Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein by Marty Martin

{I posted this and the previous 2 titles with cover photos having every ambition of entering texts soon after. Well, the road to good intention doesn't lead to anywhere. Here we are weeks to months later....I stressed myself out with the stack of books I wanted to read over spring break. In typical Jill fashion, I simply gave up. I honestly haven't finished an actual book since the last week of March (I believe). The interim has found me battling ear infections, stressed out "to the MAX!" and barely able to concentrate beyond the length of a moderately sized interweb article. I've bounced between books while finishing nothing.

I went to my trusty heirloom bookshelf and picked out some old standbys. Those have been my nightly reading, and so the next few forthcoming posts will essentially be a quote extravaganza largely excepting examination.}

Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Tolkas have fascinated me, from afar, for years. I got this mass market edition of the semi-biographical play years ago and finally read it. Combining my loves of scripts with stream of consciousness, this one hooked me immediately...and sent me running to Black & Read to find anything Stein wrote. Expect a review of Three Lives soon.

The lives that intertwined at 27 rue de Fleurus included the Fitzgeralds, Dali, Isadora Duncan, Cezanne, and Gertrude's brother Leo (of whom I am equally enamored)--en route to THE discovery of both Matisse and Picasso. Fascinating stuff. Reading this play I can smell the tea being served; the ingenuity filling the parlor is as palpable as the flair of those first paintings.

"They were a little worried the publishers about my punctuation which they did not consider satisfactory and they sent a courier to Paris to discuss with me the matter of proofreading. But it is proofread I said What about the question marks he said there are no question marks. I said question marks are out of the question. Anybody with any sense knows a question when he sees one and does not need any little marks to tie his shoes for him. Well surely you will want to put in a few more commas he said he kept looking at me and then quickly looking at Alice and then back at me again. I said it is true she is watching you very closely and after he left Alice counted the silverware she was not fond of publishers no."

"Sometimes at the sittings Picasso would discuss his ideas especially those concerned with cubism. You start with an object he would say and then you strip away all the traces of reality from it. There is nothing to fear because the idea will continue to be present and it is the idea not the object that is important. He was talking about painting of course but his ideas were pertinent to my thoughts on literature at the time Well while he was in Spain I finished the book I was writing but it was written in pencil and it was difficult to read and unfortunately typing is one of the things that makes me nervous ... Picasso said and I agreed that at the time ugliness and the confrontation of ugliness in art was beginning to unsettle people's pictures of life just a bit when it began to break and give way to the explosion that was and is the twentieth century. Always before ugliness was an effrontery to traditional esthetics but once those traditions were thrown into question ... A violin is just a thing but if you play it it becomes a feeling and if you paint it it becomes a feeling too it ceases to be a thing then a painting is never the thing that it is a painting of it is a feeling about that thing and so a painting of a violin without a violin in it can still be a painting of a violin and even a good one it is true nonetheless ... I was not interested in the principles of art ... A child with a piece of chalk and a blackboard is a potential Sistine Chapel in a way now that is not nonsense."

Granny Torrelli Makes Soup by Sharon Creech

"It doesn't...and it does."

Love That Dog (and) Hate That Cat by Sharon Creech

Free verse. Story poems. Whatever you call them, they're good. I first read Love That Dog years ago, and have used some of it in my 5th grade groups. Guud stuff. I just read Hate That Cat. More of the same.

The story of a boy named Jack, learning about poetry, hating poetry, frustrated by poetry, discovering poetry and the poet inside himself. Inspired by Walter Dean Myers, stuck on Tennyson and getting William Carlos Williams, Jack writes a beautiful story. It doesn't hurt that I, too, love those dogs and hate those cats. (And references to T.S. Eliot, to boot....what's not to savor?)




"I liked when you said
we could try
turning the metaphors
upside down or inside out
and I liked when you used
my chair poem as an example
so
instead of saying
the chair is like a pleasingly plump momma
we could try
my momma is like a pleasingly plump chair

except that now
everyone thinks
my mother is very plump
and looks like a chair"

Marshfield Dreams: When I Was a Kid by Ralph Fletcher

This book is a nugget. Started and finished inside of 24 hours, I found this book in my mailbox at school. A Post-It on the cover read, "Hi Jill-Here is that book I was telling you about. {smiley face} Amy". Amy is the instructional coach at my school, which essentially means she helps teachers be better teachers and students be better learners. I've watched her single handedly do both for the last 3 years. She is phenomenal at her job. A majority of our conversations revolve around books, be it for students or for ourselves, and I respect her opinion immensely.

