Yesterday afternoon, we held the first official meeting of the Hungry Family Book Club. Mama was in absentia, but Sis, Bud, and I spread blankets out in the grass and read in the sunshine for more than half an hour. While Sis munched Cheerios! I wouldn't say it was quiet, as Bud kept giving us updates on his book, but otherwise there were only birds and windchimes, the sweet smell of hyacinths on the cool breeze.
That night, Mama and I had our own book club meeting, spending literally hours entering and scanning, rating and sorting, titles on Goodreads. I can't begin to tell you how much fun it was to do this--we talked about books we'd read together a long time ago (Patience and Sarah, Bar Stories, Little Women--Mama and I had a long-distance book club the first year we were together, each choosing titles to share with the other), books we'd bought together (lots of Gettysburg titles), audiobooks she shared with me (Remarkable Creatures, Lady and the Unicorn), titles we liked (Caleb's Crossing) and didn't (March, me more than her). It was even better than date night at the bookstore. And free! I've sent invitations to a few people to join us on this website--join us if you'd like by looking up Mommy Hungry.
Happy Reading! And recording!
Showing posts with label Hungry book club. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hungry book club. Show all posts
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Free Reading
TODAY is the 50th anniversary of the court ruling that overturned America’s obscenity laws, setting off an explosion of free speech — and also, in retrospect, splashing cold water on the idea, much discussed during Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, that judges are “umpires” rather than agents of social change.
In honor of this anniversary, I started reading Reading Lolita in Tehran today.
While it embraces a different meaning of free, I am also reading, though much more slowly, The Three Pillars of Zen.
Neither of these is this month's Hungry Book Club selection. Mama will be reading Jhumpa Lahiri's Namesake, which I read last month, while I will be reading her short stories in Intrepreter of Maladies.
Monday, March 30, 2009
April Book Club
If you are following along with the Hungry Book Club, our April selection, a la Mama, is Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club. And no cheating by just watching the movie. At least until you're done. And then, order some crappy Chinese take out and enjoy!
Sunday, March 1, 2009
March in March
The Hungry book club is reading Geraldine Brooks's Pulitizer-Prize winning March in March.
And yes, that was totally coincidental.
It's going to be a powerful story. I've read only the first few pages and am already awestruck by the vivid, if repulsive, images of war, as well as the clear and concrete characterization of March himself. For now it reminds me of Cold Mountain.
I have liked Brooks's Nine Parts Desire and think I will like this one just as well.
(Here's what the NYTimes had to say, though I'll save reading that til I'm done).
And yes, that was totally coincidental.
It's going to be a powerful story. I've read only the first few pages and am already awestruck by the vivid, if repulsive, images of war, as well as the clear and concrete characterization of March himself. For now it reminds me of Cold Mountain.
I have liked Brooks's Nine Parts Desire and think I will like this one just as well.
(Here's what the NYTimes had to say, though I'll save reading that til I'm done).
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Opposites Attract
I just finished two books that couldn't have been more diametrically opposed, on the surface. Fun House is a tragicomic memoir illustrated by Dykes to Watch Out For creator Alison Bechdel which examines her relationship with her father before and after his death/suicide, including her own coming out as a lesbian and his closeted gay life which she discovers right before his death. Momma Zen is also a memoir, but that of Zen Buddhist priest Karen Maezen Miller who writes (would it be wrong to say) enlightening pieces on the aspects of motherhood such as the importance of being present, embracing change, self discipline, and the like (Mama has my copy so I can't look specifics up) that resemble Zen practice. But, on reflection, I realized that each is a memoir examining the parent-child relationship and its effects on parent (Momma Zen) and child (Fun House).
I have long loved DTWOF but only recently learned about Bechdel's memoir, which a friend loaned me last week. At first, it was odd to see a young Mo, but soon I was completely entranced by the narrative, the illustrations, the heavy literary analysis (Proust, Joyce, Hardy, Wilde in a "comic book"?). As the tale progresses from the early a-ha moments of her father's death (a suspected suicide) and his closeted gay life to her more substantial reflections on those, often through the books that she and her father, an English teacher (and funeral home director!), shared, my reactions to the family and family dynamic became similarly increasingly complicated. I might have to read it again. And again. If only to (and I can't believe I'm going to write this about a lesbian memoir) penetrate all the multifaceted layers.
