Girl Detective

Last weekend was the Rain Taxi Twin Cities Book Fest, one of my favorite events of the year. I go, I listen to authors, meet authors, chat with friends, make some new ones. For this reader and writer, it’s just one more reason I love the Twin Cities.

Oh, and did I mention, there are books for sale?

Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon (because Festival Director gushed about her, and because it won the National Book Award and was a selection of the Morning News Tournament of Books, and because I liked the excerpt she read from it.)

Origin by Diana Abu-Jaber (because a woman in the audience said she led retreats on the book and it always provoked great responses, and because I liked what she read from her current book.)

Winters Bone by Daniel Woodrell (because the Festival Director gushed, because I really liked the movie based on it, because I liked the excerpt he read from his current book. Unrelated but cool: he served on Guam in ‘70 to 71; I lived there ‘72 to ‘74.)

Whose Hand? by Judith Yates Borger (because she’s in my writing group and I saw this book from beginning to publication)

Get In If You Want to Live by John Jodzio (because it’s a cool little book with illustrated flash fiction, and because he’s funny, and my neighbor)

White Truffles in Winter by N.M. Kelby (because I really liked her reading of it, and both she and Diana Abu-Jaber talked about food in fiction, which I’m working on, too.)

Thus ends of the recent book bender. I hope to spend a lot of time reading. Soon.

Links to come.

From the library:

The Year We Left Home by Jean Thompson (because it was well reviewed and had a long wait at the library, I thought for sure whenever it came in I’d have time to read it. And have read her book of short stories that’s been on my shelves for years. YEARS. Sigh.)

Yoga Anatomy by Leslie Kaminoff (because in the last month I’ve strained my trapezius muscle, something in the middle back, and something in the leg area. I grow old, I grow old and I thought I’d try to figure out what’s going on where.)

Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce (because I want to try the chocolate chip cookie recipe again, and didn’t get enough time with it when I got it out of the library the last time.)

Perfect One-Dish Dinners by Pamela Anderson. (I’ve been a fan of Anderson’s since way back when she wrote for Cook’s Illustrated, and her chocolate chip cookie recipe is the one I turn to. I was hoping for inspiration for fall dinners, but this is more geared to a group and is very meat heavy, though it does have many good-looking recipes and alternatives.)

Flour by Joyce Chang (because I didn’t get to spend enough time with it when I got it out last time. Both this and Good to the Grain were recommended by Jennifer Reese on Tipsy Baker.)

Links to come.

I’ve been buying books again. With all good intentions. Do you think I can have all these books be the very next one I read?

I suppose it could be worse. It’s not crack, heroin or meth, right? I may have to post these in a series, as everything online is either not working or working slowly. And Mercury’s not even in retrograde!

From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler by E L Konigsburg (I got this for 8yo Drake, hopeful he’s old enough and up for it)
The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson (The last recommendation for me from The Biblioracle at The Morning News)
Make the Bread, Buy the Butter by Jennifer Reese, who blogs at Tipsy Baker
The Finder Library v. 2 by Carla Speed McNeil. (One of my favorite comic series, collected in a lovely new edition. Why, no, I still haven’t finished v. 1. Your point?)
Sweet Tooth: Out of the Deep Woods v. 1 by Jeff Lemire (An answer to my question of “what’s good that I’m not reading” from 2nd in command C at Big Brain Comics)

More to come…

As I wrote before, I thought once my younger son started kindergarten, I’d spend the time writing and keeping house. This hasn’t happened. Instead I’ve been biking and eating.

I had every intention of staying in today and doing Useful Things. Then I saw a photo my friend Amy shared on Facebook of duck soup. The sun was shining. My bike’s tires were filled with air. It was time to go.

Ten-plus miles later, I got the second to last bowl of rich broth filled with squiggly noodles, bok choy, broccoli, a poached eggs, and local duck. I sat in the sun and slurped it down.

Where I Went and What I Ate: St. Paul (about 10.5 miles each way.) Duck soup from Chef Shack food truck. $10.

Tomorrow’s weather icon looks like this:

Tomorrow I’ll stay in.

Maybe.

