Tag Archives: books

I Love Books- Guest Blog on DeeDoanes.com

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I was asked to guest blog on DeeDoanes.com  Ms. Doanes focuses on the world of writing and publishing and I was thrilled to add to her site.

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This guest post comes from Michelle Ross. She’s a travel writer and book reviewer. Michelle is currently looking for submissions of galley copies of books to review.

I Love Books: eBooks and Paperback Books

When the air quality monitor ranges from “hazardous” to merely “unhealthy” for weeks on end, it is amazing how much time I have to catch up on my online reading. As my lungs thank me for hiding indoors, where I’ve got multiple air purifiers running, I’ve been amazed to read article after article rehashing the “e-reader vs. hard copy” debate. I can’t believe this is still a point of contention in the world of bibliophiles. With so many of the writers digging in their heels about paper and ink being the only way to read for true book lovers, while the progressive side pushes for screens and buttons as the wave of the future, I’d like to come down smack in the middle, sitting on the fence of reason.

You see, as much as I love going to the bookstore, slowly wandering passed the “new arrivals” section, meandering into the aisles of travel writing, looping through the “up and coming authors” section, making a pit stop on a bench by the fashion magazines and then finally arriving at the discounted paperbacks, taking home a pile of books is no longer a viable option for me. As the spouse of a US Foreign Service Officer, my life is a cycle of packing my worldly goods into cardboard boxes, not to be seen for several (or more!) months at a time, living out of a suitcase, arriving in a new country where I may or may not speak the local language, only to unpack those boxes in my latest apartment, settle in for a two year stay and then start the process all over again. Doing this with the shelves and shelves of hardcopy books that I owned as an English teacher is nearly impossible! (It is pretty amazing how quickly you can hit a weight limit when your boxes are filled with nothing but novels and travel memoirs.) So, while I *heart* the independent bookstore as much as the next gal, my e-reader has been my lifeline abroad!

I Love Books: eBooks and Paperback Books

With hundreds of novels at my fingertips, I no longer have to figure out which books are getting left behind- this time. The young adult novel I downloaded while feeling nostalgic for my 8th graders is safe and gets to venture on with me. The memoir of the blogger turned author (lucky girl!) lives on to be giggled at in airport terminals around the globe. The heartwarming, if rather simplistic, novel about at-odds brothers who reunite later in life continues to take up space, but a small enough amount that it remains a book cover icon to be thumbed through on my e-reader homepage. These are the books that would probably not make the cut if they were traditional, bound paper editions, but because they are mere bits of information, adding not a single ounce to my already strained carry-on bag, travel from America to China to Thailand and the Maldives and destinations yet unknown.

The world of book-lovers doesn’t need to be divided down these arbitrary lines of loyalty. The world isn’t black and white, just like the newest wave of e-readers, shades of gray (maybe even for than fifty!) and a rainbow of colors abound. Yes, I still have several boxes of books that make the move with me every two years and yes, the number of boxes in that category continues to grow as there are times I just can’t resist the smell of a newly bound book, the feel of the pages feathering through my fingers.  But, as a bibliophile traveler, the fence of reason is my book format home.

Silver Orphan: A Social Novel by Martine Lacombe

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Silver Orphan: A Social Novel by Martine Lacombe

silver orphan

With our population of Baby Boomers growing ever-older and the social norms of the following generations creating a society with less room for these aging Americans, many communities in the US face a looming crisis of how to adequately care for the shifting demographics of their populations. This trend of seeing elderly folks without next of kin willing/able to provide such support has created an ever-enlarging segment of our population, dubbed “silver orphans” by sociologists. This emerging predicament forms the basis for Martine Lacombe’s first novel, Silver Orphan: A Social Novel.

While I’m not sure why Lacombe chose to include “A Social Novel” as a part of her title, as there are currently many authors attempting to address social issues through their fiction, I do appreciate her tackling a problem that is just emerging within our society. Recently, many authors have undertaken writing about tough issues such as bullying and school violence, but Lacombe comes out ahead of the crowd, bringing to light a problem that isn’t making the bold-faced headlines yet, but will be soon.

Brooke Blake is immediately introduced to the reader as the lead character (I hesitate to call her protagonist, as her personality is off-putting enough to not want to use “pro” anywhere near her name), whose life quickly becomes interwoven with Frank, an octogenarian who needs some support. This is the first place that I struggled a bit with the story-telling, as after a rather lengthy introduction to Brooke as a high-paid pharmaceutical rep with shoes that cost more than I make in a day and a cold demeanor meant to put all in their place, I had a hard time suspending believe enough to imagine that she would actually pull over for a random hitchhiker, then not only take him home, but become a part of his life. The idea of someone coming into Frank’s life to be a support and then push his story beyond his death is a great outline for a story, but I just don’t find Brooke believable in this role. The jump from her character in the first ten pages to her character just thirty pages later is too far for me.

