Tagged Times Two

I've been tagged for a couple of memes - I had been thinking it had been awhile - and since I'm sleep deprived they're the perfect thing for today.

Danielle tagged me for the Six Random Things Meme.

Here goes:

1. My husband and I moved (separately) to Chicago after college and met in 1997. We talk about retiring there someday. I miss the big city life.

2. I'm a terrible housekeeper. I mean, I do it (sometimes), but I don't like it. It is somewhat satisfying to get things clean, but when people come home and drop stuff everywhere - me included - I get so discouraged. I have a bad clutter habit too.

3. I like to sleep in a cold room. We keep our bedroom at 64 degrees in the winter and sleep under a down comforter. I think part of the reason I haven't been sleeping well lately is the higher temperature.

4. Confession: I can't wait to go see the Sex and the City movie. Sorry.

5. I really don't like alcohol in desserts. It just ruins it for me.

6. It seems like so many people that I work with in my department have had really horrible things happen to them or their families. For example, two people have died in unexpected and terrible circumstances. I live in fear that my turn is next. Seriously.

I've been tagged by Heather for the Meme of Fives. I did this one back in December but will answer the non-repeat questions.

What are five things on your to-do list for today? (not in any particular order)


Take child to school.
Do laundry.
Take child to swimming.
Make dinner.
Meet a guy to talk about a fence.

What are five snacks you enjoy?

Coffee ice cream
Snyder's honey mustard pretzel piece thingys
cheese
fruit- currently looking forward to plums and nectarines
chocolate

What are five of your bad habits?

I can be very bossy.
I let things become very cluttered. On the other hand, I am good at not seeing this.
I have a short temper.
I hear snoring is one but I don't believe it.
I buy too many books. Or is that a good habit? I think so.

What are five places that you have lived?

Livingston, New Jersey
Carlisle, Pennsylvania
Centerville, Ohio
Chicago, Illinois
Saint Paul, Minnesota

What are five jobs you have had?

Busgirl at Mexican restaurant when I was 14. My clothes got so stinky my mother literally made me leave them at the front door.

Worked at the movie theater in high school, selling candy and tickets. Great job, great benefits (free movies!!!), fun coworkers.

Customer service at Toys-R-Us. Ugh.

Work study program in college at Computer Science Department.

Pharmacist.

I'm not going to tag anyone for anything! But if you'd like to, please play along and let me know where I can find your answers.

A Find

Lazy, lazy, lazy. That's how I'm feeling right now. I worked all weekend so I'm taking it easy right now, still in my pajamas. Except I need to get some housekeeping done. Sigh.

I read a really fantastic book last week, The Master Butchers Singing Club by Louise Erdrich. This was a book club pick and though I've heard a lot about the author who lives here in town, I didn't know what to expect. This book was so good in fact, once I started this, I completely gave up on a book I was over 100 pages into that I wasn't really getting on with. The contrast between how well this was written and the other book was huge.

Fidelis Waldvogel returns to his small German village after serving in WWI. He marries and soon afterwards decides to try him luck in America. Alone, except for a suitcase full of sausage, Fidelis makes his way West, planning to go to Seattle, but winding up in Argus, North Dakota since that was as far as his money would take him. Fidelis sets up a business and brings his family over. Delphine Watzka, who grew up in Argus, is living on the road and performing in an act. She returns to Argus and her alcoholic father, and takes a job in Fidelis's shop forming a strong bond with Eva, Fidelis's wife. There the story takes off, all the way to post WWII, on the way there is life and death, love and animosity, murder and a bit of a mystery all woven together to tell this brilliant tale.

It's hard to put my finger on why I liked this book so very much. It's beautifully written but it's much more than that. The characters are so well drawn and complicated - they weren't just good or bad, but had many facets to their personalities. I felt as though I knew them and couldn't wait to get back to them. There are lots of bizarre situations but somehow Erdrich made them seem so possible, so real. It was just a really, really good read and one of the highlights this year. I hope my book club will have a good discussion about this one.

Erdrich is a member of the Ojibwe Indian tribe and apparently many of her books focus on these people and these small towns like Argus. She has written quite a few books and I'm trying to figure out what else would suit me. I have my eye on The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse. I'm curious if you've read anything by her and if you have any recommendations.

Fieldwork

Define - fieldwork
3. the gathering of anthropological or sociological data through the interviewing and observation of subjects in the field

I finished Mischa Berlinski's novel Fieldwork several weeks ago but I have been putting off writing a review of it. Not so much because I didn't like it, but because I don't know how to tell you about it. But, I agreed to review it for LibraryThing's Early Reviewer's program so I'm going to give it a whirl.

Fieldwork begins when its protagonist -also called Mischa Berlinski - learns about the suicide of an American anthropologist, Martiya van der Leun in a Thai prison. Berlinksi, also an American, is living in Thailand with his girlfriend and writing to earn money. He begins to investigate the story of Martiya and becomes consumed with it. The book then moves into a fairly extensive history of a family of American missionaries living in Thailand for several generations. Then we learn the story of Martiya's young life, education, and how she came to be doing fieldwork among the Dyalo people in Thailand. There are extremely detailed accounts of doing anthropological research and of the Dyalo. Mischa continues his research finally discovering how these stories come together and how Martiya came to be incarcerated.