Another thing I’m a fierce fan of is caffeine with a carb for breakfast. Perhaps it’s my Italian heritage.

Check out “50 of the World’s Best Breakfasts” at Hostel Bookers for 49 other delicious looking ways to break your fast. (via The Morning News)

The other day I wrote about the lurking bad feelings of not liking things that other people love. Today, a few things I embrace fiercely (other than my boys):

Novels
Naps
Good chocolate, pizza, coffee (mediocre might as well be bad, in my book)
Good televisiom, e.g., Breaking Bad; Parks and Recreation
Popcorn with real butter, with spice drops mixed in
Dum Dums cream soda lollipop (which I always get as my treat after we visit the pediatrician. Because mom often needs a treat after the pediatrician, too.)
Pumpkin Pie
New: Laundry dried on the line
Minnesota State Fair
Autumn
New comic day
Root beer
Butterscotch pudding

And you?

This morning at the bus stop, one mom said she’d saved all her concert Ts, imagining she’d make a quilt out of them. I asked what her first concert was.

“Tesla!”

I asked the dad next to us, and he said, “Yes.” I was about to repeat the question when I realized he had answered it, which he clarified by adding “90125.” Which, thanks to my husband, who introduced 8yo Drake to Yes, gets played way more (meaning, at all) in our house than I’d like it to. Yeah, I remember the many versions of Leave It on MTV, and I owned the album on vinyl, but still.

My first concert was Sting’s Dream of the Blue Turtles tour. I told my friends this morning there was a story which I couldn’t tell while the kids were still around. I realized later I’d gotten mixed up in my head. The Sting concert isn’t much of a story.

I went with my friend P. We lived outside Columbus OH, and the concert was at a new outdoor stadium near Cincinnati. I drove. I think we bought some beer and waited to drink it there. Once in the stadium, though, when nature called, we discovered something upsetting. The venue had no bathrooms. And if we went outside the venue, we wouldn’t be allowed back in. In retrospect, this seems unbelievable. And perhaps it wasn’t true. We had been drinking. My memory of that concert is of holding it for 2 hours until we could finally leave the venue, and then waiting in what seemed an endless line at a porta-potty. Someone later told me that bladders don’t stretch. I’m pretty sure mine grew two sizes that day.

See? Not a great story. The one I was thinking of involved the same friend and going to see Desperately Seeking Susan. But that is another story for another day.

A friend recently admitted to me that she doesn’t like yoga. She tried. She knew many others, including me, loved it. But she didn’t even like it, though felt a great relief at admitting it.

Herewith, a short list of things I don’t love. Guilty displeasures, perhaps? (and there are exceptions of course. But they are few.)

CSAs
The Help
Life of Pi
Valet parking
Live theater
Poetry
Jazz
Navy blue

What things do others love that you don’t, and perhaps feel guilty about?

We’re still on the Soderbergh kick after reading that article on his films in Slate.

The Good German (2009) I fell asleep by the end, and didn’t care that I missed it. My husband filled me in so I didn’t have to go back to watch it. It’s a gorgeous-looking black-and-white homage to post WWII movies, with Clooney as an army reporter visiting Berlin, Blanchett as a femme fatale, and Tobey Maguire as a smarmy kid. Clooney and Maguire’s performances felt unnatural, and the complications of the plot made me tired, not interested. I love The Third Man and Casablanca and many of Soderbergh’s films, but I didn’t even much like this. Uneven and disappointing.

The Informant! (2010) Matt Damon is an agribusiness executive in the 90’s who volunteers to inform on his company for price fixing. It’s clear from the beginning that things aren’t quite right, but the gradual reveals, the cheery music, and comedians playing straight men (Joel McHale, Patton Oswalt, Buster from Arrested Development) all contribute to an entertaining film and character study.

Thor (2011) Our DVR received finally crashed. If we got a new one, it would be HD, so it didn’t make sense to have an old TV, so we got a new HD one, and it didn’t make sense to have HD tv but not Bluray (you’re all following this rationalization, right?) so we got a Bluray player, and had to get a movie on Bluray to test it out, and I picked Thor, because I was interested to see if I found Chris Hemsworth as hot in HD as I did in the theater. Yep. But I’m finding the whole Bluray/HD thing disconcerting, and not sure if I’m ready for this, but ready or not, here it is. Thor is a good B movie, capably directed by Kenneth Branagh, who draws heavily on the themes of his Henry V. Kat Dennings steals all her scenes, Natalie Portman is fine, Loki is a tremendous villain, but Thor’s Valhalla crew are dead weight.

