2008: A Baker’s Dozen of Favorite Books

These are the ones I still have.

Here it is!  My top thirteen booklist for 2008.  I have been keeping track of the books I read for several years now, and because I’m a fast reader,  I include commentary so I don’t forget what they were about.  At the end of the year, I like to make a baker’s dozen list of my favorite books of the year.  It is usually harder to choose than it was this time.  My goal this year was to read more non-fiction.  Note that only two of the chosen ones are not fiction!  Anyway, here are my choices(Not in preferential order):

1.  Dragon Bones.  By Lisa See ~ Fiction
Main character is Liu Hulan, an American educated Chinese woman who is Inspector of Security in modern day China, married to American Attorney, David Stark.  Their child has died, they are estranged.  Both sent to the Three Gorges to investigate a murder and the disappearance of many ancient Chinese relics from an archaeological dig.  Thriller, spellbinding.  See is incredible.

2.  The Gate.  By Francoise Bizot ~ Memoir
The memoir of a man who was held captive in a Cambodian camp at the beginning of the Khmer Rouge reign.  Poignant, beautifully written.

3. The Other Boleyn Girl. By Philippa Gregory ~ Historical Fiction
The story of Anne Boleyn and King Henry VIII.  I know they made a movie of it, but the book is way better.  It’s a page turner, for sure.  Sometimes I just want one of those, and this one seems to tie pretty well with history.

4.  The Street of a Thousand Blossoms.  By Gail Tsukiyama ~ Historical Fiction
Japan at the time of Pearl Harbor, 1939; It has themes of Sumo Wrestling, Noh mask making as well as Japan in that era.  Beautifully written, as always.  Tsukiyama is a must-read author for me.  I have loved each of her books.

5.  The Fountainhead. By  Ayn Rand ~ Fiction
It’s Ayn Rand…Hard to read but completely compelling.  I read Loving Frank right afterwards – the similarities are strong between the main character in The Fountainhead and Frank Lloyd Wright.

6.  Prisoner in Tehran.  By Marina Nemat ~ Memoir
True story of an Iranian woman’s imprisonment in Evit prison in Tehran during the 1980s.  Completely compelling – highly recommended.

7.  Loving Frank. By Nancy Horan ~ Historical Fiction
The story of a love affair between Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah which scandalized society.  Closely tied with historical fact.  Hard to finish once I knew how it would end. (Because of course I Googled Mamah and Frank and read the Wikipedia entries while halfway through the book)

8.  The Latehomecomer. By Kao Kalia Yang ~ Memoir
Hmong story – eloquent.  This is the story about the Hmong I had long wished existed.  The book is divided in three parts, the first about life in Laos just before the author’s family escaped, the second about life in Ban Vinai refugee camp, where the author was born and the last about life in MInnesota where they came to live in the U.S.  It is so beautifully written, and my young Hmong friends say it tells their own story very well.

9.  Love Walked In. By Marisa de los Santos. ~ Fiction
I loved this book.  Loved it!!!  It is the story of love  in its different forms – romantic as well as that of friends.  It is the sort of book that I wish had lasted longer.

10.  Sweetness in the Belly. By Camilla Gibb ~ Fiction
I started listening to this book on CD in my car, but it was so good I decided I had to read it.  The time jumping became too confusing for listening, as well.  It is about Muslims in Africa then London.  The main character is a young English woman who was left alone as a child  in a sufi shrine in Morocco when her parents left town for a weekend and were murdered.  She had no other relatives and grows up studying the Qu’ran intensely.  No further details here – I loved it.

11.  Run.  By Anne Patchett. ~ Fiction                                                                   Outstanding.  Must read.  The story of a white academic family who adopted two African American boys, and the birth mother of the boys who, without anyone knowing keeps an eye on them their whole growing-up lives.  Patchett is so good. (Author of Bel Canto and several other good ones.)

