Seabiscuit

Who was the biggest newsmaker in the U.S. in 1938? Roosevelt? Hitler? No, it was a racehorse named Seabiscuit. Laura Hillenbrand wrote "Seabiscuit: An American Legend" to show modern readers why Seabiscuit captured the imagination of Americans during the Great Depression.
Yeah, I know, everybody else read this years ago, or at least saw the movie. For some reason I never read it back when it was being hyped.

I was never a horse-crazy girl and have never been to a horse race in my life. I've never even watched the Kentucky Derby on TV, or drank a mint julep. All I know about horse racing comes from reading Dick Francis mysteries, and those are mostly about English hurdling races, which seems to be a rather different sport.

Despite my previous lack of knowledge, I found "Seabiscuit" fascinating. The book gives you a lot of background about horse racing in the 1930's, Seabiscuit, his owner, his trainer, and his jockeys. However, all the information is presented in a way that reads more like a novel than nonfiction, and from me that is a compliment. Sometimes (okay, often) I get bogged down in nonfiction and never even finish the book. But I stayed up late reading Seabiscuit, just to find out what would happen to everyone. This was a great read.

(By the way, I counted my Dick Francis books last week and discovered I had 27 books. Twenty-seven! Surely I had all of them -- but no, according to http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/, Mr. Francis has written 41 best-selling novels. So I guess I can learn more about horse racing while I wait for Ms. Hillenbrand to write another book.)

Chaos on my library book shelf

I have a shelf in my kitchen where I store my library books. I noticed that I have a rather odd collection this week:

Stalin: A Biography

Generation T: 108 Ways to Transform a T-shirt

You Are Your Choices: 50 Ways to Live the Good Life

Life on Planet Rock: From Guns N' Roses to Nirvana, A Backstage Journey Through Rock's Most Debauched Decade

Now guess which book I've already read? Yup, Generation T. If you can count looking at pictures and muttering, "maybe if I was 25 years old and lived in Williamsburg Brooklyn and wanted a shirt to wear clubbing..." as reading. My favorite part? Directions on making your own wedding dress out of seven large t-shirts.

I've read a few pages each of Planet Rock and You Are Your Choices, but so far they aren't doing much for me. I just picked up Stalin, so I haven't had a chance to dive into that 700+ page tome yet. I may need to sit on a beach with a mojito to get in the mood for that one.

I'm Either in my Midlife Crisis or Just Cranky

I recently read "Midlife Crisis at 30: How the Stakes Have Changed for a New Generation -- and What to Do About It" by Lia Macko and Kerry Rubin. My friends reading this post might wonder if I'm trying to fool someone into thinking I am still 30 myself. Now, when I got the call from my high school classmate to invite me to our 20th reunion this summer, I wondered how she ever made it through math (because that CAN'T be 20 years ago -- can it?) but I have to admit that I am well past 30 myself.

So what made me read this book? Because I am at a place in my life where I sometimes question the choices I have made and wonder where I am going from here. Because I have another year until my youngest child starts kindergarten, and I sometimes feel like that is a deadline for me to get back to work and do "grown-up" things with my life. Because I wonder why I spent so much money and effort on graduate school, then only used that degree for three years. Because sometimes I feel like I'm not very good at my current job (housewife & stay-at-home mom) and wonder if I should quit, or at least cut back on my hours. This is my "mid-life crisis".

Sure, these are the complaints of an over privileged person. Lots of people would love to be in my shoes, having so many choices. But this book points out that having seemingly unlimited choices is one of the reasons that many well-educated and successful women are anxious, questioning, and even unhappy. As thirty-ish women grew up, we were the first generation to be told, as a group, that we could do anything and everything. We could bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and seduce our man (hopefully not while holding that pan of sizzling lard). And when we can't meet our high expectations, we blame ourselves.

