Friends of Greenville Library Book Sale!

I love book sales. If I drove more, I'd want this little gem:

As it is, I'll just settle for hitting every single book sale I hear about with my mother-in-law and scouring garage sales for these pieces of paper magic.  Because books aren't just reading to me.  The best description I can find about how I read is found in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling in the chapter entitled "The Very Secret Diary."  It goes like this:

The pages of the diary began to blow as though caught in a high wind, stopping halfway through the month of June.  Mouth hanging open, Harry saw that the little square for June thirteenth seemed to have turned into a miniscule television screen.  His hands trembling slightly, he raised the book to press his eye against the little window, and before he knew what was happening, he was tilting forward; the window was widening, he felt his body leave his bed, and he was pitched headfirst through the opening in the page, into a whirl of color and shadow.

Alright, it doesn't really happen that way, but it might as well.  That is exactly how it feels to me to read a good book.  I feel like I am a part of it as it becomes a part of me.  And so, I am absolutely thrilled when a good book sale comes my way!

Today Beth and I had the privilege of attending the semiannual Friends of the Greenville County Library System book sale half-price day.  I walked away, not with Seventh Son by Orson Scott Card, as I had hoped, but with 18 books, three movies, and the first season of House nonetheless, all for a whopping $14.something.  I think that's a sufficiently good bargain, don't you?  And now, for the sheer relish of it, as I'm sure you're not quite as excited as I am, I shall list my finds.

The Hitchhiker's Quartet by Douglas Adams
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling (I own all of the books already, but in various cover versions and I'd like to have a complete hardback set)
Mrs. Queen Takes the Train by William Kuhn
The Dive From Clausen's Pier by Ann Packer
Outside the Ordinary World by Dori Ostermiller
The Ginger Tree by Oswald Wynd
The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Pippi in the South Seas by Astrid Lindgren
Pippi Goes on Board by Astrid Lindgren
Brave New World Revisted by Aldous Huxley
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
Animal Farm by George Orwell
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Green Mile by Stephen King (I don't have a copy a of the book, but I love it.  I do have the movie).
Carrie by Stephen King (Please let me know if this too scary for me.  I recently read an article about how King's wife rescued this story from the trash when he threw it out and asked him to finish the story, and how this one book changed his life and transformed him into one of the best known authors of our time).

The three movies I bought are Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Bruce Almighty, and Slumdog Millionaire, the last of which I've never seen. 

I've only just realized that I've only read two of the books: Harry Potter and The Green Mile.  Several of these are required reading in many high schools, but we never covered them in mine.  Now's the time!

 I'd write more, but I'm too excited to brand and find homes for my new books amongst my shelves!  Have I ever mentioned that my mama got me this amazing personalized library embosser for my birthday?  Being named Loralee, I never had those pencils or a keychain with my name on them come back-to-school time, but this totally makes up for it!  I mean, that and the fact that I love my name and didn't have to be known by my first and  last names all through school.

Yayayay!

Perfection is Misleading

I read The Stepford Wives in about one and a half sittings.  It's short.  I didn't mean to do it; it just kind of happened.

I am ashamed to say that I took no notes.  I was too absorbed from the get-go to grab my post-its and pen.  And really, it seemed that what you see (or don't see), that what you sense, is what you get in this case.

I watched the 2004 film several years ago, surprisingly.  I am not one to read or watch anything remotely creepy because I tend to have fearsomely vivid nightmares.  However, I'd hate to label this story as horror.  How would you classify it?  Anyway, I saw the 2004 film starring Nicole Kidman as Joanna and Bette Midler as Bobbie.  And you know what?  I don't remember it.  Sure, I remembered the premise of the story, with the new town and the creepily idyllic housewives and the men running the show.  But did I remember that from the film or from the fact that "Stepford" and "Stepford Wife" have become pop culture terms for towns of conformational, picturesque beauty and uncommonly beautiful wives who whole-heartedly submit to their husbands and spend their time scrubbing the floors wearing high heels and bland smiles?  I can't say for sure.  But after reading a book, I sometimes enjoy watching the movie(s) and verbally tearing them to shreds or nodding along to some of the director's better in-tuned decisions.  This time I remembered that I didn't wish to watch anything scary, especially when my husband was away, and so I Googled it first.

