All things in moderation

Could you live an entire year eating locally or the food from your garden? Barbara Kingsolver transplanted her family from the deserts of Arizona to the mountains of Virginia for their endeavor. Join From Left to Write on February 21 as we discuss Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. As a member of From Left to Write, I received a copy of the book. All opinions are my own. 

Well, for me, the short answer for that first question would be: uhm, no.
 

I don't know how to grow daffodils, let alone anything one could reasonably eat, I don't happen to own (or be married to someone who owns) a farm on which to hone my growing skills, and I lead a very hectic life (or does it lead me?) with three very active boys and a husband who is off flying the friendly skies half of every month.  I am a big fan of convenience and the pizza delivery guy, especially when I'm the only one in the house with a drivers' license and a car, and three kids have to get to different activities or practices in the same afternoon.  My mantra is 'all things in moderation.'   Except coffee.... I really, really like coffee.   

Now, having said all of that, let me back off from my "uhm, no," at least a little bit.  

First of all, I fully realize that it is possible to lead a very hectic life and still grow vegetables.  Or buy from farmers' markets and farming co-ops or CSAs (community supported agriculture).  And I realize that many, many people far busier than I, can and do eat locally grown and harvested produce and meats all the time.   I also realize that I don't necessarily have to be the one doing all the farming and the growing.  Which, honestly, is a relief, because I'm not exaggerating, I can't even grow daffodils.   But I'm still a wife and a mom who wants to feed her family healthy and nutritious food that tastes good, is grown in a responsible way and doesn't cost more than my children's college fund. 

Barbara Kingsolver and her family moved from Tucson, Arizona to Virginia, to a farm her husband owned, and made a pact together to only eat food that they grew themselves or that was grown locally, or just do without it.  That's a huge step.  Huge.  Kingsolver's story is fascinating and well written, with humor and amazing research.  I especially liked the sidebars written by her family members.  I only wish my children loved fruits and vegetables so much!  

Being a historian, I was fascinated by Kingsolver's research into the types and variety of different types of fruits and vegetables that we have lost, due in large part to the mass production of industrial farms and the focus on growing only a couple of crops, but A LOT of them, for maximum profit.  I had no idea, and it's tragic.  If France and Italy and Germany and India are all known for their wonderful and unique cuisines, what would American food be?  McDonald's?  Ick.

I don't think I possess the intestinal fortitude for a transcontinental move and a vow to give up Honey Nut Cheerios, I'll just throw that out there.  But after reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I will say that I am inspired to expand my horizons and try some new things.  I will frequent the farmers' markets and local farms more, I will research local CSAs and I will learn to enjoy cooking.   I will stop caving to the whiny "how many bites of THAT do I have to eat?" and I will continue to encourage and teach my kids to make healthy food choices.  I will learn more about what is in season, and what is not, and I will try to do better to abide by the schedule nature gave us.

I can't promise to delete the pizza guy's phone number from my speed dial, but I can promise that I will press 'call' a little less often.

Hey, it's something!   We've all gotta start somewhere. 

Home

 

When Julia travels to Burma to search for her missing lawyer father, she discovers much more than she expected. Join From Left to Write on February 1 as we discuss The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philipp Sendker. As a member of From Left to Write, I received a copy of the book. All opinions are my own.

Home. 

Four little letters, one short syllable. So heavy with layers of meaning. 

There is a part in this beautifully told story where Tin Win goes to a monastery as a young man who has lost his sight. I am not blind, and cannot fathom what it would be like to lose my sight. To lose the primary way I engage with and experience the world. I can't imagine how frightened and out of sorts I would feel, even in my own comfort zone, my home. But I know very well the layout and the design of the rooms and hallways within these four walls, and I could navigate it in the dark if I needed to. Home is, and is meant to be, our safe place, our soft place to fall. 

For Tin Win, he experiences a different kind of home when he arrives at the monastery. He has never been there before and it is all unfamiliar territory to him, and yet he feels peaceful, as if he is at home. 

There have been relatively few times in my life when I have felt that deep peace of coming home, when I was most definitely not at the house where I reside, and most definitely not in familiar territory.

