Little Bee

I just finished the novel Little Bee. "No one likes each other, but everyone loves U2" is one of the truths in the book. Little Bee is a novel that tells the story of a Nigerian orphan and a British couple whose lives become entwined through some seemingly random events. It's an extremely well-written novel and I'm thinking I need to read Chris Clive's other novel now.

The beauty of the story is in the narrative that Clive gives us alternating chapters between narration from the Nigerian Little Bee and the British Sarah. Both have very different perspectives on their shared story that gives the reader a sense of time and space that might be missing from the telling by either one of them alone.

As the story unfolded, I realized that the themes were much deeper than just the story of these women and the people around them. It is about what it means to be part of a global community and how that may help and harm us. I found it to be a wonderful way to think about these profound ideas while enjoying such a skillfully crafted story.

Biography Badness

And when I say "badness," I mean the kind that actually is bad, not the kind that is good. I've tried to read two biographies this year. I have still not finished either of them. I usually only read one book at a time and I seldom give up on a book. I've now read several other books while still not finishing the two biographies. Ugh!

The first was inspired by watching Julie & Julia. I thought Julie was a narcissistic windbag, but I was intrigued by Julia. I wanted the whole story so I picked up Appetite for Life. That woman lived a fascinating life.That is, until you drag out the telling of it into 592 pages. There are books about the entire history of the modern world that are written in fewer pages. Worse yet, it started getting tedious before I'd even gotten 50 pages into the book. At almost halfway, I've given up. I'll just have to enjoy the fact that I have an idea of what happens next, because I won't be finishing this book.


The second biography I picked up was Pearl Buck in China. I loved The Good Earth and knew that Pearl Buck had lived in China, so it would have to be interesting. At least it's only 320 pages, so it's not quite as drawn out as Julia Child's biography, but I think it was written by a literary critic. It reads to me more like a dissertation than a novel and I really want a good story to latch onto. There are so many opportunities in the material, but it just never happens. I'm afraid, now that Pearl is living in the US again, that I've lost interest. I won't be finishing this one either.

Believe It

While traveling last week, I took some time to read Triathlons for Women by Sally Edwards. The book is very well written and an easy read, but I'm not sure it had the intended response from me. The intro to the book specifically states that the goal of the book is to get women motivated and excited about triathlons. I think I got scared. I'm not going to let it get to me, but I didn't feel excited about the triathlon when I put the book down. I really felt a bit mortified.

As hard as I've been training, and as much confidence I have in my ability to finish the event, I still have the huge fear of the unknown. I've talked about signing up for another triathlon five weeks after the one I'm signed up for now, which might sound just crazy coming from someone scared of the one race. My thought process really isn't that crazy though. I've been thinking that the first race will be harder because it will be foreign and new, not because I won't have trained enough and be ready for the swimming, biking, and running. If I were to do the second race, it would be the exact same course and I would have a better idea of what to expect and I think it would be a lot easier. Reading about what to wear and how to transition from one part to the next are the pieces that have me wondering what I've gotten myself into and I know those are the little things.

Yesterday, I swam 18 laps and took small breaks after each two full laps. It was hard, but I could do it. I've made huge progress in the swimming since I started swimming everyday (and had to rest after every length) six weeks ago. Yesterday, I also ran intervals with some at 6mph on the treadmill. My rest on the treadmill is jogging slowly instead of walking now, and that progress has been in the last four months. I'm amazed daily at the progress I have made and the abilities I'm cultivating. I'm also learning that I can do things that I didn't think were possible even six months ago. Most of all, I'm seeing the power of setting a goal and believing in myself. I've had plenty of people tell me I could do something like this, but I'm just now starting to believe it.

Sally Edwards may not have motivated me the way she thought she would, but I'm on my way to being a triathlete.

Little Women

As a child, our family would travel the two and a half hours to Burley to visit Granny and Papa, my paternal grandparents, on a regular basis. Their place felt as much like home to me as my parents’ home in Boise. I didn’t have any cousins my age, so I spent my time just hanging out with Granny, going on Papa’s gas route with him, or spending time on my own. With time on my hands, I spent most of it doing one of my favorite things, reading. Granny had a large collection of books as reading was one of her life-long passions.

I still remember finding Little Women on the shelf at Granny’s house. I devoured it in a weekend, stopping only for meals. I fell in love with Laurie, idolized Jo, and cried for Beth. Like most of my favorite books, I hated that it had to end. Granny didn’t have any of the sequels, so it was years before I even knew they existed.