It sounds absolutely off the wall and hardly anything like the book.  Characters were added, characters were subtracted or changed, and I do not know who, but someone is played by Faith Hill.  Probably not worth a second watch.  Rotten Tomatoes says: "In exchanging the chilling satire of the original into mindless camp, this remake has itself become Stepford-ized."  It received a score of 26% on the Tomatometer.

I haven't seen the 1975 film.  It sounds like it follows the story better.

SPOILER: SPOILER: SPOILER::::: DO NOT CONTINUE READING IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE BOOK AND PLAN TO!

As I've stated, I didn't take notes as I went.  But I also knew (at least vaguely) what was going to happen as far as the wives in the town not being human.  The shock of the book wasn't a shock to me.  I kind of hope that it was for you because Bobbie's suspicion of some kind of chemical or something being the source of the changes in the women was a good little red herring consideration. 

I appreciated Levin's way of normalizing Joanna.  I mean, she was normal from the beginning, explaining her family's jobs, likes, and dislikes to the welcome wagon lady.  She had normal woman problems, like her relative (was it her mother or her husband's mother) who made the comment that she could take a leaf out of one of Stepford's wives' book and get all fancied up and clean.  She did normal things, like care for her sick kids or write Christmas cards.  It was quite an artful contrast to the single minded ladies else ware in the town. 

And really, the four month timetable worked very well when Joanna finally got it.  Between her family's move to Stepford September 4th and her catching on to the four months it took for women to change, she had a very short window of time to get out of Stepford.  What a nightmare.  Here's how I picture the wives of Stepford (just in the first part of the clip, but I couldn't find a shortened version with just the commercializing):

Bunch of fakes.  But they can't really help it.  Why?

Isn't it chilling to think about a society in which men would betray, murder, and completely redo their wives for their own pleasures?  Design a woman with bigger boobs, a perkier butt, no cellulite, thick, soft hair, and feet that don't feel the pain of the leg toning stiletto heel.  She probably smells like cookies and sunshine. Design a woman with nothing to think about, nothing to distract her from her household duties of cleaning, childcare, and sex.  Design your dream woman and kill off your wife to be with her.  And, yeah.  She's a robot.  Who cares?

That's pretty freaky.  Author Ira Levin painted men to be pretty villainous, right?  Brilliantly wicked.  They even talked Joanna down when they found her attempting to escape.  "You must think we're a town full of geniuses... Believe me, we're not," they said.  And one of the biggest slaps of all to her intelligence was that once they led her to assume that she was nuts, they decided to "prove" to her that the women of the town were real flesh and blood women by taking her to see her best friend Bobbie and asking her to cut herself so Joanna could see the blood, only to have robo-Bobbie finish her off with her enormous knife.  FREAKY!

All right, maybe it is horror, but it's the kind of horror that is more, "Who can I trust?" than anything else.  It did not give me nightmares or leave me tense and sweating under my blankets begging for some rest.  Maybe it would have been different if I had not already at least kind of known what was coming.  Truthfully, the most intense part for me was not the realization, as she dug through the old newspaper articles for clarity, of the conspiracy.  It was the desperate flee she made in the snow.  It was thinking about the safety of her children (though it does not seem that the men harm the children, at least not in any way except to murder their mommies and replace them with over-the-top-perfect machine clones).  It was rooting for the hero who didn't make it. 

She didn't make it.  And that is creepy enough.  That means that this cycle of terror continues and continues and that the men's association's secret stays safe.  They get away with everything.  They're swine.  They're disgusting.

Tell me your thoughts on this book.  I have read lots of other reviews in which the writer said that she was sufficiently freaked out.  Had you seen the movies or known the big surprise before going in?  Did it make you look at your spouse (or yourself) in a new way? 