I felt that way the first time I attended the church that spoke directly to my soul. I was not raised in this church or with the beliefs or traditions of this church. And yet, the first time I sat in the pews and really absorbed the message, I knew. I'm an academic; I need to know the why's and wherefore's of things. I need to see the proof and examine the sources and analyze the credibility of the argument and the premise upon which it is based. And yet, I can't do that when pressed about my faith. 

Because I didn't choose my faith after careful consideration of all the options and a thorough analysis. I just came home. 

I felt that way when I met the man who would become my husband. I didn't try to flirt like crazy with him, or impress him with how cute and clever I was. He didn't wait any certain number of days to call me after he asked for my phone number, and he didn't waste time acting disinterested to see how hard I would chase him. We skipped over the initial, sometimes awkward, dating rituals and mating dances. I just knew about him. 

I didn't choose my husband because he adhered to a list of do's and don't's or because he met a list of criteria. I just came home. 

Home, to me, is not about a nice three car garage on a wooded cul de sac. It's not about four bedrooms in a nice suburb. It's not about Home is about peace. Home is about feeling safe. Home is about acceptance and love and comfort. Home is about belonging somewhere, belonging to someone. 

What makes you feel at home?

On appreciating quiet

 

Are you an introvert or extrovert?.Author Susan Cain explores how introverts can be powerful in a world where being an extrovert is highly valued. Join From Left to Write on January 19 as we discuss Quiet: The Power of Introverts by Susan Cain. We'll also be chatting live with Susan Cain at 9PM Eastern on January 26. As a member of From Left to Write, I received a copy of the book. All opinions are my own.

I'm guilty.  

There, I said it. 

I'm guilty....guilty, I tell you. 

My crime?  Wanting my child, no, expecting my child to be something different than he is.  As if there's something wrong with him, or lacking in him.  When he is just exactly as God intended him to be, without me and my neuroses laid upon his scrawny, preteen shoulders. 

You see, my son is an introvert.  And I...I am not.  Oh, I enjoy quiet time now and then, and I happily kiss my children goodbye as I drop them off at the door of the school, looking forward to the temporary peace that reigns in my kid-free house for a few hours each day.  I get weary of the constant chatter and TV noise and music noise and video game noise that invades my house during the hours that Moe, Larry and Curly are at home and awake.  Oh yes, I enjoy time to have a cup of coffee with a book or checking up on my Facebook friends for a while.  But not for very long.  I get a little antsy and I feel like picking up the phone and calling someone, or asking a friend to lunch or maybe just going to the grocery for a little friendly checkout-line-chitchat.  Too much quiet bothers me.   Full disclosure:  I am an ambivert, comfortable in both realms, but not comfortable enough to really stick with one or the other.  I'm a perennial fence-sitter in so many aspects of my life, but that's another post for another day.

Reading Susan Cain's Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking, has given me a whole new view on the introvert/extrovert question.  I haven't worked full time outside the home in nearly twelve years, and when I did work full time, my office was the cargo compartment of a C-141 cargo jet, flying for the Air Force.  So I don't have much of a frame of reference for much of the office statistics, such as how private or at least semi-private offices or cubicles vice an open floor plan affect productivity or how meetings are creativity-killers, and multi-tasking is really just a myth.  (As a busy mom, I wonder about that, but who am I to question solid research?) 

But for me, the real gems in Cain's book were about people who contributed a great deal to life as we know it, with all the creature comforts and technological gee-whiz fun toys, and they didn't seek the spotlight.  They were introverts.  They wanted, they needed to be left alone, in order to really get inside their own heads and pull all that magic out. Everyone knows about Apple products and the legendary Steve Jobs, may his soul rest in peace.  But not everyone knows about the other genius, the other Steve, behind my super-cool iPhone. Steve Wozniak, Introvert.  He wasn't good at, nor did he want to, jump up and down and attract a lot of attention to himself.  He didn't need to be the public face of Apple.  He just wanted to build computers.  And boy, did he ever build computers.  Given his tremendous success, he has learned to deal with the spotlight from time to time.  But he doesn't seek it out.

