JAN - The Secret Life of Bees

January review for Eclectic Reader's Challenge 2015: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, 2002. [Diversity category]

The Secret Life of Bees has been on my bookshelf for some time now. The title had always intrigued me, as had the cover art (two things that I am known to succumb to when making decisions, never mind the old adage), but I'd never quite gotten around to reading it. I read a memoir of Kidd's, Traveling With Pomegranates, in which she described her quest to write this book as well as the way thinking and writing about the Black Madonna had changed her. So when the Diversity category came around, I figured this was as good a time as any to read it. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd details the story of Lily Owens, a fourteen-year-old white girl in South Carolina who breaks her black "stand-in-mother," Rosaleen, out of jail after witnessing some of the most raw prejudice in her short life. The two go on the run, fleeing from Lily's abusive father and the racist town that put Rosaleen in jail and then let the men who attacked her come into her jail cell after hours to try to finish the job. All they have to go on is a cardboard cutout of the Black Madonna that once belonged to Lily's mother, with the words "Tiburon, S.C." scrawled on the back. When they reach Tiburon, Lily catches sight of a honey jar bearing the very same Black Madonna that she carries with her, and inquiries lead her to August Boatwright, owner and beekeeper of Black Madonna Honey, and also the keeper of a number of secrets that could help Lily figure out her past and the mother she barely remembers. Rosaleen and Lily are invited to stay with the Boatwright sisters--there are three, August, June and May--and thus begins each woman's journey to reestablish herself, and heal the scars of her past.

Sometimes it was a little difficult for me to remember that Lily was supposed to be fourteen; her tone was very simplistic, and seemed like someone much younger at times, especially when talking about her mother. She lived in such a black-and-white space when it came to the woman who had died when she was very young, a space that pitted her against her abusive father (who albeit was pretty terrible, but got a little bit of growth in the end) and would not hear anything against her mother. Lily has a vague memory of the day her mother died, of her parents yelling and a gun falling to the ground, her touching it and then a sudden bang. The circumstances of this day are hazy to Lily an she never questions the reasons behind the scene until she has been at the Boatwrights' (also called "the pink house" because of its garish coloring) for a few months. In a lot of ways, this book is about Lily's journey into her own past, her connection with her mother, but I also believe that it is about Lily's journey into herself and her manner of thinking. She is forced to come to terms with a great many ugly truths throughout the course of the novel, from Rosaleen's arrest to Lily's inability to touch the boy that she is falling in love with in public because of the contrasts in their skin tone, from her mother's death to her father's pain and the fact that he was the one who stayed. Lily deals with a lot during her summer in the honey house, the house across the yard from the pink house where the honey is packaged and where she sleeps in a room of her own. This is very much a coming-of-age tale for Lily, from her departure from her hometown and T.Ray and peaches and kneeling on grits to her stubbornness in not leaving Tiburon at the end of the novel. Not only does she find herself, but she also finds a place to be herself, a circle of women who help nurture her and help her grow into the woman she is meant to be.

One of the discussion questions in the back of my copy of Secret Life asks if the reader thinks that there is a "queen bee" in the novel, and if so, who is it? There are a number of options, but I'm not entirely convinced that there is only one answer. August Boatwright is an obvious choice: she is the leader of the sisterhood in Tiburon that worships the Black Madonna, she is the eldest of the sisters, the owner of the honey company and the overseer of the house. The less obvious choice, and one that I believe holds a lot of weight, is that the Black Madonna is the queen bee of the story. It is difficult to put into words what she did for me over the course of my reading, but she surely had an impact, a strength that came through Kidd's words and Lily's descriptions that resonated with me in a way that I was not entirely familiar with. But for Lily, the Black Madonna brings her to Tiburon, introduces her to August, shows her an entire new circle of mothers in the Daughters of Mary. She helps her to find herself, helps each woman in the honey house in her own way. She is unassuming, but at the same time commanding, her outstretched fist a testament to hard work and standing upright. She is most certainly the queen bee of this story. And in her own way, she inspires the women who worship her, the women who tell the story of Our Lady of Chains, to become her own queen bee, to find a little bit of her in every aspect of themselves and the world around them. As August tells Lily, "Our Lady is not some magical being out there somewhere, like a fairy godmother. She's not the statue in the parlor. She's something inside of you. [...] You have to find a mother inside yourself. We all do. Even if we already have a mother, we still have to find this part of ourselves inside." Part of coming-of-age is finding strength inside of yourself, and relying on your self, and I think Sue Monk Kidd does an incredible job of translating that to the page here.

