Things I Like

Book Review: The Maternal is Political

I’ve just finished reading The Maternal is Political: Women Writers at the Intersection of Motherhood & Social Change, edited by Shari MacDonald Strong.

I read it as part of the MotherTalk book review team, and received my review copy for free from them. I was not otherwise compensated for this review. (And I wrote in the book, so I’m not inclined to offer it up as a giveaway, unless you want my underlinings and dog-ears.)

The list of contributing writers is amazing — writers like Anne Lamott, Barbara Kingsolver, Rebecca Walker, Susie Bright, Anna Quindlen, and politicians like Nancy Pelosi and the late Benazir Bhutto. There are also dozens of great contributors whose writing is less familiar to most of us.

MacDonald Strong’s Introduction acknowledges how difficult it can be for overwhelmed mothers to also be engaged political activists. We have to feed our children, keep them and our surroundings tolerably clean, and supervise them. We don’t have to follow the news, organize, or worry about the myriad of issues that affect our lives and communities less directly. And in her words:

Some days, it’s just easier to block it all out, to curl up with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s (or it would be if someone else in your house hadn’t gotten to it first), and curl up to watch American Idol while hoping someone else will step up and fix things.

On the flip side, as Judith Stadtman Tucker notes in the book’s opening essay:

Once you see injustice, you start to see it everywhere. And once you start to see injustice everywhere — once you take the awareness of its prevalence and corrosive power into your heart — you can’t stop thinking about what it would take to put things right.

Rebecca Walker asks what I think is the central question of both the book, and motherhood:

Is there one single aspect of motherhood that isn’t political? From conception to graduation, from your kid’s first apartment until you die, it’s basically one political decision after another.

The rest of the essays explore different places mothers are and the different paths that mothers take between those two poles.

Barbara Kingsolver’s essay comparing her own self-image at 13 to how she perceives her daughter’s, is touching, not to mention eye-opening for those of us who grew up in a later era than Kingsolver. Her effort to help her daughter deal with a fifth grade sexually harassing bully is nothing short of inspiring.

Like Kingsolver, Amy L. Jenkins finds the courage and need to speak out against narrow-minded sexism because more than needing to be the pleasant and polite, she needed to set an example for her daughter and another young woman — while they were all stuck together on a 125 mile car trip. (Normally, one imagines that going to see the Green Bay Packers would be the memorable part of a road trip, but not for this mother of a daughter listening to a young man spewing sexism.)

And like Jenkins, Anne Lamott struggles with the question of whether or not to politely allow someone else to give a polite and non-confrontational, soft response to comments she finds almost paralyzingly sexist and frustrating.

Lamott, too, cannot contain her honest anger and frustration in the face of both the original sexism, and the genteel and inadequate responses of the people around her, when she is part of a liberal/progressive panel discussion on politics and faith:

But then I did the only thing I could think to do: plunge on and tell my truth.

…

And somehow, as I was speaking, I got louder and maybe more emphatic than I actually feel, and said that [abortion] was not a morally ambiguous issue for me at all. I said that fetuses were not babies yet; that there actually was a difference between pro-choice people, like me, and Klaus Barbie.

Then I said that a woman’s right to choose was nobody else’s goddamn business.

As wonderful as all of those essays were, they were not my favorites. My favorite essays were Helaine Olen’s The Mean Moms, and Adoption in III Acts, by Kathy Briccetti.

I thought The Mean Moms was the most vulnerable and honest essay in the book. Although the perspectives couldn’t be more different, the naked truthfulness and bravery of Olen’s voice reminded me of Anne Lamott’s Operating Instructions.

I’m not going to quote an excerpt because I can’t bring myself to expose the best and most awful story in the essay, out of context. Go read it yourself. The essay begins on page 243.

Briccetti’s essay was a favorite for more personal reasons. I owe her and her family a debt of gratitude — they were pioneers in the effort to have same-sex second-parent adoptions approved by the court. Their success in 1993 paved the way for Jill’s and mine in 2006.