Why and how do these quiet, unassuming people get all this wonderful and creative innovation and all these way-cool ideas, when they're not all that good at selling it?  Why is it better to work alone when the light bulb moment strikes?  Why doesn't brainstorming work?  Why do we seem to be more attracted to qualities like magnetism, charisma, forcefulness and energy, while allowing qualities like duty, honor, manners, integrity, and hard work take a back seat?  The latter group are all things that a person can work to improve, but the former group...well, you either got it or you don't. 

The world loves an extrovert.  And the world loves someone who will toot their own horn confidently, and sell themselves boldly.  We live in a time where people are famous for nothing more than, well, being famous.  These people simply assume that the rest of the world is interested in them and what they're doing, where they're going, and whose clothes they're wearing.  And to a significant degree, they're right.  These celebrities make more for showing up once at a nightclub than I'll make in the next two years.  How do they do that?!

It's all in the book.  There is a lot of science and statistics, but Cain writes it all down in a way that makes it easy to follow.  

But really, how does this relate to my crime and my guilt?  Well, my son is an introvert.  He's a bright, capable, intelligent kid.  His imagination and the world he inhabits inside his head are nothing short of amazing.  And yet, I fail on a regular basis to appreciate the wonder that is my introverted boy.  I'm such a social creature that I don't truly understand his need to be alone, his preference to work alone, his lack of concern for the small number of phone calls and invitations he receives.  It's not that he doesn't have friends; he does.  He does get invitations and when he shows up at a party or a basketball game, he's greeted by several friends high-fiving him or giving him a noogie (this is apparently how preteen boys show affection and happiness).  

He's totally okay with being, playing, thinking alone.  On his own.  No one else.  But I have to admit, I sometimes wonder....do the other kids really like him?  Why do they so rarely call to ask him to come over, or to shoot some hoops, or to sleep over on Saturday nights? Why does he always seem to be alone?  Is something wrong with him? More full disclosure:  we live in smalltown USA and attend a small Catholic school where everyone knows everyone else and it's not as if he's swallowed up in a huge school and doesn't really get to know anyone.  He's been in the same class with the same kids for the last seven years. And I know that the other kids love him.  But still, I worry.  I worry that he's going to get left out and left behind. 

I don't understand his imaginary world.  I often have to remind him that I don't understand the language he has just now made up, and I'm going to need him to just use English, please.  Sometimes I have to remind him to rejoin the here and now.  He always does, but he's sometimes pretty darn reluctant.  And I worry. 

I've had people...coaches, instructors, activity leaders, other parents...insinuate (or sometimes outright say) that with his temperament and his inclination to be perfectly happy on his own, that he's going to get left out and left behind. And I worry.  In the words of one of these esteemed individuals (a 100% complete and total extrovert, maybe not capable of being alone for 10 minutes), if he didn't learn to be more outgoing and change facets of his personality, he was "going to be totally screwed in this life."  Imagine how well I took that comment. 

But Susan Cain begs to differ.  And through her book and her research, she gives me reason to beg to differ.  She has given me a reason and a way to view my son differently, and new ways for me to interact with him so that he feels loved and safe, no matter how social he may or may not be.  I don't understand him.  That's a terrible feeling, to not really get your kid.  To sometimes wish he could be a little more this or a little more that.  To fail to appreciate the beauty and the wonder, the gift from God,  that is right in front of me on a daily basis. 

But after reading Quiet, I'm beginning to get it.  And I'm beginning to get him. 

Losing, and then finding, yourself

**In Lost Edens, author Jamie Patterson struggles to save her marriage which may or may not be already over. Keeping her attempts a secret from her family, she attempts to mold herself into the wife her husband wants her to be. As a member of From Left to Write book club, I received a copy of this book for review. You can read other members posts inspired by Lost Edens by Jamie Patterson on book club day, October 27 at From Left to Write. This post is inspired by the book.**

I struggle for words when I think about this book.  That's a little unusual for me, to struggle for words, but I read this book nearly in one sitting and when asked what I thought of it, I came up nearly empty of words.  Not because I didn't like it, or it was a boring story, badly told; far from it.  I found it riveting; real and raw and emotional.  I felt as though I were living the experience with Jamie, and I was spent by the last page.  It's not a real happy, feel-good story but it is, in many ways, hopeful. 