I'll tell you which dilemma it set for me.  I needed to do some household deep cleaning that day.  After my read-through of this little book, I felt torn between dressing up, putting on my frilly apron my mama made me two Christmases ago, and dusting, mopping, and folding endless laundry or locking myself in my room in flannel pajamas, eating mounds of chocolate, and avoiding housework like the plague.  I'd let you all guess which one I did, but you'd probably guess wrong!  :)

Did you know that Facebook lets you rate books you've read now?  They only give you 5 stars, though.  I like to do 10 because I may like the writing very well but not enjoy the story and then it seems kind of unfair to give the book a 2 or 3, you know?  So, I'll say that this book is about a 7 1/2 or 8 (just like my shoe size) in that I was instantly absorbed, I read until it stopped, and the writing was simple, but well done.  However, it is not a book that I picture myself reading over and over again.  What kind of rating would you do?

I had every intention of posting a picture of a friend of mine dressed as a Stepford Wife for Halloween several years ago, but I can't seem to find the picture I wanted.  And I don't know if she'd like me posting old photos on my blog anyway.  But hey!  Halloween is coming up and a Stepford Wife is a GREAT costume idea!

(Maybe wear a bit more clothing, though!) ;)

Don't forget that our upcoming read is going to be The Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst.  I'm pretty sure I don't have any followers in the UK just yet, but just in case I do unbeknownst to me, it was published as Lorelei's Secret across the pond.  And no, we're not reading it just because a character (who is a dog) has a name similar to mine, but isn't that a nice touch? 

Small Acts of Liberation

Alright, folks.  I did it.  I finally finished The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted by Elizabeth Berg.  Now, in case I have yet to pound it into your heads enough that short stories just aren't my cup of tea, I'll say it again.  I'm more of a novel girl.  This just didn't really do it for me.  That being said, my notes are pretty brief!  Yay!  I have about one note per story, sometimes a bit more if I paused over something that struck my fancy.  So, shall we?

The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted:  Eating whatever I want is luxurious as it is disappointing.  I'd have chosen my food very differently and not cooked an ounce of it myself.  Aren't you among the many who believe that it always tastes better when someone else makes it?  I am.  I have never tried Weight Watchers, but I've been thinking about it lately.  I have always been a skinnyish person but my metabolism is starting to slack off in my late twenties. 

Returns and Exchanges:  Many of us have (will always have) that someone we still wonder about and yes, it would probably be just as disappointing as Agnes's meet-up with her old flame.  But really, Agnes is not that common of a name.  Even if Jon did not recognize her physically right away, don't you think the name Agnes would trigger the ol' memory box and give him a new lens to see the woman before him?  I hate when literature acts like I'm the idiot.

The Party:  I have no notes.  It must not have sparked anything in my mind.  If it did for you, please feel free to share.

Over the Hill and into the Woods:  Motherhood is more thankless than it is regarded with gratitude.  I need to thank my mother, mother-in-law, grandma, grandma-in-law, etc. more in ways that they can feel appreciated and loved.  I also found Berg's picture of family interesting in that we can be linked by blood but so different from one another.  And in this way, we desperately need our space from one another.  (I also desperately need closeness).

Full Count:  Poor Janey.  I don't think we ever fully recover from that first shock when we realize that we aren't particularly gifted, special, beautiful, smart, or funny, but that it is only our loved ones' gentler perceptions of us that lead us to believe we are so.  Learning that we are not the favorite grandchild or student, but, "simply loved.  It is good, but she had thought it was more." was probably the deepest striking chord for me in this whole book.  Ah, yes, I know that I am loved, but I remember that very moment in my life when I realized I am more special to some people than to others and not special at all to some. 

