F is for (Books About) Family #atozchallenge

For A to Z 2018, my theme is Books About ____. If you’re stopping by from your own A to Z blog, feel free to leave a link. If you need help with how to do that, you can look here.

If you’re someone looking to read a lot of great blogs, here’s the link for the A to Z challenge.

I’m a big believer that families don’t have to be blood; we create our families. There are many reasons to create family; the important thing is to know that they’d always have your back no matter what.

This Savage Song, by Victoria Schwab (YA horror): Kate was born into a family with a father who doesn’t seem to love her. August was adopted into a family who just wants to protect him. Their families are at war over control of a dangerous city where violent acts create monsters. Kate and August both have to decide what family means to them, and how they fit into the war. This is a fantastic, gripping book that kept me turning pages. I had just as much trouble putting it down the second time I read it as the first.

If I Stay, by Gayle Forman (YA): When a car accident kills her family and puts Mia in a coma, Mia realizes that she can choose whether to live or die. She thinks about her life while her boyfriend tries to remind her of all the things she has to live for. This novel basically ripped my heart to shreds. So you should definitely read it. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but it’s on my list to watch. But since the preview made me cry, I’m guessing I’ll love the movie too.

The Sun is Also a Star, by Nicola Yoon (YA contemporary): Both of her books are fantastic (and now that I think about it, both speak to the nature of family). This one is all about the ways families simultaneously lift us up and drag us down. Natasha and Daniel both love their families, but they both expect them to be different people. The majority of this book takes place on a single day in New York City, but what an unforgettable day!

Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone (and all of them, really), by JK Rowling (MG through YA fantasy): Harry’s parents died, so he ends up stuck with his horrible aunt and uncle, who don’t love him. During his first year at Hogwarts, he finds a family that will stick with him through all seven amazing books. Some people might call this friendship, but when you have people willing to die for you, isn’t that family?

The Language of Flowers, by Vanessa Diffenbaugh (contemporary): Victoria is an orphan who had one shot at a family, and blew it. Now an adult, she has another shot, and it scares her to death. She’s only comfortable with flowers and expressing herself through them, as she was taught as a child. This story is told with dual timelines between 18-year-old Victoria and 8-year-old Victoria. It’s moving and fascinating.

What are your favorite books about family?

10 Books to Read if You’re the Grinch

Are you tired of Christmas season starting the day after Halloween? Are you tired of talking about presents and gift lists and that creepy Elf on the Shelf thing? Do you just need an escape from tinsel and sappy music?

Have no fear! I’m here to help with an eclectic list of books to allow escape from the holidays. They range from murder and mayhem to family and love (but not the holiday season!). All of them have happy endings though, so read without fear of being bummed out.

1. The In Death books, by JD Robb They’re all fantastic murder mysteries featuring Eve Dallas, her love interest Roarke, and assorted characters that grow and change over the series. Some of them actually do take place over the holidays, but if you haven’t read them before, start at the beginning with Naked in Death. It doesn’t have any holiday mentions whatsoever. There’s romance in every book, but unlike most romance novels, with 40+ books in the series, we get to see what happens after “happily ever after.”
2. Graveminder, by Melissa Marr When Rebekkah’s adopted grandmother dies, she finds out that she’s the one who now has to carry out a peculiar arrangement with death, performing a ritual at every grave to make sure the dead stay dead.
3. There Will Be Lies, by Nick Lake Shelby has lived her whole life protected by her overprotective mother. But when she’s hit by a car and goes to the hospital, she starts to learn secrets about herself and her family. Meanwhile, she starts being transported to the Dreaming, where Coyote asks her to save the world.
4. Ready, Player One, by Ernest Cline Most of my friends who are hardcore gamers or like hard sci-fi had multiple issues with this book, so be warned. I thought it was just a fun, fast read with lots of 80s nostalgia. It’s coming out as a movie next year, so now’s a good time to read it.
5. 600 Hours of Edward by Craig Lancaster An autistic man who’s life is rigid and structured has a run-in with the new neighbor and her son. He starts to realize there’s more to life than routine.
6. Made You Up, by Francesca Zappia I absolutely loved this book, though it’s not without problems. It’s YA, and the main character is struggling with schizophrenia. *It’s not an accurate portrayal of schizophrenia.* But if you overlook that, the book is a lot of fun.
7. Pollyanna, by Eleanor H. Porter This is my go-to pick me up book. Whenever I need a refresher course on optimism, I read this.
8. All the Ugly and Wonderful Things, by Bryn Greenwood I pretty recommend this on every list for any reason. But it fills all the promises I made, so you should read it. Everyone should read it.
9. Almost Interesting, by David Spade I’ve never been a huge David Spade fan, but this was funny. He talks about his days in SNL, which was interesting. I listened to the audiobook, which I think made it more enjoyable.
10. Wild, by Cheryl Strayed This fantastic memoir is the reason I now want to someday walk at least part of the Pacific Crest Trail. Cheryl is struggling in her life after a divorce and the death of her mother, so hikes 1,000 miles with little preparation, and learns a lot about herself in the process.