As much as 13 years makes a difference in the legal and political evolution, I’m sorry to say that the fear and frustration they felt were no different and no more realistic concerns than ours. Our families still can’t count on legal recognition, even though we’re sometimes fortunate enough to get it.

Briccetti’s personal journey and relationship to adoption is far more complex than mine, and adds fascinating layers of emotion to her story:

Ever since Pam and I had visited the sperm bank to choose a donor, I’d struggled with the idea that my family’s blueprint — three generations of adoptions and absent fathers — had somehow caused me to create a child who would not grow up with a father.

If this collection has a weakness, it is that it does seem to be preaching to the choir. Feminists will love it, and may find new nuggets of information, new anecdotes to support theories, new writers they’ll enjoy and return to reading. I could imagine this book used as a college text. But I have a hard time imagining a “regular mom” selecting this book from a table in a bookstore.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Don’t we join the choir because we both like music and we like listening to a good, thought-provoking sermon?

Book Review: The Working Woman's Pregnancy Book

What? You still read books? You haven’t posted a review in so long that we thought maybe it was because all you read are board books with Noah?

What are you talking about? I posted one just a few weeks ago!

Ok, true, but it was the first one in like a year.

I’m still reading. I’m just not keeping track of what I read like I did back in 2005, before I had a baby. Or writing about it. Also, I’m in this weird phase where I re-read the same books over and over. And not just to Noah.

Huh. You know that’s weird, right?

Shut up. It works for me, and besides, I’m trying to talk about a new book, ok?

As I was planning to say, before I got caught up in that imaginary conversation with you, I’ve just finished reading Marjorie Greenfield’s The Working Woman’s Pregnancy Book. I read it as part of the MotherTalk book tour. (They gave me a free copy of the book, but I was not otherwise compensated for this review.)

When I signed up, I expected The Working Woman’s Pregnancy Book to be pretty much like the myriad of other pregnancy books I obsessively bought when I was pregnant with Noah, only with some additional information on the Family & Medical Leave Act, and maybe some additional suggestions for staying healthy in different work environments, plus hopefully some advice on managing returning to work.

It isn’t.

The first three chapters are about your health before you even try to get pregnant. And the next two are about trying to get pregnant — and how/when to proceed “When Nature Isn’t Working.”

And while the next four sections are divided into the three trimesters and the actual birth, the week-by-week fetal development information ranges from a few paragraphs per week, down to a chart of key milestones.

Instead, the focus is on things like:

• How to Choose a Doctor or Midwife
• Communicating About Your Pregnancy at Work
• Second Trimester Prenatal Testing
• Arranging for Maternity Leave
• Your “Birth Plan”
• Natural Childbirth/Epidurals/Other Pain Relief Options
• Cesarean Sections

Personally, my biggest fear/annoyance about pregnancy books is that they will be ALL about the unacknowledged assumption that the reader is in a heterosexual marriage. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! But not every pregnant person is either married or straight, and you would think that authors would remember that.

I liked how this book handled that.

Right up front in the Preface, on the first page of text in the book, Greenfield says:

I also want to explain what may seem like assumptions about gender and sexual orientation. In this book, I used the male gender for the partner, since that is the most common arrangement, and alternated male and female for the baby (by chapter). In places, I assumed that the mom was heterosexual and in a long-term relationship, but I tried to address other arrangements when it made a difference.

See how easy that is? Authors don’t need to engage in awkward writing OR to ignore the diverse circumstances under which women get pregnant. Speaking to your specific imaginary reader is totally fine — just acknowledge the fact that your actual readers will be in many different circumstances, and when that makes a difference, address it! Good job, Dr. Greenfield!