The authors want to help women realize that their problems and situations are not individual, but actually common to their generation. The first part of this book features vignettes of women in their late twenties and early thirties. Some women wonder why they are thirty and still don't have a job with a high enough salary to pay off their student loans. Others have a great career, but worry that it will be destroyed if they take time to have children. Others identify so much with their jobs that they have no social life outside of work, and wonder if they will ever get married. Thirty is a difficult age for many women.

So what's the solution? The second part of the book consists of interviews with women well over 30, mostly baby boomers, talking about the difficulties they faced and how they addressed them. They are meant to be mentors for the younger generation. These women talk about the risks they took, the mistakes they made, and how they dealt with sexism, work/family balance, parenting, not being a parent, being fired, and changing careers. All these mentors have had successes, and provide reassuring stories about how they weathered the storms.

One flaw of the book is that these "mentors" are all conventionally successful: high-level executives, published authors, even a three-star general. There are very few examples of women who left the workforce completely, as I have done for the last four years. And yet I found it reassuring to read so many stories of women who faced many difficulties in their thirties, but can now look back years later and be proud of what they have made of their lives. There's hope still that someday I too will figure out who I want to be when I grow up.

And we can all start working on getting other women in this world into the envious position of wondering how they can do it all, rather than knowing they have no choices at all. But that is another book.

Thanks to Jennifer for lending me her book!

Clean Sweep Your Own Home

I love the TV show Clean Sweep. First of all, the homes on this show are REALLY messy. They make my house seem neat and tidy in comparison. I may have piles of stuff on my desk, but at least I don't sleep on my sofa because my bed is covered with laundry. At least I don't have dozens of boxes of my children's outgrown clothes. At least my bedroom closet isn't full of boxes of stuff that I rushed through the house picking up before company came over. No, wait a minute, I actually do have those boxes. But not nearly as many as the people on the show have in their closets!

But I don't just watch the show to see how much worse other people have it. I also like the way they address the mess and the clutter. Instead of focusing on throwing things out, they take all of the homeowners' belongings out of two rooms of their home, and put them on the lawn. There the homeowners can focus on what they want to keep, not on what they need to sell or throw out. When the homeowners wail and gnash their teeth, claiming they absolutely need all of these belongings, Peter Walsh steps in.

Peter Walsh is Clean Sweep's Organizer. He is the person who convinces the homeowner that his Beanie Baby collection is not going to put his kids through college, and needs to go. He gives a woman who has been separated for eight years permission to throw out her ex-husband's jackets. When someone says they can't get rid of an item because it was a gift, he calls the person who gave it to them and asks if it is okay for the item to be sold. He is gentle when people get emotional, but very firm, and the homeowners generally feel great in the end about getting rid of two-thirds of their belongings. So of course I watch and think, "I need Peter to come to my house!"

Well, I was hoping that Peter Walsh's book, "It's All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff" would take his place. There is a lot of good stuff in this book. It explains why clutter is bad, some reasons why we hang on to things that we shouldn't, and then gives tips on how to clear the stuff out. The book is clearly written and has some funny anecdotes. For someone who needs this information, it could be a very helpful book.

Unfortunately, as a regular viewer of the show, I'd already heard most of the information found in this book. Other tips sounded much like things I'd heard from Flylady and other organizational and decluttering gurus. And this just reminded me that I spend more time reading about decluttering than actually doing it.

I don't need any more information. I know HOW to clean up my house - I just need to DO it on a regular basis. Or else I need to convince the entire Clean Sweep crew to come out to my house. If a team of people pull all my belongings out into the yard, I guess I would have to start sorting and tossing. And who knows what interesting things I might find in those boxes in the closet!