Are you all-in for the holidays, or already over it?

The Emperor of Any Place, A Review

The Emperor of Any Place by Tim Wynne-Jones was a book chosen by my Facebook YA book club. Most of the people in the group said that they had a hard time getting into it. I had put it on hold at the library, but by the time I picked it up, I’d almost decided not to bother reading it. After all, I have about a thousand other books on my TBR.

I read the jacket copy, and the premise intrigued me, so I started reading, fulling intending to abandon it at the first sign of boredom.

That never happened.

It’s not a typical book. It starts off with 16-year-old Evan’s father dying. While Evan is overwhelmed with grief, he allows someone to call his estranged grandfather, Griff.

Evan has never met Griff, but Evan’s father had nothing but negative things to say about him. In the meantime, Evan finds a handwritten book his father was reading before he died, about an American and Japanese soldier stranded on a ghost-infested island during WWII. Somehow, it has something to do with Evan’s grandfather, but no one will give any answers.

The story shifts in point of view between Evan, the Japanese soldier, and the American soldier. It’s a strange story, but I had no trouble suspending disbelief throughout.

I sped through this book, couldn’t put it down. I wanted to solve the mystery and find out the truth about Griff. I wanted Evan and Griff to work through their anger and listen to one another.

I take book recommendations from other people, but this is why I don’t allow other people’s opinions to stop me from at least trying a book. If I’d assumed that because it was hard for others to get into, it would also be hard for me to connect, I would have missed a fantastic book. Allowing myself the option to abandon a book means that I never have to finish something I hate. It’s liberating, and means I can try books I’m just not sure I’ll like.

What books have you read (and enjoyed) that others didn’t like?

G is for the Great Gilly Hopkins

This was perhaps the first letter where I really, really had a hard time choosing what to do. It was between Gilly and Grimm’s fairy tales, as they both influenced me a lot, just in different ways.  So… I’ll probably do a bonus blog all about fairy tales and mythology once this challenge is over.

Anyway, The Great Gilly Hopkins, by Katherine Paterson gave me so many different things.  The book is about Gilly, who’s in foster care and goes to live with Maime Trotter, a fat woman with a huge heart, and William Ernest, who’s a younger child in the home and a bit of a sissy.  Gilly is mean, and like most foster children who’ve been moved from home to home and been promised things that never happened, is hardened, focused on her fantasy mother, who she believes will save her.

When she gets to Trotter’s home, she does everything she can to escape.  But Trotter never gives up on her, and Gilly eventually falls in love and realizes what family really means.

Gilly taught me that people who act mean often do so because they have a story, and that hard shell is mostly just armor.  She taught me that when you fight against something too much, you might get something you didn’t bargain for.  (Gilly eventually goes to live with her biological grandmother, and then realizes that she wanted to stay with Trotter.)

This book also introduced me to my love of poetry.  It contains an excerpt of Ode, by William Wordsworth.  I didn’t know it was an excerpt, of course, and it was the first poem that I copied into a notebook and then memorized.  Imagine my surprise when I eventually located the poem and found out that it was about four times longer than I thought!  I can still recite the excerpt, and it’s still one of my favorites.

I didn’t understand it when I read it (I think I was maybe 11 or 12 at the time), but the poem had a profound effect on me emotionally.  I felt it reverberate through my heart in a way that very poems ever have.