A few other things I liked about this book:

• There were lots of great quotations from moms, about their experiences, throughout the book. (Although some of the “anonymizing” was silly. Like “Jane S., state governor. Gee, I wonder who that is.)
• Non-judgmental tone in discussing emotionally charged issues like c-sections, circumcision, and breastfeeding/use of formula.
• Use of quotation marks around “Birth Plan” and explicit recognition that your birth is not going to go according to anyone’s plan. I really think that the moms who are the most attached to their idea of how birth “should go” are the ones who are the unhappiest with their actual experience. (That’s NOT what Greenfield said, but I felt validated in my opinion by her quotation marks. Certainly she agrees that you should talk with your health care providers about what you want.)
• The chapter “Crawling Up the Learning Curve” about the exhausting emotional roller coaster of the first few weeks home with a newborn does a good job of setting a new mom’s expectations. (But does anyone ever believe how crazy it will be?)
• The information about pumping at work, that pumping is a learned skill, and that your workplace may or may not do a good job of supporting your need to pump, are things I think very few women think about in advance — and it would be helpful to do so!
• Finding a health care practice — great information explaining the different types of options, including OBs, Family Doctors, Certified Nurse Midwives, and various other types of midwives, as well as RNs, Nurse Practicioners, Doulas, and Maternal-Fetal Medicine specialists. Also excellent information about how to figure out if the practice is the right fit for you. I had a hard time finding a practice to deliver Noah, and it would have been reassuring to have something concrete like the list of questions this book provides.
• Great appendices full of information about infertility treatment, interpreting various prenatal tests, and additional resources both online and in print.

This book would be most useful to someone who is at the very beginning of the process of trying to get pregnant.

While readers who are or have dealt with infertility treatment will quibble with some of the assumptions in the chapter “Trying to Get Pregnant,” for an average, fertile, healthy, heterosexual woman in a relationship, the information is WAY MORE useful than we got in high school sex ed, and probably works for most people.

The next group of people I think would find this book valuable are professional women in urban or suburban areas. We are the people most likely to be able to make the wide range of choices about health care, work for employers covered by the FMLA, and likely to buy multiple pregnancy books.

Yeah. Multiple pregnancy books.

Maybe I’m unique, but in both of my pregnancies, I’ve wanted more details about both fetal development and the changes happening to my pregnant body than this book includes. That’s ok, all those other books have that. And most of them don’t have the breadth of information in this book.

If you are pregnant for the first time, or hope to become pregnant for the first time in the next six months or a year, I recommend picking up these two books: The Working Woman’s Pregnancy Book and Bun in the Oven by Kaz Cooke.

And if that sounds like you (or you just want to read it), leave a comment. One random commenter will be the lucky winner of this book. (You can’t have my copy of Bun – I’m re-reading it for the week by week details!)

Book Review: The Big Green Purse, Plus Life

We've been super-busy and I am extra-tired lately, so here are some extremely short versions of the posts I have been writing in my head:

• Book Review of Big Green Purse:

This is a great resource on how women's "power of the purse" can be used to help contribute to a healthier, more sustainable way of life. And in many cases, it actually saves money to do it that way! MacEachern very helpfully lists some top "bang for your buck" suggestions in each chapter of the book, so that if a reader wants to test a few simple changes, figuring out some options is easy. We read this as part of the local Smith Club Book Club this month, and most of the other women at the meeting agreed. The top changes people are considering after reading are joining a CSA and switching cleaning products. Full disclosure: I did score a review copy of this book, but this review was not otherwise compensated.

• Noah seems to have contracted Fifth Disease. It appears to be not serious, at least for him. I'm hoping that my utter lack of symptoms means that I, like most adults, had it as a child and am now immune. Because naturally it is dangerous only to people with compromised immune system and fetuses. And for some reason, my midwives haven't returned my phone call about it.
• No bug sightings since Saturday!
• I am officially out of 90% of non-maternity clothes. I freaked out last week because I hadn't gained any weight in 2 weeks, and I'm in prime weight-gain time for pregnancy, the second trimester. But don't worry, I made up for it and am up 2 lbs since my freakout last Tuesday. Happily, I am still not on track to match last pregnancy's 50 lb weight gain.
• I joined a food swap. About a dozen other toddler moms and I are each making a bunch of sets of felt food items, and then doing a massive exchange, so our kids get a variety of safe pretend food. I'm making fried eggs -- I did the first one last night, while watching election returns, and it turned out adorable!Considering that his cooking toys currently rank 3rd behind trains and cars, I think Noah will like the bounty due to arrive in early June.
• I've been falling off the fruit & veg/healthy eating wagon lately. So I'm re-instating my daily fruit & veg reports here. Fruit & Veg Count, 4/22: Big fat nada, unless you count the amount of strawberries in a cup of strawberry yogurt. I'm going to go eat a banana.

