Through a Glass, Darkly

I didn’t really write about it, but last year I read March by Geraldine Brooks twice: once before it won the Pulitzer and once afterwards. The first time I read it, I was trying to decide whether my book club should read it, and after it won the Pulitzer, we decided to go ahead and put it on our list (along with Little Women, which made for interesting comparison).

I liked it. I enjoy books that “fill in” another story, and Mr. March and Marmee were both characters that were well-suited to that kind of story. I am not sure I think it deserved all that acclaim, but I did like it, even if I wasn’t completely enthused about it.

After we read it in book club, one of the ladies bought a different Geraldine Brooks book: Year of Wonders. She said she thought it was better than March, and after reading it, I’m not sure whether I agree or not, but I did like it quite a lot. This book is based on actual events - during the Black Plague, the village of Eyam voluntarily quarantined themselves at the recommendation of their rector. Two-thirds of the village passed away before the Plague finally ran its course.

The novel is set from the perspective of Anna Frith, who lived in the village with her two sons and worked for the rector and his wife. Much of the book is about her friendship with the rector’s wife, which gives Anna a new confidence as she learns to read and helps tend the sick.

This book is somewhat gruesome, with the descriptions of Plague and a few other deaths . . . normally that kind of thing doesn’t bother me all that much, but this was a book that I didn’t like reading on my lunch break or while eating dinner. Other than that, I did enjoy learning about the time period and what it might have been like to live through the Black Plague. (I have read a lot of gruesome, educational books lately, it seems.)

I did feel like the treatment of religion and the rector was kind of predictable . . . it would have been more challenging and interesting to have the rector make different decisions (I think that’s all I will say without giving anything away). The rector’s wife, though, was a much more empathetic character who was fleshed out in a realistic way. As her story was revealed, I saw her as a woman who had faced difficulties and come through them as a compassionate person with a quiet faith.

This was Anna’s story, though, and watching her gain confidence in her own knowledge and skills amid such great tragedy is what I will most remember about this book. I wouldn’t say this is an essential read, but if you’re into historical fiction (which Geraldine Brooks does well, I must say), you might give it a try.

Sometimes I read chick lit and think, “I was just not the target audience for that.” I have tried several of Sophie Kinsella’s books, and I never got past page 10. Alisa likes Kristin Billerbeck, but I don’t really care for her. I can do the lovesick calorie counting kind of chick lit (a la Bridget Jones), but I don’t have a lot of patience for the shopping kind. I’m just not a shopper. I like books that show some growth, and I’d like the girl and the boy to end up together . . . but I can be talked into an ending in which they go their separate ways. I love a good romantic story, to be sure, but I’d rather see our character learn something about herself.

It all has to do with the main character, really. She has to be . . . likeable. We all do silly things, but she needs to have a modicum of intelligence and not be completely flighty. I don’t feel like these are so much to ask, but it’s been a while since I read something marketed as chick lit that I enjoyed.

Which is why I am happy to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the book I read this weekend: Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos. It features two main characters: Cornelia, a thirtysomething who manages a coffee bar and whose life “begins” when a man named Martin walks in the door, and Clare, an eleven-year-old girl whose mother is becoming increasingly unstable. She turns to her estranged father for help, and they in turn show up at Cornelia’s coffee bar.

Cornelia relates everything to movies – old movies, to be precise. One of her favorites is The Philadelphia Story. Isn’t it funny how, once something comes up somewhere, you start seeing it everywhere? Mike and I watched The Philadelphia Story a few weeks ago because it was referenced on Gilmore Girls, and I was certainly glad that I had seen it before reading this book. And the book may finally have convinced me to sit through Casablanca. Anyway, I found the movie theme very endearing.

Clare, on the other hand, relates things to the books she’s read. She’s very concerned about being an orphan, so she makes lists of famous orphans like Anne Shirley and Sara Crewe. I found that endearing as well, especially since she didn’t just stick to Anne of Green Gables, but had read all the sequels and referred to characters in them.

This is a book about love, but the truth is that it’s actually about finding love in unexpected places, about love that grows without you knowing it. About how movie love, in the end, doesn’t really satisfy, and what you need is something more tangible and less dramatic, and that there’s romance in that, too.

It’s interesting that that was the theme, because I have read some things recently that were dealing with that same idea, though in very different ways. I don’t have the book in front of me, but Philip Yancey’s Prayer had a quote in it about how prayer can be like sex – everyone is afraid that they’re not doing as much of it as everyone else, as much as they’re “supposed” to. I liked that, because if you based your sexual/romantic expectations on the media, you’d probably feel that you were lacking. But if the average relationship has sex (as they say) three times a week, then there are people having sex both more and less often than that who are “normal.” But the point is that the drama and romance of a new relationship is just not sustainable.

Which brings me to the next thing I read that stuck with me – I was looking at Lauren Winner’s site and reading some of the articles that she had linked, and in this one she talked about how sex should not be so separate from domesticity.

