So it looks like you’ll get an actual post faster than I anticipated…because I finished the batch of books due for a book review post!  Except it’s going to be mostly a quote post because I’m a little tired.  Plus these books just have some pretty fabulous quotes.  So enjoy!

1. My Horizontal Life:  A Collection of One-Night Stands – Chelsea Handler.  I actually owe you an apology for this one – I read it in the middle of the last batch of books to be reviewed, but completely forgot about it once I started writing.  Which is horrible because this is definitely a book to remember.  Spectacularly hilarious & I highly recommend it

“I was seven years old when my sister told me she’d give me five dollars to run upstairs into my parents’ room while they were having sex and take a picture.  At that age I had heard of sex but had no idea what it looked like.  I knew for sure that my parents were sexually active.  My father had impregnated my mother on six different occasions, all of which she decided to keep, so it was clear to my siblings and me that there was a definite attraction. ”

2. Dead in the Family - Charlaine Harris.  As you know, I already reviewed the first 9 books in this, the Sookie Stackhouse series.  I had only reviewed 9 because at that time, that’s all that had been released.  But lo & behold on May 4th the 10th book was released, and I received a gift card to Target, which I promptly spent on said book.  And it was just as fabulous and just as much fun as before   GO READ THIS SERIES.  Done.

“‘Dead things love you,’ Dermot told me, and I made myself keep smiling.  ‘Eric the vampire?  He says he does.’ ‘Other dead things, too.  They’re pulling on you.’  That was a not-so-welcome revelation.  Dermot was right.  I’d been feeling Eric through our bond, as usual, but there were two other gray presences with me every moment after dark:  Alexei and Appius Livius.  It was a drain on me, and I hadn’t realized it until this moment.  ‘Tonight,’ Dermot said, ‘you’ll receive visitors.’  So now he was a prophet. ‘Good ones?’  He shrugged.  ‘That’s a matter of taste and expedience.’  ‘Hey, Uncle Dermot?  Do you walk around this land very often?’ ‘Too scare of the other one,’ he said.  ‘But I try to watch you a little.  I was figuring out if that was a good thing or a bad thing when he vanished.  Poof!  I saw a kind of blur and then nothing.  His hands were on my shoulders, and then they weren’t.  I assume the tension of conversing with another person had gotten to Dermot.  Boy.  That had been really, really weird.  I glanced around me, thinking I might see some other trace of his passage.  He might even decide to return.  But nothing happened.  There wasn’t a sound except the prosaic growl of my stomach, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten lunch and that it was now suppertime.  I went into the house on shaking legs and collapsed at the table.  Conversation with a spy.  Interview with an insane fairy.  Oh, yes, phone Jason and tell him to be back on fairy watch.  That was something I could do sitting down.”

3. The Known World - Edward P. Jones.  This book is quite a switch from the other, more light-hearted ones I had been reading.  It was a little heavy, but nonetheless excellent.  It was difficult to get into at first, but eventually I did get caught up in the plot.  It’s a very unique account – a fictional story of a black slaveowner in Virginia.  Creates a very detailed and specific picture of life in the time of slavery.

“Fern Elston had chosen not to follow her siblings and many of her cousins into a life of being white.  She stayed in Manchester County where everyone knew what she was – a free Negro, though she was as white as any white person.  Part of why she stayed was Ramsey Elston, a free Negro who came from north of Charlottesville.  Had she gone anywhere else and passed as white, the color of her husband would have made her suspect.  While he was quite light-skinned, he was not as light as she was and it was most evident that he was colored.  She would have been a white woman in the rest of the world with a Negro husband, and that would have limited her world almost as much as their just living as a colored man and his colored wife.  And being a white wife might have gotten her husband killed.”

4. Generation Me:  Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled – and More Miserable Than Ever Before. – Jean M. Twenge, Ph.D.  This is a PHENOMENAL book.  Go buy/read it now.  Seriously.  ASAP.  It’s dead-on accurate and she has done an excellent job of backing up her research while presenting a relatable account of the more recent generations (specifically in contrast to the Baby Boomers).  Outstanding.  Loved it.