Book Review: Alternadad

I just finished reading Alternadad by Neal Pollack, and I loved it. It's my second favorite book about being a parent, after Operating Instructions, by Anne Lamott. I also have to give credit for my having read this to Shelfari. It caught my eye on Lizzie's shelf, which contained numerous books I've read and loved, so while I was stuck in La Jolla, I found and bought it. I probably wouldn't have picked it up if it weren't for Lizzie's recommendation. It's a dad book, for one thing, and the cover features a rubber ducky with a stainless steel bill ring. In my mind, I am just not as hip and cool as that kind of parent -- and let's be honest, my favorite "music" is NPR. Aside from that, I 90% don't care about what I'm listening to, although I sometimes pretend otherwise. But it seems that being "alternative" is more complicated than just partying and being ironic and listening to bands in smokey bars. If Pollack and his family are examples, it also includes being politically active in your community, trying to be an informed consumer and to struggle with the compromises that requires, and smoking a lot of marijuana. I'm not a pot smoker any more than I'm a watch bands in smokey bars person, but I am progressive, moderately active, and I struggle with making consumer choices that are right for my family and what we believe. I'm also good with being ironic. Oh yeah, and I think I automatically get a heaping pile of alternative cred points for being a 2 mom family. ;-) Even if I do look like Jenny of Suburbia. Here's what I loved about Alternadad. Pollack wrote about his family, from meeting his wife, through their decision to move to LA when their son was about 2 years old. I cracked up reading at various moments, including:

Few couples have ever gone into childbirth as educated as Regina and I. We new every possible permutation and were prepared for all of the curves. This just might be the easiest birth in the history of humankind.

I don't want to ruin anything for you, but if you think an ironic outcome is on it's way, you are absolutely correct. But don't worry, everyone is ok in the end. Another favorite example:

I realized that marriage would mean some concessions. But I didn't realize I was marrying an adult female Pigpen, a woman who seemed to have a genetic penchant towards sloppy surroundings. ... I began to realize that Regina employed an odd household logic. It had only a little bit to do with her not wanting to do chores, because I was more than willing to split the work with her. Slowly, it occurred to me that, for psychological reasons, she really didn't want things to be clean, that she preferred for things to skirt the near edge of vile before she went on a massive bleach rampage.

Like Operating Instructions, Pollack wrote about the good, the bad, and the ugly. He didn't whitewash to make himself look good, or his son, or his parents. I don't think he whitewashed to make his wife look better, but she comes across as the person I'd most want to hang out with in the book, so maybe I'm wrong there. (I wrote that last sentence before deciding to include those quotations, so now I'm thinking he didn't whitewash her either. Nope.) In every major decision, every struggle, every argument, you can understand and relate to the difficulty and the final choices. They're human choices, full of human love and human pain.When people write about their experiences in a way that is true and touches on the universality of being a parent, being married, or trying to pursue their professional & artistic dreams, it doesn't matter if they are Jenny of Suburbia, the poster boy for hipster fatherhood, or a depressed recovering alcoholic single mother. Almost anyone can still hear himself or herself in their stories. Pollack is that kind of writer. And if you are a liberal or progressive parent, trying to figure out how to entertain and teach your child without sacrificing your values or giving everything over to the easiest answer, I think you'll love this book. Also? Pollack writes a bunch of blogs, so you can decide for yourself whether or not you like his writing style before you buy the hardcover book. (Aside to Parents.com: You have some great bloggers! But would you mind making it easier to find them and making your links shorter and easier to follow? This is a terrible URL: http://community.parents.com/dgroups/persona.jsp?plckPersonaPage=PersonaBlog& plckUserId=a628e41865b5c3c340ae2e98f70ccc4f&userId=a628e41865b5c3c340ae2e98f70ccc4f& ordersrc=rdparents0072& , why not make them something like http://blogs.parents.com/alternadad or www.parents.com/blogs/twomothers, which I could remember instead of needing to bookmark or google every time. Even if you do have to query a database for each entry, you could return it to that kind of top level URL structure.)