It is, of course, a salutary thing to suggest, as Stark does, that our frantic jobs are less important than the fabric of our marriages. But is the “solution” to America’s married sex “crisis” really simply to work harder at sex—an idiom that befits a society in thrall to advanced capitalism? Maybe roommate-like status is not what we ought to be aspiring to in marriage—but neither is the thrill and romance that one associates with one’s fondly remembered dating days. (Why bother with marriage if the romance of dating is all you’re after?) Surely what married people should aspire to is, well, living as husband and wife.

Enjoy the occasional weekend getaway at a B&B, sure, but create an eros situated squarely in the household. That means not just sex and candlelight, but much more often sex and domesticity, sex and routine, sex that is part of, rather than abstracted from, the day-to-day life that is marriage. Our task, then, may not be to “work harder” at romance and desire, but rather to reconceptualize eros. Our task may be to move away from the logic that tells us that erotic love is the thing that married couples try to approximate at the end of their date nights, and to adopt instead a robustly domestic and household sexuality. Our task may not be to cultivate moments when eros can whisk us away from our ordinary routines, but rather to love each other as eros becomes imbedded in, and transformed by, the daily warp and woof of married life.

In a small way, I felt like Love Walked In was also about these things, about taking joy in your relationships as they are rather than measuring them by the standard of what you see in the movies. While it wasn’t a life-changing story, it was a pleasure to read about these very likeable characters, and I would certainly try another book by this author.

This week I read two books that I did not care for. Both were a little high on the sex and gore for my taste. Both of them could have been better – the first if it had been more focused and the second if there had been a little less Lolita going on.

Labyrinth by Kate Mosse was the first book, and I read it for my book club. We chose it because it’s supposed to kind of be like The Da Vinci Code with female protagonists. I personally did not care for The Da Vinci Code, but many of the ladies in my book club did, so we decided to try it.

There were two stories, Alice in 2005 and Alais in 1209. Their stories paralleled and revealed how the Grail was hidden and then found again. Meanwhile, there was a lot of history about the Crusades in France, specifically against the Cathars, which I did not know anything about That was where the gore came in. I don’t tend to read this kind of book very often, so I’m not sure if the “spurting blood” is just part of the genre, but it was definitely not to my taste.

On one hand, I did enjoy what I learned about that time period in France. On the other hand, the book was just too long, and after 350 pages it really started to drag . . . and I still had 150 pages left. I think it started dragging for the author, too, because the last 150 pages had a big section that summed up a lot of what happened for Alais, telling us rather than showing us. It probably would have been better to cut down some of the earlier sections and give us a little more of that action. Overall, I don’t recommend it, though I think we should have an interesting discussion next week.

The second book was The Mathematics of Love by Emma Darwin. This is another book that had stories from two different times paralleling each other. This time it was Anna in 1976 and Stephen in 1819. Stephen, a soldier who had fought in Waterloo, has settled at Kersey, his cousin’s estate. In 1976, Anna comes to stay at Kersey, which has been turned into an unsuccessful school by her uncle.

To be honest, the stories seemed like they were kind of a mess. I think this book actually needed more time to do what it was trying to do, though at 400 pages, I probably wouldn’t have had patience for much more. It didn’t drag like Labyrinth, though - I just think the story needed some clarifying. Stephen struggles with his missing leg, the violence he saw as a soldier (that’s where the gore comes in) and his lost love, Catalina, while embarking on a new relationship with a young woman named Lucy. This plot seemed pretty straightforward – he had to deal with his past demons (that’s where the sex comes in) before he could embark on a new relationship. Some of the things that were set up were never really followed through on or dealt with credibly, such as the action at Peterloo in the beginning.

However, the glossing over in that plot was nothing compared to the glossing over in Anna’s story, where the impact of her sleeping with her next-door neighbor, who was old enough to be her grandfather (did I mention she’s 15?) wasn’t dealt with at all. Nor did I feel her family storyline was resolved satisfactorily. The book spent a fair amount of time setting up the fact that her mother is undependable, and after the events in the story happened, her mother showed up to help . . . and I’m not sure what, exactly, I was supposed to think about that. A happy ending was implied, but certainly not earned.

Up next is something I’m looking forward to: Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos. It’s just chick lit, but I have earned something light and funny after these last two.

Rebecca Rand Kirshner, people. Didn’t I tell you? Rebecca Rand Kirshner.

In an interview, CW president Dawn Ostroff recently said, regarding Gilmore Girls, “[T]he first half of the season was a little rocky. [Dave Rosenthal] was painted into a story-line corner [from last season]. I think the second half of the season will be a lot stronger.” Take that, Palladinos!

I kind of felt like the show was suddenly in my head, checking off the things I said I wanted. Good Rory/Lorelai time? Check. Adult conversations between them as well as the usual quirk? Check. Luke getting more screen time? Check. Lorelai and Luke having a scene together (this was one I didn’t really dare to hope for)? Check. TWO scenes? Double check. Christopher still not fitting in the girls’ lives? Check, check, check. Lane? Check, and . . . hilarious.

I even like that Chris wasn’t such a bad guy. The scene at the end was pretty much what I tried to say in the State of Stars Hollow address – it was a picture of the “perfect” life Lorelai thought she wanted, but it turns out that’s not what she wanted at all.