It took me a a very long time to read this book. I enjoyed the writing, it was very conversational and there is a sort-of quirky humor in the book. The book felt very long and there are many characters. For example, I thought the story about the missionaries was going to be an aside, instead there were over 100 pages about their family history. The fieldwork section was similarly long. I have had a great interest in anthropology since taking some college classes on the subject which increased my appreciation of this part of the story. I don't feel that Amazon's description of this novel as a 'thriller' is terribly accurate. The mystery part of the story seems more like a vehicle for Berlinski to write about what he is interested in and knowledgeable about which happens to be missionaries and anthropology. It is obviously very well researched and Berlinski is a gifted writer. There was much that I liked about this book but I never felt very involved or invested in it.

I'm a guest blogger!

Lisa from Books on the Brain kindly asked me to write a little something about my bookclub. You can read it here.

Nostalgia

Maggie Again by John Husband is one of those books that just kept popping up on blogs a few months back. The premise of the story sounded so fascinating to me and I put it on my wish list several different times. Fast Forward to about a month ago when I heard about online book publicist Lisa Roe who makes books available to bloggers who are interested in reviewing them. (Go check her out!) Maggie Again was one she had on her list and happily Lisa agreed to send me a copy.

Maggie Again is the story of Maggie, a teenager living in a small farming community in Indiana, Cobbler's Eddy in 1926. Maggie's father decides to move the family to New York City and work in finance. Maggie is lonely and invites three of her friends - all boys - to visit her. They jump on a boxcar in 1926 and when they arrive in New York - the year is 1984 - and 74 year old Maggie's life did not turn out the way she had expected it to.

Maggie Again is an absolutely charming book and the word that kept coming to mind while I was reading it was nostalgia - even though this is a story about time travel it is told in an old fashioned way. I loved reading about the aspects of life in 1984 that surprised and confused the boys. I also loved reading about life in small town America. I think in order to enjoy books like this, one has to be willing to suspend their disbelief. The story is quite magical, and gave me a lot to think about. How does my life now compare to what I thought it would be like? What if I was given a second chance - would I change anything? Maggie Again is a sweet book about friendship - maybe because of this I kept thinking about Nan when I was reading it. I think she'd like this book.

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Blogger must be having a problem because I don't seem to be getting comment notification. If I don't respond to comments on older posts I'm not ignoring you - I just don't know they're there!

How do you like your chocolate chip cookies?

I like mine just like this. Go ahead, have one. Or two. I just did.



Large and thin. Crispy around the edges, leading into chewy caramelized goodness full of chocolate chips.

My secret?

Dark brown sugar. Two extra tablespoons of butter - it helps them spread. The bigger the better - I only get 30-35 cookies from a batch.

So..how do you like your chocolate chip cookies?

More book talk coming soon.....lots of stuff going on here. I'm off to have my eyes checked now. The better to read with!

Confession

Sometimes I still read chick-lit.

There are a few authors that have the power to pull me in and Marian Keyes is one of them. Which is why I begged the Harper Collins First Look site to send me a copy of her latest book , This Charming Man, which will be released in the US in June.

This Charming Man is the story of Paddy de Courcy, a handsome young Irish politician, and four women whose lives he has affected. The book deals with some serious issues, as Keyes' books often do, and Keyes injects some suspense as well by not always letting the reader know exactly what is happening or who it is happening to.

The story is told from the four women's points of view and this is where I had a little trouble with this book. One of the women is Lola and the first 75 pages of the book begins her story. It is written in diary form, in a sort of stream of consciousness way, not always using complete sentences or proper grammar. This made it difficult for me to become engaged in this book and I worried that if the entire book was written this way I wouldn't be able to finish it. Happily, the other character's parts were written more traditionally and I did become absorbed in this book and couldn't put it down for the second half. This book was in turns funny, sad, frightening, and loving. While it wasn't my favorite book by Keyes, if you can get past the first part I think it's an enjoyable read.

Update on EPL

My book club discussed Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love last Thursday. We had six members at our meeting for what was one of our more memorable discussions. One member didn't even finish the book - she said she wasn't interested in it and felt bored by it. Three members (myself included) felt that they enjoyed the writing and the author's sense of humor but had a lot of issues with the subject matter. Two members said they liked the book overall. Both of these women still had issues with the material, one being bothered by all the talk of the 'Brazilian lover' and wishing Gilbert had remained celibate. The other woman seemed to enjoy the book the most and I asked her a lot of questions about that. She said she didn't particularly like Gilbert or feel as though they would be friends - I've read a lot of these comments from people who have enjoyed the book. She said she could see that a lot of people in our society are looking to find happiness and while Gilbert's solution is rather extreme, that people could use this as the impetus to make changes in their own lives in order to find greater satisfaction. She thought that while some people might think helping others through volunteering could be beneficial she could see that helping yourself first might be necessary.

The best part of reading EPL for me has been discussing it both online and with my book club so for that reason I'm glad I read it and was able to participate in the discussion of this popular and polarizing book.