiny concern tends to become monumental once I get a hold of it.  Before having a child, I was mostly a hypochondriac, fretting about every little ailment and convincing myself of my own impending doom.  Once parenthood hit me, I became a full blown freak show.  In a way, it was a blessing in disguise, because it forced me to change my lifestyle.  There's no room for nut jobs when it comes to parenting.  So I started exercising.  I took up running, yoga, meditation, acupuncture, therapy, antidepressants and new age spiritual healing.  I even gave up drinking, smoking  and caffeine, although the coffee seems to be creeping back into my regimen.  Anyway, if there's a self-help mechanism out there that I haven't tried, you'd be hard pressed to find it.  But sometimes I still lose my equilibrium.  Something as innocuous as scheduling a pediatrician's visit can still unleash my worry beast.

Don't get me wrong.  Being a mother is far and away the best thing that ever happened to me.  I still can't believe how much I love my daughter.  I had no idea I was even capable of this kind of love.  She's so amazing and I can't believe how lucky I am to be the parent of such an astonishingly brilliant and wonderful child.  But I do fret, and the flip side of loving someone this much is that it's easy to become overly concerned about their welfare.  As much as I love being a mother, I also find it absolutely terrifying at times.  So I find it heartening to hear about other parents who have a concern or two about child rearing.  It makes me feel less alone.

I recently read Nick Flynn's The Ticking Is the Bomb: A Memoir.  His concerns over parenting are much different than my own, but they're incredibly valid and timely.  In this memoir, he's brutally honest about his trepidation surrounding his impending fatherhood.  He's tortured by the idea of bringing a child into a world where events like those at Abu Ghraib can blithely take place.  I don't know how he does it, but he seamlessly weaves his fears of parenting together with the horrors of terror, and then manages to blend in his struggles with addiction and love relationships.  And it all makes sense, somehow.  It's a harrowing read, but absolutely masterfully conducted.  You should check it out.

On that note, if you haven't read his earlier memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, then you're in for a treat.  Maybe you should read this one first, so you can get a clearer picture of the mayhem that ensued within his family and shaped him into such an apprehensive father-to-be.  One can hardly blame him for having reservations.  I won't air all of his dirty family laundry here, but if you think your childhood was tough, Flynn just might have you beat.  It's just as sad and beautiful as his latest work.  I'm jealous of those of you who now get to go and read them for the first time.  I'm going back for seconds.