12.  Rush Home Road by Lori Lansens, author of The Girls.   ~ Fiction           Fabulous.  Just read it.  It is the story of a little girl who is left with a trailer park neighbor when her mother leaves with her current boyfriend and never returns.  The story is so compelling.  Lansens is another author who is so far completely dependable. (Her first book, The Girls is another I highly recommend.  Just didn’t read it this year!)

13.  Looking for Alaska, by John Green.  ~ Fiction                                                            A YA novel set in a boarding school in Alabama.  When I began it, I thought it resembled “Catcher in the Rye.”  It quickly deviates from that course, and is a thoughtful, compelling read.  This was a gift from a young friend who is a prodigious reader.  Her taste in literature is impeccable – I loved this book!

If you want to see the entire list for 2008, it is at http://lynnjake.wordpress.com.

I hope you find something to read!

Hmmm…on repurposing my blogs in 2009

Have you ever seen anything as beautiful as these light streams?

Doesn’t that sound like a PC word?  “Repurposing.”  Why not just say finding another use for something?  Or clarifying one’s purpose?  Or repurposing.  Whatever.  I just noticed that on WordPress alone there are 5,100,784 blogs, with 94,503 new posts today.  OMG, that is so many blogs.  Who reads them all?  I feel lucky that even five or six people read mine, there are so many out there.  As  I click around and link to various blogs, I notice that many – maybe most – blogs have a stated purpose, or a theme if you will.  This made me wonder about my own.  Do mine have a purpose?  I have three, did you know that?  Yeah.  Heaven forbid I keep it all in one place.  Here’s the deal with my three blogs:

1.  Teaching in 2008: this one was started in 2007 when I went to TESOL with/for the ELL Leadership team of the National Writing Project.  I thought the WP people could experience it vicariously through a blog I wrote, and besides I wanted to start one and this gave me a purpose.  As I recall I got the idea from another WP person whose name I won’t write because I only remember his first name at the moment and it seems disrespectful.  Anyway, I did my blog and included photos and then let it rest for a few months, after the conference was over.  I then resurrected it to be about teaching when I returned to the classroom.  I thought it could be kind of a record of my inquiry stance to the new experience of teaching middle school.  And it has remained pretty true to that, although I think I could talk less about the overall school issues and focus more on my own classroom.  I can fine tune that in 2009.  So that one has a purpose.

2.  Thoughts and Images:  This is a photo blog.  The format is one column and it makes the photos really big, so I just write a little about a photo and that’s that.  I’m not too worked up about this one, but I love taking photos so occasionally I post one there.  No one – no one at all – reads this one.  No special reason, I’m just saying.  I don’t think it is that interesting so I don’t even tell people about it.  But it has a purpose.

3.  Reduction Physics: I love this blog. I still love the name of this one, even if I can’t explain it very well.  I began it last January as a way to create some accountability for myself.  I embarked on a project to lose some weight, get out of debt and kind of straighten things up in my life, and I thought that writing about it in a public place would keep me honest with myself.  And maybe I could generate some conversation along the way.  Sort of mutual support, if you will. I was nervous about revealing myself publicly, but I sucked it up and took the plunge. Well, that was all well and fine at first, except no one read it.  Ever.  Nor did they comment.  So much for accountability and conversation.

But I’m not easily daunted, and I like to write, so I started telling a select person or two, and I began to notice that occasionally someone would read it.  I felt pretty good about that, and after a while started using it more to just write about stuff I wanted to write about in hopefully appealing ways, and less about reducing the clutter and confusion (and weight and debt) like it was originally designed for.  Which I suppose is okay, except what is its purpose?  Seems like I have strayed from its having one, other than to share my occasionally clever writing with all six of you.

So, I’m going to rethink the purpose for this blog.  Maybe I’ll just rethink whether it even needs one.  I mean, no one is twisting your arm to read it, and I am glad you do, and appreciative.  Really.  So we’ll see where it goes in 2009, if I revisit its purpose or not, because I’m sure I won’t quit writing it.

Yeah, so that’s all I have to say about that.  Have a Happy New Year.  Do something meaningful, even if it is just drinking champagne with friends.  Be thankful that you have some!