I drive my critique partner crazy.  He’s firmly in the camp of not adding quotes, poetry, or song lyrics from other people’s work into stories.  He feels that the author shouldn’t have to borrow emotional impact.

I do it though, because I remember how, without this book, I probably never would have read this poem.  This book is the first of many to not just introduce me to the world in the book, but to broaden my universe beyond it.

Thus began a life-long love affair with poetry.  It set me on the path for an empathetic life.  Years later, when I worked for CPS and saw hurt and emotionally injured children come through, I remembered this book, remembered Gilly, and it helped me to remember that everyone has a story.

That’s a lot of influence for 148 pages of book.

“Once the tugboat takes you out to the ocean liner, you got to get all the way on board. Can’t straddle both decks.”
— Katherine Patterson

Feel Good Friday

Hello!  It’s Friday again, many people’s favorite day of the week (second only to Saturday).

I’ve summed up the stories I’ve posted, but these aren’t the complete stories.  Click the link to read the entire articles, see the pictures, or watch the videos.  Thanks for stopping by, and I hope these stories make you smile, the same way they did for me.

911 operator buys food for an elderly vet who needed help.  He was in the hospital, and when he was discharged, he had no food at home, no family to help, and no way of buying groceries.  The 911 operator and police bought him food and took it to his house.  He is now receiving assistance from social services.

A Phoenix police officer helped a homeless man by taking him to the hospital and making sure he had a plan to care for himself after surgery.  These things weren’t his job, but he did them anyway.  If he didn’t do them, they might not have gotten done, and the man obviously needed the help.

A school sends home an uplifting letter before a big test, to remind children that the test does not measure everything that’s important.  The original letter was apparently written in 1999, and it occasionally goes viral.  It just goes to show that we’re all hungry for positive feedback and that tests measure very little of who we actually are.

A teenaged boy took his great-grandmother to prom because “she’s the prettiest woman.”  The month before (linked in this article), another teen took her grandfather to prom.  Proms have come under fire for being superficial and girls wearing inappropriate dresses, so it’s nice to see this newer trend with teens taking family members or friends to prom.  (I’m a sucker for these stories.)  Here’s a link to another one where the high school quarterback took his friend, a girl with Down’s Syndrome, to the prom.

Shelter dog scheduled for euthanasia is adopted by a veteran, and is now in the running for hero dog of the year for helping the vet manage his PTSD and traumatic brain injury.

That’s all I’ve got for this week, but that’s obviously not all the news.  Remember, there’s a lot of good things in the world.  It’s what you focus on that matters.

Have a wonderful weekend!

G is for Grandparents

Sorry this is so late today. Through a glitch, I thought it was scheduled to be posted earlier. And by glitch, I mean user error.

My grandparents were and still are some of the most important people in my life. My grandmother died when I was 16, and my grandfather when I was 29. I was lucky enough to have them as long as I did, but every life event I’ve had, I think about them, and how much I wish they were there for it.

I’ve always loved to read, but my grandma is the one who taught me to love stories. The first book I remember loving, Orange Oliver: The Kitten Who Wore Glasses, by Robert Lasson, sat on a bookshelf in the hallway entry to her home. I read it every time I went over there until I “outgrew” it. Obviously I never did, if I still remember it all these years later.

My parents both worked, and they read me stories at bedtime, but it was my grandma who told me about The Little Match Girl, Snow White and Rose Red, and strangely, Liberace. She watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory with me. She encouraged me to tell stories to her, and she listened, nurturing the storyteller in me.

She drew numbers and told me to make pictures out of the numbers. I knew even then that I wasn’t a good artist. Not only were my drawings not very good, but they weren’t very creative. I learned that I’m good with words, less so with any visual arts. I don’t remember whether she told me that my drawings were good when I told her I didn’t think they were, but I do remember her encouraging me to draw anyway. I wouldn’t understand the lesson for years, but it was there. It didn’t matter if I was good at it or not; if I liked it, I should do it.