I think you may recall that in November I put forth the theory that April would have to be the one to bring Luke and Lorelai back together. I repeated it last week. And now it looks like it’s going to come true. I like that it’s all coming together, finally.

I could go on and on about the Discovery Store (that’s what it was supposed to be, right?) scene and how much I love these glimpses of Luke’s involvement in Rory’s life that we get from time to time, but let’s just say that, for me, what I have been saying was summed up when Lorelai said that Rory had been out of town at Christmas so they were celebrating Christmas in January, and Luke said, “Of course you are.” That was it, right there. He knows them, both of them, in a way that Christopher can’t because he wasn’t around. The one thing I would have liked in that scene [and Mike pointed this out, so kudos to him] was that, when Rory listed all the presents Luke had given her, she should have ended with the necklace from last season. Though maybe they didn’t do that because the necklace should probably be April’s. But, still.

It’s just a matter of time, now, before Lorelai and Christopher call it quits. We must just be patient. To quote Lorelai from season 4: “Things are happening! Big things, wow things!”

I slip on my shoes and run out without my coat, unlock the car, turn the key in the ignition, and blast the heat. I set the seat warmer as high as it will go. Then I run back inside to finish packing my lunch. By the time I get ready to leave, the windows are defrosted and the car (especially my seat) is toasty warm.

When I was younger, I remember that my dad would get up specifically to start my mom’s car in frosty weather, even if he didn’t have to be up yet. When I started driving, he’d do mine as well. It’s such a small thing, but I never had to think about the car before it was time for me to walk out the door.

Now that I’m a grownup, and now that I have to be at work at 8:00 instead of 9:00 (I live in the South. Frost is gone by 9:00), I have to start my own car. Mike leaves about 30 minutes before I do, so it’s not feasible for him to start it on a regular basis. A few times over Christmas break, he did get up and take care of my car for me, and, you know, I wouldn’t have known until he did it that it was a big deal until he did it. I didn’t know that I wouldn’t really have the words to say what that meant to me, that I’d still be thinking about it over a month later. I hadn’t needed him to do it before, and I wouldn’t have asked. But he did it even though it meant leaving a warm bed on a cold morning.

Mike and I had a conversation over Christmas break about how, if I expect him to be just like my dad, I miss the ways he grows and changes. He did some things that were new for him, and I took them for granted because they were the kinds of things that my dad did. But then he does something unexpected, something I think I have to take care of myself, like getting up to start my car or coming back in before he leaves to make sure I know how frosty it is outside. And I remember that, for all the ways he’s not like Dad, he has that same big heart.

The trailer for Becoming Jane is up. It looks wildly inaccurate (based on what little I have read of Jane Austen’s letters) and I found the Little Women music distracting (that’s what that is, right? I think so), but there’s no point in me saying that I won’t go see it. We all know that I will. It is, after all, a movie based on Jane Austen herself, no matter how loosely. And I’ll probably enjoy it for what it is, much as I did for the recent Pride and Prejudice. It has Maggie Smith! And Julie Walters! I’m shameless, I know.

It’s supposed to come out August 3 . . . though it may take longer to get to my area. Anybody in?

1. Went to the community center in my town. It’s nice.

2. Joined the community center in my town, which would also be the first time I’ve ever paid for a gym. I am going to try to go a few times a week and use the treadmill.

3. Got hit on at the gym/community center. And then rejected. It went something like this:

Guy gets on the third treadmill down from Kari. No one is in between them. Kari’s television is set to the Florida State/Miami slaughter. His had . . . something else. He changes it to a different basketball game.

KARI: Is that the Duke/State game?

GUY: Yeah. Do you want the remote, to watch it on yours?

KARI: Oh, I’m almost done. But thanks!

Two minutes pass. Kari finishes her workout. As she gets the spray to clean off her machine, she notices that Guy has on what look like Duke basketball shorts.

GUY, SUAVELY, CLEARLY TRYING TO START A CONVERSATION: So, who are you pulling for?

KARI: Oh, State.

GUY, SHOCKED: Really?

KARI: I’m a Carolina fan.

GUY: Oh.

KARI: Bye!

So, he wanted to talk to me until he found out I was a Carolina fan. Hee. Good times.

4. Got my hand scanned to be a member of the community center. I should have put this one earlier, but I’m not going back to change the numbers now. It was so fun pretending I was on Star Trek when they did it. hee hee. And that’s how I sign in every time. It’s like going to the gym in the future! (When I told Mike that, he said, “Did you eat dipping dots there, in the future?” Double hee hee.)

5. Made chicken chili. You guys, it was so good. Here is the recipe I used, from Cooking Light.

Chicken Chili

2 cups cooked chicken thighs, boneless and skinless; cut into bite sized pieces (about a pound)
2 cups cooked chicken breast, boneless and skinless; cut into bite sized pieces (about a pound)
1 green bell pepper, diced
1 large onion, diced
2-3 jalapenos (we used 2 and took out most of the seeds)
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 T chili powder
2 t cumin
1/2 t oregano
1/2 t black pepper
1/4 t red pepper
1 T Worcestershire sauce
1 T dijon mustard
1 14.5 oz can chicken broth
1 14.5 oz can stewed tomatoes
1 can red kidney beans (I used pinto beans instead because we don’t like kidney beans)
1 jar chili sauce (and its equivalent in water or broth)

Cook up your chicken–you can undercook it and finish it in the stew, once it’s put together. Keep that aside in a separate pan.