Finally, another part of this book that spoke to me was Lily's discovery of writing. Zach gives her a notebook and encourages her to just write. She starts to set down everything that happens to her, and says, "Words streamed out of me so fast I couldn't keep up with them, and that's all I was thinking about." (p289) My goal for this year is to not let my writing fall by the wayside with everything else I am doing, as it has the past few months. I am aiming to make time for myself consistently for writing, and I'm aiming to get my reviews done on time! (Starting next month, I promise!)

Recap 2014: A Second Year of Eclectic Reading

It's hard to believe I've finished another year of this challenge. That means I've been out of college for two years. This year, 2014, has been stellar for me. In January, I started my new job as a technical writer for an immigration law firm where I still work. In March, I tried and fell in love with roller derby, and I am now an alternate for the B team in our league (hoping to be full B Team member by February!). In August I moved in with my best friend in admittedly the smallest of living spaces and most dubious of neighborhoods so far, but it's still lovely. In November I finally completed NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), writing over 50,000 words in 30 days, a feat that I am still supremely proud of, even though the story is nowhere near over. A few weeks ago (I know, I know, not 2015, but still!) I went snowboarding with my amazing boyfriend and actually started to get good, throwing my body into new things and moves possibly more intensely because of all that I have learned in derby (I am no longer afraid of falling. Except for off ski lifts. Those things are intoxicating and terrifying all at the same time). Needless to say I've felt pretty good all throughout this year. And that goodness has been augmented by the books I've read this year. Obviously I read more than just these twelve books, but these were the ones I picked for this particular endeavor, and if I tried to write about every single book I read, I don't think I'd get anything done or ever leave my desk! So here goes, a wrap-up of 2014 in books. Enjoy!
The Woman in Black by Susan Hill
January - gothic fiction
I kicked off January in much the same way I did last year: with a book that was the source material for a movie I'd already seen. Prior to this, I hadn't really "read" much horror, other than some Stephen King (which I loved, obviously), and I was always intrigued by how I would react to something scary on the page versus on the screen. Turns out there were still parts where I had to turn the lights on and remind myself that I wasn't being haunted in an old ramshackle house by a suicidal mother ghost whose kid had drowned. It was interesting to have to think about, to be able to go back in my mind and in the text to figure things out if I needed to or wanted to. With Woman, I started to reevaluate my attitude toward horror, becoming more comfortable with it as something that I hold dear. I never thought I would say such a thing: my tastes used to be very unilateral, cut-and-dry, I like everything EXCEPT FOR horror, which is really quite prejudiced of me!
American Supernatural Tales edited by S.T. Joshi
February - anthology
In February, I continued this trend. My friend bought me this beautiful tome for secret santa that Christmas, and it seemed fitting, as again, I felt like I hadn't read much horror prior to these books. I fell in love with more writers. I loved the educational portion of it, the history of the genre that was laid out in the curation of the stories, as well as the author biographical sketches introducing each selection. I loved finding threads that connected stories other than the horror/supernatural moniker, I loved finding new voices to listen to and be prodded by.
Traveling With Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor
March - travel
I read this book for a number of reasons. I enjoy this author, I love these places, the cover intrigued me, and I shared it with my mom after. The duality of the story, the mother and daughter each having a turn at describing most of the same events, also drew me in. My mother and my relationship has been changing constantly over the years, and I think we're in a very good place now, but even so this book made me look at our relationship thus far under different terms, under a different lens. Our family recently went to Israel together, and I wish I'd been able to visit some of the places the women described. This book reignited in me that old desire to travel and write and take pictures of the world.
The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling
April - cozy mystery
Of course I was interested in the new J.K. Rowling endeavor when I heard about it; I wanted to see what her writing was like outside of the film of magical boarding school and incredible Latinate vernacular building. I must say, I was not disappointed. I enjoyed the "slice of life" feel of this book. A bunch of mysteries cropped up throughout, but it was more about the people, what they do in response to those mysteries. I really enjoyed all the different perspectives encapsulated here, something that was never really addressed with Harry Potter, the eponymous boy wizard carrying most of the outlook. A study in politics, it was.
Mr. Churchill's Secretary by Susan Elia Macneal
May - war/military fiction
Speaking of politics! I found a way to make war/military fiction really work for me. I feel like so much attention is already paid to the war itself and the death and destruction involved, and it was great to take a different angle. The secretary who wants to be a codebreaker, the girl power of it all, was wonderful. It was also a nice behind-the-scenes, all the precision and composition and PR that it takes to fight a war.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
June - award-winning
I had heard about this one a bunch, I knew the cover design, but when I read about HeLa cells at work, I was sucked in. What really struck a chord in me is the story behind the history, behind the facts. I've always been a big fan of that, I wanted to be a historical fiction or even just history writer for a long time. Skloot beautifully wove hard facts with personal experience and humanizing anecdotes to create a story that I couldn't put down, made all the more visceral by its reality. This book was written in 2010, so there was also an element of "the road so far" in my reading, a desire to continue the search, to see where the writer and the foundation were now. Science isn't really something I read about all too often of my own accord (unless I find some really cool research at work, as is evidenced by the HeLa connection), and this was an interesting way to bring it to the table without putting me off.