Two Guys, Two Life Stories

I've read two memoirs recently, "The Tender Bar" by J.R. Moehringer and "Never Have Your Dog Stuffed" by Alan Alda. These men have lived very different lives and have written two very different memoirs.
Moehringer grew up mostly in Long Island. "The Tender Bar" is a story about growing up poor, raised by a single mom and an assortment of local barflies. This may sound like a tough life that he might portray as either humorous or terrible. Instead, although there is both humor and sadness, he really does approach his story in a sweet, tender way. You see the great affection he holds for his family (well, some of his family), the men at the bar who he feels raised him to be a man, and the bookstore owners who he feels educated him. It is a very well written story. The "characters" are interesting and seem very true to life. They must be pretty close, as only a couple of ex-girlfriends asked him not to use their real names. The last part of the book, about the effect of 9/11 on the town, feels a bit like an add-on as he had already moved away at that point in his life. However, as a bedroom community, it was one of the towns hit very hard by the destruction of the World Trade Center, and 9/11 had a huge impact. I can see why it was important for the author to include that in his book. All in all, this was a very good memoir that I enjoyed very much and would recommend to anyone who likes memoirs. Thanks to Janet for recommending it!

I've enjoyed Alda's work on M*A*S*H* and on Scientific American Frontiers. I heard him discussing his memoir on the radio, so I read it with high expectations. I have to say, if I hadn't read it soon after reading "The Tender Bar", I probably would have liked it better. It contains a lot of humorous anecdotes about Alda's life, and is not a typical celebrity memoir that is more about name-dropping than about the subject. However, it sometimes reads like a string of stories that he has told and retold for years. I got the feeling that he has been dining out on these anecdotes for a long, long time. There are some more serious chapters about his mentally ill mother and his sometimes troubled relationship with his father, but most of the book is light and humorous.
It was an easy book to pick up and read for a little while, then put down again. It didn't really hold together as a complete book, or as an overall picture of Alda's life. I felt like he was just sharing bits and pieces that he had been asked about in interviews throughout the years. It isn't a bad memoir, and for a celebrity memoir it is actually pretty candid, but it isn't a great book either. But if you are a fan of Alda, it may be worth a trip to the library.
If I had to give grades, I think "The Tender Bar" would get an A-, and "Never Have Your Dog Stuffed" gets a B-.

Why your kid won't get a perfect SAT verbal score, you lazy bum

I took a little break from blogging so I could do what I actually like to do - READ. Reading is fun, easy, and interesting. Writing is hard. But I love to share what I've read, and I hate getting halfway through a book before realizing that I've already read it, so I'm back to the blog.
But what's this about SAT scores, you wonder? My kids are years and years away from college worries, but I am already getting a little anxious about their academic progress, or lack thereof. I noticed a book at the library which claimed to explain how to make every child an avid reader, and who doesn't want their kid to be an avid reader? Or at least who in the self-selected group of people who scan the new books section at the library?
"The Read-Aloud Handbook" by Jim Trelease starts with the story of Christopher, who scored a perfect 36 on the ACT, one of only 58 students out of 400,000 to do so. He did not take any prep courses - but his parents read to him for 30 minutes a day, year after year, even after he was able to read for himself. The book is full of anecdotes about parents who read to their children and end up with valedictorians and scholarship winners and Pulitzer-prize winners. (No mention is made of whether Ted Kaczynski or John Hinkley Jr. were read to by their parents.) According to this book, children are home for many more hours than they are in school, so it is up to the parents to prepare their kids for reading, enforce reading at home if necessary, and to read to their children to encourage a love of reading.
How is this going to help me? My kids have a house full of books and other reading material (we get three newspapers a day, for Pete's sake) and heaven knows my husband and I model lots of reading behavior. I read to my kids every day, although I admit I didn't start until each was about a year old, instead of starting in the womb as the book recommends. So how did I end up with a daughter who hates to read? Did I just not read enough? Erin's mom read her seven books after breakfast and nine after lunch - now Erin is brilliant! It must be because Erin's mother cares enough to do everything right, unlike the pathetic mom that my poor daughter is stuck with. Three papers a day, and all I'm reading to her is the "Garfield" cartoon and one lousy chapter at bedtime.
It sounds like I hated this book, but once I got past the really, really annoying anecdotes, there were actually some useful ideas.
I will try to read to my kids for a longer time each day. In choosing books, I'll keep in mind that kids can understand material at a higher level than they could read for themselves. And I want to require my daughter to do some reading of her own every day. I tend not to make her read because she dislikes it. My excuse is that I'm already making her practice piano and spelling, so why make her even more miserable? But this book reminds me that improving her reading skills through practice is the best way to help her enjoy reading in the long run. And if we can improve her reading, maybe the rest of her academic work will become easier and more enjoyable.
Now I'm not sure I'll follow all of the advice in this book, for example to keep reading to your kids through middle school and high school. There is a wonderful photo of the author sitting at the kitchen table, reading aloud to his then seventh-grade son while his son washes the dishes. Oddly, the teenager doesn't look like he wants to kill his dad. I'll let you know in 6-9 years if my kids are still letting me read to them in seventh grade! Of course, if they still aren't reading themselves I guess I will have no choice...