Sautee peppers, onion, and garlic five minutes. Add all the spices and coat them. After adding the spices, add the tomatoes and chicken. If you like, use the chicken juice from your cooked chicken as part of the 14.5 oz of broth. Add the Worcestershire and mustard and chili sauce. Fill the chili sauce bottle with water or broth and toss that into the pot as well. Rinse the kidney beans before you add them, and they go in last (I did not rinse the pintos, because I felt I could use the extra liquid in the chili). After you’ve compiled all the ingredients, you have to let it simmer for about twenty minutes (especially important if you undercook the chicken). Serve over rice and with cheese or sour cream.

So, the big changes I made were that we used pintos instead and I didn’t serve it over rice. I think some people like rice and chili together, but I am not one of those people. We used more than a pound of chicken breasts, just because that’s what we had, and I was afraid we were going to have to add more broth or something, but it seemed fine. It had this great mixture of being spicy and just a little sweet, like the flavor filled my whole mouth. I really enjoyed it. It was pretty easy - the thing that took the longest was cutting up the chicken and dicing the peppers and onions. Definitely a keeper for us.

I think that’s all the new stuff I did today. I did get to watch youth basketball at the community center while I was on the treadmill. That was fun. Now I am going to go work on my book some more: Labyrinth by Kate Mosse. I was NOT enjoying it yesterday, but today I have knocked out a big chunk of it, so I’m feeling a lot better about it. Will someone build me a labyrinth in my backyard?

So, here’s something I think is . . . interesting. I have seen a fair amount of fans of The Office complaining about how much they think Ugly Betty sucks, how undeserving it is of the Golden Globes that it won (well, specifically Best Comedy Series, so maybe just one of the Globes that it won), that The Office was robbed, etc. I know some people are kidding, but I’ve seen actual vitriol.

As a fan of both shows, I find this sad. I love The Office, because I love Jim and Pam, and I love all the supporting characters, and it makes me laugh (and I love to laugh). It’s quotable and hilarious, and I am a huge fan. It’s one of my favorite shows. We have the DVDs and I watch it all the time.

But I love Ugly Betty, too. Its over-the-top characters and antics are a completely different kind of humor, but I often find myself laughing out loud at it, as well. I love America Ferrera. I love that she makes Betty sweet instead of cloying, and words cannot express how much fun the supporting characters (specifically Marc and Amanda) are. Plus, I always have a soft spot for underdog/ugly duckling shows, especially when the show takes the extra steps to make the point that beauty is more than just what’s on the outside. It keeps getting better and better, and it’s fun being a fan.

So, here’s what I would say to Office fans:

1. Ugly Betty is actually very funny and sweet and the people there are doing excellent work. It’s not for everybody, but if there’s anybody who should understand that kind of thing, it’s Office fans.

2. I think a lot of the current widespread popularity of The Office dates back to last year’s Golden Globe win for Steve Carell. The show really picked up in the spring, and I think the Globe is part of the reason why. I would argue that the Globe got people paying serious attention, which probably led to the Emmy nomination and win. So - share the love, Office fans! You guys/we are doing great! There’s room for new kids to come and play, too! (I know, I know, Ugly Betty is doing great, too . . . but maybe that’s why it was just a teeny tiny bit deserving of an award? Is that going too far? Am I going to get beat up for saying that?)

3. Other than the possible boost in ratings (which didn’t help Commander in Chief last year, and which Ugly Betty doesn’t really need), I don’t really think that the Globes mean anything. No need to get worked up about a meaningless awards show. (And, really, aren’t all awards shows meaningless? Someone should have reminded me about that last year when I got so worked up about Crash winning the Oscar. hehe.)

4. Let’s face it, Ugly Betty probably won because many members of the Hollywood Foreign Press have a version of Ugly Betty in their own countries. Additionally, the Globes have a history of awarding what is hot and fresh right now (see: Grey’s Anatomy, Steve Carell’s win last year). Which is fine. Nobody ever said that stuff was anything more than a popularity contest. But . . . see number 3. Probably not worth drinking yourself to sleep over.

Anyway, I just wanted to get that out of my system. All the “Ugly Betty sucks” was leaving a bad taste in my mouth and making me want to disassociate myself from Office fans. And that’s just not right. I don’t want to lose my Office peeps. There’s enough love to go around, you guys! Why can’t we all just get along?

(P.S. I think Alec Baldwin deserved his award, too, because he makes 30 Rock. I laugh at every single thing he says on that show. So I’m definitely getting beat up now, right?)