Most of us have been through a terrible break-up, whether it was getting your heart well and truly broken by your first love, or a mid-30's divorce that left you shattered and alone with young children.  I remember when my first love, my high school boyfriend (I'll just call him T) broke up with me.  I sobbed and cried and begged him not to leave me; I promised I'd be anything he wanted me to be, if he would just not leave me.  My baby heart was broken; I was 17 and I believed with all my heart that he was The One.  He had even given me a tiny diamond chip that I wore proudly; it may as well have been a flawless, colorless 5-carat ice cube for all the weight it carried for me.   By the time I graduated from high school, the shine was off the diamond, literally and figuratively.  It was never going to last; we were children and we had no idea what we were talking about as we pledged to love each other forever and ever. We broke up on senior prom night and although we got back together and tried to make it last, we were never the same and no matter how I tried, I could never change myself enough to be the girl he wanted to be with.  

Now, over twenty years later, I am glad that, as painful as it was and as much as I didn't think I could live one.more.day without him, T set me free.  He's gone on with his life and I've gone on with mine.  My life is a pretty good place to be these days and I'd never have grown up to be who I am today, with my experiences and my perspectives, with all the good and the bad that entails.  

The next Serious Relationship I had, with R,  also ended with me sobbing and crying and swearing to be whoever he wanted me to be, if he would just please not leave me.  He did, in fact, leave and again, I'm grateful.  Although at the time, I thought I might die from heartbreak. 

I'm beginning to see a pattern here.  

The thing that T and R knew, that I didn't, was that you can't change who you are, to please someone else.  Not even if you really, really, really want the relationship to work.  When you dance to someone else's tune, you are always just a little bit out of step.  You are always looking to them to see what your next move is, to see how you're going to feel about everything, from the day's headlines to how much cream and sugar you take in your coffee.  Little by little, you get swallowed up by the person you're trying to please.  You look to them to see if those pants really do make you look fat, if you're cheering a little too loudly for your favorite team (wait, is that your favorite team? you can't remember), or if it's ok for you to go ahead and have that second slice of pizza or glass of wine.  What they want becomes what you want, and your desires and needs merge with theirs until you almost can't see yourself as separate from them. Your thoughts, and by extension you, cease to matter, even to yourself.

And in the end, by compromising so much of yourself and what you want, you disappear.  One of the most poignant moments in this book, to me, was pretty early on, when Jamie was at Target buying a new set of sheets.  She really wanted the pink ones but she knew he wouldn't like them and would rather have another color.  She tried to take a stand, even to herself, and get what she really wanted.  But even as she bought her new pink sheets, she knew she couldn't do it; she knew she'd be bringing them back the next day to exchange them for sheets that would make him happy.  Even in something so simple as a set of sheets, Jamie allowed her desire to fix her troubled marriage to trump everything that might have been important to her, everything that made her who she was.  

T didn't necessarily want me to change for him; he told me so, and so did R.  They both said essentially the same thing: you can't change for me.  You wouldn't be you anymore. During each of those break-ups, I wanted so badly for them to love the me that I was, and I didn't know that trying to make myself into someone that they could love would have negated me.  It wasn't T or R telling me I wasn't good enough as I was; I was saying that to myself. 

Losing yourself is far harder than losing someone else.  If you don't know who you are, if you have lost yourself, how do you know where to start?  How do you go about figuring out who you might be, what you might want? If you're not good enough for yourself, how can you be enough for someone else?  Finding out the answers to those questions is a tough thing.  But after you have allowed someone (and yourself!) to beat you down to where you don't recognize the girl in the mirror, the you that you will find at the end of the questions is pretty awesome.  Don't ever let anyone tell you differently. 

