summer reading book review

I just finished reading two books: I'm a Stranger Here Myself and Dead Women Walking. I thoroughly enjoyed them both.

Bill Bryson's book I'm a Stranger Here Myself is a collection of writings (that he submitted to the newspaper he was working for at the time) about coming back to the United States after having lived abroad in Great Britain for 20 years, and the subsequent wonder (and frustration!) at all that had changed in that time. His stories are hilarious as always! It gives you an understanding about culture differences between British and Americans, gives you reasons to love our country, and of course, reasons to wish it was more like Great Britain. He talks of things from his childhood, like quaint little diners and drive-in theaters that have all but vanished. Another aspect of growing up were skeezy motels that were all part of the adventure of road trips, that have nowadays improved greatly to have more than 3 rings holding up the shower curtain. I loved his family stories, his nostalgic reveries, and his hilariously descriptive language. 4.5 out of 5 stars!

Dead Women Walking was about 3 working-class Taiwanese women, that each struggle with difficulties in life: emotional, physical, marital, and especially spiritual. We see their stories interwoven throughout, with similarities of drunken husbands and abuse affecting all three. One woman was even possessed by evil spirits--I had to stop reading it right before bed because I got creeped out! Three-quarters of the way through we meet Elisabeth Weinmann, a German missionary, who is called by the Lord to be a missionary in Taiwan. Having learned that most evangelism is usually only done among middle and higher classes, she started reaching out to working-class women by distributing magazines in their shops. Elisabeth is introverted, and felt uneasy among strangers, but the Lord strengthened her to reach out to these lost women. In the book, we learn about Taiwanese culture, and what maladies affect the working-class. This book delves into what Taiwanese women have to struggle with, and demonstrates that their only salvation from their struggles is Jesus. 3 out of 5 stars.

Learning to Drive by Meredith McDonough

While dropping cheerios
that multiplied on contact with the car floor,
and accidentally memorizing the lyrics
of all of Whitney Houston's radio hits
as you traveled from schools, grocery stores, homes, hotels
and all the innumerable destinations
of your slow childhood
you unwittingly became expert
in the sensation of coming to a stop
in a vehicle weighing several thousand pounds
that feels like an extension of your own small body.

You are astonished when you attempt to teach your girlfriend
who has mastered the theories of Industrial Engineering
and who grew up running the labyrinthine streets of Shanghai
has not learned the undulation of slowing.

Hurtling forward in a metal cage,
much like a yolk in an unbroken egg,
you feel the same fear
as the day you decided you would not learn to swim
floating in the ocean, sipping air
moving your limbs without coordination
achieving neither forward nor backward
trapped in a machine you didn't understand.

more to life than books

stumbled upon this cool poster on a music blog. courtesy of The Black Apple and Tsururadio

Marginalia by Billy Collins

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.

Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
"Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" -
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
who wrote "Don't be a ninny"
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.

Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's.
Another notes the presence of "Irony"
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.

Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
"Absolutely," they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
"Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!"
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.

And if you have managed to graduate from college
without ever having written "Man vs. Nature"
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.

We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.

Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird singing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.

And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.

Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page

A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
"Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love."

quick music post

i've only heard this one song from The Middle East, but i can't get the part at the end with a group sing-a-long out of my head! also, anything with a glockenspiel/xylophone makes my heart go pitter-pat. :)

ugh, the lyrics are so sad though! i guess it's about their grandmother dying of cancer. but the lyrics are beautiful and heartfelt, and they do not make you pity. i think my favorite lyrics are these:

and you'll find somebody you can blame
and you'll follow the creek that runs out into the sea
and you'll find the peace of the Lord.

first photo shoot!

this is my debut as a photographer. i have known for a long time that photography was something i wanted to learn how to do. and of all things to photograph, people are what i want to take photos of. so i was so pleased that my friends who are having a second child allowed me to use them as photographic guinea pigs! they have the most precious 2 year-old, Jackson, and the parents are Kristi and Eric. they make great photographic subjects, so I was very lucky. even Jackson smiled when we asked him to! these are some of my favorites from the shoot. the top is my favorite of just Kristi and Eric.
this is my favorite of Jackson and his mommy.
this is my favorite of the three of them!
this is my favorite of a series with jackson on eric's shoulders.
ha! i love Jackson's face in the one above!
this is a good one holding her belly together!
and she is so beautiful in this one. what a gorgeous pregnant lady!

it was such a pleasure photographing them. enjoy!

summer music

there's lots of great stuff out there that i'm enjoying--if i were a better writer, i think i would want to become a music blogger, because i just love listening to new music and sharing it!



this first music post is for an album that won't be out until the fall (august 24, 2010 to be exact), but i stumbled upon it and absolutely love it! this is S. Carey, the drummer from Bon Iver, coming out with his debut album All We Grow on Jagjaguwar records. this song is so beautiful. He has a whole orchestra of instruments that play along with him (clarinets, vibraphone, flutes, piano, drums... just to name a few i can pick out), which totally melts my heart since i'm a former trumpet player/band nerd. check out this beautiful song called "In the Dirt".

and now for something completely different! this is a solo act from San Francisco. i love that it actually makes you feel like your drifting off into space. crank it loud!