I went through a lot of emotions while reading Philip Yancey’s new book on prayer. Excitement that I can join God’s work on Earth by praying, turning inward to contemplate the kind of praying I do compared to what the Bible talks about, surprise when confronted at the truth of what scripture (and Jesus) had to say about prayer, and, most significantly, sorrow when he talked about unanswered prayers, when he talked about healings or lack thereof (specifically when he said, and I quote, ‘And I have never yet read an account of miraculous healing of pancreatic cancer (which has a 100 percent mortality rate), or of cystic fibrosis, or ALS’).

It’s hard for me to read this kind of non-fiction, where an idea is expounded upon for many pages. It’s easy for me to lose the thread, to get distracted. I took this book slowly, and I meant to take notes, but it would have been hard to reduce what he was saying into bullet points or summarized form. It’s a book that I will probably revisit in a year or so.

Meanwhile, it has given me a lot to think about as far as prayer, and a renewed interest in its efficacy. I had been wanting to read it, but being on the Prayer Team at church gave me more motivation to actually get through it, which was helpful. If you have read and enjoyed Philip Yancey’s books in the past (here’s where I should disclose that I’m pretty much a Yancey fangirl), you will probably like this one, too, though I think it’s more scholarly and less conversational than many of his books. I did particularly enjoy his heart for missions and the poor as expressed in this book - I think that’s been a growing theme in his work, and it fit well into a book that isn’t offering easy answers.

Soon and very soon, Gilmore Girls is coming back. (Veronica Mars, too, and I’m probably more excited about that one, but I don’t write about it, so this is a Gilmore-centric post.) Next week! And . . . I think I’m looking forward to it. Even after the craptastic episode that was “Merry Fisticuffs.” Why is that?

After having some time to think about the first half of the season, I feel more optimistic than I did at the beginning of December. Let’s recap what happened this season, shall we? Lorelai and Luke split up, she became a cloying, insipid version of herself, and she impulsively married Christopher.

All the happy smoochy stuff was what was bugging me. Was Lorelai actually happy? Was she just wanting to be happy? Was she going to convince herself that she was happy? What were we, the viewers, supposed to be seeing in those scenes? With a little distance between me and “Merry Fisticuffs” (I, like Luke, need processing time), I have come to believe even more firmly that the first half of this season was just setting us up for Lorelai and Christopher’s relationship to fail. I must confess that I was espousing a certain view (Luke and Lorelai are going to get back together) when, at times, I didn’t believe it myself. But I believe it now. I think that the cracks that I have been seeing in Lorelai and Christopher’s relationship (or claiming to see when my faith in Luke and Lorelai was wavering) are going to become more and more evident, to the point that Lorelai is finally going to have to do some serious soul-searching about this situation. I think that, finally, we are going to see her realizing what I have been saying for a while - she married quickly because she thought that any man would do, that what she really wanted was just to get married. That getting married would finally mean she had “the whole package.” But, instead, she is going to see that what she wanted was to be married to Luke, and that Christopher is a poor (poor poor) substitute for what she really wants.

Did you notice that I called Lorelai and Christopher’s “marriage” a relationship rather than using the word “marriage”? Well, let me give you my theories about the second half of the season.

-First, we know that, in real life, one must be a resident of Paris for something like 40 days before getting married there. In real life, Lorelai and Christopher’s marriage wouldn’t be legal. When Emily started talking about having Lorelai and Christopher exchange vows at her fancy party, my theory developed like this: Lorelai and Christopher find out that their marriage isn’t legal. Emily encourages them to exchange actual vows at her party. Lorelai declines. Christopher whines. She kicks him out. Birds sing, flowers bloom, and Kari cries tears of great joy.

-Second, April is going to be part of what brings Luke and Lorelai back together. Perhaps his custody battle will have something to do with this? But, seriously. Good storytelling requires it. April pulled them apart, she brings them back together. At this point, it would be a total cop-out to have April just move to Arizona and be forgotten. Instead, she’s got to play a part in fixing this.

As far as Rory goes, I’m not really sure. If this is the last season, I’d like to see her break up with Logan. I have long thought that Rory should end the show single, and I can’t really articulate why except that, for so long, Rory was so dependent on her mom. I would like to see her being more independent, and, for Rory, I think that would mean being single for a while. We haven’t really seen her single except in season 4, when she basically felt so lost without her mom and without a relationship that she turned to her married ex-boyfriend. So, in light of that, I am hoping that the future (grad school?) takes her and Logan down different paths. Also, I’d like to see him get hit by a bus. (I had such high hopes for that LDB accident last season.)

We need to spend some more time with Lane and Zach (and Mrs. Kim). I miss Michel. And Sookie and Jackson. And Paris. Too much of this season has been wasted on Christopher. Let’s get focused and go out on a positive note.

That’s all I have for now. I really think this is going to be it for the series, so things are going to have to move quickly so that we can finish on track. But I think things are looking up. Here’s to next week.

