I’ve been reading gobs lately. I go through phases where all I want to do is read and then a month will pass without the desire to pick up a book. Summer is the perfect season for reading in Phoenix namely because it is so darned hot during most of the day to do much else outside. Plus, if you want to head out to the pool to lounge for an hour, why not grab a great book or a stack of magazines?
“When A Crocodile Eats the Sun” is a heart-wrenching memoir of a Zimbabwean journalist who is struggling living abroad while his aging parents try to maneuver life in the current political nightmare dictator Robert Mugabe has created. This book puts the day-to-day struggle of White Zimbabweans into focus. It is an excellent read and if nothing else, it brings more due attention to a political and humanitarian crisis that has been mostly ignored outside of southern Africa. (I can guarantee if White Africans were doing this to Black Africans today, the world would be responding differently. And yes, I’m bias. I have Zimbabwean friends who have lost everything thanks to Mugabe’s terror — folks who had to flee in the night with nothing but their lives to watch their homeland crumble from abroad. It is disgusting what Mugabe has been able to destroy.)

An excerpt that sums this up nicely:
“It is sometimes said the worst thing to happen to Africa was the arrival of the white man. And the second worst was his departure. Colonialism lasted just long enough to destroy much of Africa’s indigenous cultures and traditions, but not long enough to leave behind a durable replacement. There is a paradox at the heart of Africa: it is mankind’s crucible, the motherland, the place where early hominids evolved and, presumably therefore, the environment originally most hospitable to man, yet Africa is not the economic laggard, the Cinderella continent, a byword for poverty, disease and underdevelopment; the Third World’s Third World. In 1963, Zimbabwe had the same gross domestic product as South Korea. Now South Korea’s economy is 120 times the size of Zimbabwe’s. Africa accounts for more than 11 percent of the world’s population and less than 2 percent of its trade.”

Four out of five bananas, absoloodle.

As for the others in the stack:
“Lucky” made me cry and wince. It is another memoir, although this time it is the brutal story of a rape victim and how she survives and eventually thrives. Beautifully honest writing and Alice Sebold continues to be one of my favorite authors. Three out of five bananas.

“The Shack,” has shot to the top of the best-seller list and you probably know the plot. Without giving anything away, I’ll just say God is a main character and she is an African American woman with an attitude. I am 150 pages in and truly enjoying the tale. Four out of five bananas.

“Shop Girl” continues my love affair with Steve Martin. This movie is thoughtful and I love that he stars in the novella he wrote. I wonder if he imagined himself as this character? Clare Daines is pretty darn good too. Three out of five.

“Gone Baby Gone” slugged me in the gut. It is a twisted plot that makes you question if there are ever really right and wrongs and if justice exists. If nothing else, it was a great introduction to the cuteness that is Casey Affleck. Three out of five.

“Gabbeh” is a low-budget Iranian flim that I tried watching but kept falling asleep. You can’t close your eyes to movies with subtitles, so I missed about 80%. That said, the scenery is interesting and I’m not sure I’ve ever before seen a movie set in Iran. The countryside is quite pretty.

I am sad there haven’t been more great flicks at our local independent movie theater. Can you believe in Phoenix, a city with more than 3 million people, there is one tiny theater in Scottsdale showing independent movies? Maybe this week there will be a new crop and something will catch my eye.

~K

I’ve been sitting on the couch watching sports for the last three hours. And thanks to a very, very generous friend who works for a certain fabulous company, I may or may not be cheering for Team USA in new Olympic-themed workout clothes. That’s right — I’ve become one of those girls with words across her butt and currently my rear-end reads: USA!
I know what you are thinking.
Sports! Couch! Three hours! Sweats! And she drank beer this week? Is she morphing into Homer J.?
Well, not exactly. I spent my time in bliss watching athletic glory – I am a bit of an Olympic nut — completing this.

My friends Todd and Kathleen met in the Peace Corps in Cameroon and will be married next month.

Ah, hand-sewing. What a perfect way to get something done even when you are lounging.

And if I didn’t mention it: Go team USA! Woo hoo! Olympics!
~K

I mentioned earlier I’ve been reading “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down.” What an incredible read. I am enthralled in part because I’m now working with refugees. These excerpts capture the nature of this excellent book and the cultural chasm it describes. Again, the story en sum is about a Hmong refugee family with an infant daughter (Lia Lee) who has epilepsy and the American medical system that tries to treat her for this illness. The conflict lies in the fact the family doesn’t consider epilepsy a sickness, but instead a blessing.