“Today’s young people…take these changes for granted and thus do not face this problem [of being overwhelmed by the pace of cultural change].  Instead, we face a different kind of collision: Adulthood Shock.  Our childhoods of constant praise, self-esteem boosting, and unrealistic expectations did not prepare us for an increasingly competitive workplace and the economic squeeze created by sky-high housing prices and rapidly accelerating health care costs.  After a childhood of buoyancy, GenMe is working hard to get less.”

5.  Gather Together in My Name – Maya Angelou.  This is the continuation of Maya Angelou’s autobiography (following I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which I actually have yet to read…).  Her life story is, beyond a doubt, incredible.  It’s difficult to believe she can have gone through so many different and dangerous experiences, especially given the image I have of her from the Wake Forest orientation video.  She is truly an incredible woman, and hearing her incredible story is only made easier by her gifted writing and way with words.

“My head stayed high from habit, but my last hope was gone.  Every way out of the maze had proved to be a false exit.  My once lively imagination would not come up with one more fantasy.  My courage was dwindling.  Unfortunately, fortitude was not like the color of my skin, given to me once and mine forever.  It needed to be resurrected each morning and exercised painstakingly.  It also had to be fed with at least a few triumphs.  My strength had fallen away from me as the pert features fade from an aging beauty.  I didn’t drink and had run out of pot.  For the first time in my life I sat down defenseless to await life’s next assault.”

Um well and on that note…time to scrape up some fortitude and head into work.  Another day, another dollar…and the start of another book

The pretty much incredible Becky Hartzog used this Mother Teresa adaptation of Kent Keith’s “The Paradoxical Commandment” as the benediction for Wake Forest’s graduation yesterday…While I had heard it before, I don’t think I could ever hear it often enough.

“People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.  Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.  Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies.   Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you.  Be honest and sincere anyway.

What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight.  Create anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous.  Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, will often be forgotten.  Do good anyway.

Give the best you have, and it will never be enough.  Give your best anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God.  It was never between you and them anyway.”

I don’t think it’s a secret that I am just a little obsessed with pictures.  In fact I’m pretty sure that, at some point, 95% of the people in my life have been annoyed with my insistence on taking pictures of what’s going on.  But even beyond that, I can literally spend hours looking at old photos.  I love black and white photos.  I love pictures where people aren’t looking at the camera.  I love portraits of individuals.  I love pictures of couples.  I will probably always smile at any picture of a baby.  I can look at pictures that I was never even there for and imagine what was happening, and I can laugh at pictures I am in or that I took and vividly recall the exact situation in which the picture was taken.  And this is pretty much what I have been doing the past three days or so – looking at pretty much every photo of people in my life that I can get my hands on (and you don’t even want to know how many that is).

So, in honor of that, here are some quotes I particularly like about the power of photography…

Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created.  It is a major force in explaining man to man. – Edward Steichen

All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget.  In this – as in other ways – they ar e the opposite of paintings.  Paintings record what the painter remembers.  Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it. – John Berger

It’s not really a secret that I have a lot of, shall we say, job dissatisfaction.  There’s a lot about my job that is hard, a lot that is unnecessary, a lot that is an inconvenience, a lot that doesn’t make sense, and even some that is just plain dangerous.  Lately all of these negatives have been weighing heavily on my mind – and by that I mean I have begun making randomly bitter exclamations in a surprisingly vehement tone.

It’s not attractive.

It’s also not fun.

But despite all of the varied complaints I have had recently (and no matter how legitimate they may or may not have been) and despite how desperately I continue to search for, well, any other job, today was just one of those days.  I hate it when I have days like this.  There I am, happily going along in my cynical state, adding pile after pile of bleach/manure stained clothes to my dirty laundry list (hehe literally & figuratively, get it?).  Awful things happen, and it’ s just one more thing to add the pile of why I hate my job.  I begin speaking really angrily about…anything, begin stress eating, the nightmares return, my co-workers and I purchase even more wine and stay up till 3am crying and venting, my face breaks out, and I once again start yelling at God when I’m in the shower or car.