A periodic treat at The Morning News is when John Warner assumed the mantle of Biblioracle, and invites readers to list the last five books they enjoyed. Based on those, he suggests the next book to read. After the summer round, he suggested his friend and fellow TMN writer Kevin Guilfoile’s second novel, The Thousand. I’d seen a negative review from Publishers Weekly, and didn’t consider it after that. But the Biblioracle struck again, because I enjoyed it tremendously.

The story switches between several characters, but the central one is Canada Gold, a petite woman with a famous dead father and a talent for counting cards in Vegas that’s gotten her into more than a little trouble. Canada is the kind of smart, scrappy, supernatural heroine its easy to cheer for, not unlike Lisbeth Salander though slightly less crazy. As a child, she got a neurostimulator implanted to control her seizures. The “spider” as she calls it, did what it was supposed to but brought a host of weird side effects. These come into play when she becomes the center of various plots of a shadowy group called The Thousand, fanatic and secret followers of the ancient mathematician Pythagoras.

This is a speculative thriller in the style of William Gibson and Neal Stephenson. It has a number of similarities to a previous Biblioracle rec, Gibson’s Pattern Recognition, which I loved earlier this year. This was a fast, entertaining read in the midst of a bunch of heavy books. I enjoyed it a lot and look forward to checking out Guilfoile’s first novel, Cast of Shadows, as well as the latest recommendation for me from the Biblioracle: The Family Fang.

Many, many people asked “what are you going to do with yourself when Guppy starts full-day kindergarten?”

As if filling the time would be a problem.

FYI, all those people who told me to enjoy their baby- and childhoods because it goes so fast? My experience is spending actual time with babies and children can be tedious. The kid-free peace and quiet? THAT flies by.

I’m doing freelance writing now for three different places, so filling the time isn’t even confined to housewifery. And Oprah and bon-bons were never on the table.

I started this week with the desire to get back on my bike and get strong. After a couple recent physical setbacks, including a strained back the past few weeks (I grow old, I grow old…), I’ve fallen off my never very consistent exercise horse. When I get winded carrying the laundry upstairs, I figure it’s time to get moving, literally.

Monday I biked to meet a friend for lunch at a restaurant I’d long been wanting to try. In spite of bike map and smart phone, got lost, was late, but made it eventually. Total ride, 20+ miles.

Tuesday I met friends for coffee and breakfast at one of my favorite spots. Total ride, 10 miles, plus 2 more later in the day when I biked to and from yoga.

Wednesday, I thought I would rest till I saw the weather. Being Minnesotan now means seizing the weather when it’s good. I didn’t have anything in the fridge for lunch. Decided to bike to the falls and an eatery I’d never tried. In spite of smart phone and map, got a little lost. Total ride, 20+ miles.

Thursday, I realized we were almost out of espresso beans. In spite of debilitating wind, decided to bike to a fancy bike and coffee shop. Once there I ogled fancy bike gear (could EASILY have spent $500 just on clothes, gloves and a bag) and enjoyed an expert cappuccino and chocolate chip cookie. Started home. About halfway there wondered what the noise was. Had a flat. Walked to a nearby transit station, missed the train, wondered if I should ask anyone of the biking folk around if they could help me change it (I did have a spare tube). Saw a friend! He would be late to work if he helped me change it, but a bike shop was only a few blocks away. Went there, got the tube replaced, got a lesson so maybe I can change my next flat myself, then finally got home. Total ride, 20+ miles.

While I’m exercising, I’m also riding to high-calorie destinations, so this is not a weight loss regimen. However, now that I’ve begun, I figure I should keep going. I always thought what I would do when Guppy started school was write more. Turns out, for now, at least till the weather changes (heh, probably next week) it’s biking.

And so, I’m off on my bike to meet a friend at a bakery I’ve long wanted to visit, then maybe hang out downtown to check out the food truck vista.