Beyond the far-fetched connection of these two characters, the other aspect of Silver Orphan that I struggled with was the sometimes halting dialog. When Lacombe is telling the story from the narrator’s point of view, the writing is smooth and, at times, even poetic, but once she is forced to put words into the mouths of characters, something in the flow is lost.

The multi-layered settings of the book create one of the high points of the novel, as Lacombe braids together stories from the current time, the recent past, the WWII era and the height of the Italian immigration. History that is often glossed over by textbooks is uncovered throughout the book, making the novel a mini-social studies class, thanks to Frank’s genealogy. There are times that the historical references seem a bit forced (I have to admit to still being confused about why the tale of Orson Well’s War of the Worlds is included), but this novel could find a place as a companion novel in a high school history classroom.

Without giving the ending away, I did feel like it came a bit out of left-field and has me closing the book with some lingering questions, not about the main plot line of the book, but about new twists that were introduced on the final page.  I am finding it hard to assign a final score to this book, as the novel was given to me for free in return for a book review, but there are revisions I think the story needs to go through before it is great. (My hesitation comes from the fact that I would love to be more active in the review of book galley copies, but my first one is not overflowing with praise, which may turn off other authors.) Martine Lacombe’s soon-to-be-published first novel is just that- a first novel. It is a great start for a young author and I am excited to see what social issues she will tackle in her next book. This book isn’t going to fall into my top 10 of 2013 list, but I like where Lacombe is headed with her writing and will definitely be watching and waiting for her sophomore publication! Silver Orphan: A Social Novel by Martine Lacombe earns:

books shellbooks shell
 

The Case of the Missing HHE

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It may have taken a few months to get the paperwork sorted out, but just a week ago today I was thrilled to announce that I was “Rolling in the Renminbi.” That windfall (okay, windfall may be a bit of an exaggeration, but at least I have employment and a steady source of income) was a high point of the week, leading to a lovely Sunday outing to ChunXi Lu where I treated Thad to the long-promised Pizza Hut meal.

(Pizza Hut may seem like an odd choice for celebrating a new job, and while Pizza Huts in China are fancier than those in America, with waitresses in long white aprons and fancy decorations adorning the restaurant, that is not why we chose to eat pan pizzas for our personal-sized party. Rather, when we were here with Peace Corps, Pizza Hut was the destination for pizza whenever we happened to be called in to Chengdu for a meeting. It was pricey on a Peace Corps budget, so we would plan carefully, weighing the triple threat of quantity we wanted to consume vs. the quantity our stomachs could handle after being without dairy and grease for so long vs. the amount of cash we were going to drop on a single meal.  Now, here on Thad’s Foreign Service salary and my CLO income, we could eat Pizza Hut every day if we wanted. [Ugh! We don’t want.]  So, falling back in to the DINK category, it was off to Pizza Hut where I promised to buy Thad anything he wanted off the menu- although when he went with the popcorn chicken stuffed crust pizza, I did have to question his taste. )

With the successful deposit of my hard-earned  money into our account I thought we’d have smooth sailing for the foreseeable future.

I should have known better.

Monday morning I was greeted with a long-anticipated email from our consulate customs staff member saying our HHE (Foreign Service speak for “everything that was in my Idaho house which has been in storage for the last sixteen months) had arrived in Chengdu and was ready to be delivered to our apartment.

YES!

For weeks now I’ve been mentally pacing my office, hoping to hear that our stuff is in town. I’m excited for the wall hangings from Idaho to help disguise my cement walls. I’m itching to read the piles of books that I know are in plastic Rubbermaid tubs, just waiting to line up neatly on the shelves of my apartment.  I’m uncharacteristically enthusiastic about the pots and pans and plates and pitchers awaiting homes in my Chinese kitchen. And I’m dying to get my hands on my school supplies to make my office at work not only more colorful, but also more organized and efficient.

With a twinkle of excitement in my eye, I dropped by the cubicle of the staff member in charge of shipment deliveries this afternoon. My excuse for popping in was that I wanted to verify the time of tomorrow’s delivery, but in reality, I just wanted to look at the white board that says “Ross” and “October 14” that hangs in his office, announcing to the world that I will soon have a complete household.

This was a poor choice.

Rather than walking away with the same twinkle in my eye, I walked out of his cubicle holding back a tear. There will be no massive HHE shipment tomorrow. There will be one box.

That’s right. One, single, lonely box.

