Shark Girl: We’re gonna need a bigger boat

Shark Girl: We’re gonna need a bigger boat

My little girl has been consumed by a shark obsession.

She is SHARK GIRL.

shark girl

She even has a shark poster on her wall.

shark girl

Those cute little stains around her face are evidence of her other current obsession: frozen blueberries.

shark girl
shark girl

and what book could consume her attention so completely?

shark girl

eek! how did she get her hands on that? not exactly on my preferred reading list. there goes my mom of the year award.

What consumed your attention this week?

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Who in this room

Who in this room

I went straight to the bookstore after I got the “I’m sorry it’s cancer” phone call; surely amongst all the wisdom coded into letters and words, pressed to paper, and bound to books, would be some little snippet that would tell me how to move forward.

 

Since that day I’ve read a lot of books about living with cancer, but when Katherine Malmo placed the slender, uncorrected galley of “Who in This Room” in my hands, I knew I was in possession of something different.

Katherine’s book did not tell me how to move forward. But it was the first I’ve read that really connected with me on how it feels to have cancer.

That’s not to say the book is touchy-feely, in fact, it’s quite the opposite. One of my favorite quotes from the book shows her trepidation at joining a cancer support group: “You are afraid someone will try to hold your hand or leap from behind the ficus to hug you.” That pretty much sums up the way I felt the first time I walked into a support group meeting with the Young Survival Coalition.

I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I’ve had this book for well over a month, and I’ve been struggling with how to write this review.  I want to tell you that reading this book is like going through the process of diagnosis, treatment, grieving, and moving on – but then who would want to read a book described like that?

And I do want you to read this book. I want my friends to read it. I want my family to read it. Because even though this is Kate’s story, it is my story, too. And the story of all my friends who have looked cancer in the eye, and stared down death… even if only for a little while.

This is not a sad book. This is not a book that is just about cancer, although that obviously drives the story line. This is a story about getting up every day and living. And this is a book that ends at the start of her brand new life.

The launch party is on Sunday, October 2, 2pm, at Elliott Bay Books.

Katherine also writes the blog Hysterical Mommy Network.

You can learn more about my cancer story here:

my cancer story | Judy Schwartz Haley

 

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Book Review: A Good Hard Look by Ann Napolitano

Book Review: A Good Hard Look by Ann Napolitano

BlogHer LogoFlannery O’Connor was not kind to the characters she created for her stories; they were deeply flawed, and in need of redemption. Ann Napolitano does not spare Flannery of those characteristics in her own novel, A Good Hard Look.

It takes a certain level of confidence to fictionalize the last months of a famous American novelist’s life. Napolitano handles the challenge with grace; O’Connor could be walking around in one of her own stories. But does she get the one thing she really needs, that all her characters needed? Does she get a little grace, and forgiveness?

Read the rest of my book review at BlogHer.com

Why Mommy can’t read

My father built floor to ceiling cupboards along the walls when he closed in the garage of my childhood home.  The top shelf of these storage units was four feet from the ceiling, just enough space for a fourth grader to comfortably nest.  I would climb to that top shelf with a blanket, a pillow, a flashlight, a jar of marshmallow fluff, and a book. Everything a ten year old girl needs for happiness.

And I was happy when I was holed away in my little nest.  It was my space. My quiet time.  My place where I could be wholly myself with no roles to play. And as the only girl in a family with four boys, it was a safe place for me to be girly.

But mostly it was about the books.

I loved to read.  I went through several books a week, often reading an entire chapter book in one sitting.  I loved the Little House on the Prairie series, Little Women, Little Men, and the rest of the Louisa May Alcott books, Kidnapped, Heidi, The Swiss Family Robinson.

I loved to read.  Past tense.

Somewhere along the way I lost the joy of reading.  Maybe all those years of mutlitasking caught up with me, because now when I sit down to read, I can’t just read.  I have to be doing something else at the same time.  If I try to read without some other distraction, my mind will find one anyway.

Maybe the the ability to enjoy a book has been educated out of me.  Oh, I can plow through a book in record time if it’s for school.  But the intensity of reading for data, studying for exams, and culling information for papers has left me impatient with florid writing styles that take their time in revealing information. Give me the facts, preferably in a bulleted format.

I suppose I could also blame this on chemo brain, which is a very real condition that makes it much more difficult for those who have endured chemotherapy to retain and quickly process information.  But in truth, this situation began a long time before I knew I had cancer.

The frustration in all of this is the fact that the love of reading is tied up in my self image.  I think of myself as someone who loves to read.  I present myself to the world as someone who loves to read.  The amount of money I spend on library fines and book stores would suggest that I’m the kind of person who loves to read.

What I love, it turns out, is the potential of a good book.  Oh, and the cover.  I love to judge a book by it’s cover.  There’s nothing like finding a great cover paired with a well written blurb on the back to get my fingertips tingling.  Oh, this is going to be good.

And it is, usually. For the first 20 minutes.  If I make it that far.  But odds are my toddler will climb to the top of the bookshelf, or I’ll realize it’s 6pm and I haven’t figured out what’s for dinner yet, or I’ll notice the polish on my toes is chipped, and this is just taking too long anyways.

What I really want to read is:

  • I was sad and my life was a mess
  • I got my hands on an unrealistic amount of money
  • I went to Italy and ate a lot of food
  • I went to India and met a very wise redneck from Texas
  • I went to Indonesia and fell in love
  • bulletpoints.
See, was that so hard?

But I hate that.  The snob in me is cringing at what I just wrote.  The snob in me wants to analyze Eat, Pray, Love, to argue about it and disect it and, and, and, … but that means I have to come up with the attention span I had in fourth grade – an attention span long enough to actually finish a book.

I love books.  I love the idea of books.  I want to love reading books.  I miss loving reading books.  I want to love reading books again.

Has anyone else lost and refound their book mojo?  How did you do it?