Mice in the Bedsprings

It is Christmas night, actually early morning of the next day, and you are in that fitful sleep that comes after once waking up and deciding that 4:15 is too early to get up when you are on vacation.  Suddenly you hear a gnawing sound.  You quickly realize it is the fan on your nightstand, except the washer is not on spin cycle, it is not even on, so there is no reason for the fan to jiggle.  So it must be gnawing, and Oh Shit!! it must be a mouse.  You jiggle the bed a little and finally it stops.  Then you know for certain it was a mouse, because it responded to your movement.  It is scared now, and being quiet.  So you  go back to sleep, hoping it will stay scared until you wake up at a more reasonable time, when you will poke around and see if you can find its nest.  What you will do then is not something you think about at this moment.

You go back to sleep and you dream of mice.  You dream you have woken up and are shining a flashlight around and under your bed, and sure enough, you see them.  They are scampering in and out of your box springs, hanging over the edge of the bed frame, chewing on the beautiful pinewood.  Teeth marks are everywhere, and there are numerous raggedy holes in the side of your box spring.  You wonder why the electronic rat repellers that have been plugged in to the outlets in your bedroom for the past year and a half, ever since a roof rat wandered in and set up camp one hot summer night, are not working.  Have they run out of vibes, or whatever makes them work?  Or are mice not tall enough to feel them?  In and out of this sleep you move, always sleeping but feeling intermittently awake.  Once a thought passes through your head that the only thing it could have been besides a mouse is an earthquake, but that is so unlikely it is gone before it is even fully formed.  You keep dreaming, alternating between the mice dream and another about someone who has rearranged your classroom in a distasteful way until finally, exhausted, you wake up.

You go downstairs and make a cup of coffee and check in with the cyber world.  You write a blog post about having spent too much money – again – at Christmas, and then go to the local newspaper, which you read online every morning.  You read the headline, “East Quincy quake felt as far as Butte County”  and in a moment of clarity you realize that there are probably no mice in your bed at all.  It was indeed an earthquake, and your little fan felt it.  And in spite of the happy surprise you feel, you still go upstairs and check your bed for raggedy holes and gnaw marks.  Only when you find everything intact do you truly feel relieved.  There are no mice.  That frantic dreaming was unnecessary.  Whew.

Recriminations on the day after

Whew.  As much as I enjoy Christmas, I like the day after almost as much.  I like that I got through it, and I like that things are so messy I can’t procrastinate about cleaning up.  I have recriminations for myself in how I dealt with money in the last week or so; that is, when I finally give myself permission to spend some because it is CHRISTMAS, I lose control and spend way too much.  And every year I feel mildly icky for having done so, and I promise myself I’ll do better next year, and every year I do the same thing.  So, here I am, getting ready to clean up the big mess and promising myself that a.) I won’t let myself get out of spending control next year and/or b.) I will save a few dollars a month this year so I have some money earmarked for the annual overspending. Do banks still have “Christmas Clubs?”  Where you put aside a certain a mount each month and you can’t get at the money until a certain date?  Or did they go the route of lay-away, (which was actually resurrected this year)?

This year we drew names, and had only one person plus the little person for whom to buy or make gifts.  That was easier, but my person got more gifts than others and I felt embarrassed by my inability to control myself.  The little one got way more than was necessary even in her own wishes, which makes all of the gifts a little insignificant.  I’d think that by now I”d have this figured out, but I seem to bumble along the same as always.  Except now I don’t have nightmares about not having gifts for the in-laws like I used to.  Wait – is that because I no longer have in-laws?  Or would I be calmer about it anyway?

Guess I don’t have to know the answer to that.  Merry day-after and Happy week leading up to the New Year.  I plan to be ready for that.  Spic and span, no clutter anywhere, ready for art projects and lesson planning!  Oh yeah, and with a light glow of just having returned from the gym for the fourth time in a week.  Hot tub cleaned and ready for the rest of the winter.  Whatever else will make me feel calm and energetic lined up and done.  Merry and Happy to all.