Fast forward twenty years. In my early 30’s, I had to travel quite a bit for my job. The biggest perk was that I got all the sky miles and my manager let me have Fridays off on occasion because I had to travel on most Sunday evenings. With a built in three-day weekend, I flew to places other than home on some of the weekends using my free tickets purchased only with the sky miles. I got to go see Ann while she was working in Washington DC and I got to go with my friend Camille to visit our old roommate and friend Catherine in Boston. We had a great adventure there, but my favorite part of the trip was going to Concord. We saw Walden Pond and the home of Henry David Thoreau, but the best part was going to Orchard House, the home of Louisa May Alcott when she wrote Little Women. The setting was beautiful and I felt like I knew Miss Alcott even better after that lovely visit.

Last week, I watched a PBS program on Louisa May Alcott. I was surprised to find out that she sold more books and earned much more money in her lifetime than both Henry James and Herman Melville combined. She did quite a good job of turning her talent into gold for her family, which was a good thing since her father had never done well at providing for the family. I enjoyed hearing about her clever wit and abundant personality. It made me like her even more.

Life of Pi

This weekend, I finally finished reading Life of Pi by Yann Martel. It honestly felt like one of the longest books I've ever read. The book came highly recommended by several of my friends, so I really looked forward to reading it. I have to say that it did not meet my initial expectations, but that it was well-written and I would recommend it (mostly).

I found the first section of the book to by highly entertaining and engaging. This is where Pi Patel is still living in India and his father is a zoo-keeper in Pondicherry. Martel uses the language to his advantage and he is a fantastic story teller.

The second part of the book, at the length of a few hundred pages, is the telling of Pi's adventure at sea in a lifeboat. This truly was years long in the reading. Perhaps that was part of Martel's method, since it must have felt like a lifetime to the young boy, but I got bored and lost patience. I only picked the book up to read because I was flying for several hours. I had to force myself to keep reading. The writing is still good, but the story just wasn't compelling enough to keep my interest for such a long telling.

The final section of the book is very short and happens after Pi lands on dry ground. It was interesting and tied the story together.

All in all, I thought the book was good, but I didn't find it to have the profound effect that I was given the impression it would deliver. It also says that it will make you believe in God, but I didn't think it would have that impact on anyone. In the end, it's a nice story, a little long, but pretty good.

Fabulous Reading!

I just finished a delightful book. I read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. The story takes place in post-WWII England starting in London and ending in the Channel Islans of Guernsey.

This was a very quick read and perfect summer reading. The story has some serious points, but is mostly light and fun. There's romance and a little intrigue (though mild at that). The whole story is written in letters, so you get to know each of the characters both by how they write and by how they are described by others. I especially liked that the main character is herself an author and discusses her own works and her love of other authors. It makes for a great literary adventure. She refers to Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy often and looks for love just as Elizabeth did. You'll have to read to find out if her story ends as happily as Elizabeth's.

Song of the Lark

I graduated with a degree in English Literature. I love to read and my favorite literature is Western American Literature. I think Willa Cather is one of my favorite authors, so I was really looking forward to reading Song of the Lark. I even read the really long foreward. The story is supposed to be semi-autobiographical, so that drew me in.

The writing is great, but I just could not get behind the main character. In the end, I found her quite unsympathetic. In this story, she is an opera singer instead of an author, and there is a heavy focus on what the woman sacrifices to be the artist she was born to be. The sad thing is that she really loses out on all the intimate relationships she could have had because she is so focused on her art. I guess I just question the either/or mentality. If someone is meant to be great, then I don't think that having real relationships with people would put that in jeapordy. I do realize that the lifestyle of an artist comes with some sacrifice, but there was just too much for my liking.

One thing I really liked about the book was the side story about how the girl goes to sing with the Mexican community in her small Nebraska town, much to the dismay of most of the Scandinavian town folk. Her mother doesn't mind it, so she's not having to sneak away. She really seems to connect with several of the Mexican characters, but they are still shown as very marginalized in the context of the story. I think that's just part of the period she lived in.

Willa Cather really is masterful at setting a scene and taking you there in every way. I could almost feel the rain when she described the stark Arizona landscape and the afternoon rain shower in the canyon. If you want to read Willa Cather, I would recommend My Antonia or Death Comes to the Archbishop before this book, though.

On My Bookshelf

Tinkerdoodle lent me the book Persepolis, a graphic novel by a woman who grew up in Iran until she was shipped out to boarding school in Austria. Marjane Satrapi was only 9 years old when the revolution took place in 1979. She depicts how the changes that took place happened through the eyes of a child, but with the depth of an adult seeing it all in retrospect.