When interviewing one of Lia’s doctors after the fact:
Then I asked, “Do you wish you had never met Lia?”
“Oh no, no no!” His vehemence surprised me. “Once I might have said yes, but not in retrospect. Lia taught me that when there is a very dense cultural barrier, you do the best you can, and if something happens despite that, you have to be satisfied with little successes instead of total successes. You have to give up total control. That is very hard for me, but I do try. I think Lia made me into a less rigid person.”

In response to Lia’s family’s response to her disease progression that it was the medical system, not the epilepsy that made their daughter suffer:

“It was also true that if the Lees were still in Laos, Lia would probably have died before she was out of her infancy, from a prolonged bout of untreated status epilepticus. American medicine had both preserved her life and compromised it. I was unsure which had hurt her family more.”

When consulting a medical expert, who wasn’t involved in her treatment, about her case:
“I told him what had happened later — the Lees’ noncompliance with Lia’s anticonvulsant regimen, the foster home, the neurological catastrophe — and asked him if he had any retroactive suggestions for her pediatricians.
“I have three,’ he said briskly. “First, get rid of the term, ‘compliance.’ It’s a lousy term. it implies moral hegemony. you don’t want a command from a general, you want a colloquy. Second, instead of looking at a model of coercion, look at a model of mediation. Go find a member of the Hmong community, or go find a medical anthropologist, who can help you negotiate. Remember that a stance of mediation, like a divorce proceeding, requires compromise on both sides. Decide what’s critical and be willing to compromise on everything else. Third, you need to understand that as powerful an influence as the culture of the Hmong patient and her family is on this case, the culture of biomedicine is equally powerful. If you can’t see that your own culture has its own set of interests, emotions, and biases, how can you expect to deal successfully with someone else’s culture?”

Excellent read, four out of five bananas absoloodle.
~K

I’ve done a good bit of reading this summer toward my goal of 40 books this year. To add to the list:

18. “What is the What” — which I already reviewed and loved. Five out of five bananas, absoloodle. The perspective and writing are excellent. This has serious potential to be my Christmas book of 2008.

19. “What the Dead Know” by Laura Lipmann: Two bananas, good plot and I liked the Dennis Leary-esq character Kevin Infante, but too heavy on the needless profanity to be truly enjoyable.

20. “Kabul Beauty School” by Deborah Rodriguez: Three bananas, fascinating memoir and I appreciated this foreigner’s take on living in a Muslim country as a divorced Christian woman. However, some of her choices leave her as a less-than-desirable lad character.

21. “I Capture the Castle” by Dodie Smith: Four bananas. Love the characters, the way of telling the stoyr, the creativity of the author. It was an entertaining summer read that I recommend for teens.

22. “Hank & Chloe” by Jo-Ann Mapson: Two bananas. Didn’t hate the story but didn’t think it was much more than mind candy. Lots of sexual detail that made me blush when reading this in public.

23. “It’s Not About the Tapas” by Polly Evans: 1 banana. I couldn’t get hooked on this one, but it would be a good read for European history buffs. It is a nonfiction travel memoir of a girl who decides to ride her bike across much of Spain.

24. “Millions Saved.” Four Bananas, and a mandatory read for anyone interested in international public health programming.

25. “Good Faith” by Jane Smiley. Two bananas. This was slow and again I wasn’t sure I liked the characters by the end.

26. “Fieldwork” by Mischa Berlinski. Four bananas. Such a vividly written tale that when I was done, I felt like I’d been the one traveling through Thailand. I loved this story. Several of you recommended it, so thank you!
{Sidenote, Berlinski recommends “The Dogs May Bark but the Caravan Rolls On.” I am going to add this to my library list.}

27. “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. Four bananas. This true story of a man building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan has been handed to me several times by friends. When I finally sat down to read it, I couldn’t put it down and did the very socially ugly act of even reading at the dinner table. It was that good. If you want to be motivated into how one person truly can make huge change, pick this up. Mortenson is one of my new heroes.

28. “The Law of Similars” by Chris Bonjalian. Three bananas. I like the way this author teaches the reader so much about topics — such as food allergies and homeopathy in this case — without it coming off as stuffy. Good fiction.

29. “More Than You Know” by Beth Gutcheon. Three bananas. The author does a good job of bouncing between two main stories and eventually tying them together.

30. “Soul Cravings” by Edwin McManus. Five bananas. My minister gave this to me before I left and it was perfect timing. This book is written in entry-style, so you can read it a bit each day or all at once. Great spiritual insight and motivation to ask more questions about faith.

