April 2020 life/book report

Let me get out of the way that I know there is an issue with posting comments on this site. You’ll get a message that your comment didn’t go through, but it will. I see them all. I promise to call tech support next week about it. I’m not a huge phone person and have put it off for months now.

Around here, we’ve been sticking to our routines. Sweet Girl’s virtual school is going really well. I am sad that she only has a few more weeks of it because I love being this involved in her learning. Her school is making a special effort to reach out to the “graduating” fifth graders to make them feel special since their “promotion” ceremony will take place virtually. Another blow… we just found out that our beloved summer camp will not be happening this summer, so SG is now 100% focused on preparing for middle school. At this very moment, she is sitting with a new combination lock, figuring out how it works for her new locker.

We have been in our new house now for 6 months!! That is hard to believe. I think SG’s doing great with all this change. It’s been quite a lot to handle for such little shoulders. Loss of home, 4 moves, loss of a pet, and now not being able to be with her friends every day, graduate from elementary school as planned, or go to camp.

How am I doing, you ask? Why, it’s so nice of you to be concerned! I’m ok. I’m trying to keep up with my podcasts and online classes, appreciate my new home and the people I share it with, and limit my time reading news/politics. We do a lot of laughing around here. And I’ve done a number of puzzles, which is therapeutic for me since it uses a different part of the brain than I’m used to using. It’s similar to painting or collage, I think.

I also want to share a few of my favorite funnies from this current situation.

And last, this infographic that resonates with me and I look at often. I alternate between the Learning and the Growth Zones.

OK on to the books for this past month. I didn’t read as much as I wanted to (must be all the puzzles!) but these were great. I even got to spend time reading outside on our porch swings and in the backyard.

The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell

“While we were away, I asked Laurie to make a note of a few things customers asked her during the day. Her note reads: … ‘Why is Wigtown a book town?’ ‘How many bookshops are in Wigtown?’ [They] are asked on average twice daily all year round. After fifteen years, that means that I have been asked those same questions 9,360 times. It’s hard to muster any enthusiasm when I reply now. Perhaps it’s time to start inventing fresh answers that have absolutely no basis in fact.“

I noticed that Bythell has a sequel just published and it got great reviews, so I figured I should read this first. It’s an amusing diary of life in a used book store in rural Scotland, in a dry humor sort of way. His original idealism quickly turns to sort of a curmudgeonly look at life. It poses a nice balance to the Amazon book review. I won’t be reading the next one though.

“Before the days of Amazon and AbeBooks – web sites to which one may quickly refer to check prices – booksellers would have to acquire and carry about all of that… biographical, bibliographical and literary information. Now this knowledge – accumulated over almost a lifetime, once so valued and from which a good living could be earned – is all but useless. Those dealers who could tell you the date, publisher, author and value of a book just by looking at it are few and far between, and their ranks are shrinking daily.“

The Book of Longings: A Novel by Sue Monk Kidd

I just love Sue Monk Kidd! The Book of Longings imagines the possibility that Jesus had a wife. Kidd writes in her Author’s Note, “I saw Ana not only as the wife of Jesus, but as a woman with her own quest—that of following her longings in pursuit of the largeness inside herself. I saw her, too, as a woman able to become not only Jesus’s wife, but his partner.”

“Rising, I took my incantation bowl to the small high window, where skeins of light fell. I rotated the bowl in a full circle, watching the words move inside it, rippling toward the rim. Lord our God, hear my prayer, the prayer of my heart. Bless the largeness inside me, no matter how I fear it. Bless my reed pens and my inks. Bless the words I write. May they be beautiful in your sight. May they be visible to eyes not yet born. When I am dust, sing these words over my bones: she was a voice. I gazed upon the prayer and the girl and the dove, and a sensation billowed in my chest, a small exultation like a flock of birds lifting all at once from the trees. I wished God might notice what I’d done and speak from the whirlwind. I wished him to say: Ana, I see you. How pleasing you are in my sight. There was only silence.”

SUCH a good read!

The Starless Sea: A Novel by Erin Morgenstern

“A book is an interpretation,” she says. “You want a place to be like it was in the book but it’s not a place in a book it’s just words. The place in your imagination is where you want to go and that place is imaginary. This is real,” she places her hand on the wall in front of them. The stone is cracked near her fingers, a fissure running down the side and disappearing into a column. “You could write endless pages but the words will never be the place. Besides, that’s what it was. Not what it is.”

A magical story within a story within many other stories, impossible to know what’s real. A man on a quest that began years ago. I don’t know quite how I came to this book… maybe it was an Oprah recommendation? I would not have kept going if it weren’t about books!

“Why are you here?” Because a book said I was supposed to be, Zachary thinks. Because I’m worried about going back because of crazy ladies in fur coats who keep hands in jars. Because I haven’t figured out the puzzle yet even though I don’t know what the puzzle is. Because I feel more alive down here than I did up there. “I’m here to sail the Starless Sea and breathe the haunted air,” he says and the echoed statement earns a smile from the Keeper.”

Holy Woman: The Road to Greatness of Rebbetzin Chaya Sara Kramer by Sara Yoheved Rigler

I met Sara Yoheved when I was in Israel in February and want to read all her books. This happens to be the first one I picked up. Though it’s not about her, it is an amazing biography about a very inspirational woman and how she has dealt with great challenges. She and her husband spent most of their years in a small farming area in Israel, lived very meagerly, gave to anyone and everyone, and adopted many children. Both of their stories are inspirational.

Your Love Is Blasting in My Heart: A Grandmother’s Journey by Marilyn Saltzman

“Lessons in lifecycles and imagination, the ordinary transformed to extraordinary and all God’s handiwork became exciting and new, thanks to my favorite young teachers.”

Marilyn is a friend of mine that I met at a mussar kallah last year. Writing about her experiences with her grandchildren, Selam and Dian, she shows us relatable examples of 13 middot (courage, mindfulness, trust, compassion, gratitude are a few). I loved seeing them through her eyes and also seeing the world through the wonder in a child’s mind. Such a delightful read!

The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone

Fascinating. Jeff Bezos is apparently known to be difficult to work for. He is a competitive micromanager with very exacting standards and unlimited ideas. Would you expect less from the inventor of a company that changed how we shop and read?

Brad Stone tells very well the Amazon story, from 1994, when the idea for Amazon was conceived, to today. He begins with Bezos as a gifted child, tells of the beginning challenges of the company and its growth, as well as how it solves problems, its hiring criteria, and how it defines itself. Bezos is intense, always on the verge of change and adaptation, and ever-loyal to his vision and values.

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Thanks so much for reading! I am looking for some good novels. Anything you might recommend?