I enjoyed the style of the graphics and thoroughly enjoyed the story. It gave me more insight into life in Iran. I also listened to Rick Steves talk about his recent trip to Iran and the filming of a documentatary about Iran. I must say, it's left me wanting to learn more. I feel like Iran is severely misunderstood by Americans and I'm ready to learn more.

I highly recommend Persepolis and look forward to reading the next installment, Persepolis 2. Once I've read the second one, then I'll watch the movie. It was a big hit at Cannes a year ago and got quite a bit of press when it was in theaters here, but I didn't get to it then. It may have been the French with English subtitles that made me think renting it might work out better for me. I'll let you know how I like the rest of the stories.

I Love the Library

As a child, I loved to go to the library. I remember spending cool summer days in the basement of the old library. The children's section was downstairs and you had to go through a separate entrance to get to the lower level. I don't think I ever saw the main level. It was an old Carnegie library and I loved it.

I don't know when I first started to read, but I'm pretty sure my love affair with reading started very early on. I always wanted to take home a big stack of books and then we had rules about how many books we were allowed to check out. I think my limit was five books.

In elementary school, for a while, we went to the library once a week. I loved going and I can still remember the smell. Then we'd go once a month on Monday for family home evening. The books were all checked out for a month, so the whole family would gather up our library books and head to the library to get more. Oh, the trauma for everyone when one of us couldn't find all of our books! Even though the fees were small, they seeme huge to us as children.

I also remember being part of the summer reading program for several summers at the library. I think one summer, it was a Jr. Great Books reading club and I was introduced to many new and different genre and authors. I ate it up. I can still remember staying up reading until far into the wee hours to finish books before they were due or before I went back the next time.

I loved the Boise Public Library and still do. It's been a few years since I've been there since I relocated, but I still have so many great memories of my library there. I had a library card from before I could remember and finally got rid of it several years after moving to Seattle.

I've been in Seattle for eight years now, and just this weekend, I finally got a library card. The Seattle Public Library system is fantastic and I've been meaning to do it for years. Now I've finally got it!

Reading and Reviews

While in Hawaii, I finished Three Cups of Tea, but I also read Twilight. I've both lived through my own teen angst and read about it, and this is another story showcasing teen angst with the added excitement of vampires. I completely understand the hype with tweens around this book. I'm a little confused at the many adult women who seem to be completely enthralled with this book though.

The closest I can come to serious discussion of this book is to say that it is a great gateway into Harlequin romances. As far as a quick and easy read with a story that keeps you interested, it works. The funniest thing about this book is that the DH read about every third page over my shoulder and got the story without having to read the whole book.

I appreciate the interest and I plan to see the movie, but Twilight is mediocre writing at best. (Sorry Ann!)

So, now I'm moving on to other reading. I'm looking at the stack of books and trying to decide what's next. Let me know if you have any suggestions. I can go to the library if it's not already sitting on my shelf waiting for me to get to it.

Three Cups of Tea -- a Book Review

Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin is a fantastic story about Greg Mortenson and how he tries to change the world. After reading the book, I have the utmost respect for this man. The way that he was able to put aside his own life, forge bonds with people far more unlike than like him, and find success in a country rife with war and corruption is astounding. I know this sounds like hyperbole, but I really am impressed with the man and what he has done.

David Relin worked very hard to get an unbiased look into the world and the work of Greg Mortenson and I feel like he did a good job of keeping the story even-keeled. The beauty in this book is not with the most refined writing, but with the story.

One of the parts I loved was when Mortenson found out that there was a fatwa against him. A fatwa is a legal pronouncement by a religious cleric. There were some in Pakistan who were very much against a Christian building schools in their country and believed that he was trying to indoctrinate their children. On the contrary, he was trying to educate them to fight against the indoctrination going on by the Taliban in the madrassas that they were building. At any rate, Mortenson had built a strong network of allies by showing great respect for the Muslim people and their religion. As a result of the way he lived and the example he set, the higher ruling bodies overturned the fatwas against his school building.

The lesson that I took from this is that he was successful because of his integrity. He loved the people and their war-torn country, respected their differences, and lived what he believed even at great personal sacrifice. I have great respect for such a man.

All in all, I highly recommend the book and think it's an important read for people who want to learn more about a part of the world that we generally have very little knowledge of.

Writers on Writing

I was introduced to Seattle Arts & Lectures by a collegue several years ago. She always attended the lectures and highly recommended them. Over the years, I've been to a few lectures here and there, but this year I decided to buy tickets to the series. I know of most of the guest lecturers and thought I might even enjoy those few I wasn't familiar with.

