Terrapin Station

Botswana Day!

Did you know that today is Botswana Day? 

This, according to my Returned Peace Corps Volunteers of Wisconsin-Madison calendar.  It's an amazing, colorful, beautiful item that I treasure each year.  "Created, produced, and marketed by volunteers, all proceeds from calendar sales are donated to educational and development projects at home and abroad. " Don't you want one yourself?  Some to give as gifts?  Go to their website and order now for 2010! 

Anyway...Botswana Day. 

Here is a link to information about the history of Botswana and its independence from the UK in 1966.  Here's a link to the Botswana national anthem.  Hum along! 

Why (you may ask) am I all excited about Botswana?

Well, any of you who have read and loved the wonderful No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency books by Alexander McCall Smith (his website is a delight!) are not the ones asking!  These lovely books are a peaceful and gentle look at a proud country where the citizens' concerns are the same as those of us all...love, relationships, fear, jealousy.  Mma Precious Ramotswe runs the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, using cleverness, common sense, and (largely!) her listening skills to solve mysteries that come her way. 

If you have not read them, you are in for a treat.  I have recently gone on a feast of re-reading this series and have a great desire to travel to Botswana!  Here is information from the Botswana Tourism Board.  Their website home page says: 

Welcome to the very best part of Africa. Botswana, a country better known for peace and tranquillity, diamonds and beef, holds a lot of suprises for you.  Come and explore the diverse cultures of its people and nature at its best. If there’s a place where one wishes time could stand still, it is the beautiful country you will be viewing on this Web site.

Recently, an exchange consortium to which we belong has opened a site in Botswana!  So now my students have the opportunity to do an exchange semester or year at the University of Botswana!  Oh, those lucky students!   

Do a little bit of reading about Botswana, and dream with me about a visit to Mma Ramotswe and her compatriots.  And for heaven's sake...if you haven't read these books...get to your local library! 

My Mama Writes

If you haven't already done so, please go read my mama's great blog post about the book The Pain and the Promise .  I found this book at Half-Price Books one day, browsing through the Civil Rights section looking for Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man. 

I SNATCHED it up, because while I never lived in Tallahassee, it and the surrounding area are a big part of me.  My mother grew up there, and we went there every summer.  In addition, my mom's stories of growing up in that idyllic small-town, deep-South milieu were always fascinating to me.  I can't tell you how much time I spent poring over her yearbooks and wishing that I were there, then.  Of course, the truth (I am certain!)  is that those beautiful girls with the pageboys, those handsome young men in their letter sweaters, having the dates in the malt shop, were every bit as insecure and teenagedly miserable as I was 40 years later! 

I read the book, identified many of the names and families, was horrified, and eagerly took it to mom to read, fascinated to know how much if it she would recall.  And the answer was:  almost none.  She had been quite completely protected from it, as the white men running the city intended.  She had an entirely different experience of Tallahassee in the 50's and 60's than described in the book.

Enough from me.  Go read what she has to say.  It's eye opening. 

Poormouth* here

I am home for 2nd day with sinus headache.  It makes me wicked dizzy to move around much but I've propped myself in front of this computer and thought I would check in. 

This is the first day of classes so not a great day to be out...but last time I went to work with this, it wasn't pretty.

I love:  Mucinex DM. 

I read a book yesterday, interesting story but excessively poorly edited.  I hate that.  It makes me dislike the book.  I shan't recommend it. 

I read another one, wonderfully written, funny, excellent tight dialogue, and it's British so I got to hear lovely English inflections and turns of phrase as I went.  And it's about knitting, what a bonus!  It's called The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club.  It's on at Amazon for a bargain price, and it's available for Kindle as well. 

Another interesting but unrelated find:  George Bullard:  http://bullardjournal.posterous.com/ via a FB link from BesoMami.  Good stuff about congregational development and growth. 

Wouldn't you think I'd have something else to say, but my head's not quite right.  (Maybe it never is but we will leave that one alone.)  So I'll stop for now.  Good to read you all. 

