Mom is Just a Nickname

The Smart One by Ellen Meister

The Smart One was a fun read for me. The main character, Bev, was in the middle of a trio of sisters. She was always known as “The Smart One”, while her sister Clare was the “The Pretty One” and her sister Joey was “The Wild One”. One grew up to be a wife and mother, one a one-hit-wonder rock star, and the other has wandered through her life, always looking for what she was supposed to be doing. Being “The Smart One” didn’t make living life any easier for her.

A series of events lead the sisters to discovering a body, preserved in a barrel under their parents’ next door neighbors’ house. That discovery lead the three on a hunt to solve the mystery of how the body got there. Along the way they learned a lot more about each other and about themselves, and about their neighbors.

This book was fast paced and well written. Although the characters experienced tough (and sometimes unlikely) situations and spent time talking about a wide range of feelings, there was humor, wit and an honesty about life that kept it from ever becoming morose or gloomy. Although the situations did seem unlikely to me (innocent, naive me?), there was never a chink in the story, never a chance for me to fall out of my suspension of disbelief. And there was always a whisper of “It could happen…” there in the back of my mind too. Unlikely does not mean impossible, after all.

I was excited to get The Smart One to read and review. I had heard of Ellen Meister’s first book, The Secret Confessions of the Applewood PTA, but I still haven’t read it…I have it from the library, now, actually, but I haven’t started it yet. After reading The Smart One, I am looking forward to reading it even more!

The Smart One is available for pre-order on Amazon.com. It will be released on August 5! This review was made possible by Lynn at Blog Stop Book Tours. For more information about the book, the author or how to become a reviewer for Blog Stop Book Tours, please click through the link and check out all of the information there!

Every once in awhile, the Universe seems to reach out and smack me with a concept. I figure I’m really supposed to learn this point because it will show up every where for awhile. This week it has been the concept of “One River, Many Wells” which is also the name of a book by Matthew Fox, as you can see if you follow the link. I’ve only scratched the surface of this book, but I’ve been intrigued since I read the title. The concept is that there is one shared Truth, but many different ways to arrive at that Truth. (The book describes “Truth” as “Divine” instead. I have altered it for my purposes here.)

The idea so completely encompasses my understanding of the religious world that it struck me. Ever since I began learning about ancient cultures and their creation myths, ever since I began to learn more about the many active religions in the world, the idea that any one system had the ONE and ONLY path to Truth seemed impossible to me. There were similarities to be found in all of the ones I’ve read, and the differences were matters of cultural diversity.

So, it was not a new idea to me, Matthew Fox simply stated it far more clearly than I’d ever heard or tried to express. To think of a single flowing Truth or Divinity that we all tap into in our own unique ways…that’s powerful to me.

Then, I was reading a different book: “How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead: Your Words in Print and Your Name in Lights” by Ariel Gore. In a section called “Embrace Your Genius”, she writes,

You have a unique and delicious genius to share. You see this vibrant and vulnerable planet in your own strange way. You draw connections that make you wonder if you’ve lost your mind. Your fears are specific, and alien to me. We’re human kin, you and me and Murakami –when we dig deep enough into our own individual wells, we reach the same universal stream– but the places we’re digging from, they’re different.

It’s not enough to me that we draw from this deep and shared river of Truth, Creativity or Divinity, though. I believe that we not only receive from it, but we, each of us, feed it. Just as many tiny streams feed into the large and sprawling river, so we too have our own unique things to give to the greater Truth. It is not enough to see that there are many paths, we have to acknowledge that each individual path helps make the common Spirit stronger. The sharing of each Personal Truth only makes the Greater Wisdom all the more potent.

This is the story of a woman and her Bunko-playing circle of close friends. Together, they face challenges like debillitating illness, divorce, infertility, and a husband being sent to Iraq with the National Guard. There are heart to heart discussions, shopping, and arguments. On the surface, it seems like it’d be a great Chick Lit book: fun to read, but easy to put down. There were a few things that made it a book that was hard for me to digest, though.