My grandpa could be gruff, but not with me. With me, he was patient. He liked to teach me about antiques and baking. He loved to laugh, and could be silly when I didn’t expect it. One time I put a spoon on the end of my nose, and straight faced, he did it too. One of my favorite memories of him was when I made some comment about not being sure if he knew how to use the voicemail on his cell phone. He said something like, “Of course I know how to use my voicemail. It’s my phone, isn’t it?” I retold that story as just a funny story for years, until I realized that I learned a lesson from it. If you own it, know how to use it.

Although I lost them way too young, I learned many important things from them, and I still miss them. They say you can’t pick your family, and that’s true. But if I had to pick, I couldn’t have done better than the people who were gifted to me.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Photo credit: Doree Weller

In my family, Thanksgiving has always been all about the food.  I love the filling, the sweet potatoes, the green bean casserole, and the dessert.  In recent years, I’ve started to reflect on why we celebrate Thanksgiving, and it boils down to gratitude.

I’m a big believer in having a gratitude practice, and studies back it up.  People suffering from depression and anxiety do see improvements by practicing gratitude daily.  The holidays are a great time to start a gratitude practice, as most of us tend to see family more often during the holidays, and we’re reminded of what we have to be grateful for.

For me, the things I’m grateful for don’t tend to change much, and that’s how you know they’re valuable.  I’m grateful for my wonderful family who loves and supports me.  I’m grateful for my husband, who encourages me and shows me the best parts of myself.  I’m grateful for my friends, especially those I consider family.  Without these wonderful friends, I wouldn’t be who I am.  I’m grateful for my dogs, who love me no matter what and provide constant reminders that they think I’m wonderful.  I’m grateful for books and the authors who wrote them, as they’ve introduced me to worlds I otherwise never would have explored.  I’m grateful that I have enough and some extra.  Having enough is a wonderful thing.

What are your Thanksgiving traditions?  What are you grateful for?

Open Letter to My Pets

Dear Furbabies,

I just read an article on Facebook that really hurt me.  It was about a dog who had been shot for no reason, by a stranger.  His parents took him to the vet, went outside to discuss the cost of surgery, and never returned.  I presume they couldn’t or didn’t want to afford the cost of surgery, but I just can’t imagine leaving any one of you to wonder if I were going to return.  I’d never do that.  When I bring you home, it’s forever, for better or worse, and I mean it 100%.

I know that I’m your whole world.  I know that because I see the way you look at me, the way you greet me at the door when I come home.  The way you snuggle against me, or nudge my hand when I’m not paying close enough attention to you.  I know that I’m your only source of food and water, but what you want from me more than those basics is my love and attention.  Sometimes I get busy or stressed and don’t think about it the way I should.  I’m sorry for that.  It doesn’t mean that I love you less; it just means that I’m human: selfish and flawed.

Even if I don’t always give you enough attention or playtime, I promise you that I love you and will never leave you behind.  I’d rather live with you in a cardboard box than alone in a mansion.  I’ll be with you until the end.  I’ll make the hard decisions when I have to, because that’s what I took on when I brought you home.  Whenever that time comes, I take comfort in knowing that you, and all the ones who’ve gone before, will be waiting at the Rainbow Bridge.

It doesn’t matter what happens: there will always be room for you in my life.  That’s a promise.

F is for Family

Growing up, we were a small, close-knit family, and I always wished we would get together more often with all my aunts, uncles, and cousins, and do things.  Sure, we visited with them, but we never had big family dinners or family parties like you see on TV.

Midnyte and Moonshyne

I always hated history, but now that I’ve grown older, I’ve started to get interested in family history. Of course, the people who could tell me the most about it are long gone.  Why is that?  By the time you get old enough to be interested in history, you have to look for it.  I did some research on ancestry.com, and while it was interesting to me, it wasn’t what I wanted to know, which is those family stories that have been passed down, that are more fragile than spun glass heirlooms.

A couple years ago, my husband found tons of black and white pictures of his family from back in Poland.  Some of the people he could identify, and others, he had no idea.  Taking black and white photos in the early 1900s wasn’t like snapping a photo today.  I can take a 1000 pictures and have all of them be meaningless.  (Not that they all are, but it’s just that easy).  Back then, if there was a photo, it meant something, and I just wonder what story was lost to the family as the photo was passed down but the story wasn’t.