31. “We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed with our Families” by Philip Gourevitch. Five bananas. This is an excellent read for anyone interested in the Rwandan genocide and Africa politics. It is a good study of what pushes the average everyday mind into being comfortable with killing others and how to prevent this sort of nonsense from happening again.

32. “Vinegar Hill” by A. Manette Ansay. Two bananas. Surprise, surprise. This Oprah book pick left me sad and miserable. The female lead lives a hopeless life.

33. “Hard Laughter” by Annie Lamott. 1 banana. I know, I know. Usually I love Lamott. Come to find out I really love her nonfiction. Her fiction is a bit too odd for me.

34. “The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel. Five stars. Again, another spiritual book that will rock your socks if you give it a chance. I have found myself repeatedly reminding myself of these agreements when faced with obstacles and they’ve helped me to find grace in the journey.

35. “At the Mercy of the River” by Peter Stark. Four bananas. A nonfiction adventure tale about a team who decide to kayak the Lugenda River in Mozambique. Absolutely wonderful writing and I am bias because I kinda love the country.

36. “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe. Three bananas. Good story with interesting African tribal insights. Reminded me of “The Alchemist” in the writing style.

Currently reading and loving, “Cold Mountain” with “Lucky” on deck. What have you been enjoying?

~K

I’ve just finished reading, “What is the What” and I have to say — it is an excellent, heartbreaking work of genius. No coincidence it’s author — Dave Eggers — already wrote a book by a similar title. This biography of one of the Sudanese Lost Boys had me laughing and at one particularly horrifying point, crying into the soft gray pages. It is a great story that needed to be told 10 years ago. I applaud Eggers for taking such a series of such daunting topics (Sudanese politics and history, refugee life, asylum, immigrant life in the United States) and making them humorous, entertaining and thought-provoking. For example, one of my favorite scenes puts the narrator at an Atlanta Hawks game sitting with Manute Bol — the token spokesman for Sudan in the United States. There he sat with a gaggle of other Sudanese refugees, newly moved to Atlanta. They were all malnourished, confused by their surroundings and totally overwhelmed by their environment. If being in the stadium with the basketball game occurring wasn’t odd enough to their much more simple sensibilities, imagine half-time. These conservative men were about to lose their minds when the cheerleaders came out:
“They performed a hyperactive and very provocative dance to a song by Puff Daddy. We all stared at the gyrating young women, who put forth an image of great power and fierce sexuality. It would have been impolite to turn away, but at the same time, the dancers made me uncomfortable. The music was the loudest I have heard in my life, and the spectacle of the stadium, with its 120-foot ceiling, its thousands of seats, its glass and chrome and banners, its cheerleaders and murderous sound system — seemed perfectly designed to drive people insane.”
Then, as if to add insult to their cultural injury, these refugees watched as the women loaded guns (guns! They’d just barely escaped with their lives) with t-shirts. T-shirts were precious to this group. They’d traded clothing along their routes to survive. I’d never before considered what a ridiculous scene this must be to a foreigner and how it flaunts American excess at each cartwheel.
Four out of five bananas, absoloodle.

A few of my favorite excerpts, from the voice of the narrator, Valentino Achak Deng:

After being assaulted in his own home in Atlanta by African Americans who nearly kill him and refer to him as “Africa” and “Nigeria” during the attack, he says:
“Each time I find myself giving up on this country, I have the persistent habit of realizing all that I have here and did not have in Africa. It is annoying, this habit, when I want to count and measure the difficulties of life here. This is a miserable place, of course, a miserable and glorious place that I love dearly and of which I have seen far more than I could have expected.”

And so poignantly when discussing his love through war, refugee camps, and establishing life in a new country that might as well be in a new solar system, he says,

“I cannot count the times I have curses our lack of urgency. If ever I love again, I will not wait to love as best as I can. We thought we were young and that there would be time to love well sometime in the future. This is a terrible way to think. It is no way to live, to wait to love.”

If you are interested in Africa, the immigrant experience in the United States or the Sudanese Lost Boys — this is a must read. We have a large population of Lost Boys in Phoenix. Many work at the airport. I’m know I’m going to embarrass myself next time I see them; I imagine a series very inappropriate but well intended hugs and handshakes. A perhaps a sincere apology, if I can muster it, that I had no idea what’d they’d gone through until now. I am so sorry such inequity and injustice can occur.

~K

Yesterday I received both of these in the mail and couldn’t help but laugh at the irony. Something tells me I’m not going to burn 320 calories at lunch by enjoying the Bon Appetit cover article.