Ta.

Trying to catch up here at the blog. In home news today, I changed sheets to flannel and mended a pair of footie pajamas. Winter is coming.

Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. When I began this book, I was impressed, as in, head tipped to the side I said, huh, this is different and good. Chapters are of three kinds. Two are narrated by Alex, a Ukrainian tour guide, who in one type of chapter corresponds with the character Jonathan Safran Foer, and in the other recounts his side of JSF’s recent trip to the Ukraine to unearth details of his grandfather’s early life. The third type of chapter is told ostensibly in third person omniscient, but really by JSF (whether the fictional, the author, or both) of his family history based on what he found on (or what he’s making up after) his trip. As the book wore on, though, so did the JSF family history chapters. While I continued to delight in Alex’s fractured English and point of view, I came to loathe the history chapters. They brought nothing new to tales of persecution during WWII, but they did concern themselves in disturbing detail with the bizarre sexual habits of grandparents and great-greats. I’m all for grandparents having sex or people having weird sex. But I don’t have to know the details. So, by the end I still really liked about 2/3 of the book, but hated the other 1/3.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by JSF. For a book group because of the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Narrated mostly by precocious 9-year-old Oskar Schell, who is weird but lovable and understandably deeply damaged by his fathers death on 9/11. Other chapters are letters written by his grandfather, who left his grandmother when she was pregnant with Oskar’s father, and the grandmother. The book is full of quirky bits, like photos from Oskar’s personal collection, pages that are blank because they were typed on a typewriter without a ribbon, four full pages of people’s doodles, numerous photos of doorknobs, and more. I’m reminded of a line from Spinal Tap: the line between clever and stupid is very thin. As with Everything is Illuminated, there is far too much detail about the weird sex of grandparents. The parts about Oskar and his mom were touching and interesting. The inclusion of Dresden is an intriguing contrast to 9/11. But the gimmicks and the grandparents didn’t work for me. Like EiI, a mixed bag of engaging, talented and really annoying writing.

The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall. Moving, with great characters, especially Rusty, who will stay with me a long time. A good example of taking something specific like polygamy and making it universal.

Savages by Don Winslow. A selection of this year’s Morning News Tournament of Books that I finally got ’round to. A fast, entertaining read about a trio of marijuana growers who get mixed up with Mexican cartels. It’s told in short, devourable segments that sometimes switch to screenplay form. This reminded me in good ways of Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell and Breaking Bad on AMC: extremely violent but incredibly entertaining with involving characters.

The Magician’s Elephant by Kate DiCamillo. A fable about an orphaned boy’s search for his sister, presumed dead. There is also, as promised in the title, a magician and an elephant. Lovely, evocative illustrations and a good tale.

The Fate of the Artist GN by Eddie Campbell. I’ve loved some of Campbell’s other works, and he’s undeniably a great artist visually and holistically, but this didn’t work for me. Way too meta, which I can sometimes love but apparently wasn’t in the mood for this time. I’ll go back to it, though.

God on the Rocks by Jane Gardam. Margaret, eight years old, has to navigate a lot of adult weirdness, like her vague mother, Jesus-obsessed father, bawdy nanny, a mysterious house in the woods and two recently returned friends of her mother’s. Like her more recent novels Old Filth and The Man with the Wooden Hat, it’s peopled with complex and fascinating characters. I loved it.

Here’s what we’ve been watching.

Muppets Take Manhattan (1984) d. Frank Oz. With the kids. Solid and sweet with great cameos. A worthy follow up to the original, which Muppets in Space was not. I’m very much looking forward to the upcoming muppet film.

Nausicaa (1984) d. Hayao Miyazaki. With the kids. The first full-length film he directed, and one of his best. Based on his own series of graphic novels, this is one of the rare instances when the film betters the book, which was too long and repetitive. The story benefits from the compression to film, while color, motion, and voices bring the story to new levels. A princess in an ecologically destroyed future has to battle bad guys, giant robots, killer spores and rampaging insects. She’s cute, smart, tough, and compassionate. Now THIS is a princess.

Bridesmaids (2011) Again. On a date night with my husband. Because I love it. LOVE IT. Bawdy and at times brilliant.