While Fun House is a child's look at what many would term a dysfunctional family, Momma Zen is a mother's attempts to avoid just such a thing. Following upon my readings of Everyday Sacred and Plain and Simple, as well as my attendance at the NVC workshop and reading a couple of NVC books (and maybe even The Bean Trees), this book spoke to many of the strands of spirituality, identity, purpose, and practice that I have slowly been gathering. Miller is my kind of mother: admittedly flawed but trying anew everyday out of this enormous love. I read the book awfully fast--in less than a day, as I recovered from my cold in bed on Sunday (blessedly alone, as the kids went to church with Mama)--and will likely refer to it often (and there's a handy list in back of chapters to read when you need to hear something particularl, like patience or presence), especially because I want to try the meditation technique at the end (Mama had taken meditation through work but hers is different--there's a secret word and stuff that I don't know--but this is accessible). I remember practicing my breathing when I was pregnant and how I could lower my heartrate as I watched the monitors (which in those last few months, I was hooked up to on a weekly basis). I think I might even check out her blog. Because, I think, of all the parenting books I've read (both advice and memoir)--though admittedly, that's not many, since they aren't usually my thing (who wants to spend "down time" being told that you aren't doing motherhood correctly, as many of the books do)--this is the one in which I most see myself, both flaws (making everything work, not easily being present, for example) and aspirations (not doing those two things! among others . . .).
My next book, which is for the Hungry Book Club, is Geraldine Brooks's March, a fictionalized biographical account of Bronson Alcott, father of famed Louisa May (you remember him from Little Women, he was off at war until he came home but then still didn't figure in it much--they call it the first homosocial/all-female novel). But he was famous in his own right, an educator and Transcendentalist, friend of Thoreau and (I think) Hawthorne. And, if I understand it, there's parenthood and sexuality, though probably no Zen and little advice, in that book too. Can't wait, love that I'm reading again. And what I'm reading.
I have long loved DTWOF but only recently learned about Bechdel's memoir, which a friend loaned me last week. At first, it was odd to see a young Mo, but soon I was completely entranced by the narrative, the illustrations, the heavy literary analysis (Proust, Joyce, Hardy, Wilde in a "comic book"?). As the tale progresses from the early a-ha moments of her father's death (a suspected suicide) and his closeted gay life to her more substantial reflections on those, often through the books that she and her father, an English teacher (and funeral home director!), shared, my reactions to the family and family dynamic became similarly increasingly complicated. I might have to read it again. And again. If only to (and I can't believe I'm going to write this about a lesbian memoir) penetrate all the multifaceted layers.
While Fun House is a child's look at what many would term a dysfunctional family, Momma Zen is a mother's attempts to avoid just such a thing. Following upon my readings of Everyday Sacred and Plain and Simple, as well as my attendance at the NVC workshop and reading a couple of NVC books (and maybe even The Bean Trees), this book spoke to many of the strands of spirituality, identity, purpose, and practice that I have slowly been gathering. Miller is my kind of mother: admittedly flawed but trying anew everyday out of this enormous love. I read the book awfully fast--in less than a day, as I recovered from my cold in bed on Sunday (blessedly alone, as the kids went to church with Mama)--and will likely refer to it often (and there's a handy list in back of chapters to read when you need to hear something particularl, like patience or presence), especially because I want to try the meditation technique at the end (Mama had taken meditation through work but hers is different--there's a secret word and stuff that I don't know--but this is accessible). I remember practicing my breathing when I was pregnant and how I could lower my heartrate as I watched the monitors (which in those last few months, I was hooked up to on a weekly basis). I think I might even check out her blog. Because, I think, of all the parenting books I've read (both advice and memoir)--though admittedly, that's not many, since they aren't usually my thing (who wants to spend "down time" being told that you aren't doing motherhood correctly, as many of the books do)--this is the one in which I most see myself, both flaws (making everything work, not easily being present, for example) and aspirations (not doing those two things! among others . . .).