Politics and sex

**As a member of From Left to Write book club, I received a complimentary copy of Cleopatra, by Stacy Schiff for review. This post was inspired by reading the book, and you can check out other club members' posts by going to www.fromlefttowrite.com starting on 27 September.**



I recently graduated from college with my bachelors' degree in history. It was a big deal for me, a long awaited dream and a goal that I had put off.

I mention this only because it seems to me that, with said degree, I should have some knowledge of, well, history. I read this book, Cleopatra by Pulitzer Prize winner Stacy Schiff(who is totally my new hero! Author, scholar, historian, yo!) and I learned so much! I learned a lot, and I also disabused myself of some of notions previously held.

Obviously, as a history major, and a historian, I'm fascinated by history. I also love politics, and nothing pumps my blood pressure like an election season, preferably with big issues at stake. And really, when isn't there a big issue at stake? But every election season, I lament the ever-increasing hostility and lack of manners and decency. I wish that we could back to the days when politics was a little more civil and polite. Heh. And when, pray tell, would those days have been? Loosely defined, I think of politics as the relationship between the government and the governed. The bosses and the workers. The leaders and the people. The business of making a nation function.

That's what I mean. You'd think I would know that politics has always been a blood sport, quite often literally, and maybe never more so than in Cleopatra's time. In the early chapters of Cleopatra, Schiff outlines Cleopatra's "ungainly shrub" of a family tree and her early years when she was groomed and trained to lead. She was schooled vigorously in philosophy and language and the art of public speaking and it seems her father had high aspirations for her. She married one of her brothers; a common practice of the time, hence the "ungainly shrub" of a family tree. They were expected to rule Egypt as king and queen and yet they were mercilessly plotting against one another, even to the death.

The thing I find kind of funny, not so much in the ha-ha way, but in the ironic way, is that a woman who was successful in politics in the years before Christ (B.C.) is, to this day, regarded as a wanton seductress, and cunning manipulator. Julius Caesar, with whom Cleopatra crafted an alliance, was regarded as a successful military strategist. Credit is given to his intellect and his leadership, while Cleopatra, who was not necessarily regarded as all that attractive in her time, has emerged from history as a breathtaking beauty who was capable of rendering men senseless with her come-hither smile and a bat of those kohl-rimmed eyes. She doesn't get credit for being smart and well-trained; she gets credit for being beautiful. But love her or hate her, she was on a pretty equal footing with the men of her time and outfoxed many of them, including her brother and husband Ptolemy who was trying so hard to kill her! When he discovered she had tricked him right under his nose, he literally burst into tears and threw a tantrum, so furious was he. Who says she's just a pretty face?

Fast forward about two thousand years...love them or hate them, there are some pretty powerful women in American politics these days. Hillary Clinton, Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin. Their education and expertise, although it is hotly debated by many, was enough for the people that elected them. They didn't come to be governors or Senators or Secretary of State on their looks alone, and yet that is exactly how they seem to be judged first and foremost. Eventually the conversation will turn to intelligence (or perceived lack thereof), training, experience, education, political savvy. But a lot of weight is given to looks, when the same isn't true of their male counterparts. Unless you count the snarky jokes about John Edwards' $400 haircuts, but that's another post for another day....

Cliches become cliches for a reason, and this whole line of thought brings an oldie but a goodie to mind: the more things change, the more they stay the same. No, a woman doesn't have to be beautiful to be successful, but it helps. Hillary's presidential campaign was history making, groundbreaking, and yet what got so much press was her wardrobe. Sarah Palin's clothing budget was the stuff of political legend. And just yesterday, I read a snark opinion piece complaining about how much Michele Bachmann must spend on her manicures.

I stand in awe of powerful women, who didn't follow the rules and didn't behave, no matter what they might have looked like. You know, well-behaved women don't make history.