Easy A (2010) The charming Emma Stone is a high school nobody who gains notoriety by pretending to sleep with gays and geeks. She gets noticed, they stop getting beaten up. It’s supposed to be win/win, but of course, then there would be no conflict. An homage to the John Hughes movies of the 80’s, brought up to date with social media and hardware. Funny, with a few nice surprises.

Black Swan (2010) d. Darren Aronofsky. What I hated about this film was it’s hatefulness. That’s not circular, even if it sounds like it. Yes, the film is interesting to look at, Portman can act, and the story is involving. But it’s bleak, hopeless, and says only cruel things about people and the world. As with his previous directorial effort, The Wrestler, I felt icky during and after watching this. I’m done with this director.

Edited to Add: Another thing that didn’t help me like the movie was how strongly it reminded me of an episode of Fantasy Island from my childhood. Annette Funicello played a nice-girl ventriloquist, whose sassy dummy seemed to be taking over her life. The dummy came to life in the form of sexy Maren Jensen (Athena on the original Battlestar Galactica) and they had a struggle to the death at the end to see which part of Annette’s personality would survive. I may be the only person who remembers this episode, but nonetheless, it was more than a little distracting to see many of the details in Black Swan.

Out of Sight (1998) d. Steven Soderbergh. Restored my faith in film making. I don’t care if you don’t like Jennifer Lopez. She’s great in this: strong, smart, sexy and just fun to watch. The non-chronological story, the chemistry with her and Clooney, the amazing work by supporting actors like Albert Brooks, Don Cheadle, and the hilarious Steve Zahn, the assured direction combine to make a great movie. Enjoyable and well-crafted, I concur with Dan Kois at Slate that this is a movie for the ages.

I am woefully out of the writing and blogging habit. The boys have been in school for almost a month now, and only now do I begin to see glimmers of what a balanced routine at home might look like. I keep getting waylaid by the housewifery. I’ve learned to live with ever-increasing levels of dirt and clutter in order to maximize time for reading and writing, but the bill has come due now that I’m home while the kids are at school.

And this mess is so big
And so deep and so tall
[I] can not pick it up.
There is no way at all! (Cat in the Hat)

I don’t do well with a lack of structure, and I tend to treat deadlines as starting points. Time to change. Create structure, albeit one that bends. Respect deadlines. Read, write, rest, exercise, clean, organize, cook, eat. It’s not complicated unless I insist on making it so.

From “Deeply Embarrassed White People Talk Awkwardly About Race” by Jen Graves, from The Stranger:

Every conversation about race is tortured–palpably awkward, loaded with triggers, marked by the blind spots of perception and presumption–but that doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong or should stop doing it, says Scott Winn. That means you have to keep on.

“Once I realized I was racist, it was, well, what am I going to do about it?” says Winn, a mild-mannered white guy in his 30s. “That shifts the defensiveness.”

From “North by Nostalgia: Remember It Was Never Easy To Be Alfred Hitchcock,” by Linda Holmes at MPR

It was never easy to be Alfred Hitchcock, or everybody would have done it. It was never easy to be Cary Grant, or Eva Marie Saint. The crop-duster sequence wasn’t always an iconic piece of filmmaking; it began as someone’s idea. Filming the long, largely silent sequence that leads up to it wasn’t simply a product of the time; it was a product of creative effort that can’t be reduced to a dusty recollection of when people magically knew how to do things better than they do now.

Is there a modern movie that can hold a candle to North by Northwest? Linda mentions The King’s Speech being memorable for 2010, and while I enjoyed that film, I think it was an entertainment, not a great film. What are some great and lasting films from the last decade or so? For some reason, late at night, The Matrix is the only one that leaps to mind.

Two recent articles that have me thinking:

From “The Sugary Secret of Self Control” by Steven Pinker, a NYT book review of Willpower by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney. via Arts and Letters Daily

In experiments first reported in 1998, Baumeister and his collaborators discovered that the will, like a muscle, can be fatigued. Immediately after students engage in a task that requires them to control their impulses – resisting cookies while hungry… – they show lapses in a subsequent task that also requires an exercise of willpower, like solving difficult puzzles… Baumeister tagged the effect “ego depletion,” using Freud’s sense of “ego” as the mental entity that controls the passions.