My next book, which is for the Hungry Book Club, is Geraldine Brooks's March, a fictionalized biographical account of Bronson Alcott, father of famed Louisa May (you remember him from Little Women, he was off at war until he came home but then still didn't figure in it much--they call it the first homosocial/all-female novel). But he was famous in his own right, an educator and Transcendentalist, friend of Thoreau and (I think) Hawthorne. And, if I understand it, there's parenthood and sexuality, though probably no Zen and little advice, in that book too. Can't wait, love that I'm reading again. And what I'm reading.
Friday, February 20, 2009
More Magic Beans
The first book of our Hungry book club was Barbara Kingsolver's The Bean Trees (Harper & Row, 1988). I've finished it, owing to a few sleepless nights of coughing, and await Mama finishing it so we can have our discussion.
We have been talking about it as we go along, though. Especially because I didn't like it in the beginning. I found the main character, Kentuckian Taylor Greer, to be too folksy, too country, practically a caricature of a Southerner, with her quaint microstories about characters from her home town. I don't consider mysef a person of rural Southern origins, but I know people like that, have family like that, indeed, have a mom who grew up in a small, segregated farm community in Texas. And I wouldn't call her, or any of them, folksy. So, I think, I took offense and couldn't embrace the first third of the book as Taylor describes growing up a "nutter"--country kids who blackened their hands picking walnuts to earn money for new clothes--in a town trapped in the 1950s, which she miraculously escapes unpregnant in her testy Plymouth. The road soon leads her to Oklahoma and the Cherokee nation that she'd always been told she had "head rights," being a quarter Cherokee.
It is in Oklahoma that she acquires a child, the one thing she had avoided and escaped in Kentucky. An Indian child, who is soon called "Turtle," who she learns has been molested and mistreated, a child who is left--mind you, saved, not abanndoned--in the front seat of her car. The rest of the novel--the part that I savoured--involves Taylor coming to terms with her newfound motherhood and the people she meets in Tucson, where the road finally desposits them when the Plymouth needs two new tires, who form her support community.
The New York Times reviewer Jack Butler, in describing this "Southern novel taken west," analyzes it, in part, as a journey through language: Taylor's folkisms, her and a fellow Kentuckian discovering that they talk alike, Turtle's catatonic silence and eventual acquisition of words, and Guatemalan refugee and English teacher Estevan's perfect English and conscientious awareness of the meanings of language (which he passes on to Taylor). And while I see these strands flowing throughout Kingsolver's book, I don't think it is the main theme. Indeed, motherhood and community--the notion of "it takes a village"--most resonated for me.
It is in the last chapters that the reader finally learns the meaning of the book's title, though there have been references to beans--Turtle's first word--and "bean trees," or wisteria, throughout the story.
Wisteria vines--which like many of the characters in the book--thrive in poor soil and need a community. It is no surprise that Kingsolver began as a science writer--her descriptions of and integration of science in this novel are entirely readable, even powerful. If Taylor is the wisteria, the first rhizobia of which we are made aware is in the first pages of the novel--her mother, who believes she "plugged in all the stars." When first reading of her mom, I turned to Mama and said that it was Taylor's relationship with her mother that would drive the book, even indirectly. Once Taylor acquires Turtle, she worries constantly about being a mother, about being a good mother, a mother like her own. And I would say that it was the relationship with her own mother that even made Taylor open to trying (and Mama and I had a long talk about whether it was our own good mothers who made us want to try). Indeed, mothers and mothering are central: fellow Kentuckian Lou Ann and her mother and grandmother and her own child; the mothering between Virgie Mae and her friend (was it just me or are they "family"?) Edna who is blind; the lost child of Estevan and his wife Esperanza; Mattie and her mothering of Taylor and the refugees in her sanctuary; the absent (and then presumably dead) mother of Turtle; and of course Taylor. It is Mattie who summarizes motherhood for Taylor:
So while Butler didn't like the predictable path he believed the novel took, it was this path--in the end an optimistic one about the hope of motherhood and mothering, of maternal connections, the wisteria with the help of rhizobia thriving in the poor soil--that I so appreciated, perhaps because it resonates so deeply with me. Even if I am nowhere near folksy, I found I had many of the same fears and worries of Taylor, which in the end, made her a character, and this a book, that I really cherish.