Who burns 320 calories at lunch? Not this Phoenician. I can tell you that it is in the 90s here this week and we’re sweaty driving to lunch, much less going for a walk or workout this time of year.

On the flip side, the postman also brought me two rocking new Amy Butler patterns. Giddyup. I can’t wait to dive into these!

Why yes, this will be my new summer tote. Can’t wait!
~K

P.S. If you are a Phoenician and interested in meeting this crafty gal, she is going to be at the grand opening of the new Blissful Living Studio in downtown Mesa on Saturday.
{I hope to make it post SheRox, but timing and energy levels are questionable post-tri.}

Come to find out, you guys read a ton. We read a lot of the same authors (Kingsolver, Lamott, Coehlo) and you had some mighty suggestions. For anyone interested in a recommended summer reading guide, here is what you’ve suggested in comments that I have not read:
(I copied these directly from comments, forgive the lack of editing style. Some are authors, other book titles.)

Beatrix Potter
Corrie Ten Boom
Jane Austen
Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff
Come Back, by Claire and Mia Fontaine
Lucky by Alice Sebold
The Golden Compass
Sala’s Gift: My Mother’s Holocaust Story by Ann Kirschner
Pride and Prejudice
In Lucia’s Eyes
The Historian
The Book Thief
The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show
Janet Evanovich’s number series
Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinkski
The Devil in the White City by Erick Larson
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Necessary Madness by Jenn Crowell
You’re Not You by Michele Wildgen
The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
Jane Eyre
Dr. Oz’s book How to Keep Young
PS I love you
March by Geraldine Brooks
The Last Witchfinder by James Morrow
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
The Last Summer of You and Me
Hypocrisy of Disco
See You In A Hundred Years
Highest Tide
The God of Animals
Lullabies for Little Criminals
The Solace of Open Spaces
Haven Kimmel
Ron Carlson’s Five Skies
Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth
Gaia Girls
Wee Free Men
The Birth House
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe by Douglas Adams
Mezzanine Nicholson Baker
A Woman in Berlin
Persepolis

And these I have read and have provided a brief review:
{On a banana scale, Summer Sisters by Judy Blume is a 1 (horrific!) while A Hundred Years of Solitude, The Power of One, The Poisonwood Bible, are all 5 bananas, absoloodle. Fives changed my way of looking at the world. Ones make me want to burn the pages for kindling.}

The Poisonwood Bible — 5 bananas
My Sisters Keeper by Jodi Picoult — 3 bananas
Kite Runner — 4 bananas
Tom Robbins — 4 as a general rule, always entertaining
Eat, Pray Love — 4, loved it, love Elizabeth Gilbert more in person
Hemingway — 3. I realize he’s a classic, but not my favorite.
Blink — 3. Liked the topic but was bored by the end.
Freakonomics — 3. See above.
Sue Grafton — 2. Summer mind candy, good for the occasional craving.
White Oleander — 4, great read, descriptive writing
Water for Elephants — 3, candy.
The Namesake — 5, love Jhumpa Lahiri
The Alchemist — 5, one of my faves of all time. Coelho is gold.
Secret Life of Bees — 3, enjoyed the story
The Red Tent — 4, great imagination, loved the Biblical references
Life of Pi — 4, great story telling, great for discussion afterward
Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver — 3, good summer read
Prep, by Curtis Sittenfeld –2, couldn’t identify with the main character

Now, what to read next…
~K

Book bag for a swimmer friend. This has me thinking. A. I need a new tote for my summer travels that must hold lots of books. B. I need to start putting aside trusty used paperbacks I can leave behind as I go.

My goal of reading 40 books this year is going pretty well. January was a banner month. February was brief and a great time to be outside riding my bike, not on the couch lazing about. March I got hung up reading a book I really didn’t enjoy, only to then spend $7 on the movie that I didn’t like either. Go figure.
There have been some great reads this year; I am a little in love with William Powers and wish Anne Lamott was my friend. There have been some silly ones too. I’ve been tutoring a friend who is in high school and reading a fair number of books I wouldn’t have otherwise enjoyed — like those Traveling Pants.

2008:
1. Whispering in the Giant’s Ear
2. A Thousand Splendid Suns
3. Lipstick Jihad
4. The Island
5. A Year of Pleasures
6. Blue Clay People
7. Traveling Mercies
8. Grace Eventually
9. Bird by Bird
10. The Other Boleyn Girl
11. Glass Castle
12-14: The Traveling Pants series, 1-3 (tutoring)
15. Wuthering Heights (repeat, tutoring)
16. Animal Dreams (repeat, tutoring)
17. Atonement

Next up: What is the What, Three Cups of Tea, Plan B. I know I’m a goof ball for being so excited by the growing stack of books on my nightstand, but someday I’m going to be a busy parent and am going to look back at my twenties and think, “I am so glad I read those then!”