Marshfield Dreams is about Ralph Fletcher's first 13 years of life. This gem of a book includes little snippets of growing up as the oldest of nine in Massachusetts. As I grew up with some 40-odd cousins that I saw on the regular, this resonated with me. Ralph, his siblings and his friends ran and played on Acorn Street and through Ale's Woods just as we did on Maple Avenue and at Silas Willard. It was magical, however briefly, to travel with Fletcher to this place of childhood freedom.

Eating by Jason Epstein

Let's be honest: I didn't love this book. It's a memoir, which I do love. Jason Epstein was the editorial director at Random House for 40 years. He was responsible for the publication of authors like Nabokov, Doctorow, Mailer, Philip Roth and Gore Vidal. Fantastic. Except here he barely talks about any of that. Jason Epstein loves to cook, loves to eat, and loves the memories associated with certain foods. Awesome. Except here half the book is storytelling, the other half is recipes. The basic premise of the book is that Epstein believes in cooking as storytelling. So the recipes are told as if spoken to a friend, with no exact measurements. For someone who doesn't cook often or experiment much beyond what has worked before, this is not stimulating. I found myself throughout the book thinking of people in my life who would love this book.

There were a few bright spots. The early chapters that correspond with Epstein's childhood and young adult years in the Mid-Atlantic do evoke a sense of whimsy. I also wrote a few worthy quotes in my journal, which I'll share below. I don't discount this book, I only discount it for an untalented and uninspired (un)chef like myself.

"Without books you would not know who you are or where you came from or where you might be going."

"Perhaps my New York neighborhood with its multitudinous temptations is at fault. But I chose to live here. There is no escaping one's self."

Haunted House and Other Short Stories by Virginia Woolf

Guess what? I love Virginia Woolf. Shocker. If you've known me much longer than 2 weeks or ever asked for some sort of "top 5", you already know this. I love Virginia Woolf so much that she shows up on not only my book list, but also plays, movies, and music. Ferreals. Her name has come up twice in conversation recently, so I went to the shelf and revisited my old friend. Here's the deal: I don't generally like short stories. And I'm more apt to be drawn to Woolf's journals or nonfiction (go read Room of One's Own. NOW.) than her fiction. However, in this collection the prose is tilted slightly toward her typical stream of consciousness style, so it still seemed as if she was talking to me. Just to be clear: I LOVE CRAZY LADIES. Her writing is at times so effortless it has the cadence of poetry. Mmm mmm mmmh.

"Flaunted, leaf-light, drifting at corners, blown across the wheels, silver-splashed, home or not home, gathered, scattered, squandered in separate scales, swept up, down, torn, sunk, assembled-and truth?"

The Atonement Child by Francine Rivers

I have a refrigerator magnet that reads, "I don't mean to be an elitist; I just am."...please take that as a warning. There are very few authors who write romance, religious fiction (or "religious" anything, for that matter), or anything that could be counted as self-helpy or "inspirational" that I read. I tend to get on a soapbox or a high horse, if you will, when it comes to any o' that business. While I'm working on being a gentle, quiet-spirited sentimental type gal, it just isn't the core of who I am or how I express myself.

That being said, this book was alright. (I hope you're laughing.) A conversation with a roommate a few months ago led to this book ending up on my nightstand. (She didn't thrust it upon me or put it there, I took it.) I really liked the first 75 pages. Then came another character....and another storyline....and another character....which ended up with a whole lotta predictability. The characters' prayers being included in italics throughout the story also drove me nutballs.

This is essentially a morality tale about abortion. It made me think, resulted in a few conversations, one of which was a commiserating about how much we didn't like this book in comparison with some of Rivers' others. Since I tend to be cynical and belittling, I'll stop. I finished the book, which is an indicator that it wasn't horrible.