Rain:  Possibly the best story in the lot of them; at least the one I think I remember the most.  It may be because the character most talked about is a man and this is a very female book.  Michael is refreshingly down to earth; just slightly over the brim of believable.  I loved his lifestyle out in the cabin he built and the simple pleasures of blueberry pies left by friendly neighbors and contra dancing (I absolutely adore contra dancing.  It is the only dancing that I thoroughly enjoy in spite of my two left feet and no rhythm to my name).  This story, too, talks about the person who might have been (the female narrator), had she chosen a different path and gone with her friend years ago.  I think about such things.  I think of how differently my life would have turned out if I had: stayed in high school rather than the career center; gone to Florida for an internship I was offered after college; stayed in Chorale my senior year; gone to a different college altogether; stayed in the mission field in England long term; stopped going to church when the church hurt me personally; etc.  So many choices (these were all big choices I made, like the narrator's choice not to go), so many different possibilities I have forsaken.  And yet, I am very happy in the life I have now.  I think accepting where we are is the best approach, don't you?  Woah, that was all just free thought.  I didn't even get to my notes.  So, a fantastically, painfully true line in this story was, "But our visits fell off: the distance, the necessity of living our own lives, the way one becomes used to anything, even a good friend dying."  Ouch.  It hurts to acknowledge that we can move on.  It digs to remember to grieve, but we eventually get to the point where we look back and see we've gotten used to it.  And then it tends to hurt again.  My other note states:  "Could-Have-Been - That person is very real to me.  One (one!) different decision and my life could have turned out completely different."  "Favorite story so far."  "Opposite sex friendship."  Ah, that's very special.  You don't get a lot of purely platonic opposite sex friendships anymore.  Really, not even in this story, though I sort of think their more-than-friends feelings were only occasional.  I have had a few platonic friendships with men in my college days, some of which still exist.  And an enormous blessing and view into the male psyche they are, along with just every good thing true friendship provides: laughter, good conversation, support, etc.  The narrator (did anyone catch her name, or is it given at any point?) holds closely to what she has while still having the imagination capacity to dream of what could have been.  I admire it.

The Day I Ate Nothing I Even Remotely Wanted:  Well, that was depressing in a new and different way, wasn't it?  Kyle and I sometimes decide to do a "super cheap" grocery list.  When we do, he recommends that we have cereal for dinner one night.  I always shoot this suggestion down.  I may have a food problem, but knowing that I will have a (usually) hot and (hopefully) delicious meal for dinner when I get home sometimes is all that gets me through the day at work.  Even when it isn't, I get pretty excited for lunch and for dinner.  This is especially true when there is something simmering in wait in the crockpot (like this delicious potato corn chowder, to which I have altered the recipe only slightly).  And this is why I am having such a slump when it comes to my lowering metabolism.  I've sort of grown up going against the dieters' thinking of food as fuel "rather than, oh, a reason to get up in the morning." 

Mrs. Ethel Menafee and Mrs. Birdie Stoltz:  I'd like to first point out that I become aggravated with "hospital" stories.  I'm afraid that most people are woefully ignorant about hospitals.  More goes on there than nurses doing things that frustrate you, long waits for doctors, and codes over the loudspeaker meaning someone has died.  It drove me nuts when the woman thought she might be sharing the elevator with a dead body and imagined the morgue full of people covered in body bags.  I do not claim to know everything about hospitals, but in my years working in Medical Records and ER Registration (what!?  I worked in the hospital and wasn't a nurse?!), I sometimes (much less often than you'd imagine) had to release bodies from the morgue.  They were not in body bags.  They were covered up in white sheets.  So Ethel's hope to be "wrapped up in a sheet with a decent thread count" did not have the gently dark humor to it that I'm sure the author intended.  And Code Orange did not mean "another soul going to heaven" in the hospital where I worked.  It meant a hazardous spill.  Not every thing in the hospital is life and death.  You would not even believe the number of non-emergencies I saw in the emergency room.  Toothaches, stubbed toes, minor bloody noses, colds, people who started throwing up an hour ago and have only thrown up once since... Really.  It's obnoxious.  So please stop writing morbid and depressing things about hospitals always being life and death.  Please. 

On another note, I did like the idea the two old birds had about moving in together to die.  Yes, it's morbid.  But in a way, I think it is lovely.  Your best friend might be your husband or your sister or your mother or just that, your best friend.  Don't you want to be with them and put a little pleasantness into your last days?  It is also in my notes that I finished reading this particular story the day before my boss's best friend died suddenly of a heart attack.  She was there with him when it happened.  I know it is very hard for her, but I'm sure that he was happy in his last moments before it began and ended. 