What are you reading? Is there a book you’ve read in 2008 that you can’t wait to share with others? I’d love to hear about it. In 2007 that book for me was The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint. In 2006 it was Winterdance.

~K

My goal is to read 40 books in 2008. I’m off to a chaotic start. The latest read was “Blue Clay People” by William Powers. I enjoyed his other book earlier this year and was excited to see my library carried this one. Four out of five bananas, absoloodle.
This book is about Liberia in 1999-2001 when President Charles Taylor was fine-tuning his abilities to see that the rain forest was cleared and the diamond mines emptied. (In all fairness, he did this to feed the diamond and timber hungry markets of the world, very much including my own American community.)The expense was a generation of Liberians — and their next door neighbors in Sierra Leone — who fought brutal wars, many of who survived with wicked drug habits and missing limbs.
Powers excerpts the following, which so accurately sums up my experiences as an expatriate:
“Like most people who go overseas to do development work, I did so expected to find out what it’s like to be poor…That ’s not what happens. Instead you learn what it’s like to be rich, to be fabulously, incomprehensibly, bloated with wealth.”
— Mike Tidwell, “The Ponds of Kalambayi”

And this point from Powers’ book will remain with me for the rest of my life:
“There is a point called ‘enough.’ It is elusive, but it exists and Chief Wah, and many of Liberia’s simplest people know where it is, even if they slip below it during the hungry season, during the warring season. Enough is food, water, clean air and community. Enough is the rhythm of a talking drum under a moon that speaks to you through its light. Enough is listening to nature rather than dominating it. We in the West must relax and ratchet down to the joyful place called enough; many Liberians need to increase their well-being until we meet there, in a sustainable world.”

One last excerpt:
“I go into each new day looking at every person as a unique being capable of miracles; I look with wonder upon the healthy forests that still remain and draw strength from them; I am conscious of what I consume and try to bring my consumption into harmony with my vision of a just world. I attempt to find joy in living simply so that others (including other species) may simply live. I act as if a sustainable world were possible.”

Learning not to fulfill every need, living in the world of enough. It would be a beautiful thing.

Books in 2008:
1. Whispering in the Giant’s Ear
2. A Thousand Splendid Suns
3. Lipstick Jihad
4. The Island
5. A Year of Pleasures
6. Blue Clay People
7. Where God Was Born — currently reading

~K

The Case of the Missing Ponytail

It took me three years to complete a rough draft of my first novel, much of which I wrote under duress during a wicked breakup. Hot off the press, I sent the first copy to my father. {My dad has always been my writing inspiration, my biggest literary cheerleader. While I love my mom, to this day she hasn’t read the book. “I read a couple pages and keep falling asleep!” Unless I’m planning on marketing this to insomniacs, let’s hope for better reviews.}
I’ve since sent it to many other friends and it was resoundingly decided that the ending “sucked.” And there was a character no one understood. And what about that one guy in the hospital and where did he end up going?
There were holes in the plot and in this fragile time of life I wasn’t ready for criticism. My skin was thin and I just wanted everyone to tell me how I was a literary genius at the ripe age of 25! No dice.
Like everything else in life, success in writing was going to come from heaps of work and dedication. I re-read the story, made a few minor changes — insisting my ending was realistic and perfect! — and sent it off to agents far and wide. The rejection letters promptly started arriving and I cried. Oh, how I cried.
Then I found an agent who was willing to read it. Better yet, he wanted to talk about it. Bob talked for hours — two hours actually. I listened, taking detailed notes for the first hour. I cleaned the house during the second. He hated the ending too, but he loved the characters. We’d never met, he hadn’t read my blog, he didn’t know my story. Yet, as he spoke, I felt like he truly understood my vision. He knew me because he knew my art and that was a powerful feeling I’d never before experienced. It made me more optimistic and hopeful than I’d been in a long time. With a list of edits, and a much better ending, he said this could be published.
Six months later, I pulled out those notes and began the tedious process of changing significant characters and part of the plot. I am about a quarter of the way finished and I find this work exhausting in the best sense. It pushes me creatively and I look forward to the hour here and there I can grab to write, edit and read. That said, holy moly do I wish this book was ready for print. I really want to start writing the next story. I’m doubly motivated because it dawned on me this week — what if I’ve let so much time pass Bob no longer wants to help? Then what?
Oprah, now is the time to delurk.

~K