I like the idea of being able to chronicle your life through mix tapes. I remember the mix tape of They Might Be Giants and R.E.M. that my cousin made for me, the CDs that Sarah and I were given when we drove to Memphis in 2003, the countless playlists that Mike has devised for me, the CDs people made for me this year so I would know they were thinking about me. I like how the music that we listen to isn’t just about the music, but also about the things we were doing at the time, the way it makes us feel. I have been putting together a playlist of music from 2006, and I suppose I could do it by play count or something, but, really, when I close my eyes and just try to remember what I was listening to, what 2006 felt like, and it all comes back. Brandi Carlile, Over the Rhine, Kelly Clarkson, Eef Barzelay, The Dandy Warhols, Grant Lee Phillips, Sam Phillips, Dixie Chicks, Dolly Parton . . . just like lives are made of tiny pieces of memories, so are years cemented by little scraps of emotion sung to music.

And I don’t even consider myself a music person, so I know it’s got to magnified for someone who is.

Which is why I wanted to read Love is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time by Rob Sheffield, a writer for Rolling Stone. In it, he chronicles his love for music and his relationship with his wife by the music (specifically mix tapes) he was listening to at the time. The book jacket and reviews I read make no secret of the fact that his wife died after they were married just five years, so I’m not going to, either. Because of that, it’s difficult to read in parts. I liked, though, that he didn’t shy away from that, that he didn’t edit himself to make it more palpable. I liked that music was both healing and destructive in his life after his wife passed away - that it reminded him of the good times, but that it was hard to listen to the music they shared and the music that he would never get to share with her.

The chapter I liked best was called “MmmRob,” where he talked about how kind people were to him, and how he had to learn to accept that and even try to be worthy of it. In talking about it, he said, “You lose a certain kind of innocence when you experience this type of kindness. You lose the right to be a jaded cynic. You can no longer go back through the looking glass and pretend not to know what you know about kindness. It’s a defeat, in a way.” I have had a few conversations in the past week about how, at times, I find sincerity difficult. It’s easier for me to make light of something, to crack a joke, or even to be snide. But I agree with what Rob Sheffield said here - the overwhelming kindness I have experienced in the past few months has changed me. It wasn’t easy to ask for or accept the help that people were offering. It was tempting not to accept it, to play some kind of martyr. But I needed people, and they knew that, and they wouldn’t let me turn them away. As he says later in that same paragraph:

People kept showing me unreasonable kindness, inexplicable kindness, indefensible kindness. People were kind when they knew that nobody would ever notice, much less praise them for it. People were even kind when they knew I wouldn’t appreciate it.

I had no idea how to live up to that kindness.

I do know that this year taught me a little more about how to be kind. I am not great at reaching out to people, especially when they are hurting. It’s a bad old habit, not feeling secure enough to know what to say or that my presence would be welcomed. But now, on the other side, I realize the importance of just showing up, of sending the card or the email. Of giving the hug, giving of myself. Naturally gregarious people can do that more easily than the rest of us. But when the people around us are so kind, it’s awfully hard not to pass it on.

But this was about the book, right? I liked it. I didn’t know all the songs, but it was good. I liked the way he wrote about sharing music, about music in community. The first time you listen to a song with a friend or your spouse and you know that you’re never going to forget it. I was never a Nirvana fan, but . . . I almost got the Kurt Cobain thing when he described it. It was sad and raw, but it was very real, and I always like reading about music by people who know what they are talking about.

So, if you’re a music person, give this book a try. (If it doesn’t make you think about your own story and what the soundtrack would look like, well, I’ll be very surprised indeed.)

“You will be frightened, often, but never fear them. The powers of the Dark can do many things, but they cannot destroy. They cannot kill those of the Light.”

I have read four of the five books in The Dark is Rising sequence, which, for some reason, I’ve never read before, and I have enjoyed them. (I guess I’m kind of on a children’s lit kick this January, because I’m currently reading The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald, another children’s book I never read.) In the earlier books, the emphasis was on the fact that the Dark has no real power over those of the Light, which put me in mind of John 1 and 1 John 1 (heh - it looks funny to write them like that).

In the fourth book, The Grey King (a Newbery winner), there are a few passages that talked about how, in the battle of good and evil, the Light doesn’t really concern itself with sacrificing a human here or there in the overall battle, because it’s for the greater good. It’s very Star Trek – the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. And I realized, while I was reading it, that I used to think of God that way, that he had plans and that he didn’t care who he hurt while he was accomplishing them. I wouldn’t necessarily have said that, though I might have skirted around the edges of it. Whether I would have said it or not, I certainly lived like it was true, as if I was nothing more than a pawn in the hands of the Almighty.

But I have come to believe that I was wrong, that there is, of course, pain in this life, and we do see casualties for the greater good, but that God shares and understands our grief about those things. He isn’t far up somewhere analyzing everything impartially – he came and experienced life with us and our pain is personal to him, too.

Thinking about those things made me so thankful, both that God is so close and that I have come to understand him a little better. It’s a good way, I think, to start off a new year.

Everyone, except maybe Peter Pan, has to grow up, and that includes Carmen, Tibby, Lena, and Bee. For these four friends, growing up encompasses all kinds of things: a pregnancy scare, learning what “home” means, thinking about why you selfishly hurt the people around you who have what you don’t, finding out who you are when your friends aren’t around to define you. Most of all, they learn, again, about friendship and love. Loving your family, getting over old heartbreak, getting past the first glow of a relationship, and, of course, learning what true friendship looks like.