Baumeister then pushed the muscle metaphor even further by showing that a depleted ego can be invigorated by a sugary pick-me-up (though not an indistinguishable beverage containing diet sweetener). And he showed that self-control, though almost certainly heritable in part, can be toned up by exercising it.

And from “Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue” by John Tierney, also in the NYT and also via ALD:

Decision fatigue helps explain why ordinarily sensible people get angry at colleagues and families, splurge on clothes, buy junk food at the supermarket and can’t resist the dealer’s offer to rustproof their new car. No matter how rational and high-minded you try to be, you can’t make decision after decision without paying a biological price.

Edited to add this article, “The Willpower Circuit“, from Wired:

Mischel has also helped redefine willpower. While we typically think of willpower as a matter of gritting our teeth and outlasting the temptation — staring down the marshmallow, so to speak — Mischel realized that this assumption was backwards. Instead, the ability of delay gratification depended on the “strategic allocation of attention,” a fancy way of saying that some kids know how to distract themselves. Instead of obsessing over the marshmallow — the “hot stimulus” — these patient children covered their eyes or looked away. Their desire wasn’t defeated — it was merely forgotten. “Kids who can delay gratification have a much more realistic understanding of willpower,” Mischel told me. “They know that willpower is very limited. If you’re thinking about the marshmallow and how delicious it is, then you’re going to eat it. The key is to avoid thinking about it in the first place.” There is, of course, something unsettling about this new model of willpower, since it assumes the utter weakness of the will. Resistance is only possible when we’re not actively trying to resist. (emphasis mine)

Reviewing Bridesmaids and The Hours together? What could be similar about the raunchy Kristin Wiig comedy and the sedate Oscar winner based on a Pulitzer Prize winning book? Other than that they are both terrific in an apples-to-oranges way, they DO have a few things in common.

The Hours is a SERIOUS FILM with major stars including Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Nicole Kidman (who won an Oscar for her role as Virginia Woolf) and Ed Harris. Like the novel it’s based on, it intertwines the stories of three women: Virginia Woolf who is writing Mrs. Dalloway; Julianne Moore as a 50’s housewife; and Meryl Streep as a lesbian whose best gay friend is dying of AIDS. This film was beautiful to watch, and while I felt it slow at the beginning, it gained momentum and I was weeping by the end. The Phillip Glass score was a little too loud, obvious, and full of itself, while the film also had some interesting and not-so-good departures from the book. Virginia was crazier in the film than in the book–more of a spectacle than the living, breathing, fascinating complex person she was in Cunningham’s novel. Moore was also more interesting in the book. She was the awkward outsider while her husband was a returning war hero, and it was more overtly about post WWII than about 50’s Americana, which the film took pains to portray, has less of a connection to the novel Mrs. Dalloway and is an easier target. Streep was terrific, and fun because she’s mentioned in the novel, a bit of synchronicity that Cunningham understandably enjoyed.

Bridesmaids opens on Kristen Wiig’s character Annie having vigorous, prolonged and cringe-worthy but hilarious sex with Jon Hamm, perfectly cast in contrast with his suave, womanizing Don Draper character from Mad Men. Annie is single and in a downward spiral after her cake shop shuttered during the recession. When her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph), she finds she has a rival for Annie’s affections in Helen. As the two joust, Annie meets a nice guy, can’t deal with him, and thinks she’s hit bottom but somehow keeps digging. There is tons of over-the-top and uncomfortable humor, but it also possesses a solid thread of believability, especially in some of the female relationships and interchanges. Wiig is tremendously engaging, while Melissa McCarthy as the wacko sister of the groom steals most of the scenes she’s in. I saw this first with a girlfriend, and then with my husband. If you can handle the raunch, I highly recommend this. It’s funny, smart, with some truth and realism to it, plus some satisfying romance. I look forward to buying it on DVD.