The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston with Mario Spezi
July - true crime
I've read (a little) true crime before, but this was the first that was still as-yet unsolved by the end of the book. The part of me that loves puzzles and logic and whodunits thoroughly enjoyed this story, but the cut of reality gave it an edge that I wasn't sure I could handle for long periods of time. Especially with the ages of the victims and the circumstances of the killings. This was another book that changed how I look at/think about endings, because the mystery of the Monster of Florence is still just that, a mystery. The epilogue allows Preston to distance himself from the events of the book, letting his final discussions be colored more by emotion rather than his investigative tendencies.
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde and Girl Reading by Katie Ward
August - alternate history
I couldn't decide between these two books, but I think they worked well in tandem. I absolutely love Jane Eyre, and I adored the use of actual paintings as inspiration for stories. Like I did with the Degas book last year, I was constantly looking up the paintings to see how they made me feel, what they made me think of. I also re-read bits of Jane Eyre just for the occasion. They are very different sort of books: EA of a younger stripe and more fantastical, while GR was more aloof and philosophical. They each imagine in a different way, and I liked the way they portrayed the reader and her relationship to the text. I also appreciated the postmodern/meta idea of me, a girl, reading the book called Girl Reading. I chuckled more than a few times thinking about that one. GR reminded me of an idea I've had for a (short?) story that I could pick up again with a few tips from Katie Ward...
Whip It by Shauna Cross
September - romantic comedy
ROLLER DERBY! Need I really say any more? I guess I will. This was a fun book. It had a lot of the essence of the sport, the heart, although it didn't spend too long on the game itself. I could definitely see myself falling in love with the idea of derby much earlier if I'd read this: there's so much emotion and dedication and empowerment and creativity and hilarity and determination all rolled into this book and this sport, and I cannot imagine what my life would be like if I hadn't found it when I did.
Harvest by Tess Gerritsen
October - medical thriller
I don't think I'd really read anything like this before, and it really helped me get into the "eclectic" part of the challenge. This was one of the most difficult subjects to pick a book for, mostly because medical thriller is awash with series and continuations and I just sort of wanted a standalone thing. Funnily enough, this book fit in again with the thinking about endings, and with the strong investigative ladies that have cropped up in other books I've picked for myself this year. I think I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it.
Yes Please by Amy Poehler
November - Published in 2014
Amy Poehler is one of my favorite ladies. She's hilarious, she's talented, she's forward-thinking, Smart Girls at the Party is one of the coolest things I think that has come around lately, and I'm just generally in awe of her as a human being. The chance to read this book felt like a little sit-down with Amy, and it was refreshing and interesting and funny. She has an absolutely wonderful voice and her stories range from drugs to comedy to growing up to writing, to all sorts of things.
Seconds by Bryan Lee O'Malley
December - graphic novel
Bryan Lee O'Malley wrote another graphic novel! I loved it, and I also loved the Scott Pilgrim reference he worked in on page 135. Seconds had a lot going for it, and it was a relatively easy read, but I still had to sometimes go back a few pages and re-read portions to really get myself into every possible nook and cranny of the story. It is a coming-of-age story for someone who already thinks they've come of age, very appropriate for me at this time in my life.
This wrap-up is coming in late (again) this year because I did not have my act together enough in December to finish my November post (because I didn't have my act together in November, either) and my December post and a 2014 retrospect...I didn't have it in me. Or maybe I did, but there was so much else going on that I couldn't take the time to dig it out. I realized, over the course of writing out these blurbs, that a lot of the books I've chosen this year made me think a lot about endings. Or rather, reevaluate the idea of an ending, as most of the ones that really made me think were the ones that had unresolved endings or just brought us up to speed. I feel like I could wax poetic about how nothing really ends, does it, everything just sort of leads into the next beginning, but I'm not sure I want to be as heavy-handed as all that. Mostly because I don't feel like I'm at an "ending" moment in my life; rather, I feel like I'm just past the honeymoon stage in a lot of things, and I'm ramping up to something new and exciting in almost every aspect. The obsession with endings, with conclusions and "moral of the story"s and everything wrapped up in a tidy bow by the time you reach the back cover, seems to be a very short-sighted and static way of viewing things. I'm trying to be more open, more fluid, and the books that I chose this year seemed to reflect that subconsciously.
Going back and reading my 2013 wrap-up, I'm struck by my last paragraph. I still feel as if this is a bit of a struggle for me, and I think it would help to be reminded of these resolutions periodically, rather than just looking back the same time next year. A lot of new things are going to be happening to me this year, and again I want to be able to give myself space to adapt to them and to rise to them, without allowing myself to shrink away or hide behind established opinions or empty words. I've thought a lot about endings this year, and I think 2015 should be more about beginnings, more about the transition between the two and the fact that sometimes change should just be looked at as change, rather than something beginning while something else is ending. In 2015, I'm going to aim to be more adaptable. To let my defenses down, to have conversations and read books that maybe make me a little bit uncomfortable but will ultimately be good for me. So here is to my third year of reading eclectically!

