The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

The narrator of Alice Sebold’s first novel, The Lovely Bones, is dead.

Meet Susie. Susie Salmon was 14 when she was brutally raped and murdered in a cornfield near her home. Now, as her family recovers and learns to live again, she watches them from her gazebo in her heaven and begins to come to terms with her own death. Despite the brutal beginning to Susie’s death, her story becomes one of celebrating life.

By the end, there were a number of things I didn’t enjoy about this book, but overall, I found it more refreshing than that simple (and potentially gruesome) summary may sound. The Lovely Bones focuses on a brutal subject (assault and murder and the aftermath) and yet, from the beginning, the tone was calm.

Because the narrator was the one who was dead, we already knew she was “okay.” In some respects, it took the entire book for Susie and for the rest of her family to come to that understanding: it is okay to celebrate the dead, and it is okay to move on and keep living and loving.

Continue reading »

The Door by Margaret Atwood

I always love to pick up a slim volume of poetry, a volume that contains poems all by the same author, because it helps me to pick up on themes, it helps me get to know an author, and it lets me really feel the emotions the author celebrates.

Margaret Atwood’s The Door was published in 2007, and as such is a reflection on life from a position of maturity. Atwood was born in 1939, and the poems reflect her growing realization that she is aging. Some of the poems are sad. Some seem almost bitter. The volume I got from the library also had an audio disc of Atwood reading half of the poems – a touch that gave these poems a personality beyond the mere(!) words.

One has to be careful not to interpret poetry as autobiographical, for often it is not. But even if these poems are fiction, they are so real, I felt they were real. I felt Atwood was telling me something about her life: she was telling me what it is like to be almost 70 years old, reflecting on the world, a life, and a career.

Can you tell I enjoyed reading this volume of poetry? After I read it all, I listened to the audio. And then I reread some of the poems, hearing her voice. Atwood’s poetry is more emotional and I’d suggest slightly more complex than Billy Collins’ poetry (reviewed here). But I still think it’s highly accessible to one unfamiliar with poetry. Continue reading »

A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg

I have an unfair bias against memoirs. This may stem from the fact that many memoirs are written by people who are complete strangers, and I find myself wondering why their life should be of interest to me. With this book, at least, that unfair stereotype was certainly proved wrong!

Molly Wizenberg’s A Homemade Life is a great example why someone else’s life may be incredibly interesting, simply because Molly’s life has been defined by food. And as she explains each chapter of her life for us, she provides recipes so we can experience the integral food too, if we choose.

It’s so much fun to see a life through the eyes of delicious foods. Molly shows that food is a communal part of our lives, helping to form lasting memories and lasting relationships. Food really can tell the stories of our lives, as Molly’s memoir/cookbook attests.

As she writes of her childhood, for example, she shares her dad’s excellent French toast. As she writes of her first trip to Paris, she writes of the bread and chocolate that defined her days.  As she writes of the holidays, she shares favorite holiday treats. And then, of course, there are her Paris recipes, and her best friends’ recipes, and her vegetarian boyfriend’s salad recipes. And Molly could just keep going, I’m sure.

But A Homemade Life is not just about the food. Molly’s memoir is excellently written, easily readable, and absolutely delightful. I know “delightful” is a cliché, but this book seriously fits the word without being cliché. It is real, and yet amusing and engaging all at the same time. Continue reading »

Wit by Margaret Edson

The Summer Lovin’ Challenge is all about rereading favorites, so can you blame me for squeezing in a short reread this week? After I made my list, I couldn’t resist. I love rereading my favorite books!

Wit by Margaret Edson is a quick read (I think I read it in about an hour over the course of a day), but is poignant because of its emotional subject matter. Despite its brevity, it is packed full of various implications. I’m sure I miss most of the subtle meanings when I read it, so I enjoy rereading it. I get more out of it each time. Continue reading »

Death in Children’s Literature: Love You Forever by Robert Munsch

In the picture book Love You Forever, Robert Munsch captures every mother’s feelings of unconditional love. I can’t read it without my eyes tearing, and I love the tender expressions of love. But I wonder if children like it. Continue reading »

Death and War in Children’s Literature: Two Newberys about the Revolution

There was no doubt that John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (reviewed here) was written to teach both children and adults lesson about Christianity and life; there was little attempt to veil the message behind the story.

While the message in modern children’s literature may not be so thinly veiled, to me it seems obvious that authors still impart their subtle messages into a text that is otherwise a story. This is all the more obvious in stories for children.

Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes (a Newbery Award winner) and My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier (a Newbery Honor book) both tell the story of a 12- to 16-year-old boy during the American Revolution of the 1770s. Both books were written by both accomplished children’s authors and historians; both are accurate portrayals of war. And yet, each story has a distinct message about war. What that message is should be obvious to adults when they realize that Johnny Tremain was written in the 1940s and My Brother Sam was written in the 1970s.

Note: While the following review and analysis may provide “spoilers,” these “spoilers” seem pretty obvious given the subject matter of the books: The American Revolutionary War. Therefore, I don’t believe they would actually “spoil” the book for an interested adult reader. Continue reading »

Divine Songs by Isaac Watts (Poetry Friday)

In the history of western children’s literature, after Pilgrim’s Progress came Isaac Watt’s elegies for children, Divine Songs. But while Pilgrim’s Progress was actually intended for adults and children learned from it, Divine Songs was intended to be for children. And while Pilgrim’s Progress actually does have some relevance for Christians today (even given how bored I felt while reading it), Divine Songs are even more painfully instructive than Pilgrim’s Progress was. In fact, I don’t want my son to ever read these as a child. Continue reading »

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

Randy Pausch was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at age 46, when his youngest daughter was just 3 months old. As a well-known computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, he was a world leader in virtual reality training. But the focus of his last lecture to the university is not about programming a computer: It’s about how to live life. In Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture, Randy tells his three young children what it means to be happy, despite the odds, and what it means to truly live. His words, given with his own death date in mind, may inspire everyone. Continue reading »

Stiff by Mary Roach: A Change Your Life (or Rather, Death) Book

One Saturday, my husband laughed out loud while listening to something on his headphones.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

” ‘Maggots’ is an ugly word; she’s using ‘haciendas’ instead!”

My husband doesn’t normally laugh out loud while listening to audiobooks. This was new. After a bit more coaxing, I found that he was listening to Stiff by Mary Roach, which I had wanted to read, until he started talking about maggots.

“It’s about cadavers,” he said.

I was disgusted. I couldn’t read that!

Later, I entered the kitchen, where he was listening without headphones. (Yes, in the kitchen.) The narrator now discussed shooting cadavers with bullets.

“That’s disgusting!” I said, reaching for my lunch. “I won’t be giving my body to science!”

“Well, you better believe I will be!” he responded.

This shocked me. I stammered out an objection, and he reiterated his wishes. And yet, despite my disgust, I couldn’t put in words why I would want to see him dead in the casket. (We’ve been married for only two years, and maybe just the thought of him dead was most disturbing.)

He told me I couldn’t say no to medical research, organ donation, or human dissection until I knew what would happened, be it decay, cremation, or the other things.

Enter Stiff:The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. Yes, I gave in: I listened to it too. It stops being nauseating fairly quickly; you get used to it. And after listening to this (wonderfully narrated by Shelly Frasier) audiobook, I’ve been converted:

Please, don’t bury me! There are too many other, cooler things that could happen to my body after I die! Continue reading »