Last night was the first in the series. The guest was Richard Russo, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Empire Falls and a few other novels and stories. He spoke on writing with humor. He had us all laughing and brought home some great points with his excellent humor. I was especially touched with his observation that, although anyone can write, good writing comes from really seeing. He provided an anecdote about a commode placed squarely in the middle of the back deck bringing attention to an old grave stone that had been in the back yard since before his family had moved into the house. It was the juxtaposition of the two objects that helped him see the one that was there for longer than he had been.

He also reminded me that in order to be a writer, you must act like a writer -- or be a writer. I often think that having a blog helps me be a writer, but at the same time I realize that I have chosen other priorities. I love to write and find it both enlightening and cathartic. However, I'm not ready to make it a priority in my life where I do it faithfully on a daily basis and really build my talent.

For now, I'll look for humor where I can and write when I can make it a priority. I won't be writing the next great American novel, but I sure will enjoy the writing I do. I'll also find myself inspired by accomplished writers as I go to the other lecurers in the series.

Finally Finished

Well, I started it on April 25th and finished It's Your Ship May 25th. It really was a great book on managing people. Much better than any of the other books I've read. Here's a little more of what I learned from the Cap'n.

One of the big things Captain Abrashoff talks about is building up your people. You have to make sure they know you care about them and what they're doing and that you feel this on a very personal level. It's super important to make sure that you recognize the good things people do when they do them. It's not as effective if you wait. In a workplace setting, that means you can't wait until annual reviews. In a personal setting, it means you shouldn't wait until everyone has forgotten what you're even talking about.

The other thing that I really liked in the book was the idea of generating unity. One aspect of this is making sure that you tell people they've done things wrong when they do them. You can't wait arount to discipline people and you have to be as fair as possible. When people see that you are quick to punish and that you are fair about it, they will rally around you. It's also important to listen to their ideas and implement what you can while removing any roadblocks that may be in the way. This builds everyone's confidence and helps them to love what they do.

He also talked a lot about having fun. I think that everyone needs to have more fun. I know that it's one of the things that brought my family together growing up and it's a great way to build unity at work. I think I'll start with some grilling. That's always fun!

Learning From the Cap'n

I'm reading about the Best Damn Ship in the Navy and the first thing that I learned that I really want to implement is that it's important that people know you care about them. This sounds like a no-brainer, but the chapter on this really opened my eyes. It made me realize that there are a lot of things we do unintentionally that give people the feeling that we don't really care.

Here's my list of things that I want to stop or start doing:

• Don't let the phone interrupt an in-person conversation. The one exception is if I'm expecting an important call. In that case, I'll warn the person I'm talking to that I may need to be interrupted (so they know it's not because I don't value my time and/or conversations with them).
• If I'm on e-mail when someone comes to talk to me, I'll ask them to wait a moment so I can finish what I'm doing and then physically turn away from the computer screen (and not look back at it while I'm talking to the person).
• When talking on the phone, I will not multi-task by working on e-mail. I can always tell when I don't have someone's full attention, so people can probably tell when I'm not focused.
• Be on time for meetings. This is the hardest one for me, especially when I have things scheduled back-to-back. It means that I will have to set expectations in meetings that I can't run over, because I have another committment. It also means paying attention to the clock.

Those are the things I get to work on because of the Cap'n's advice. let me know if you have any other good advice for sending the message that you really care about people.

Yes, A Book

So, I started reading a book on Wednesday. It's true. It's a book, not a magazine. It's Called It's Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy. It was recommended by my former boss's boss's boss (or my GM at the big software company accross the bridge). Apparently, it's all the rage at that big software company. Kudos to the Cap'n for getting that message out there, because I'm sure it's boosted sales in a big way.

That comment just made it sound like I'm not a big fan, but so far I am. It's a fairly quick and easy to read and I definitely like his style. I think I have a lot to learn from the Cap'n and I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Reading Magazines

I know I'm too busy when my only free time is spent reading magazines or playing soduko. I love to read books and I think I can count on one hand how many I've read in the last two years. It's really pathetic. It took me several months to read The Master Butcher's Singing Club and by the time I finished it I was simply relieved to be done. That's not how it's supposed to be.

Now I'm on Good Reads and suddenly I'm feeling guilty about all the great books out there that I haven't gotten around to reading. And it makes me a little sad when I see how all my friends are reading all these great books and I'm not.

My new goal is to start reading books again. I'll even commit to posting some new information on Good Reads.