On forgiveness and second chances

** Deborah Reed's debut novel Carry Yourself Back to Me follows heartbroken singer-songwriter Annie Walsh as she digs into the past to exonerate her brother from murder. As a member of From Left to Write book club, I received a copy of this book for review. You can read other members posts inspired by Carry Yourself Back to Me on book club day, September 22 at From Left to Write.**

I really enjoyed reading this book.  I really enjoyed it. This is a debut novel and I really like the author's writing style.  I have a bad habit of picking apart the author's writing style when I read, as opposed to just allowing the story to carry me along, but I suppose that's an occupational hazard.  Sometimes I just can't keep reading, if the style distracts me too much, but I found Reed's style compelling and a little mysterious.  Maybe suspenseful is a better word...at the end of each chapter, she threw in a little twist that made me stay up too late to find out what happened, saying to myself, "Just till I see what what she does now, then I'll put it down."

This book got me thinking, as good books are supposed to do, and it got me thinking about second chances.  Seems to me that just about every character in this book, major and minor, got a second chance.  Bad guys got a chance to be good guys, broken hearts got a chance to heal and love again, and dreams that seemed crushed had a chance to breathe again.

Forgiveness and second chances are not the same thing, but it sure is hard to give someone a second chance when you're not willing to forgive.  Then again, if you forgive, that doesn't always mean you're willing to give a second chance.  

I have been blessed throughout my life, with many, many second chances.  I find it kind of funny and ironic that friends from my wild and mis-spent youth would not recognize the small-town, church-going, stay-home wife and mom I have become, while friends that I have now would not recognize the somewhat wild-child, party-girl, dancing-on-the-edge-of-legal rebel kid that I used to be.  I had something a little bit removed from the childhood my own little people are enjoying.  They have both parents still living, still married to one another, in a nice comfortable house with dinner on the table (oh alright, sometimes it gets delivered in a box from the pizza guy, but whatever!) every night, good friends at a great school, all the books and Legos and video games any three kids could want, and very few worries.  I used to feel sorry for myself for the raw deal I thought life had given me, but I've come to see my rough beginnings as a blessing. 

I got a second chance. 

I was at a crossroads as a young teen, poised on the brink of that time in life when bad decisions really can follow you for a lifetime instead of being mostly temporary and erasable.  And then what I thought was the worst possible thing happened: I was uprooted from one home to another.  I thought it was the end of the world, and that my life was over.  In reality, it was just beginning.  Had I stayed in the other place, I was all but certain to head down a path that was littered with bad decisions and unpleasant consequences.  That is not to say I never made a bad choice again, or that I didn't live with any unpleasant consequences; to the contrary, I did just that.  But my new environment afforded me opportunities that the old one had not and much better guidance along the rocky path to adulthood that kept me from completely careening out of control and over the edge.  I found my way.  Not perfectly, not without mistakes and regrets and tears, but I found my way. 

My father was alternately emotionally abusive, or completely absent.  He was a guy who always seemed to have circumstances stacked against him, he had a lot of bad things happen to him, and he got bitter about it.  He and I didn't see eye to eye on many things, and we hurt each other.  A lot. Ultimately we spent a lot of years estranged and not speaking.  Until he got really sick.


I gave a second chance. 


A lot of water passed under the bridge that last week he spent in hospice and I learned that forgiveness isn't something you give to the other person, it's a gift you give to yourself. Putting down that baggage is blessed relief.  You're the only one that carries it; it's only a burden for you, not the other person.  It's easier to move forward when your load is that much lighter.

Second chances are a gift.  A beautiful gift to be treasured and not squandered. 

In Carry Yourself Back to Me, Annie extended forgiveness and received second chances.  It was only after setting down her angry baggage and forgiving those who had hurt her, that her hands were open and able to receive the second chances. 

Have you ever been given a second chance?  Were you able to receive it? 

Gettin' it done

My summer reading, that is.

Which is at least part of the reason this poor blog sits unwritten-in, lonely and neglected these days.

