Let's Talk About Books Baby!

October

Books Bought:

The Shining by Stephen King

Between Two Worlds: by Zainab Salbi

Freedom from Fear: by Aung San Suu Kyi

Songs of Blood and Sword: by Fatima Bhutto

A Kitchen in France: A Year of Cooking in my Farmhouse by Mimi Thorisson

Books Read:

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

The Red Queen by Philippa Gregory

Giving by Bill Clinton

The Shining by Stephen King

First off, let's just get The Shining out of the way since this is so far out of range from my usual taste.  Some friends came to town for a wedding in Estes Park, I kind of shuffled them around so they let me stay with them in the cabin they rented.  I had a lot of down time by myself so when I dropped them off at The Stanley Hotel for a rehearsal dinner I decided to walk around the property a bit since I've never done that before.  I found myself in the gift shop and so I thought, "why not?  It's October, it's chilly out, I'm in the mountains, and I may as well go back to the cabin and spook myself out!"  So, I cozied up on the sofa and got to reading, it wasn't really that scary, but just knowing it was going to get scary was what scared me the most!  When my phone buzzed I nearly had a heart attack!  It was my friends needing me to come back down the road and pick them up at The Stanley.  It was so scary outside, driving on the winding mountain roads, waiting for my heat to kick in and defrost the window from my breathing, not knowing the bends in the road and wondering what could be just around every corner.... so I pick them up, we headed back to the cabin and built a fire.  I realized I left my sleeping bag out in the car and when I went out to get it I stepped weirdly on a rock and I fell- twisting my ankle in the process!  Once I hobbled back inside and got an ice pack on my foot, the coziness just overflowed, I felt like I was in a cozy trance!  I felt so at peace.  I could just imagine a future of not having to take care of everything and myself all the time, a future in which you fall down but you have a person to sit by the fire with and who hoists your ankle up and makes sure you have fresh ice on it.  I want to pass the time with another quiet soul, someone who can stop and listen to the fire popping, and read a book.  Someone who can build a fire, and navigate snowy mountain roads.  Of course when I talk to my sister about these dreams, she just tells me I could learn how to build a fire myself.  She has a point.  But sometimes, just sometimes, I want to be taken care of; it would be nice to know that there is a man that cares when you fall.  Anyways... I digress, back to books.

Turns out that the suspicions I've always held turned out to be spot on... Stephen King, not for me!

I want to talk about Mimi Thorisson for a moment!  Her cookbook is insanely gorgeous!  Just like her instagram and blog!   Instagram had suggested I follow her, and I adore her account!  She has the best life, and I truly believe that one of my best dreams ever was inspired by her life.  Mimi lives in a tiny village in France and spends her days buying the freshest ingredients and making the most amazing meals to share with her family & friends!  Her life is amazing, her book is gorgeous!  This would be a fantastic holiday gift for any of your francophile or foodie friends!

To read more about Mimi, and experience the wonderfulness that is her blog, click here:  http://mimithorisson.com/ 

Now, as to the other three books that I bought this month I can tell you that they have a theme and are inspired by books I've read recently.  In Hillary Clinton's new book she talks extensively about Myanmar and Aung San Suu Kyi, which piqued my interest.  And, I'm currently reading Benazir Bhutto's book that came out right after her assassination which made me think that soon I would like to read one of her niece's writings.   And finally, this month I finished Giving by Bill Clinton and in it he mentions a women's organization called Women for Women International which I had heard about previously when Angelina Jolie's movie In the Land of Blood and Honey came out.  This organization is all about helping women in areas of conflict.  Sometimes I get this deep feeling that I'm supposed to be doing something political and geared towards the aid of women in humanitarian crises and this stuff always pulls me in.  For now, I would like to read more and then hopefully see where I feel comfortable volunteering or even just learn how I could volunteer. 

As for books read, I read my first book by Gillian Flynn (and no, it's not Gone Girl but I will hopefully be reading this one soon)!  It's not that I think she is extremely talented linguistically per se, but she is entertaining (somewhat in the nature or ballpark of a Dan Brown novel); it grips you right from the get go and you keep telling yourself, "just one more chapter"!  Plus, it was another good, "scary" read for October.

And, in an insane attempt to catch up with Philippa Gregory's Cousins' War series I've read my second book of hers this year.  I hope, fingers crossed, that I will be able to read the third before it's due back at the library.  I have come to terms with the fact that despite all my best efforts this woman will remain as my most read author, seeing as how she comes out with a book (or two) every year, and I always want to read them!  Take it away, Philippa, climb the ladder past authors who deserve a better spotlight!!  It's fine, you can be my number 1!  *sigh*

That just about sums up October, here's hoping that I can post about November in a timely manner!  

Let's Talk About Books Baby!

September

Books Bought:

The Children Act- Ian McEwan

Adultery- Paulo Coelho

Wild- Cheryl Strayed

Tiny Beautiful Things- Cheryl Strayed

Torch- Cheryl Strayed

Books Read:

Cutting for Stone- Abraham Verghese

Adultery- Paulo Coelho

The Secret History- Donna Tartt

The Children Act- Ian McEwan

The Lovers- Vendela Vida

Wow!  September was a crazy good month for books!  First let me tell you about the Cheryl Strayed event I went to in Fort Collins.  For those of you who haven't heard of Cheryl Strayed you're about to!  Her book Wild about her life saving trek down on the Pacific Crest Trail has been turned into a movie, starring Reese Witherspoon, in theaters this December!  It's debuted at Telluride and there has been a lot of buzz around Miss Witherspoon's performance!  I had previously read Wild and Cheryl's book of essays called Tiny Beautiful Things and I love them both!  They are the kinds of books that when you finish you know they were good but then you even grow to love them more as you realize that it's been months and you've read lots of books since them, yet, they are the ones you are still thinking of.  Anyways, both of those books I had checked out from the library but since I was going to this event, I bought them to get them signed.  

