From Somewhere Between Japan and Hogwarts

Hello Everybody! I've been following the blog with great interest but I haven't posted for many months. I've even been reading, most months. In February when we were all reading a romance or relationship book, I read The Shadow Wife by Dorothy Eden. The romance or relationship was warped! But at least the setting was Denmark, so I enjoyed that. And there was enough suspense to keep me hooked.

In the spring when we were all reading Newbery winners and kid-friendly read-alouds, I chose Esperanza Rising (by Pam Munoz Ryan) because Maddie had been begging me to read it. Just as Beccy reads things for Curt. Esperanza Rising was a beautiful book that I'll always remember, and better yet, it created a stronger bond between Maddie and me. I'm convinced that a lot of the books we love are loved for those family-connection reasons, and that's a fun thing about this family book club.

I also read Holes, by Louis Sachar, knowing that Rae H and Beccy and Maddie all loved it. (It was one of my Newbery reads.) Then I cuddled with Maddie on the couch and watched the movie version. More memories!

I read The Whipping Boy (Sid Fleischman)--I think that was my choice in the month that we chose kid-friendly read-alouds. I'm convinced I would've enjoyed it ten times more if I had been reading it aloud to a kid, especially one of my grandchildren. I might even have considered it a classic if I'd done that. Like I said, who we read with/for can really influence what we think of a book. This one's silly and elementary school level, but not super. I notice there's quite a big difference between one Newbery and another, don't you all?

I need to escape to the other side of Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters fairly often, so I've continued with the Harry Potter books that I'd started some years ago. I'm in #5 now and they're all so delightful. My Fantasy read for August was #4. It's hard for me to enjoy fantasy but Harry Potter suits me to a T.

My Relief Society book group decided to read the Twilight books for October (a Halloween theme, I guess) and I know a few of you have read them. But I can't take an interest in any of that, so I'll just tell them about my September Sci-Fi read for the Hawkes book club, which is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. I'm halfway through it and enjoy it as much as Harry Potter, even as different as those two are. I love the way the Victorian authors, when they weren't just being verbose, could say so much in so few words because they had enough vocabulary. It's kind of a lost art.

All of these books are fiction but I love my nonfiction options and could never live without them. So when we all read books associated with our own locations, for July, I read Hiroshima (John Hersey) along with Blake and Maddie, while the Hinkles were here. I would've loved it at any point in my life, but it's far more meaningful since I've come to Japan. I also read one Rae and I found here (she read it too and mentioned it in this blog) called Nine Who Survived Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Robert Trumbull). It hadn't occurred to us that some few people lived through the A-bombing of Hiroshima and then happened to be in Nagasaki three days later when that city was bombed. Talk about bad luck! The situation keeps reminding me of one of Mother's favorite jokes--the one that inspired the name of one of our cats--where "Clyde" wonders aloud to God why everything goes wrong for him. (Like Stanley Yelnats in Holes?) And the voice from heaven says, "I don't know, Clyde, something about you just ticks me off." Anyway, it was fascinating to read of people's varied responses, weak and strong, to the crisis of the A-bombing. And to know there will be more events like that in our own lifetimes.

I'm nibbling at several other books over a period of time, and they're the perfect thing when I pick them up, the way you want to eat something sometimes and you know that the very thing you need is an orange, or a bag of popcorn, or a cucumber. (I think I associate the fiction more with chocolate.) I'm still reading No More Words, by Reeve Lindbergh. I have to take it in small pieces, since it's about Reeve's gradual loss of her mother Anne (read by Rae and Beccy and needing to be shared with me). Also This Is Your Brain on Music (Daniel J. Levitin) and Language in Thought and Action (S. I Hayakawa) are great favorites right now.

Well I'm sure this is all anyone wants to see in one post, so I'll make an effort to write in "littles" that come more often. I love the sharing we do here. I must go now and start some bread for tonight's special guests. This has been the priority, though--like a lot of you I'd usually rather read than cook! Mim/Mom