Another friend of mine: The Little Prince August 21, 2007

Of all the little boys in children’s books, the Little Prince is the greatest heartbreaker, but his tale leaves you happy-sad. Patiently, he travels from planet to planet learning grown-up ways, and just as patiently, he turns them on their head.

The characters he meets in outer space are the shards of human weakness that make up our delusions — the conceited man who wants to be admired, the tippler who drinks to forget that he drinks, the businessman who thinks he owns the stars, the lamplighter who must light and extinguish his lamp every minute because his planet revolves so quickly.

Unfazed by extreme personalities, the Little Prince soldiers on until he reaches the earth. Here he befriends a fox and a man he finds lost in the desert. In typical Little Prince logic, the gifts they give each other cannot be seen or touched — only felt. The Prince teaches the man to trust, leading him to a well in the heart of the Sahara. The fox teaches the Prince about attachment, begging the little boy to tame him.

No sooner do we get to know the Prince (and like anyone worthwhile, he’s hard to get to know) than he has to leave. Before splitting the scene, the Prince asks us to believe that he is not dead but merely traveling back through space.

The joy of this book lies in the fact that it covers heavy ground (love, death, yearning) without being earnest or maudlin. Like a good friend, it makes you an accomplice in a secret language and forces you to be understanding toward peculiar ways. After The Little Prince, you’ll want to draw everything (no matter how clumsily) and question everything.

And you’ll never see the stars the same way again.

A book for precocious grownups August 19, 2007

Happiness is more than the absence of pain*;  it is a radical shift from one state into another. It’s a move from darkness into light. It’s a smell like lavender or a freshly baked pie. It’s the feel of a new dress or the wag of Rileydog’s tail… anything that jolts introspection and forces you up and out.

When I want to feel happy I try to change my context — move into a ray of sunlight, thrust through the air on a swing until my toes reach clouds, read a book in a bubble bath, saucily swing dance with Sneakered Prince, or go to the lake and think of a place I’d rather be.

If all else fails, I reach for a stack of children’s books and let them take me to that realm of lighter spirits. A good picture book makes you laugh and think and smile. They give you good impulses: to chase invisible dragons, laugh at your own bad jokes, paint autumn leaves pretty pink, wear cowboy boots and flamingo lipstick to the supermarket, or treat a pebble beach like a jewelry store and select faux diamonds and pearls for your moonstone tiara.

Sometimes being true to yourself means looking a little eccentric to the outside world. To do this you need a very supportive crcle of imaginary friends. Eloise is one of mine.

Everyone talks about finding your inner child, but what a new-age hocus-pocus image that summons up. Better to excavate the naughtier incarnation of the inner brat. Eloise is the best brat of all because she has tangled hair, a potbelly, and a bad-girl attitude that makes a mockery of adult ways and leads us back to the sandbox where snobby airs are shed and the most important of all Very Important People is a pet turtle.

Eloise is dead sophisticated. She raises pigeons in the bathroom in the bathroom of her suite at the Plaza Hotel, wears a necklae made of champagne corks, orders one raisin and seven spoons from room service, gets her sneakers cleaned and pressed, and reads the Herald Tribune.

Despite the fact that Eloise dines at Maxim’s and has had a dress designed for her by Christian Dior (sans tassels), she’s no snob. She knows how to make a pair of skis out of two loaves of French bread and order up a whiskey for her nanny. The best thing about Eloise is that she is an uptown girl with bad hair. Her witticims sum up a life of casual swagger and a flagrant disregard for the ordinary:

ELOISEISMS
“You have to eat oatmeal or you’ll dry up. Anybody knows that.”
“Getting bored is not allowed.”
“Paper cups are very good for talking to Mars.”
“I always travel incognito.”

Come back tomorrow and I’ll tell you about another friend of mine, The Little Prince.

*Plato

Dedication by McLaughlin and Kraus August 19, 2007

I must be a glutton for punishment – or just have a really terrible memory. 

I decided to read Dedication because the premise sounded fun (girl falls for and is betrayed by now famous rock star.  wants to make him “regret his entire existence.”) and because I recognized the authors – they also wrote Nanny Diaries and Citizen Girl.