First of all, I think I must live in a different social hemisphere than the characters in this book do. I could not relate to designer shoes, buying Starbucks all the time, outdoing each other for themed decorations for their Bunko Nights, or the many luxuries they all seemed to have. The situations they face are real enough, but their reactions to those situations don’t seem mature or realistic. The friend I related to the most was Autumn, the easy-going mother of eight children. She seemed the one nod to those of us in the real world who scrimp and save, who don’t have the cash to decorate lavishly for a gathering of close friends, who wear what we have even if it’s not right in style that season and who have accepted that kids and nice furniture don’t get along. Honestly, if a friend of mine had walked into my house and had been as picky as the fastidious Madison was about sitting on Autumn’s furniture, I would have doubted the bonds of our friendship. Love me, love my mess!
Another thing which put me off was that I found the religious references in the book were done with a heavy hand. I see how the many Bible citations and discussions of faith fit into the story, but I sometimes felt more like the author was using the book to proselytize than to tell a story.

I might recommend this book to my Christian friends, particularly those who have wrestled with the question of their faith. I did find some inciteful insightful passages about the nature of belief and faith as I was reading - I have already shared one with a friend, actually! But unless you are looking for Christian lit, I wouldn’t pick this up. The meat of the story is faith-based, not Bunko based, or even character based….in my opinion.

This Book Review has been brought to you by Blog Stop Book Tours. Click on the link to find more information about the book, the author and other bloggers who have reviewed this book!

At least according to the school calendar, it’s the first day of summer! I’m looking ahead to the next several months and wondering what I’m going to do to keep the kids entertained (so that they don’t drive me crazier than I already am!). So, this afternoon, we went to the library. As per my usual, when I’m interested in a topic, I check out a stack of books about it.

Today, some of the titles I picked up: 101 Easy Wacky Crazy Activities, The Busy Mom’s Book of Preschool Activities, Easy Homeschooling Techniques. So far, I’m really happy with the ideas in the first one, but I’ve barely been able to look through the others.

There was one other I got that had me tsking and shaking my head in disagreement with some of their statements: Kids Play: Igniting Children’s Creativity. I have not read the whole thing yet, by any means, but I was flipping through it while the kids played on the computers at the library today. Among other things, I saw a list of things you should and should not do to foster creativity in your children. Glaring out at me were the words: “16. Avoid painting with children, especially if they copy you or compare.”

Ok, I used to subscribe to this theory. I never wanted my kids to feel bad for their efforts at drawing or painting, so I would refrain from doing much of either in front of them. I don’t know if it’s because J is older now, or I’ve just adopted a new way of thinking, but now I think that children SHOULD see us doing the things we are talented in. I do not think their works should be compared to mine, but rather that we should do the activities together.

Why has my thinking changed? I think of all the times I sit to do something (like draw, paint, knit or crochet) but I don’t know how to achieve the image I have in my head. I don’t know the techniques to use, I don’t know the tricks of the trade, so to speak. I’ve never had anyone to watch, anyone to emulate. So, although I am artistically inclined, and I can draw and paint better than some people, I’ve never learned how to sharpen that raw talent into a useful skill.

BUT, I have these two children who are sponges. They will soak up everything they see, everything they hear. So, maybe if I do the things I enjoy and let them watch, they will absorb some of the tricks I have managed to learn through my thirty years of trial and error. I think that this enhances their ability to create rather than stifling their desire to create.

Anyone else have an opinion on this? I’ll have to read the book more carefully to see if there’s a solid reason behind the author’s recommendation, but as of now I’m fully in disagreement!

Springtime on Mars, by Susan Woodring: A Book Review

I see every book I read as a journey. Each book explores some facet of a life, each allows me a glimpse into someone else’s head. I love reading short stories. It’s fascinating to me the way a writer can work so much into such a small number of words or pages. Previous collections that I’ve read were mostly anthologies, collected from many different authors and they’ve usually been in the fantasy genre. Springtime on Mars deviated from this.

The whole collection is written by Susan Woodring and each story is stamped with her voice. Her stories are not fantasy or sci-fi, as the title may suggest. Instead, they explore American life in the last fifty years or so, touching on a curiousity about the possibilities of the universe beyond Earth, which America’s space explorations have fuelled.

So, I began reading Springtime on Mars unsure of what to expect from the journey. In the end, it took me on a walk through lives that were at once mundane and amazing. Some were far removed from my experience of American life and others touched very close to my heart due to Susan Woodring’s deeply poignant storytelling.

I feel the need to go back and read it again, though. I was so busy searching for hidden layers and meanings in the first few stories that I wonder what I missed. I think, in this case, reading each story for itself, without an agenda of my own, will allow me to get closer to the heart of the stories in this book.

This book review has been brought to you by Blog Stop Book Tours. Please click through the link to see more information about this book and it’s author, including reviews from other bloggers.