DEC - Seconds

December review for Eclectic Reader's Challenge 2014: Seconds by Bryan Lee O'Malley, 2014. [Graphic Novel category]

I devoured Scott Pilgrim when the graphic novels came out. I inhaled them. I loved them and read them multiple times, and then fell madly in love with the movie when Edgar Wright released it unto the world in 2010. I've been Ramona Flowers for Halloween multiple years in a row--you don't spend that many hours making a duct tape subspace purse not to use it at every opportunity, amirite?? Needless to say, Brian Lee O'Malley's head has always been a great place for me to be, and I was beyond pumped when I read that his newest (standalone) graphic novel would be coming out this year. Still in the graphic style we all know and love, Seconds is a new kind of story about young adult angst and getting your shit together. There's a quote from Guillermo del Toro on the back of the dust cover of my edition that reads, "In Seconds, Bryan Lee O'Malley plays the angst of youth against the fabric of a larger epic. In doing so, he enriches both." I agree wholeheartedly with this statement. The story is about Katie, a chef currently living above the first restaurant she started while she's waiting for her new restaurant to be finished. It's about a girl who pretty much has things together, but her obsession with these mushrooms that allow you essentially a "do-over" causes her to attempt to change every little thing, each time waking up in a slightly new version of her world. As she attempts to adapt, things get stranger and stranger and the house spirit whose mushrooms they are gets angrier and angrier. Katie doesn't understand why, and she continues on, bull-headedly, making things that she doesn't understand worse.
When writing reviews, I learned that it's always best to talk about the setpieces in movies, which are storylines or thinks that are integral to the storyline, without which the story built around them would fall apart. The setpieces in Seconds are the restaurant(s), the dresser on which Lis first appears to Katie, the mushrooms themselves. Whatever else changes in the storylines, these things always exist. Katie moves through her revisions, as she tries to make her errors right, fixing small things that have larger repercussions, trying to get her life and her restaurants and her relationship *just* right. And it all goes to hell. There is an element of the fabulous in this tale, and its casualness makes it all the more entertaining for it. O'Malley has certainly retained the glory that made Scott Pilgrim into the cult classic it was; his talent hasn't diminished with time. His witticisms (some even breaking the fourth wall), his careful scene construction with multiple panels in a row that may not contain any text whatsoever but simply emotion, his imaginative plot impetus--these are all things that work well for this story and that cement my reaction to it.
And of course, good ol' Brian Lee O'Malley, paying homage to everyone's beloved Scott Pilgrim in my favorite part of the entire book:

It is clearly a favorite joke, executed brilliantly by Michael Cera in the film, and I was more than a little amused to have it snuck into this new endeavor. And somehow, it still works here. In all actuality, I feel like that's sort of what Katie's story is about: taking her old life and trying to make it fit with this new one she's creating or forging. Her speech at the end to the demon-y house spirit rings true for someone unsure how to move forward without making innumerable mistakes, and ultimately the endgame message is that those mistakes are inevitable, innumerable, unavoidable, and meant to be cherished. Lived through and learned from. A message that, while a tad heavy, is something we could all stand to remember from time to time, especially at the junctures in our lives where a choice could send us down one of any number of branches, just like in the story. (Also, if anyone is interested, I really enjoyed reading this review of Seconds, by Douglas Wolk from Comics Alliance.)