And then I have a day like today.  A day that is really no better than any other day – and definitely not better than any day in the past 2 weeks – and a day that is in the middle of another typical not-so-great week.  My kids, who have been on level or behaving appropriately, get in fights, lie, pass notes, sneak drugs, make ignorant comments, break rules, are disrespectful.  My co-workers and I argue and don’t speak and have med errors and become passive aggressive and miss appointments and lose our cool in front of the clients.  The parents cancel visits with the kids, yell at us on the phone, fight in family therapy, try to get us to discipline their kids when they don’t want to, break their kids’ hearts, and give up because they don’t know what to do.  And my organization requires us to take yet another retraining that is a complete waste of time, opens up more jobs instead of giving any of us raises, doesn’t support us on the shift, won’t assume responsibility for the competency of its employees, lie to the kids, and still haven’t fixed our microwave.  As a bonus, a drugged/crazy man comes on campus, violently looking for an “Isaac” when there is no such person in *any* program.  My friends have relationship drama, friendship spats, quarter-life crises, financial disasters, family horrors, illness, death, break-ups, addictions, breakdowns, weddings to plan, body-image problems, job dissatisfaction, muscle spasms, professional disagreements, etc. etc.

And then somehow…I have a good day.  Nothing in particular is great.  But, at the end of the day, I feel like I have done my job.  I have had some truly wonderful conversations.  I have laughed at a variety of things.  I have been supported and appreciated, even if on small small scales.  My opinion has been heard.  I have figured out some of my own issues.  I miss my friends & family in the satisfying nostalgic kind of way that recognizes their blessing in my life.  I have flirted and day-dreamed.  I have had coffee.  I have looked at old photos.  I have mentally talked to my ex-boyfriends and felt satisfied with the parts they played in my lives.  I’ve taken a walk.  I’ve started a new book.  And, most annoyingly, I’ve just melted over my kids and co-workers.  My heart has actually broken for them.  And it’s so damn frustrating because as much as I hate my job, as awful as it is, and as awful as the kids can be and certain staff members can be, by and large…I love those damn crazy people.  Even when things are as frustrating as they can possibly get, that is still there…no matter how much I may try to kill it.

It’s so annoying.

But the sword cuts both ways. While our heart grows in its capacity for pleasure, it grows in its capacity to know pain. The two go hand in hand. What, then, shall we do with disappointment? We can be our own enemy, depending on how we handle the heartache that comes with desire. To want is to suffer; the word passion means to suffer. That is why many Christians are reluctant to listen to their hearts. They know that their dullness is keeping them from feeling the pain of life. Many of us have chosen simply not to want so much; it’s safer that way…Sanctification is an awakening, the rousing of our souls from the dead sleep of sin into the fullness of their capacity for life… – John Eldredge & Brent Curtis

Well, time for a book review post!  As I gathered together the books I’ve read since last time, I realized that 4 out of 5 of the books I just finished reading provide some form of satire or societal critique.  So, it’s been an entertaining reading season, and probably explains why my cynicism has increased just slightly   I think I’m going to try out the quote-style book review once again, because there are some truly fabulous quotes that just need to be repeated.  Annnnnd…begin.

1. Love in a Dead Language – Lee Siegel. 

This book is…difficult to explain.  It’s kind of like 3 or 4 books in one.  It’s a fictional story (even though the author inserts himself as an active, albeit it minor, character) of a professor who falls in love with one of his students, and is murdered.  In honor of his lover, he has been translating the text of the Kama Sutra, and providing commentary.  After he dies, the completion of the translation and the other matters of the academic estate are left to one of his doctoral candidates, who then annotates the professor’s translation/commentary.  Sooo yeah.  There’s a lot of playing with language, which is awesome, and in some places it’s just ridiculous; definitely a funny & entertaining read, even if occasionally confusing.
“We were, nevertheless, not so happy that she had convinced Isaac that being a poet was a good career choice.  In Vatsyayana’s time the profession promised fame, fortune, the love of women, and the respect of men, not to mention a higher birth in the next life.  But no longer; we live, as everyone has surely noticed, in tawdry times in a banal world.”

2. Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger.  Ah, Holden Caufield.  I guess I heard a lot of hype about this book, because I wasn’t completely bowled over or anything by it.  I guess at the time it was written it was most likely a truly transformative writing style – very innovative.  And it is incredibly stream-of-consciousness, and Holden is an engaging character, whether or not you like him (which I found him pretty sympathetic).  Good read.

“You could tell he wasn’t tired at all, though.  He was pretty oild up, for one thing. ‘I think that one of these days,’ he said, ‘you’re going to have to find out where you want to go.  And then you’ve got to start going there.  But immediately.  You [Holden] can’t afford to lose a minute.  Not you.’  I nodded, because he was looking right at me and all, but I wasn’t too sure what he was talking about.  I was pretty sure I knew, but I wasn’t too positive at the time.  I was too damn tired.”

3. The Mermaid Chair – Sue Monk Kidd

So.  This book is the only one that wasn’t somewhat satirical.  It was also probably the one I enjoyed the least out of this batch. I like Sue Monk Kidd – I *loved* The Secret Life of Bees.  But I don’t know, I just found this one kind of meh.  Predictable; not in terms of plot (which is pretty interesting) but just in terms of message I guess.  And delivery/voice.  Same old thing.  True, it’s an interesting premise – a woman falling in love with a monk, plus the additional mystery of what’s going on with her mother and how her father died – but it really just kind of fell flat for me.  It was also a little too romance-novel-esq…mushy.  But there were still some enjoyable parts, and the ending was a little surprising in some ways.  An easy read to pick up and put down from time to time, I think (what my former yoga instructor called “a good bedside book”).

“After I’d learned how my father had died, there was a lifting away of sorrow.  I can’t explain that, except to say there’s release in knowing the truth no matter how anguishing it is.  You come finally to the irreducible thing, and there’s nothing left to do but pick it up and hold it.  Then, at least, you can enter the severe mercy of acceptance.”

4.  Mumbo Jumbo – Ishmael Reed.  I enjoyed this book quite a bit; it really pushed me to think and examine it in a literary way (as had Love in a Dead Language).  Reed’s composition of the novel was stimulating and drew from a number of different means of presentation.  The novel presents the “Jes Grew” movement in the 1920s and the ensuing conspiracy by the “Wallflower Order” to depose it.  Essentially it looks at the way Western Civilization seeks to control its members of society and, specifically, the relations between blacks & whites throughout history.  Highly satirical and definitely requires that you pay close attention to what you’re reading.“What it boils down to, LaBas, is intent.  If your heart’s there, man, that’s 1/2 the thing about The Work.  Even the European Occultists say that.  Doing The Work is not like taking inventory,  Improvise some.  Open up, PaPa.  Stretch on out with It.”

5. Nightlight: A Parody – The Harvard Lampoon.  I absolutely LOVED this book.  Like more than words can say.  As most of you know, I’m a bit ambivalent when it comes to the Twilight saga…this book picks up on all of those aspects which caused me to take issue with the books.  And it’s just so dead-on and hilarious.  Please go read it.  I can’t say it enough.  Also, you’re going to have multiple quotes on this one cause it cracks me up…It’s enjoyable whether or not you’ve read the Twilight books, or seen the movie, but it’s even more amazing if you have read the books…

“Why did I have to beware?  Was Edwart going to hurt me?  What hadn’t he hurt me yet?  Was I not worth the trouble of hurting?  No.  I was being insecure.  I was worth a lot of hurting, elaborately planned to take place in an old ballerina room with easily shattered mirrors to complete the gloriously gory spectacle.  If Edwart didn’t think I was worth that, I’m sure some other vampire would.”

“‘So is it awkward if I ask what our status is?’ I asked quickly.  Not that I cared either way.  I just wanted to know, you know?  ‘Not at all.  We’re a couple now.’  Hmm. I wondered how I’d express that on Facebook.  I’d have to change it from what it was before: ‘It’s complicated with a vampire.’  But then I realized that worked pretty well with the new scenario.”

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been reading for the past monthish.  Onto new books…happy reading all!