Double Diet:  I was getting tired of all the dieting by this point, weren't you?  I did enjoy the couple finally talking openly with each other about their weight issues and their attraction and caring.  Caring is far deeper, but of course we still have the desire to be attracted to our loves.  And I loved the part about children bringing sorrows and joy, "but, oh, the joy."  I am so excited to become an aunt in May 2014!

The Only One of Millions Just Like Him:  This one was a struggle for me.  I wanted to like it because grieving over losing a pet is so overlooked, but Monica was not "believable as a human being" as was once stated on Friends.  No one gets all gussied up to sit around with her dying dog.  Sit around with her dying dog, I get.  Wearing a yellow blouse and bangle bracelets and fancy sunglasses and lipstick to do it, nuh-uh.  That said, I am somewhere in between when it comes to love for my pets.  I madly love my animals.  I miss and worry about them while I'm at work.  It gives me unspeakable joy to have my fluffy grey cat Polly come running into my room first thing each morning with sweet meows and ankle wraparounds just for me.  I daresay I love my animals more than Ralph loved Dogling.  I would be absolutely devastated if something happened to them and I know that from experience.  When Fiona was in the accident rendering her a one-eyed kitty (after two emergency trips to the vet, both of which were for days at a time), I was in complete, shaking hysterics.  When my old yellow lab Max was diagnosed with glaucoma and we were told he was completely blind in one eye and likely to lose his vision altogether, I was distraught.  Even so, I felt Monica was taking it a bit far.

Truth Or Dare:  I now think that I remember this story the best as it was the first one I picked up when I resolved to finish the book.  It's another one full of the what-ifs and could-have-beens.  Really, I guess that they all are stories about what could have been in their own ways.  But this one struck me in a way with which I decided that I wanted to know what happened to some people who used to be part of my life.  And maybe not even know.  Maybe just tell them I'm sorry, in the instance of the brand-new Physical Science teacher I had in 9th grade and tormented with the rest of my class, though she was nothing but nice to me.  I want to extend my apology for making her first year (ever?  just at my school?) much harder than it needed to be.  Then again, I want to write the nastiest of letters to my junior high History and Language Arts teacher, who was the meanest, sliest, loathsome old hag who ever darkened a school's doorway.  I want ask her what her problem was with me and I want to make her cry.  I won't.  But I want to.  I want to thank the student teacher from 7th or 8th grade who helped me through my Literature class.  I'd always loved reading but I was struggling to care about school with all of the changes happening and my hormones out of whack.  I want to tell her that she was wonderfully gentle in her encouragement and gave me hope in a time when I was feeling pretty hopeless (some of it being teacher #2's fault, I might add). 

How to Make an Apple Pie:  This is not a very usable recipe, unless you are willing to read it and write down only the steps, saving room for bits and pieces Flo puts in late in the game. However, it's a nice little letter and a vivid history.  I'm sure that if Ruthie were real, this would indeed be her favorite birthday gift.  In giving of ourselves, like Flo does in this letter, we often receive.  I also loved Flo's description of why books are better than movies: ""I remember how you and your sister would lie on your stomachs or your beds or on a blanket in the back yard in the summer and read and read and read and I could just about see the heat of your imaginations rising up off you like steam.  You can say what you want about movies, but to my mind they leave too little to the imagination, it is always better to read the book.  Make up your own pictures, they are always realer because they come from inside out, not the other way around."  Lovely.  

Sin City: Here's a lame ending to my blog... I liked this story but my only notes I took on it are that of mentioning that I absolutely love my charm bracelet and charm necklace for the very reason Rita likes the one she buys, already done up: it is a whole life represented in little bits.  In my case, it is my life.  Mine.  And that means something.  The sum of all of the stories come together on the last page in this line: "But time does not hold still, and Rita thinks now that it's a blessing, she thinks that what it means is that your life is free to make or unmake every day." 

And there you have it, my friends.  Another day, another story.  Or in this case, me dragging my feet for many days, and many little stories pieced together in one binding.

One Sitting.

Good morning, afternoon, evening, night to you readers out there, depending on the time of day when you read this post!

