May book report

May accomplishments:

Sweet Girl graduated from elementary school. She had a Zoom promotion ceremony and a car parade with lots of cheer. I made a book for her of memories of her 6 years there with class pictures, special milestones or occasions that I have pictures from, and even letters that I had her teachers write to her each year that she didn’t know about.

We saw some WWII planes fly overhead on VE Day. Mother’s Day was nice. I had a quarantine birthday. I’m putting myself on a diet after many months of a “whatever” attitude.

I’m working on two large art pieces for a friend’s home. One is on it’s fourth attempt. Oh well.

I created some artwork that will be printed on a postcard and included in some care packages for first responders. I have a friend who is the Houston Poet Laureate and she is coordinating this project to collect words and images from others.

And it’s summer all of a sudden. We have been vigilant in isolating ourselves in our home, cleaning the groceries that are delivered, and not allowing anyone inside. We did decide to allow a masked exterminator in a couple weeks ago, and that experience was enough to freak me out and not let anyone else in. That man was way too chatty and stayed too long.

At this point, I’m conflicted. I see pictures on Facebook of people getting together. I am stunned by the crowded protests and I fear for those people’s lives. And we are not risking summer camp or any inside activity. I don’t even answer the door. Is this sustainable though? I am concerned about SG going to middle school in the fall. She very much wants to, so I hope it will be configured in a way that is safe. I looked into homeschooling and I don’t think either one of us would like it.

Our country is vacillating between finding some form of unity and falling apart. It is so sad to watch such pain and hurt. After I put SG to bed at night, I check the numbers of new cases and deaths in Houston, the US, and the world; look at the CNN app top stories; and check Facebook. Some nights this takes me a couple of hours, so it’s no wonder I haven’t read many books this month. (I realize 7 books probably sounds like a lot to many of you!)

I decided to change my links in my book reviews going forward to Bookshop.org. Supporting independent bookstores has always been a passion of mine.

The Book of Delights: Essays by Ross Gay

“The point is that in almost every instance of our lives, our social lives, we are, if we pay attention, in the midst of an almost constant, if subtle, caretaking. Holding open doors. Offering elbows at crosswalks. Letting someone else go first. Helping with the heavy bags. Reaching what’s too high, or what’s been dropped. Pulling someone back to their feet. Stopping at the car wreck, at the struck dog. The alternating merge, also known as the zipper. This caretaking is our default mode and it’s always a lie that convinces us to act or believe otherwise. Always.”

This is collection of short essays written over a year about small joys he encounters. I like that he was actively seeking out and appreciating these moments. A very enjoyable read that changed my perspective of those little moments in our days.

Rules for Visiting: A Novel by Jessica Francis Kane

An introverted campus gardener decides to visit four old friends from different periods of her life in order to see how much they understand her. It’s an almost melancholy tale of being lonely in a digital age.

“Perhaps a best friend is someone who . . . holds the story of your life in mind. Sometimes in music a melodic line is so beautiful the notes feel inevitable; you can anticipate the next note through a long rest. Maybe that is friendship. A best friend holds your story in mind so notes don’t have to be repeated.”

Writers & Lovers: A Novel by Lily King

Thank you to Cynthia Newberry Martin for this suggestion! This is my favorite book from this month.

“I don’t write because I think I have something to say. I write because if I don’t, everything feels even worse.”

Casey is down-on-her luck and working as a waitress while she strives to finish her novel and live a creative life. We observe her loneliness and watch as she meets two very different men. I loved her determination to be true to herself and her struggles to enter the next stage of her life.

“I squat there and think about how you get trained early on as a woman to perceive how others are perceiving you, at the great expense of what you yourself are feeling about them. Sometimes you mix the two up in a terrible tangle that’s hard to unravel.”

An Unorthodox Match: A Novel by Naomi Ragen

After many disastrous relationships, a woman seeks an Orthodox Jewish life in New York. She meets a young widowed scholar who is newly grieving and cluelessly raising 3 children. Suprise ending: it all works out. 😉

“Reunited with Yaakov Lehman’s young children, Leah realized just how much the world she had lived in close to thirty-five years, the world she thought she knew, had been transformed, and she along with it. It did not happen suddenly one morning but was cumulative.”

Themes and Variations: An Essay by David Sedaris

I enjoy Sedaris’ sense of humor very much and delighted in this short essay about his last book tour and how he tries to connect with his audiences. I read a whole book in 20 minutes!

“My worst experience still angers me all these years later. I waited in line, a nervous wreck, and when I got up there, the author was talking to someone, her publicist, maybe. “I don’t know,” she said, sounding bored. “There’s not really much to do in this town. Why don’t you call Jerry and see what he thinks.” My copy of her memoir was reached for, signed with nothing but her name, and then pushed back. She didn’t even look up. In that case, I didn’t leave embarrassed. I left feeling betrayed. What I’d wanted, much more than the book—which I now would rather die than read—was to be seen by this person. If only for a few seconds. I left the store determined that when and if it was ever my turn and I was the author seated at that table, I was going to engage people until they grew old, or at least thirsty. “Well, all right, then,” they’d say, looking past me for the nearest exit, “let me let you go.” I would see them until they wilted. And that’s pretty much how it goes. I generally start the conversation immediately, that way the person wanting a book signed never has to say the things they’ve stood in line agonizing over, and that they will most likely regret later on.”

In Five Years: A Novel by Rebecca Serle

File this one under “read in bed and get pillowcase wet.” We’ve got a type-A lawyer who gets her dream job and is engaged to a man who agrees with her airtight life vision. The only “hyper realism” here is that she dreams one night that it is five years later and she is with a different person living in a different place. Back to her normal life, she begins questioning her relationship and actually meets the person in her dreams. Add in a beautiful friendship with a long-time friend and her cancer diagnosis, some thoughts about choice and destiny, and an acceptance at the end of what is and is not in our control.

“We are like constellations passing each other, seeing each other’s light but in the distance. It feels impossible how much space there can be in this intimacy, how much privacy. And I think that maybe that is what love is. Not the absence of space but the acknowledgment of it, the thing that lives between the parts, the thing that makes it possible not to be one, but to be different, to be two.”

Becoming Eve: My Journey from Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi to Transgender Woman by Abby Stein

This book has been recommended to me a few times, so I finally read it and liked it. Abby Stein was born a boy and raised in a Hasidic Jewish community in New York, groomed to become a rabbi and leader of the community. This is the story of her thoughts, education, and faith as she struggles to come to terms with her gender, ultimately leaving the community and breaking ties with her parents to become who she was meant to be.

“Questioning is basic human nature, and for most Jews around the world, it is a strong Jewish value. Not in the Hasidic community. My questions were met with disdain and anger, and shock. Asking these questions was just not done. I didn’t know of any other teenager who questioned the existence of God, the ultimate truth of Judaism as the only true path to God, the fact that we were the chosen people, or even the authority of our late sages. For me, it was necessary. I had no faith in anything I was told; if every authority in my life told me I was a boy, and I knew I was a girl, how could I believe the rest of their claims? If they were wrong about my gender, they could be wrong about God, too.”