But I have been on a major reading tear over the last several weeks, staying up waaay too late and losing sleep to see how things end.  I must confess that much of my reading is pure escapism, not really edifying or educational in any way, although some of the books have made me really think about different things.  I finished Love, Greg and Lauren, and jumped into The Passion of Mary Margaret, which is a really good story that didn't go at all as I expected it to.  It's the story of a religious sister who knows from a very early age what she wants to do with her life and sets out to do just that, only to find that Jesus has other plans for her.  He literally sits down in her kitchen and tells her so.  I thought all the way through that book, how great would that be, to have Jesus sit down at my table for a cup of coffee and say, "Good morning sweet pea.  Here's what I have planned for you." I'd always know for sure what God intends for me, what His plans are for my day, my week, my life.  I wouldn't spend time needlessly worrying about if I'm doing what God wants, or if I've convinced myself that what I want is what God wants, by the sheer force of my desire.  In any case, it was a good book that I enjoyed reading, and there were some real surprises that I didn't see coming.  I don't like to give away spoilers so I won't tell you what the surprises are, but suffice it to say that it wasn't plodding or predictable.

From there I jumped into Unbroken,  for my book club, and I'm SO bummed out I had to miss the meeting where we discussed it.  What a phenomenal story, and written so beautifully.  It's the story of Louie Zamperini, written by Laura Hillenbrand.  He was a troublemaker kid in Torrance, CA, in the 1930's, who fell in love with running and was training in hopes of running in the 1940 Olympics, and when they were canceled because of World War II, he went into the Army instead and became a bombardier on B-24s.  He and his crew crashed one day and he, along with two other crewmembers survived the crash and drifted at sea.  After an astounding 47 days drifting in a liferaft, with very little food or water, and nearly constantly hounded by hungry sharks, he and his pilot were rescued and ultimately taken prisoner by the Japanese.  He endured nothing less than hell on earth and eventually made it back home to tell his story.  He is still traveling today, speaking at churches and community centers.  Hillenbrand is a fantastic writer; I felt like I knew him personally and there were several points in the book that were suspenseful enough to make me stay up reading into the wee hours just to know what happened.  This was one of those books that really affected me.  I'm a military person and a history nerd, but that's only part of it.  Amazing story, amazing man, amazing book.  Read it.

I also motored through Then Came You, Jennifer Weiner's new one.  A story of three women who don't know each other, have very little in common, and yet their lives are permanently intertwined.  I love Jennifer Weiner's books and this one was no exception.  Her style is just so comfortable...easy to read, snarky and funny and clever, but also heartbreakingly real and vulnerable.

I found Emily Giffin this summer too...I'm usually late to the party, and it's not as if she is new to the world of books.  I just hadn't read her before, and she is similar to Jennifer Weiner in that her books would be considered 'chick lit' but they're not fluffy.  My husband would never read her books, but they're about far more than who's having an affair with whom, or rich trophy wives and their shoe collections.  I've read Heart of the Matter (which I finished at 2:30 am the morning after I bought it....HAD to know where it was going) which addresses infidelity in a very thoughtful and thought-provoking way, and Love the One You're With, which is about a question most of us have asked ourselves at some point, if we're really honest with ourselves.  It's about "the one who got away"....what if you got a chance to make that choice again?  It's romance, yes, but much more at the same time.

I have started and set aside The Hunger Games a couple of times and I'm not sure why.    I did it this week, in fact.  I am reading Working It Out right now, by Abby Rike. If you're not a Biggest Loser fan, you probably don't know who Abby Rike is, but she was a contestant a couple of seasons ago.  She had by far the saddest story of anyone there, at least to my mind.  She lost her husband, her 5 1/2 year old daughter and her two week old son all at the same time, in a horrific car crash, and it just devastated her.  As a mom, I can't even fathom what that would be like.  She insulated herself with food and the weight gain that came with it, and ultimately became a contestant on The Biggest Loser.  Her story is inspirational and the love story of her marriage is bittersweet.

Next up is Angry Housewives Eating Bonbons, for my book club.  I've read it before and was the one who suggested it, but I am looking forward to reading it again.  It's the story of housewives who live on the same block and become friends, bonding over books and weathering life's storms together.  It's the story of the strength of friendships and how, sometimes, a girl just needs her girlfriends, even more than the other important people in her life.  Good stuff.

I hope that I can find time to do all the reading I still want to do!  I've read a lot in spite of lots of summertime running around, but there are still so many books, so little time.   I hope that you're able to make a dent in your summer reading, and while you're at it, leave me some suggestions from your list!