Yet Another Book Meme, Stolen from Reno

These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (as of Oct 4). Thanks Reno! Bold what you have read, italicize those you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. Add an asterisk to those you've read more than once. Underline those on your to-read list. ? for can't remember if I ever tried to read it or not. Having stolen this list from a Reedie, I'm also going to add in the annotations R, S, and HS if I read the book in question at Reed or Smith, or in high school. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell* Anna Karenina R Crime and Punishment R Catch-22 One Hundred Years of Solitude HS Wuthering Heights* HS The Silmarillion Life of Pi: a novel The Name of the Rose Don Quixote Moby Dick Ulysses The Odyssey R Pride and Prejudice* HS Jane Eyre* A Tale of Two Cities The Brothers Karamazov R Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies War and Peace Vanity Fair The Time Traveler's Wife* The Iliad R Emma* The Blind Assassin The Kite Runner Mrs. Dalloway S Great Expectations American Gods Atlas Shrugged Reading Lolita in Tehran: a Memoir in Books Memoirs of a Geisha* Middlesex* Quicksilver Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the West* The Canterbury Tales HS & S -- read and enjoyed selected stories, never tried to do the entire thing from soup to nuts The Historian: A Novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Love in the Time of Cholera HS Brave New World The Fountainhead Foucault's Pendulum Middlemarch Frankenstein The Count of Monte Cristo Dracula A Clockwork Orange Anansi Boys The Once and Future King The Grapes of Wrath The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel 1984 HS Angels & Demons The Inferno R The Satanic Verses Sense and Sensibility* The Picture of Dorian Gray Mansfield Park One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest To the Lighthouse S Tess of the D'Urbervilles Oliver Twist Gulliver's Travels Les Misérables The Corrections The Amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time Dune - I've been thinking about rereading this The Prince The Sound and the Fury Angela's Ashes: A Memoir The God of Small Things A People's History of the United States : 1492-present Cryptonomicon****** -- one of my favorite books ever Neverwhere A Confederacy of Dunces A Short History of Nearly Everything Dubliners The Unbearable Lightness of Being Beloved S Slaughterhouse-Five The Scarlet Letter HS Eats, Shoots & Leaves The Mists of Avalon* Oryx and Crake: a novel Collapse : How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed Cloud Atlas The Confusion? Lolita Persuasion* Northanger Abbey* HS The Catcher in the Rye - 8th grade On the Road The Hunchback of Notre Dame Freakonomics : a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an Inquiry into Values The Aeneid - R Watership Down Gravity's Rainbow The Hobbit White Teeth Treasure Island David Copperfield The Three Musketeers*

Banned Books Week

A lot of you know that I'm a wannabee librarian, I love libraries (although I hate giving books back), and I generally think that librarians rock. So of course I "celebrate" Banned Books Week. Celebrate is such a strange word, isn't it? But I think that recognizing the ongoing challenges to young people's freedom to read and learn to think for themselves is important. It's one of the many valuable services that librarians and libraries provide to our communities. These were the 10 books most frequently challenged in 2006: (I bold italicized the ones I've read.)