Superficially, the films couldn’t be more different. Yet both included repeated images of breaking eggs and women kissing women. Both had scenes of a woman sneaking into bed with her lover pretending to have been there longer than she had. Both meditated on women’s friendships, and both had a challenging mother/daughter relationship. Both also had a panoply of female actors playing interesting and often out there characters. Both were shining examples of how good films can be when they pass the Bechdel test, which most movies don’t. (Though there’s a small but vocal minority who disagree about that, in an intriguing interchange in the comments.)

(One question about Bridesmaids, though. The character of Lillian’s cousin, Rita, who is blond, dissatified in her marriage and yet hungry for adventure (and thus the most cliche of the bridesmaids, apart from Helen), reminded me strongly of the bride’s sister in one of the first R-rated movies I saw, Bachelor Party. Does this ring a bell for anyone else?)

For one of my book groups, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun tells the story of the Biafran war in late-60’s Nigeria. It was a time and event I knew nothing about other than that Biafra is not currently a country in Africa, so I could guess the broad strokes of the ending. The story is told through three main narrators, Ugwu, a village-born houseboy; Olanna, an upper-class Igbo woman; and Richard, a British ex-patriate who adopts Nigeria, then Biafra, as his home. Of the three, Ugwu was the most interesting and sympathetic to me, though the others were satisfyingly complex.

Master was a little crazy; he had spent too many years reading books overseas, talked to himself in his office, did not always return greetings, and had too much hair. Ugwu’s aunty said this in a low voice as they walked on the path. “But he is a good man,” she added. “And as long as you work well, you will eat well. You will even eat meat every day.” She stopped to spit; the saliva left her mouth with a sucking sound and landed on the grass.

Ugwu did not believe that anybody, not even this master he was going to live with, ate meat every day. He did not disagree with his aunty, though, because he was too choked with expectations, too busy imagining his new life away from the village.

Together, their stories and the ones of those around them form a striking narrative of a terrible time in history, perhaps the origin of the phrase “starving children in Africa.” It’s a long book that moves slowly at first, then has many events in the last hundred pages. But the shift in pacing makes some sense; it gives a vivid portrayal of life before, during and immediately after the war. I found this book moving and informative, though didn’t really fall in love with it.

Wondering: why is there a whole sun on the cover when “half of a yellow sun” is in the title?

I started fifth grade on the second day of school. I was sick on the first day, with one of the terrible sore throats I’d have for eight more years till I got my tonsils out. While sore throats were normal, I’m suspicious of the timing; I was starting a new school. Again.

My sisters started first and third grades on time, but Mom took me to work with her at church. I forgot my book, so I spent the day paging through Christian family magazines. I’m not sure if I felt better the next day, or was more willing to face a new class than the church basement, but I went to school.

Kindergarten through fourth grades were in the elementary school, but fifth graders were bussed to a squat brick building on the outskirts of town. The Union school had two classrooms on two floors, with music and tornado drills held in the basement. At recess, my teacher told me to go with Renee, a tiny girl who introduced me to the other kids. Everyone wanted to know why I hadn’t been in school yesterday.

“Sore throat,” I said, using few words because it still hurt. I might also have been shy. It was my fourth school by fifth grade, while most of the other kids had been together since kindergarten.

At the end of the day, the bell rang and four classes of students clambered onto one bus. The driver was an old man named Dickie. I sat by myself in the seat behind him, reading the book I’d forgotten to bring the day before. It was a Trixie Belden mystery that belonged to the best friend I’d just moved away from. Our parents said we’d see each other, but she’d given me the book as insurance.

Off the bus and into the car, I pled my sore throat and let my sisters tell Mom about their days. On the forty-five minute drive to the apartment we stayed in till our new house was ready, I read Trixie Belden and wished we hadn’t moved.

###

(P.S. 5yo Guppy started full-day kindergarten yesterday. I said I’d get back to writing fiction when that happened. As with fifth grade, I’m starting on the second day.

After the move, my friend’s and my parents were true to their words. We continued to see each other. She was a bridesmaid at my wedding, and her mother just friended me on Facebook.

This sounds sadder than I thought it would when I started. I think it also sounds like my parents might be divorced; they’re not. Finally, while places and people might resemble those in real life, this is not necessarily truly true. It’s “pretty much all true,” as Olivia the pig might say.)