Signs in Our World

Two nights in a row, my son has asked me to read "Signs in Our World" by DK Publishing. Notice that there is no author. It is not that kind of book.
My son opens this book and points to a color photograph of a street sign and says, "What this sign say, mommy?" and I say, "No U-turn" or "Truck Route" or "Kangaroo Crossing." If I try to point to signs, my hand is gently brushed away and my son says, "No, I do that." There is a strict protocol for reading this kind of book. He points, I name.
Reading this kind of book bores me silly. I have no chance for dramatic reading or funny accents, because nothing happens and there are no characters. Because I am bored, my mind wanders to thoughts like, "Why does my son like this boring book? Is this a sign of Asperger's syndrome? But if he had that, wouldn't he be smarter?" and of course these are not helpful thoughts to have so soon before my own bedtime. I don't need to lie back and fret more than I would anyway.
But of course the reason I let the kids pick their own bedtime stories is so they can pick the books they are interested in. Sometimes those aren't the same ones that I am interested in, because my kids are not me. And I don't want them to be me, or just like me. I just want them to learn to read so they can get through these boring books without me.

It's So Amazing!

Recently, my six-year-old daughter has been asking a lot of questions about where babies come from, and the old "from mommies' tummies" line wasn't cutting it anymore. Based on referrals from two good sources (Asha Dornfest at Parenthacks http://www.parenthacks.com/ and Marjorie Ingall at The Jewish Daily Forward http://www.forward.com/articles/learning-the-facts-of-life/) I ordered "It's So Amazing! A Book About Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families" by Robie H. Harris and Michael Emberley.
Well, this book answers every question my daughter had and a few she hadn't thought of yet. This really is a soup-to-nuts book that covers everything: anatomy, puberty, sexual intercourse, fetal development, "not okay touches", adoption, birth control, masturbation, and AIDS. I have to admit, I skipped over the last two topics because I was a little overwhelmed over the amount of information we covered in a short time. My daughter, on the other hand, took it all in stride. The book is for ages seven and up, but it seemed like it would be at the right level for any early elementary student.
The cute, cartoon-style illustrations show everything from the anatomy differences between males and females of various ages to a syringe shooting a sterilized egg into the uterus after artificial insemination. And Emberley makes that look cute! My three-year-old son is endlessly fascinated by the illustrations of the sperm speeding through the vas deferens, but I'm not sure he has any idea what the book is actually about. His time will come soon enough!
I would consider myself a pretty open, non-repressed person, so I was surprised that it was difficult to talk about reproduction with my kids before we got this book. I wasn't sure how much information my kids needed to know. I wanted my daughter to have honest information, but I didn't want a vagina monologue at the dinner table. This book really helped me. It provides enough information to answer a young child's questions, and presents it in a cheerful, matter-of-fact way.
Like I said, I did skip a few sections, but I'll go back and cover those soon. And this book will make it a lot easier. I'm hoping that by starting the conversation now, my kids will feel comfortable talking to me about all of these topics as they grow older.
The same team has written a book for ages 4 and up called, "It's Not the Stork" and a book for ages 10 and up called, "It's Perfectly Normal." I'm eagerly waiting for their adult books, "It's Not Hot in Here -- You're Having a Hot Flash" and "It's Perfectly Normal to Need Viagra at Your Age."