*When I was growing up, poormouthing meant complaining.  However, I found this on the web:  "(Poormouth)...comes from a Gaelic expression -"putting on the poor mouth"-which means to exaggerate the direness of one's situation in order to gain time or favour from creditors."

So if I owe you any money you can expect to have it be late...!

Book Review: Cooking and Screaming by Adrienne Kane

No one is ever going to accuse me of being a foodie.  I might be a foodie wannabe, but not badly enough to DO IT.  But I have that wannabe thing going on. 

And I read a book last night that made me wanna be, just a little more. 

Cooking and Screaming: Finding My Own Recipe for Recovery is a memoir by Adrienne Kane, who owns a catering company called Nosheteria (and has a blog of the same name).  Originally from California, she was in her last weeks of college at UC Berkley when she suffered a stroke.  Specifically, an arteriovenous malformation (commonly known as an AVM), which initially left her completely paralyzed on her right side.  This at the age of 21. 

It's a wry, subtle, and funny book about just dealing with what life dishes out, no matter how crappy it is.  When you are feeling down, it's a big help.  And the recipes...oh, the recipes!  Some even seem like ones I could make, and that my meat and potatoes spouse might eat!  Each one begins a chapter and they are neatly tied into the story of life-changing illness and recovery. 

I probably never will try making the Julia Child duckling thing (a version of which is here) but I loved reading about it.  And about her love and respect for good ingredients, lovingly prepared. 

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

Seen in the univ bookstore when I stopped over there yesterday.  (I saw a real paperback book, not the Kindle version...but Amazon seems to be a little sleepish today.)

I did not buy it; I'm not amused by zombies.  But my son, who will be 20 on Saturday, IS.  Do you suppose this book would be any good if you hadn't read P&P?  Which I feel confident that he has not...

It begins thus: 

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.  Never was this truth more plain than during the recent attacks at Netherfield Park, in which a household of eighteen was slaughtered and consumed by a horde of the living dead.

Who do you suppose makes up this stuff?  or, said a nicer way,

O, brave new world, that has such people in't!

Reading

I've been reading, as always; but somehow in the fall I stopped posting my books.  Can't tell you why. 

However, getting back to it I want to share some thoughts on recent and particularly fine reads.  A lot of memoir, lately, and that's not surprising.  I love to read the stories of other people.  I read the obituaries each day, too - and have done it all my life. 

Walking Through Walls:  A Memoir.  If you are in any way interested in energy work, energetic and spiritual healing, etc.: Run, don't walk, to get this book from your library.  It is a fascinating tale of growing up with a father with amazing spiritual gifts.  If you shake your head and think, "oh no, woo-woo stuff," reading these sentences:  don't bother. 

Is it true?  Can it be true?  I believed yes, I believed no, alternately, as I read.  The healings are apparently extremely well documented.  There is a brief video of the author (a well-known artist and former editor of GQ Magazine) on the Amazon site talking about his father and the situation.  It is a bizarre story.  I'd love to hear thoughts from any who read it! 

 Scattershot: My Bipolar Family.  This is an amazing book, about a family of five with four biploar or schizophrenic members (both parents and two of the kids).  I have a particular interest in this topic as you know.  It was hard to read in places, but so far these people are making it, and that is a hopeful thing.

Epilogue:  A Memoir.  Anne Roiphe (I'm sure I've read other things by her but cannot recall what...I'll be exploring that more) writes of her attempts to navigate the world of grief and loss after the sudden death of her husband.  Fascinating musings on the nature of physical possessions, relationships with friends and children, attempts to date, at this stage of life. 

and

Greetings from Bury Park: A Memoir.  It's a bit unevenly written, but this is a really interesting reflection on growing up as a Pakistani immigrant in London, and also about the power and effect that the music of Bruce Springsteen had on this fellow.  As an 80's girl, I can relate to the latter, though not the former!