Highlights of her talk in Fort Collins:  Cheryl talked a lot about her mom (understandably so since Cheryl just had a birthday where she has now passed how old her mom was when she died, plus the movie is coming out and Cheryl's real daughter plays the younger Cheryl in the movie which brought up weird motherly feelings and realizations, and her mom is a driving force in how Cheryl got to where she is).  One thing that really resonated with me is that when her mom died, Cheryl got really destructive and was doing really bad things to her body and one day it's like it clicked that even though she was trying to show the world how sad she was without her mom, in a way, she realized she was dishonoring her mother's work by destroying herself.  I liked this because sometimes I feel I do things to myself (overeat) because I'm sad and because some really shitty things happened or I'm stuck in a rut, but I never think about how this must make my mom feel.  I'm sure this isn't what she wanted for me, and I know she loves me no matter what, but I just like the way this made me feel that I should honor my body because it is my mom's work of art.  Weird, I know.  Anyways...

I also really loved when she was in this outdoorsy store to get a shovel to dig her car out of the snow, she saw this book for the Pacific Crest Trail at the counter and she thought, "wow, that's really something, maybe, if I can just attach myself to something this magnificent then I might become magnificent too."  I liked this because this is how I feel about yoga... like yoga is this most beautiful practice and if I can just implement it in my life (be brave enough too) and then live it then I might be beautiful too.

I like how when Cheryl was on the trail she said she didn't do nearly the amount of thinking and analyzing that she thought she was going to do, it was more how can I walk this many miles with no water and no toenails to make it to shelter for the night?  It was about survival.  She said, "physical suffering, deprivation, was what I actually needed".  I think about this all the time (the irony, I know).  If I could just stop sitting around thinking and get up and move... just walk, just learn to love walking.  I feel like I've been on the emotional journey, I've done the spiritual thing, now I need to work it all out physically.   

Anyways, if you haven't read Wild or Tiny Beautiful Things I HIGHLY recommend both!  I also picked up her other book Torch that I've never read before so hopefully I will get around to that one soon!

The other two books that I bought this month, I ended up reading (go me!) so let's start with those:

Ian McEwan, how I love thee. McEwan's books are always so beautifully twisted.  This one is about a judge in the UK who has to deal with cases involving children.  She often gets stuck making a decision for what's in the children's best interest when their parents or guardians can't agree.  We see a few of her interesting cases, but we also get to see her marriage and how it is unraveling.  I just love the way McEwan writes, definitely one of the better books that I've read that was released in 2014.

Paulo Coelho.  I'm new to reading his books, I've only ever previously read The Alchemist which I loved, so I was expecting to feel the same about this book.  I know that this book was making a lot of statements about how we've all grown bored and complacent, and how we feel entitled to give into our every little whim or indulgence, how we can justify things in our heads or place blame on others.  Bottom line, the main character in this book is a repulsive woman, which makes it very hard to love this book.  I think most of us can probably recognize some of her gross behaviors in ourselves, but this woman was unbearable. 

Now onto some of the other books....

Cutting for Stone had been on my list for a very long time and I'm so glad I finally got around to reading it!  I have to admit it took me a while to get through it... the first 100 pages lagged for me, but I stuck with it because when a book has a heavy religious story line, mixed with culture & history I just KNOW it's going to be good.  It did not disappoint.  Once I finally got going with it, it was hard to put down.  I see why it was such a successful novel and I look forward to reading more from the author in the future.

After reading and loving The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, I knew that it wouldn't be long before I would get my hands on her first book that many call a cult classic: The Secret History.  This lady is legit.  Girl can write.  And she keeps you captured from the get go!  I loved this book and all of its' super twisted characters, I loved the setting, I loved the descriptions.  Sooooo good!  I'm scared to read the book that she wrote between The Secret History and The Goldfinch because apparently it wasn't well received when it came out.  But seeing as how she took about 11 years between the second and her last, I'm sure I'll have to read it just to tide me over until she someday (hopefully) releases a fourth book. 

And lastly... I've had The Lovers by Vendela Vida on my shelf for a couple of years now.  I've been hesitant to read it because I wasn't a big fan of another book of hers that I read, but I've wanted to read it because I really want to like her because she's married to my love Dave Eggers.  So, I'm not sure what made me grab for this one at this particular time, but when I opened it I realized it takes place in Turkey (which seems to have a gravitational pull on my attention lately), so I curled up in my chair and I started to read.  I loved it.  It doesn't end in a way that I thought it would and maybe that's part of why I liked it so much.  But it was just a simple story of grieving and coming to terms with life's little abuses.  I think when/if Vendela ever puts another book out, I will look forward to reading it and I don't think it will sit on my shelves for years. 

Which brings me to the question... why do I buy books only to let them sit there for so long unopened?  I'm not sure, I've done this for as long as I can remember.  But I know that there are times when a book calls to me in the store, but by the time I've finished whatever book I may have already been reading at that time, then I'm no longer in the mood for the new book I bought.  But sometimes, I end up reading them exactly when I need to, which makes it feel like it's all pre-destined.  Or maybe I'm just an addict.  My eyes are bigger than the speed in which they actually can read.  Who knows?  But it's kind of like when you buy an album and for whatever reason it just doesn't get a lot of play only to years later suddenly become your favorite album.  Timing.  They say it's everything.

What books have you ever bought and let sit on your shelf for way too long before getting around to cracking the spine?