1. “And Tango Makes Three” by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, for homosexuality, anti-family, and unsuited to age group;
2. “Gossip Girls” series by Cecily Von Ziegesar for homosexuality, sexual content, drugs, unsuited to age group, and offensive language;
3. “Alice” series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor for sexual content and offensive language;
4. “The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things” by Carolyn Mackler for sexual content, anti-family, offensive language, and unsuited to age group;
5. “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison for sexual content, offensive language, and unsuited to age group;
6. “Scary Stories” series by Alvin Schwartz for occult/Satanism, unsuited to age group, violence, and insensitivity;
7. “Athletic Shorts” by Chris Crutcher for homosexuality and offensive language;
8. “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky for homosexuality, sexually explicit, offensive language, and unsuited to age group;
9. “Beloved” by Toni Morrison for offensive language, sexual content, and unsuited to age group; and
10. “The Chocolate War” by Robert Cormier for sexual content, offensive language, and violence.

And these are the 10 most frequently challenged authors, from 1990 - 2004.

1. Alvin Schwartz
2. Judy Blume
3. Robert Cormier
4. J.K. Rowling
5. Michael Willhoite
6. Katherine Paterson
7. Stephen King
8. Maya Angelou
9. R.L. Stine
10. John Steinbeck

Here's the thing: I respect the right of a parent to decide what is appropriate, or not, for their own children to read and view. Trying to limit that hugely seems like a waste of effort to me, and a good way to get your kids to sneak around, but that's each of our individual business/problem as parents. And frankly, if your repressive parenting makes your kid sneak away to the library...that's actually a pretty good silver lining. But that's not what challenges to books are about. These are parents (mostly) who want to prevent EVERYONE from reading the books they don't want their children to read. And that is unacceptable. You may not want your child to learn about loss or death from a book like Bridge to Terabithia, or the Harry Potter series, and I respect your right to make that choice. But I don't agree with it. I think fiction is a wonderfully safe learning tool, allowing all of us as human beings to imagine things we've never experienced, including some things we hope never to experience. Reasonable minds may differ as to when a child is mature enough to read this or that. In the context of Banned Books Week, that's one of the many valuable roles a librarian can play. Without preventing a young person from reading something they want to read, a librarian can help them select appropriate material. I'm not going to go into my personal opinions about these books and authors, except to say that some I love, some I am just not a fan of, and some don't interest me. That, I think, is precisely the point. If you don't want to read something, there's a very simple way to do it. Close the book and walk away from it. If you want to have the huge fight with your child about not reading something, go right ahead. But leave my child out of it. A tip of the pixel to Clare and Polly, for reminding me to blog about this.

Book Review: Maximum Ride 3

Yes, at last long last, it's a book review post, of Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports. I'm not sure there have been any since Noah was born. Not that I haven't been reading, I just haven't been writing about what I've been reading. My first thought, when the opportunity to do this review for Mother Talk came up, was a mix of interest and skepticism. I can be a book snob, and James Patterson hasn't been an author on my list. Plus, the book is Part 3 of a series that I haven't read. Isn't that just wrong? On the other hand, a free YA sci-fi book with a fabulous-sounding heroine? Well, that is my cuppa tea. First the full disclosure part: Mother-Talk gave me the book, and they're giving me a $20 Amazon gift certificate for doing this review. I think you know that my opinion can't be bought, but especially not that cheap. Now the meat: I really enjoyed this book! I was pleasantly surprised by how much. The writing has a nice witty edge to it, making fun of readers like me at the beginning of Chapter 2, when the narrator Max comments:

Those of you who picked up this book cold, even though it's clearly part three of a series, well get with the program, people! I can't take two days to get you all caught up on everything!