Woman Behind the New Deal by Kirstin Downey

Ever heard of Frances Perkins? I won't judge you, because I hadn't either.

When I heard that this was one of my book clubs' picks, I was immediately excited. I've had many conversations (heated debates, honestly) about FDR and all things that resulted from the New Deal. There's a mural in my hometown that was done with CCC funds, and my grandfather served in the Corps. I was less excited when I realized that this historical biography is 400 pages long. Ugh.

So again: heard of Frances Perkins? She was the first female to ever be appointed to the U.S. Cabinet, serving as Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor for his entire presidency. Perkins was the progressive force behind FDR, and often served as his conscience. Under her persuasion, the CCC and the Public Works Administration were born. Oh, and a little thing called the Social Security Act? With it, she created welfare, pensions and unemployment. She also established the first child labor laws, the 40-hour work week and overtime law. Given that she fought tirelessly for these things and labor unions, I'm surprised that my dad hasn't lectured me on Frances Perkins for the last 30 years. Wait, in the American public school system we learn about Betsy Ross and how she sewed a flag.

Pleasantly surprised at how this biography read more like a novel, I was engrossed and fascinated in the way the Frances' life unfolded. Her personal life, while held immensely private, was less than ideal. Raised in priveledge, she shunned her affluence, but used her connections to her advantage later in life. Constantly aware that people of influence could (and would) eventually help the plight of the less fortunate, she was saavy and sharp in maintaining relationships while carving her own path in social work.

This book made me think. It is almost unimaginable how this woman dealt with the glass ceiling in the 30s and 40s. Frances Perkins maintained a career and a family...and changed the future for millions.

First Light by Rebecca Stead

When I was a kid, the weekly trip to the library was a staple. Reading always just was for me. I vaguely remember Richard Scarry, Mercer Mayer, Charlie Brown and various other picture books...but I think those memories are mainly remnants or were purely sparked by the physical presence of those books in our house.

My first actual memories of reading (that I fully own) start somewhere in the range of 3rd to 5th grade. Beverly Cleary, Judy Blume, Barthe DeClements, Jerry Spinelli....those authors I remember vividly. I felt what those stories told me, they resonated with my experiences while still taking me away from them. The urgent want to escape reality while simultaneously feeling compelled to relate within humanity was allowed when reading. A true love was born.

So imagine my bliss that I now get to talk to kids about what they are reading, to walk through this phase of discovery with them....I am truly blessed. Even more ridiculously satisfying-they come back to me the next year to tell me what they've found over the summer, they ask me if I've read a new series or heard of a book. In short, I still read a lot of young adult fiction.

Enter First Light.

Rebecca Stead's second novel, When You Reach Me, won the 2010 Newberry Medal. I was looking for it, it wasn't on the shelf, and I picked up her first novel instead. (Don't worry, the other is on it's way via the post as I type.)

Here we find Peter, a boy living in New York city, about to embark upon a 6-month journey of living in Greenland. Peter's father studies the science of global warming, and often does fieldwork. The story quickly introduces the fact that Peter is having headaches, a fact which he tallies in a notebook and hides from his parents. Peter's mother experiences these same types of headaches and frequently asks if the onset has struck Peter.

Tandem to Peter's story is Thea's. Thea is a girl living in Greenland. In a city under the ice. Shrouded in mystery, Gracehope is an exclusive society (that somehow filters air through the ice) where heritage is stressed, and communal living is essential to survival. Thea is of the "first line" and is rebelling against her Machiavellian grandmother, seeking permission to explore the surface.

The book is heavy and long on the foreshadowing, only to get to the point where Peter and Thea eventually meet and discover all kinds of things about their respective worlds. Given that I am not a giant fan of science fiction, I was much more interested in the more factually scientific Peter chapters. The constructed world of Gracehope, while creative, was thin on explanation and assumed the reader could swallow much speculation.

However, any reader can accept and appreciate the story of family and reconciliation. I also value the message that kids can handle more than we expect them to, especially when it comes to the truth. Overall, I enjoyed this book. I occasionally read it aloud to the 7-year old that I nanny, and he was intrigued. I had fun updating him on what I was reading, and can easily see why this is a book that kids will relish.