I've been feeling down and discouraged as of late.  Why?  Fall.  It seems like this time of year is most everyone's favorite, but it is just not mine.  I dislike the shortening of days: waking up when the sun has not even had the chance to get up, night being in such a blessed hurry to fall and disorient me.  I'm in South Carolina, but there is a bit of a chill in the air in the mornings this week and that chill doesn't cheer me but brace me for the cool, cooler, cold days to come.  I am not the biggest fan of pumpkin flavored things.  I dislike the color orange (though I have loosened up on that issue over the years).  Needless to say, I just don't like fall.  It actually depresses me quite a bit.

Yep.  That about covers it.  

I've been trying to think up some good things about fall so I don't feel so pissy: bonfires with s'mores (forget the fact that I have no friends here, as I believe I've mentioned), scarves, hot cocoa and hot apple cider, people are actually in the mood for soup (I am always in the mood for soup.  Call me crazy), it's Kyle's favorite season and things that make him smile are okay in my book.  And the best reason is our anniversary, which is coming up in just a few days. 

Ahh, October 16, 2010... you were among the best of days.

Anyway, mix my personal foreboding dislike of short stories with my contempt for fall (apart from those things listed above... and feel free to add your own encouraging good fall things to help me feel better, but so help me if you say football) and you get a highly unmotivated Loralee who wants to read anything but that short story book (in this case, I'm still talking about The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted by Elizabeth Berg) and not want to do any housework or crafts or anything but loaf on the couch.  I don't like that Loralee much at all.  Nor do her work pants, which continue to tighten.  So, yes, I PROMISE I will finish the book, but I needed something with meat to read in the meantime, and since I asked Missy (one among you who kept tragically getting outvoted) to vote here and she asked for The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin, that is what I read today.  So this present post is just fair warning that the Stepford post may come before the Whatever I Wanted post as I finished it in just one sitting.  Not only that, but I'd like to move to the next read after the short story book.  Since I've demonstrated my dislike for this season and my lack of motivation to do things, I think we'll go with something I've already read and, therefore, know that I like: The Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst.

And no, I don't just like it because the dog's name is Lorelei.  Lorelei is certainly not a minor character, but the fact that her name is close to mine is minor in my head compared to the rest of the reasons I enjoy this book.  You know that I don't recommend books I haven't read yet but if I may recommend a good book to you, this is it.  Please keep in mind... it has some very weird parts.  But it is also beautiful.  Yes.  Recommended.  We'll get to it soon, friends.  After The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted and The Stepford Wives. 

Oh, and as a side note, The Dogs of Babel was also published as Lorelei's Secret, though I believe that was exclusively in the UK.  It's also supposed to be made into a movie one of these days so you'll want to read it before that happens!  I'm pretty sure no one can live up to the expectations in my head. 

Ehh

Ok folks.  You picked The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted so I'm reading it.  I hope that you are, too, if you are all caught up.  I know that there was some concern about finding this particular book in libraries, though if they participate in interlibrary loan, it will probably not be an issue.  My positively tiny library back in Ohio was able to get me books that I requested from other libraries if they did not happen to have the ones my heart desired.  I will be a complete hypocrite here and tell you to ask.  And I'm being a hypocrite because I am generally far too intimidated to ask questions in a public place.  I fear the judgment and shunning that might ensue if I asked how to use the equipment at the gym, for instance.

On that note, does anyone want to be my out-of-shape-gym-mate?  Oh, I forgot again!  No one lives here!

Anyway, friends, I am once again learning the hard way that I am not a fan  of short stories.  There is nothing really wrong with Elizabeth Berg's stories in the current book.  I just... ehh...  I just can't get attached to characters in stories that are only 10 pages long.  Some are more.  Probably most.  But since I typically read one story per sitting, I start afresh each time I sit down to read and that does not motivate me to read.  I would rather keep plowing through, getting to know my characters and surroundings and loving or hating them.  *Sigh.  I hope you understand.

Sooo... I will finish the book, okay?  I will.  But in the meantime, I need something to sink my teeth into.  I have let you choose the last two books, and one of you has been outvoted twice, so we are going to read something she would like to read next (after The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted, but I need a novel to supplement, so there you are).  So, here are your choices.  Missy wanted to read The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd during the first vote and The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin on the second vote.

Which would you rather read next?