Heh. The rest of the (short) chapter introduces all of the main characters whom I would have known had I read the first two books, and points the reader in the direction of character Fang's blog. (Other characters have started posting too, but in this book, Fang is the only one.) Kinda gimmicky, but it drew me into the story and left me thinking about reading the first two books. The basic plotline goes like this: 6 science experiment kids, who were genetically engineered to have wings, and their talking dog, have escaped from their evil corporate creators. Of course the evil scientists are hunting for them, and they also have a dastardly plot to reduce the population of Earth by some ridiculous amount like 50% -- I've spent 5 precious minutes of Noah's nap looking it up unsuccessfully -- and Max is determined to stop them. How can 6 bird-kids and a talking dog do that? The old fashioned way: grassroots organizing! YES, you heard me right, these sci-fi action heroes use their blog to communicate with kids and sympathetic adults all over the world, and convince the kids especially to take action locally to stop this evil multinational corporate and corrupt government plot. In fact, I hope that the legions of teen fans not only enjoy the action-adventure and the budding romance elements of Maximum Ride 3 -- I hope they imagine themselves making the kind of difference that ordinary kids all over the world make in the book. Our bird-kid protagonists may not be average kids, but they know that they can't save the world all by themselves. Instead of either giving up, or asking someone else to do it, they organize and inspire others to join the fight. It isn't just in books that ordinary people blogging can make a huge difference with a global impact -- look at the amazing success two Moms, Cooper & Emily, had with the Been There Clearinghouse, which connected people in need with people who wanted help, after Hurricane Katrina. Or Melissa Poe, who started Kids FACE (For A Cleaner Environment) at age 9, and has seen it grow to a organization with more than 300,000 members in 15 countries -- who have planted more than a million trees. So yeah, I liked the book. I liked the message as well as the curl up and get lost in the adventure. But you should probably start with book one, Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment.

Help!

I need a clever title for a book chapter. A few months back, I proposed to write a chapter in a book on Mommy Blogging. My chapter is going to be on how/why I decided to launch the Lesbian Family blog, and then to recruit lots of other wonderful writers to make it both really serve the community and be sustainable. And now the editors want a title for my chapter, and they need it yesterday. Any ideas???

Anne Lamott and Other Adventures

Yesterday night, Anne Lamott came and spoke at our church. It was co-sponsored by our local feminist bookstore. (I love that about our church.) Lamott is, right now, my favorite writer. We read her book Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year when I was pregnant. Right now, I'm inhaling her book on writing, Bird by Bird. I'm only sad that I didn't read it sooner. Seriously! When I was working on my book, I was a wet mess. I made Jill go away for weekends at a time. I was convinced I was an idiot. I played stupid mind games with myself about how long I was allowed to read/eat/clean before I had to go back to writing and how long I had to write before I was allowed to go back to eating/reading/cleaning. It was totally torturous. I thought that meant I wasn't cut out to be a writer. No, says Lamott. That's pretty much how it is for everyone she knows. Her advice is more support and encouragement than anything else, but it's funny and effective. At least so far. I'm only about 2/3 of the way through. I haven't tackled any of her books on faith, but she said something that really spoke to me during her talk. She said, "The opposite of faith isn't doubt, it's certainty." She has a wonderful way of being about what she has faith in, and that she totally gets that it's kind of incredible to believe it, but she does. It seems like the kind of book on religion that I could handle. Speaking of books, I did buy 2 at the reading. I pretended to myself that I wasn't going to, before we got there, but I really knew I probably would. Then I convinced myself before the reading that I was only going to buy the current book, but during the reading, I realized I had to buy Bird by Bird. At the post-reading reception, our pastor and our friend Margaret recommended it effusively. Margaret credits it with surviving her PhD dissertation, and Gary thinks it should be required reading for all writing students. (Reno, are you listening?) In case you were worried, Noah is still cute:

Another Book Meme

Stolen from Shelli and Bri. And added to, because like Shelli, I had a number of books on my list that I prefer to those on the original meme. Incidentally, I recommend all of the books on my list (numbers 101-125).