I just want to say…

I hope this time of year as you celebrate with family and friends, that you have fun with those you love, and feel peace and joy in your heart.  Good night.

Across the Universe

Today I watched “Across the Universe.”  I’d rented it from Netflix a while ago, and finally decided to watch it today while I wrapped the caramels I made last night.  I expected to enjoy it because I love Beatles music and everyone said it is so good.  I didn’t count on being so unsettled by it.  At first I just enjoyed the music and the unfolding story.  As it developed, it carried me back to the time of my youth when I believed in the victory of good over evil, peace over war.  When I believed that “all you need is love.”  This music was the sound track to my generation’s coming of age in a tumultuous world.

As the story developed, I was reminded of how quickly we formed deep friendships, how readily we adopted a cause, how firmly we believed in what was right and how steadfast we could be in our decision making.  It was a hectic time, when you could be whatever you could imagine, and yet nothing was quite reachable.  That is hard to explain…

The thing is, the stakes were really high, what we believed actually did matter, and we  did have an impact.  People today often kind of make fun of us, kidding around about the things we held dear.  And I guess that’s okay, because I know that if you didn’t live it, you can’t possibly get it. Sometimes I wonder how much got lost in translation, in our aging and raising children.  We have blended in, and you might miss us with our grey hair and less than youthful bodies. But we are still here, and we did make a difference.  We will always know that, even if other people don’t.  We changed the world.

My Break List

Tomorrow begins a three week break from school.  I am giddy with anticipation.  Since I love making lists, I am making one especially for my break plans.  Sort of so I don’t forget, but mostly so I can enjoy thinking about it (not all of it, but most of it) right now.  Let’s see…

1.  Clean up and declutter.  My office and spare room are piled with stuff.  Somehow I will get it under control.

2.  Doctor stuff.  I just (finally)  got a new doctor, so have to catch up on some deferred maintenance.

3.  One day of NCWP work in Yreka.  One long day!  But it’ll be fun to be part of it.  I just have to figure out how to present something to P.E., Special Ed, Freshman Reqs, etc.  The Etc. group – I have to make something useful and interesting to such a diverse group.

4.  Write and write.  Maybe someplace other than my blogs, but I’m not sure.  I’m pretty partial to writing here.  And there.  And there.

5.  Early morning coffee at Peets every day.  Well, not Sunday.  Every day I want to.  I love to get there at 6:00 when it’s still dark and stay until about 7:30.  I especially like it when friends come in and we can sit around and talk a little.  But I’m good with solitary coffee too.  I write then.

6.  Re-novate my annual NY Eve state of the person collage.  I used to make a collage every year on NY Eve, but have lapsed because lately I’ve been at my mom’s place each year.  But this year I can’t afford to go, so I’ll make a collage.  Probably with a nine-year-old at my side.  Fun.  I might make this year’s collage in the form of a beautiful new strand of prayer beads.  Two things in one!

7. Remind myself that I like to work out.  Often.  And do it.  Maybe build a little energy running in to this category.  Not because it is about the gym or making my body healthier.  Because it is about making my spirit healthier, and it’s all part of the same package.

8.  Try a break from sugar.  See if I can.  Today I was thinking that if every time I ate sugar I smoked a cigarette or had a drink of alcohol or a shot of a drug instead, I’d be a rampant addict.  It’s not that I’m above or immune to addiction.  Mine is just to sugar and thus more socially acceptable.  Still, it’s unhealthy and as such worthy of my attention.

9.  Read and read.  After lazy dunks in the hot tub.  Chats with Orion while I sit in hot water.  (The constellation, not a new boyfriend.  Hm…)

10.  Figure out how to teach seventh grade.  Plan my new attack.

I figure that ten is enough. If the list gets any longer it’ll become a life list. Twenty-one days off,  ten things, some of them compound items.  Enough ambition for now.    I’m counting the hours…

Wait!  I forgot one more thing that I’ll definitely do.  Take photos.  I do that a lot, and will definitely fit in a safotari (photo safari) or two.  There is always PhotoFridays to attend to!

So now, what is on your list?