Problem is, I really didn’t enjoy Nanny Diaries or Citizen Girl!  Dedication was a fluffy piece that I whizzed through over the last couple days.  Booklist, on Amazon.com, writes that McLaughlin & Kraus detour from the predictable to a suprise.  In my opinion, it was the “surprise” ending that was the predictable cliche.

So anyways, I’ll probably be in the minority of this book’s target audience with my opinion – most people also raved about Nanny Diaries.  It’s not a bad book (quick read, fun 80s details, interesting writing style of switching from past to present in each chapter), it’s just that I know most of my friends don’t read that often – so if you’re only going to read one book this month (or this quarter), I wouldn’t recommend that this be it.

The gift that keeps on giving August 19, 2007

Last Christmas, Ryan & I decided we needed to be “creative” (read frugal) in our gift giving.  I’ve got to tell you – I can’t even recall what I came up with for him, but Ryan’s gift to me was (break: I’ve been sitting here for the last five minutes trying to find the right words to describe how the gift was so…) perfect.

Ryan got me a library card.

 Simple right?  Except that on a personal note, this was, as Meg Ryan said in ‘You’ve Got Mail,’ “Mr. 152 insights into my soul!”  Ryan knows how much I love to read and that I don’t read near as much as I’d like because we can’t afford every  book I want.  Plus, he knows that I can be a little lazy… so in addition to the card, the gift came with a promise that he would do all the picking up and returning for me!  My only responsibility (besides choosing the books) would be to make sure I keep track of when they’re due so we don’t get late fees.

So for the last eight months, you could usually find my nightstand piled with four, six, or even eight books at a time.  I’ve read more wonderful books than I can count – or sometimes remember.  And that’s the problem!  I’m reading so quickly that I want to make sure I take the time to think about what I’m reading and remember the details.  That way, not only do I retain the stories and lessons – but I also have more to pass on to YOU!

 So next time you feel like picking up a good book and would like a suggestion from a friend, drop by and take a look at what I’ve been reading.  And please – if you have any recommendations, pass those on, too!

Books I’ve read (2007) August 19, 2007

I’ll keep this post updated with titles as I finish each book this year.  Assume if there’s no comments that it was pretty decent – if it’s amazing or horrible, I’ll note that!

Lottery by Patricia Wood

The Other Mother by Gwendolen Gross 

The Sleeping Beauty Proposal by Sarah Strohmeyer

The Agony & The Ecstasy by Irving Stone 

Mad Dash by Patricia Gaffney

Dedication by McLaughlin & Kraus

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Harry Potter & the Deathly Hollows by J.K. Rowling 

Gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson

Beyond the Blonde by Kathleen Flynn-Hui

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

The Collectors by David Baldacci 

Skylight Confessions by Alice Hoffman

Ricochet by Sandra Brown

Wicked by Gregory Maguire

The Red Tent byAnita Diamant (goes into my top 5 booklist)

Queen of Babble by Meg Cabot

A Good Year by Peter Mayle

Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven by Fannie Flagg

Suite Fraincaise by Irene Nemirovsky

Bad Blood by Linda Fairstein

I Like Being Catholic edited by Michael Leach and Therese J. Borchard

Autobiography of a fat bride : true tales of a pretend adulthood by Laurie Notaro

The enemy : a Jack Reacher novel by Lee Child

The Ruins by Scott Smith (I really can’t let you read this one! Not a favorite.)

Body Surfing by Anita Shreve

Little Children by Tom Perrotta

Cesar’s way : the natural, everyday guide to understanding and
     correcting common dog problems by Cesar Millan (Sorry, Riley still barks & jumps – but I think that’s more Ry & my fault than Cesar or Riley!)

Forever in blue : the fourth summer of the Sisterhood by Ann Brashares

Simple Genius by David Baldacci

The Good Guy by Dean Koontz

Bad luck and trouble : a Jack Reacher novel by Lee Child (this was my favorite Jack Reacher tale)

The Quickie by James Patterson (the fact that I read this further proves the glutton for punishment theory)

Persuader : a Jack Reacher novel by Lee Child

Case Histories: a Novel by Kate Atkinson

Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos 

Natural Born Charmer by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver (I just finished this – will do a post about it this week)