This book, more than any of the others, made me wish I could go back and do some of this over – investing in the people who matter rather than the people who are only thinking about themselves, being a more sacrificial friend, learning much sooner what it looks like to care for my friends and family, not letting other people define me, learning how to stand up for myself. These girls are lucky that their friends help them know who they really are, but it took me a lot longer to find people who could help me do that. When I finished it, it’s not an exaggeration to say that I ached a bit to go back and make some of that right. But if there’s a message in the books, it’s that you can’t go back, you have to take what you have made of your life and, with the help of those around you, keep going forward.

I don’t want to give away the ending, but this is the end of the series, which is fitting – the girls learn in this book that they use the pants to push each other away as well as to keep them together. A good lesson for all of us to learn – not to let the things we do with our friends and family be the things that keep us from actually communicating with them.

This novel was about four women who loved Byron, Shelley, and Keats. The four women were Caroline (who was Lord Byron’s lover at one time), Augusta (more on her in a minute), Mary (Shelley, obviously), and Fanny (engaged to Keats when he died).

I knew next to nothing about these Romantic poets, so when I started I was a bit confused. Luckily, Wikipedia was available for me to brush up on these stories.

Aside: I know that we read some poetry by these men in high school, what I don’t understand is why some of the history wasn’t explained. If, for example, we’d read Byron’s Epistle to Augusta and the teacher explained that, hey, this is Byron’s half-sister with whom he was reported to have had an incestuous love affair, well, I probably would have paid attention. I think one of the reasons I usually think that I’m not a poetry person is that it’s hard to read poetry without knowing some background information. Just like songwriting, really - knowing what a song is about illuminates it so much, at least for me. (But I think even the least poetic ears are going to perk up if you explain Augusta and Byron’s relationship, don’t you?)

(Anyway, that explains Augusta. She was Lord Byron’s half-sister, and history seems to believe that he was the father of her younger daughter.)

What this book was able to do for me was take the vague names of Byron, Shelley, and Keats and make them real people with real relationships. What struck me especially was how young they all were. Shelley was not yet 30 when he died, Lord Byron was only 36 at his death, and Keats died before his 25th birthday. Not much time to write all that poetry and have all those disastrous love affairs.

The other thing that struck me was how unhappy all the women around these men were. Lord Byron seemed to destroy everyone around him, Mary Shelley struggled to balance the ideals of free love with her own desire for a more conventional relationship, and Keats had a jealous mercurial nature. There were other women, too, who were mentioned - Lord Byron’s wife Annabella, Mary Shelley’s stepsister Claire (who had a baby by Lord Byron, and, history reports, possibly one by Shelley, though that’s not part of this story). You can see how convoluted the relationships were. I think it’s easy to have a vague notion that, “Oh, it would be wonderful to be so famous and be with a man who wrote poetry about me,” but these people were, frankly, making each other miserable.

The novel seemed to line up with the known facts - what it did very well was explain plausible reasons for things we don’t know for sure. For example, it doesn’t appear that history is quite clear on how Annabella knew about the relationship between Lord Byron and his sister. In the book, Jude Morgan has Lord Byron tell Caroline Lamb about his love for his sister, mostly to scare Caroline Lamb off. Which brings Caroline Lamb to tell Annabella, for revenge, which she later regrets. The women wove in and out of each other’s lives, and I enjoyed watching that happen.

This book was quite an education for me, as well as being well-written and compelling. It was long, but I enjoyed it a lot. My one complaint was that Fanny Brawne’s character wasn’t as integrated into the story as the rest - I know that we don’t know as much about her, but her exclusion until the end was kind of glaring. Other than that, I enjoyed thinking about what it must have been like to be a Romantic poet . . . or to be a woman who loved one.

I wrote about my ten favorite books of last year at The Corner Table.

Once upon a time, Harry and the Potters played at the Greensboro Public Library on a Saturday afternoon. I had to work that day. I did not get to go.

But then! Then Harry and the Potters came back! And I got to be there! While they rocked the library! It was a good time - their song lyrics (when I could make them out) are very funny. The consensus was that our favorite lyric had to do with not wanting to talk about Cho’s dead ex-boyfriend over coffee. I believe the song was “The Human Hosepipe.” We were, admittedly, a little old compared to most of the crowd but it was fun to watch all the kids (read: teenage girls) who knew every single word of every single song. Also funny: the teenage girls surrounding the younger brother after the show. hee.

Anyway, here are some pictures from the evening. Enjoy.

The opening band, Someone Still Loves You, Boris Yeltsin. I liked their Beatles cover.

My Harry Potter shirt and Harry and the Potters.

Harry and the Potters in action!

Harry and the Potters singing their hit song, “Cornelius Fudge is an Ass.” (Well, it was a hit with us, anyway.)

Check out the saxophone action.

Here you can see some of the fans. Those girls in the front were really into it.