NOV - Yes Please

November review for Eclectic Reader's Challenge 2014: Yes Please by Amy Poehler, 2014. [Published in 2014 category]

I've been waiting to read Yes Please by Amy Poehler aaaaaaall year, and I was not disappointed. Yes Please feels very organic, feels very much like Amy is just chatting with you over a glass of wine on your couch, trying not to spill as she makes you laugh and laugh with nonchalant, raw stories from her life. I have long been a fan of Amy Poehler and her writing, and I believe her to be one of the great comedians of our time. She is a strong, able, successful woman who created a strong, able, successful woman TV persona in addition to getting her name in the writing credits of countless shorts and episodes and scripts. She created an amazing vlog endeavor called "Smart Girls At The Party" with Meredith Walker and Amy Miles that has set up a precedent for empowering media material for young women, answering questions and just generally being a killer role model. The inside flap describes her "hilarious and candid book" as a "collection of stories, thoughts, ideas, lists, and haikus from the mind of one of our most beloved entertainers," and I think that is a more than apt description. Yes Please could easily be called either a memoir or a collection of essays, and Poehler brings elements of both into her finished work. Printed on glossy paper to highlight all the pictures and mementos included, Yes Please is a heavy book, but the heaviness does not extend to her prose style or her overall tone. Poehler is easy with her storytelling, describing a past that sometimes makes you double-take and skirting certain, more private issues with panache.

There is certainly a degree of "bandwagon fever," (as tinges anything in a successful genre these days,) coming quickly on the heels of books like Bossypants by Tina Fey, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me by Mindy Kaling, Girl Walks Into A Bar by Rachel Dratch, Not That Kind of Girl by Lena Dunham, and others, but Poehler definitely has her own way of doing things. Her voice is definitively different from these other hilarious ladies, and she admits to having read a number of the aforementioned texts during her writing process for this book. She includes pictures and lists from her childhood, sections written by her parents, a chapter penned by good friend and fellow writer-actor Seth Myers, and many other deviations from the standard memoir format. To be fair, Poehler herself is a deviation from the standard format, and it only makes sense that her own book about her life would follow her lead.

I think it would be extraordinarily difficult to pinpoint one singular part of this book that I liked more than the rest, but there were a number of sections that were more interesting to me. I particularly enjoyed Poehler's descriptions of how she got into comedy and improv, on both the Chicago scene and the New York one. Her chapters devoted to SNL and Parks and Rec were thrilling, and more than ever do I want to be able to write like this woman does and do things like this woman does. There were definitely a few lines that spoke to me more than others did, like this following little passage:

"Everyone lies about writing [...] No one tells the truth about writing a book. Authors pretend their stories were always shiny and perfect and just waiting to be written. The truth is, writing is this: hard and boring and occasionally great but usually not." (p.x)

This. This is beautiful. Poehler constantly keeps it real without making a big deal about it. She is honest and humble and unassuming and she talks about hard work as an expected and welcomed part of life. I was reading this book in November, which much of the writing world knows as NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, where one attempts to put down 50,000+ words in 30 days or less. This was the first year I'd actually completed it, or "won," and it felt sublime. However, my other writing (read: this blog) seems to have fallen by the wayside over the year and as almost a hangover from NaNo and all the technical writing I do at work all day. My boyfriend pointed this out to me recently, and it sort of took me aback: I hadn't quite realized how much my own personal writing had taken a backseat until I looked at the summary of this year vs. last year's blog, and I've only written about half the posts I did last year. I guess what I'm trying to say is, Amy gets it. Writing is hard. I've let myself get away with far too much the past year and this book reminded me that I needed to get back.

Eclectic Reader Challenge 2015

Second Year of Eclectic Reader Challenge!

Categories

1. Retellings (of fairytale, legends or myth)
2.  A book set in a country starting with the letter S (eg. Sweden, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Slovakia)
3.  PI Crime (fiction featuring a private investigator)
4.  A novel published before you were born
5. Contemporary romance
6. Fiction for foodies (fiction featuring food/food related business)
7. Microhistory (Non Fiction)
8. Science Fiction set in space
9. Sports (Fiction or Non fiction)
10. Featuring diversity
11. Epistolary Fiction (fiction written in the format of letters/emails/diary entries)
12. Middle Grade/YA Adventure