Laura Ingalls Wilder was quoted as saying that she wrote the Little House on the Prairie books because she saw how the pioneer way of life was dying, and she wanted to preserve it.  I thank her for that, because I learned more about that time period from her than I did from the history books in whose pages I drifted off to sleep.

But in the end, what’s important about family?  Is it all those stories I’ve forgotten?  Or the ones I remember?  I would like to know how my grandparents met (I should ask my mom or uncle about that), but I have a million images and stories in my head from my time with them.  My grandmother was actually the one who “trained” me to be a therapist.  When I was around 5, we played “psychiatrist.”  She would tell me all her “problems” and have me solve them.  Her “problems” were things like being picked on and called names.  Clever, huh?  I didn’t have a clue until years later.

As my grandfather got older, he had a cell phone.  My parents didn’t know how to use their voicemail, so I assumed he didn’t either.  I must have said something well-intentioned about it one day, because he responded, “I own it, don’t I?  I know how to check my voicemail.”  That sums up my grandfather.  He loved his constant companion, Amie, a Beagle rejected by another family.

Maybe that’s what matters about family.  Still, it wouldn’t kill me to write down a few stories about those that came before… before I don’t have a chance to decide if I want to or not.

We all grow up with the weight of history on us. Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies. ~Shirley Abbott

Vacation with Family

Two weeks ago, I was on vacation in Virginia with my sister-and-brother-in-law  The four of us always have way too much fun when we’re together.  We played tourists in DC and played board games together.  We were silly, laughed, and ate too much.

I adore squirrels!

If you’ve paid any attention to the weather, you’ll know that it’s been unusually cold and snowy out there.  If you’ve paid any attention to this blog, you may know that I have a curse: every single time I go back to the East Coast in the winter, it’s 60, and if we get any precipitation at all, it’s rain.

Yeah, this time was no different.  Well, we did get a dusting of snow the last night I was there, but otherwise, nothing.

We went to Arlington National Cemetery, the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum, the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, the Museum of Natural History, the National Archives, toured the Pentagon, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Jefferson Memorial.

Other than seeing family (and a few friends), I had some highlights in my trip.

We spent all day at Arlington National Cemetery, which I don’t think any of us expected.  We’d budgeted a half day there and planned to go to the zoo later.  I love cemeteries, and always find them inspirational.  I enjoyed doing some writing there and took some photos.  One of the things that really struck me was the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  Day in and day out, no matter the weather, the tomb is guarded.  Watching the young man march and the changing of the guard made me misty-eyed.  It was powerful to watch.

The tree is reaching out as if to offer comfort.

The day we were there, someone was being buried who got a 21 cannon salute.  That too, was powerful to watch.

The cannons boomed!

We went to two Air & Space Museums because my husband is crazy about spaceships and planes.  I’m not.  I like going up in planes as a means to an end, but otherwise they don’t interest me all that much.  I liked the Museum of Natural History a lot.  What can I say?… I like dinosaurs and gems!

T-rex!

In the National Archives, I learned some interesting things.  First off, there’s absolutely no photography in there anymore, and when we first went in, I didn’t understand why that would be.  After I saw the Declaration of Independence is, I get it.  The document is so faded that it’s illegible in places.  For many years, it was kept in full sunlight and in bright rooms.  After they put it in a dark room with LED lights, people came in taking pictures, but didn’t shut their flashes off.  Flash photography fades those documents, so they’re now doing everything they can to preserve them.

While seeing the documents was cool, I was actually more touched by a display of handmade birth/ death/ marriage documents.  Apparently, during the Revolutionary War, widows sent these beautiful documents in to the government to prove their marriage to get benefits.  They had a small display of these documents, and I fell in love with the workmanship and the time that it took to make these.  I found a website that shows some of these documents, and you can see it here.

On the last night there, we got a dusting of snow, for which I was very grateful.

That’s my snow ration for the year.

Of course, the week I left, they got 5 inches of snow.  I expected nothing else as my sister-in-law gleefully texted a “guess what” message.  But hey, I got even.  My response to her was, “That’s cool.  I just got out of the pool.”

Modern people are so lucky to be able to travel back and forth so easily to visit with loved ones.  Even if I always miss the snowy weather!