Book Reports

I've just finished Have You Found Her, a smart, funny, thoughtful memoir about a woman who volunteers in a homeless shelter and gets particularly close to one of the girls.  The relationship takes her to places and ideas she could never have imagined when she began. 

The author, Janice Erlbaum, has a cool blog called Girlbomb and on it there's a video trailer for the book:

Have You Found Her from Milk Products on Vimeo.

I've also just finished a novel: Keep Your Mouth Shut and Wear Beige, which was an entertaining book with more smartly and realistically drawn characters than I usually find in my summer reading. 

Both recommended.

Book Thing

The Big Read, from the NEA, was designed to encourage community reading initiatives. They’ve come up with this list of the top 100 books, using criteria they don’t explain, and they estimate that the average adult has only read 6 of these. So, we are encouraged to:

1) Look at the list and bold those we have read.
2) Italicize those we intend to read.
3) Underline the books we LOVE (I’ve used an asterisk)
4) Reprint this list in our own blogs

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

A quick count shows that I've read about 75 of them.  What else this means, I don't know.  Found at BesoMami

Summer Reading Friday Five

Songbird's Fast Friday Five!  Which she clearly wrote just for me!  :) 

(I recently wrote about my pleasure at participating in my local library's Summer Reading Club...a particularly wonderful memory from my childhood...now they invite adults to play, too!  Woot!)  The challenge is to read at least 20 minutes a day for 30 days (there is no day in which I do not read for at least 20 minutes, unless I am unconscious).  It's self reported, so we turn in tickets verifying that we have done the required reading and get prizes.  My first prize was a paperback book; my second will be a tote bag, and the third is a party at WaterWorks Park.  Oh, we also get entered into a drawing for FABULOUS PRIZES!)

So, says Songbird:  "Back in the day, before I went to seminary, I worked in the Children's Room at the Public Library, and every year we geared up for Summer Reading. Children would come in and record the books read over the summer, and the season included numerous special and celebratory events. As a lifelong book lover and enthusiastic summer reader, I find I still accumulate a pile of books for the summer."

This week, then, a Summer Reading Friday Five.

1) Do you think of summer as a particularly good season for reading? Why or why not?  Yes, and probably because of Summer Reading Club when I was a kid.  When I got too old for the club (waaaah), as a teen, I set myself reading projects:  I'd read all of Steinbeck, or Vonnegut, or Roald Dahl, that my branch library had.  I'm not sure how I got this idea but I loved doing it. 

2) Have you ever fallen asleep reading on the beach?  Certainly.  Then I am a lobster! 

3) Can you recall a favorite childhood book read in the summertime?  There was a book called, How to Eat Fried Worms that was particularly amusing.  Also, in about third grade I took a library book called Who Has Poisoned the Sea? on our annual Florida vacation.  It had a BIG impact on me.  It's out of print, but Amazon has some used copies and a brief description:  A boy from the twenty-fifth century solicits aid from a youth in the present in order to save the waters of the world from a devastating poison.

4) Do you have a favorite genre for light or relaxing reading?  Mysteries, biographies, and children's books (re-reads and new ones).  ReverendMother had a great list at her place the other day that I'm working through.

5) What is the next book on your reading list?  Clued in by the alert St. Casserole, I've received The Kalahari Typing School for Men as an audiobook from my library.  Now I can listen to the story in the accent it was written in!  I've read all the books in the series, and was always frustrated that I didn't know how to pronounce the names...especially the feminine honorific, "Mma."  Now I will know!  

This can only be done, however, when I finish listening to my current audiobook, The Quilter's Homecoming (an Elm Creek Quilts novel by Jennifer Chiaverini).  I love these books for their quilting stories and information, but also the historical fictions of the early nineteenth century US that are stitched into each one.  (yes, pun intended...) 

C'est moi

"For those who consume books as nutrition."

From Unshelved.com.

Big hat tip to Gigi!