We have been talking about it as we go along, though. Especially because I didn't like it in the beginning. I found the main character, Kentuckian Taylor Greer, to be too folksy, too country, practically a caricature of a Southerner, with her quaint microstories about characters from her home town. I don't consider mysef a person of rural Southern origins, but I know people like that, have family like that, indeed, have a mom who grew up in a small, segregated farm community in Texas. And I wouldn't call her, or any of them, folksy. So, I think, I took offense and couldn't embrace the first third of the book as Taylor describes growing up a "nutter"--country kids who blackened their hands picking walnuts to earn money for new clothes--in a town trapped in the 1950s, which she miraculously escapes unpregnant in her testy Plymouth. The road soon leads her to Oklahoma and the Cherokee nation that she'd always been told she had "head rights," being a quarter Cherokee.
It is in Oklahoma that she acquires a child, the one thing she had avoided and escaped in Kentucky. An Indian child, who is soon called "Turtle," who she learns has been molested and mistreated, a child who is left--mind you, saved, not abanndoned--in the front seat of her car. The rest of the novel--the part that I savoured--involves Taylor coming to terms with her newfound motherhood and the people she meets in Tucson, where the road finally desposits them when the Plymouth needs two new tires, who form her support community.
The New York Times reviewer Jack Butler, in describing this "Southern novel taken west," analyzes it, in part, as a journey through language: Taylor's folkisms, her and a fellow Kentuckian discovering that they talk alike, Turtle's catatonic silence and eventual acquisition of words, and Guatemalan refugee and English teacher Estevan's perfect English and conscientious awareness of the meanings of language (which he passes on to Taylor). And while I see these strands flowing throughout Kingsolver's book, I don't think it is the main theme. Indeed, motherhood and community--the notion of "it takes a village"--most resonated for me.
It is in the last chapters that the reader finally learns the meaning of the book's title, though there have been references to beans--Turtle's first word--and "bean trees," or wisteria, throughout the story.
The wisteria vines on their own would just barely get by, is how I
explained it to Turtle, but put them together with rhizobia and they make
miracles.
Wisteria vines--which like many of the characters in the book--thrive in poor soil and need a community. It is no surprise that Kingsolver began as a science writer--her descriptions of and integration of science in this novel are entirely readable, even powerful. If Taylor is the wisteria, the first rhizobia of which we are made aware is in the first pages of the novel--her mother, who believes she "plugged in all the stars." When first reading of her mom, I turned to Mama and said that it was Taylor's relationship with her mother that would drive the book, even indirectly. Once Taylor acquires Turtle, she worries constantly about being a mother, about being a good mother, a mother like her own. And I would say that it was the relationship with her own mother that even made Taylor open to trying (and Mama and I had a long talk about whether it was our own good mothers who made us want to try). Indeed, mothers and mothering are central: fellow Kentuckian Lou Ann and her mother and grandmother and her own child; the mothering between Virgie Mae and her friend (was it just me or are they "family"?) Edna who is blind; the lost child of Estevan and his wife Esperanza; Mattie and her mothering of Taylor and the refugees in her sanctuary; the absent (and then presumably dead) mother of Turtle; and of course Taylor. It is Mattie who summarizes motherhood for Taylor:
"You're asking yourself, Can I give this child the best possible upbringing
and keep her out of harm's way her whole life long? The answer is no, you
can't. But nobody else can either. . . . That's why it's the wrong question to
ask, if you're really trying to make a decision."
"So what's the right thing to ask?"
"Do I want to try? Do I think it would be interesting, maybe even
enjoyable in the long run, to share my life with this kid and give her my best
effort and maybe, when all's said and done, end up wth a good friend."
So while Butler didn't like the predictable path he believed the novel took, it was this path--in the end an optimistic one about the hope of motherhood and mothering, of maternal connections, the wisteria with the help of rhizobia thriving in the poor soil--that I so appreciated, perhaps because it resonates so deeply with me. Even if I am nowhere near folksy, I found I had many of the same fears and worries of Taylor, which in the end, made her a character, and this a book, that I really cherish.
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