After a bit of mild panic at Thad’s desk, an almost meltdown in my bosses office (which took every ounce of my power to contain, but as nothing less than a professional, I did my best to hide the tears of frustration with a smile and a whole lot of note-taking) and a few deep breaths behind the closed door of my office,  it was time to get to the bottom of the mystery of my missing HHE. (I really could have used the detective help of Scooby-Doo today. If only that goofy dog and his slightly-stoned partner in mystery-solving were here to follow a green slimy monster through a deserted amusement park, eventually unmasking him as the horrible customs official who was hiding my goods.)

A bit of digging revealed a much more bureaucratic bad-guy: paperwork.

It seems that when Thad scheduled our whole pack-out from the mo-partment, he told them that we also had a lot of items in storage that would need to be shipped to Chengdu at the same time. The operator that he spoke with said that wouldn’t be a problem, so we left it at that. Somewhere between that discussion and the forms though, this extra piece of information was lost in the shuffle and the operator never added the note about our other boxes that were resting in storage.

None of this came to light until today, when I saw the packing slip that was written out for a single box.

After sixteen week in Chengdu, we will now wait another eight (or more…it is hard to be optimistic at this point) weeks to be able to finally settle in and completely make our apartment home.

Tomorrow I will get my giant box of goodies, most of them items I collected on my shopping spree to Costco in the weeks leading up to our departure, and for this I am grateful, as I may need those bulk-sized boxes of chocolate pudding cups and the case of brownie mixes to get me through the frustration of not getting family photos and holiday decorations for another two months.

Here’s to countless more weeks of white walls, pineapple shaped lamps and a set of dishes that rivals those we had when we were first married…

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Not Quite the Rainbow Connection

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During my five months of self-imposed unemployment, I discovered that I don’t do well without a schedule. When I was teaching, I was up by a bit after five in the morning, at school before seven and several nights a week didn’t head home until 5:30. Weekends were something to be looked forward to and treasured.  Sleeping in (which in the world of early birds like myself just means getting up without the squawk of an alarm, even if that is 7:00AM) was a treat to be cherished each and every time it was possible.

Post-cross country move, Thad had a very rigid agenda, while I was free to wander as I pleased.  There were parts of that independence that I loved. Over the summer I was reading a book every day or two (thank goodness for library e-lending!), discovered creative new ways to paint my fingernails and in much less than the seventy-two days it took Kris, discovered that I was just not that in to the Kardashian clan.

As I wiled away my summer days, I began to look for volunteer opportunities in the area.  One evening I took the green line (gasp!) out to Petworth to work with ESL students.  I spent the evening tutoring a Cambodian woman hoping to get her GED.  I enjoyed the time I spent there, but without a car, the commute there and back took as long as I actually spent working with students.  In July I had an opportunity to volunteer at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial opening, which was super, but just a single day project.  With a few other odds and ends chances thrown in throughout the summer, I soon decided that I would like something a little more regular, something with a schedule that I could count on, dates that I could obsessively mark on my calendar.

It was at this point that I was introduced to a program called The Reading Connection.  This is a group founded in 1989 by some teachers who saw the profound effects created by a lack of literary material in the homes of children.  The Reading Connection is a volunteer program that works out of shelters and homes for at-risk students to create literacy-rich environments in which they can grow. As a reading teacher and uber-book lover, this was a great fit for me.

After going through the training process and getting my background check and references in order, it was time to actually begin.  Along with my team of three other members, I go to a local homeless shelter once every four weeks to read with the children.

This has been…well…an experience.  I taught middle school for a decade. I have a pretty good handle on discipline and control when it comes to a group of students.  The gal I go with, Pam, was a middle school teacher (6ht grade, bless her heart!) in Hawaii. She now teaches in the education department at a local university. She is organized and I’m sure was a fabulous teacher. And yet, TRC nights are utter chaos.  The last time we were there, I had to convince a young girl that standing on the table was probably not the best option. Pam had kids hanging on her the moment she walked in the door.  These kids are needy, in many senses of the word.

While it can be frustrating and a long hour attempting to bring books to life for these kids, it is the neediness that creates the need for the program.  These kids need more adults who care. They need more attention. They need more structure.  They need more books.

During the November session, which of course revolved around Thanksgiving.  I hauled in a pile of picture books about turkey feasts and thankfulness and harvesting fields.  For a treat, I put together “turkey baggies” which held all of the fixings for Oreo turkeys. (This is the OCD teacher in me. Rather than just bringing and trying to pass out the various turkey parts at the house, which I knew would be the epitome of bedlam, I pre-packaged the necessary cookies, candy corn, and Whoppers for easy access.)

Volunteering with The Reading Connection has been an eye-opening experience. I am well aware than an hour of reading time each week isn’t going to solve the root problems that create the cycle of poverty in which these kids are being raised.  I do hope that our books and discussions provide a glimmer of what else is available in the world and hopefully even just one child will latch on to that possibility and become something bigger and better than she had previously dreamed!

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