Not to be outdone, Alisa and I had our picture taken with the older brother, Paul.

And, finally . . . the shirt I’m wearing to work tomorrow. ROCK THE LIBRARY!!!

(Brian got a shirt, too, a different one. He should post a picture of it, because I don’t have one.)

It was an excellent time. I loved seeing all the kids (I’m so old) getting into the silliness and having fun with Harry Potter stuff. I’d definitely go see them again. And, you know, we could only get the first CD, so if somebody wanted to get us other CDs for, you know, my birthday or something, that would be cool. It’s music for people who read. I read. I’m just saying.

That’s all for now. I have to go save Ginny Weasley from a basilisk. Be back later.

Mike and Andrea and I went and saw The Holiday, which I was hesitantly looking forward to. I mean, on one hand, the trailer made it look super-cute! And it has Kate Winslet in it! I love her! On the other hand: Cameron Diaz. Back to that first hand: Jack Black! He’s funny! And that second hand again: skeevy Jude Law.

The movie itself was fine – probably not a classic (though it could grow on me like You’ve Got Mail did), but well-executed and cute. When I got home, I had some banter with friends about it, and that was it. Except. I read this article by Richard Roeper, and hoo boy did it rub me the wrong way.

Now, let me start off by saying that I am not a huge fan of Richard Roeper, mostly because of an article he wrote for the Sun-Times in which he responded to those Dove “Campaign for Real Beauty” ads by saying things like this:

But the raw truth is, I find these Dove ads a little unsettling. If I want to see plump gals baring too much skin, I’ll go to Taste of Chicago, OK? I’ll walk down Michigan Avenue or go to Navy Pier. When we’re talking women in their underwear on billboards outside my living room windows, give me the fantasy babes, please.

If that makes me sound superficial, shallow and sexist — well yes, I’m a man.

Well. Aren’t you charming. And I know I’m way behind the times in responding to him, but , to me, the idea that those women are chunky and not worthy of admiration is the whole point of the campaign! They looked like women who took care of themselves but who weren’t supermodel-thin. The whole idea was, I think, to challenge our culture’s idea of beauty. I thought that the women in those ads were beautiful, but apparently Richard Roeper couldn’t get past a little flab.

So, with that said, you can see why, right off the bat, I am inclined to take the things he says about women the wrong way. Maybe that’s what the problem is here, but when he calls Amanda “shrill, work-obsessed and apparently frigid,” it raised my hackles quite a bit. Then he goes on to belittle the concept behind the movie – swapping houses for a couple of weeks. “Just because it’s based in reality,” he says, “doesn’t make it a good idea.” I know people who have swapped houses. With no problems. Strike two.

And then, at the end, he spends a lot of time talking about how beautiful one of the secondary characters is, excusing it because he’s a “cad.” This is right after he admittedly engages in gender stereotyping about how no man would choose to see the movie on his own (tell that to the man who sat ALONE on the row in front of us, Richard).

The one thing I found most telling is that he compares this movie unfavorably to another feel-good holiday romantic comedy – Love Actually. I like Love Actually, but I think it had some plotting problems (too many stories, not enough time). The real thing that I wanted to point out, though, is that I know a lot of women who had a lot of problems with Love Actually because of the gender roles. The majority of women in it are secretaries or assistants or housekeepers, and they (of course) fall in love with the men who are “over” them. Well, isn’t that a lovely idea for a movie? Do you think Richard Roeper would have liked Amanda a little better if she hadn’t been an independent businesswoman? Do you think that if Amanda’s character had been a male who worked a lot and was maybe too busy to have sex, he would have seen it as a bad thing? I’m not sure, either, and that’s what I find so troubling.

Look, everyone’s entitled to his or her opinion, but what this review says to me is that Roeper doesn’t like these kinds of movies (not to mention the fact that I’m not sure he likes women all that much, at least not unless they are airbrushed and servile), which probably means he’s probably not the best guy to write a review of it. It says a lot to me that most of the women I know who have seen The Holiday were on the, “I enjoyed it,” end of the spectrum. I have said before, in regards to books, that if I don’t like a certain kind of book, I shouldn’t criticize it for following the norms of that particular genre, whether I like it or not. Would Richard Roeper criticize an action film for having things that blow up and a big showdown scene at the end? Should this movie be criticized for its “standard” scenes? I don’t write reviews on thrillers (books OR movies) because I don’t appreciate them enough to do them justice. I think that, just maybe, just because Richard Roeper has an opinion . . . doesn’t mean it’s worth sharing. (And, I know, maybe neither is mine, but I’m not getting paid to write this stuff. hehe.)

I don’t think The Holiday was the greatest movie I saw all year, but I think it did what it aimed to do, and it did it well. It managed to keep me from being annoyed with Cameron Diaz and kept the Jude Law skeeze factor to a minimum. Kate Winslet was gorgeous and hilarious as usual. Maybe I won’t remember it in 20 years, but . . . is it possible that I paid for my ticket just wanting to see a well-executed romantic comedy with pretty people who make me smile? Because I feel like I got my money’s worth. No matter what Richard Roeper thinks.