Instructions:

in bold=have read the book.

in italics=want to read the book

+ =own the book

*=unfamiliar with the book

[]=notes from me

1. + The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown) 2. + Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) 3. + To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee) 4. + Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell) 5. + The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien) 6. + The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien) 7. + The Lord of the Rings: (Tolkien) 8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery) 9. + Outlander (Diana Gabaldon) 10. *A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry) 11. + Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling) 12. + Angels and Demons (Dan Brown) 13. + Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling) 14. + A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving) 15. + Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden) 16. + Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling) 17. *Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald) 18. The Stand (Stephen King) 19. + Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling) 20. + Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte) 21. + The Hobbit (Tolkien) 22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger) 23. + Little Women (Louisa May Alcott) 24. * The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold) 25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel) 26. + The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams) 27. What was 27?? (Emily Bronte) 28. + The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis) 29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck) 30. + Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom) 31. + Dune (Frank Herbert) 32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks) 33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand) 34. 1984 (Orwell) 35. + The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley) 36. * The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett) 37. *The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay) 38. + I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb) 39. + The Red Tent (Anita Diamant) 40. + The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho) 41. + The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel) 42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini) 43. *Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella) 44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom) 45. + Bible [partly bold to indicate partial reading] 46. + Anna Karenina (Tolstoy) 47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas) 48. + Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt) 49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck) 50. + She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb) 51. + The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver) 52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens) 53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card) 54. Great Expectations (Dickens) 55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald) 56. *The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence) 57. + Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling) 58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough) 59. + The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood) 60. + The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger) 61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky) 62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand) 63. War and Peace (Tolstoy) 64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice) 65. + Fifth Business (Robertson Davies) 66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) [In Spanish][In high school] 67. + The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares) 68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller) 69. + Les Miserables (Hugo) 70. + The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery) 71. + Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding) 72. + Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) 73. Shogun (James Clavell) 74. + The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje) 75. What book? Doesn’t matter, I’ve probably read it. (Frances Hodgson Burnett) 76. *The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay) 77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith) 78. + The World According To Garp (John Irving) 79. *The Diviners (Margaret Laurence) 81. *Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley) 82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck) 83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier) 84. *Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind) 85. + Emma (Jane Austen) 86. + Watership Down (Richard Adams) 87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley) 88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields) 89. *Blindness (Jose Saramago) 90. *Kane and Abel (Archer) 91. *In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje) [familiar with the author] 92. Lord of the Flies (Golding) 93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck) 94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd) 95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum) [enjoyed the movie] 96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton) 97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch) 98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford) 99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield) 100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

Bonus Books, because while that list was interesting, I have more that I think are interesting. And in no more order than the list above.

101. + Trickster's Choice/Trickester's Queen (Tamora Pierce) 102. + Geeks (Jon Katz) 103. + The Princess Bride (William Goldman) 104. + Joy of Cooking (any edition) 105. + Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson) 106. + Rage for Justice (John Jacobs) 107. + The Fairy Godmother (Mercedes Lackey) 108. + Golden Compass (Philip Pullman) 109. + Artemis Fowl (Eion Colfer) 110. + The Thief Lord (Cornelia Funke) 111. + The Amulet of Samarkand (Jonathan Stroud) 112. + Gaudy Night (Dorothy Sayers) 113. + He Shall Thunder in the Sky (Elizabeth Peters) [or any other Amelia Peabody mystery] 114. + A Taste for Death (P.D. James) [or any other Adam Dalgliesh mystery] 115. + Bloodchild and Other Stories (Octavia Butler) 116. + Motion of Light in Water (Samuel R. Delany) 117. + Code (Larry Lessig) 118. + Gregor the Overlander (Suzanne Collins) 119. + Operating Instructions (Anne Lamott) 120. + The Seeing Stone (Kevin Crossley-Holland) 121. + The Westing Game (Ellen Raskin) 122. + Geek Love (Katherine Dunn) 123. + Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress (Susan Jane Gilman) 124. + Bun in the Oven (Kaz Cooke) (best pregnancy book EVER; 100% free of preaching) 125. + Chronicles of the Chrestomanci, Volume 1 (Diana Wynne Jones)