The Sunday Salon: Ice Cream as a Feminist Statement and Other Self-Help Suppositions

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The Sunday Salon.com

On my birthday in 2010, a good friend gifted me with a book from my Amazon Wishlish: Kiss My Tiara: How to Rule the World as a Smartmouth Goddess, by Susan Jane Gilman. I’d recently read her memoir of being one of the first Americans to travel in China when she was young, and wanted to read more of her stuff.

As sometimes happens when you have a to-be-read pile that reaches epic heights, and have to get the to-be-reviewed books read first, Kiss My Tiara kept getting shoved to the bottom of the pile. Finally, a couple of weeks ago, I had both the time and the mood to read it, and I’m glad I did, because while a lot of it doesn’t apply to me, a lot of it does.

Even better, unlike most self-help books, Kiss My Tiara is funny. I’m an improvisational comedian when I’m not writing or blogging, so the use of humor in this book (which is what drew me to it initially) really worked to keep me interested. Engaged even.

One passage that really made me giggle – and then made me think – was her suggestion that we women use our PMS bitchiness to get things done. “I mean,” she writes, “why harangue our loved ones when we can harangue our legislators. After all, it’s what we pay them for. It’s their job to listen to our concerns.” And so, she says (helpfully providing phone numbers) when your hormones make you want to kill your spouse or partner because he/she had the nerve to breathe too loudly (or whatever) instead of picking a fight, you should call Congress, and demand that your representatives actually represent YOU, or avail yourself of the White House complaint line.

And then there’s the bit about ice cream:

Ice cream is non-patriarchal. Ice cream, frozen yogurt, milk shakes – every dairy product we can think of is the exclusive product of females. So, okay, they’re cows. But eating this stuff can be a political act that neatly unites feminist principles with a love of animals. It can be a way of showing support for our bovine sisters! Fuck the vegans, I say. Anyone who doesn’t eat ice cream for purely “ethical” reasons is a killjoy and a moron and not to be trusted. Pro-ice cream is pro-woman, Baby!

Best. Self-help book. EVER!!!

But speaking of self-help, recently for All Things Girl, I had the opportunity to review two recent spiritual self-help books, and interview their authors. One is called The Enlightened Mom and it’s an amazing book about how mothers, and indeed ALL women, should embrace self-love in order to model loving kindness for their families. It basically boils down to “If mama ain’t happy, ain’t no one happy,” but it’s written in a really positive way, and as a Unitarian Universalist, the Christian elements felt appropriate and not off-putting, which is good, because even spiritual life guides should be supportive, not preachy. (Also, the Author, Terri Amos-Britt, is one of the most delightful, smart, wise, interesting women I’ve ever had the pleasure of speaking with.)

The other book, which also has a spiritual element was Dr. Carmen Harra’s book Wholiness, which teaches us how we have to unite to save the world. She talks a bit about 2012, and how it’s not the end of the world, but the end of a cycle, and how endings and beginnings have power. (She’s actually our “cover girl” for our last issue of the year.)

If this sounds like a whole lot of self-help, well it is, and no, it’s not really my preferred reading genre, but sometimes the universe sends things your way, and the best thing to do is accept them, explore them, and take the advice that applies, while not stressing over the bits that don’t.

Happy Sunday.

30-Day Book Meme #3: Holmes & Russell

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The Beekeeper's Apprentice

When you fall in love with a character or world, it’s natural to want more of what you love. I think that’s why so many of us read series of novels. I’m told that whenever you’re trying to sell a novel, if they ask you “Do you have an idea for a sequel?” the answer should always be “yes,” because series make money. Multiple books in general make money, actually, but people buy what they know.

The 30-Day Book Meme wants me to tell you my favorite series. There are so many. The Little House and Anne of Green Gables books, as well as Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys kept me entertained all during my childhood. As I grew older, I fell for such different series as The Cat Who… mysteries, and the Mrs. Pollifax novels, but I also loved Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries, Anne Rice’s vampire and witch series (before she was popular and trendy, and later, overdone), and Anne Bishop’s Black Jewels books.

I love the Star Trek tie-in novels, and I also love the Pink Carnation series. I’ve spent hours on Darkover, Pern, and Valdemar, I’m a sucker for Harry Potter’s adventures, and I’m getting into Game of Thrones after watching the HBO series (my husband loves those books). I sip coffee with Cleo Coyle’s baristas and want to visit her alter-ego’s Haunted Bookshop.

But if I had to pick a favorite? It would have to be Laurie R. King’s Sherlock Holmes/Mary Russell novels, first because I’m a Holmes junkie from way back, and second because she writes Mary with a feminist sensibility that I really enjoy. The books are well written, well plotted, and entertaining without being stupid.

They are best read in order, so begin with The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, and if you’re diligent, and read as fast as I do, by the time the new book comes out on September 6th, you’ll be ready!

Booking Through Thursday: National Book Week

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Kiss My Tiara, by Susan Jane Gilman

On Thursday, August 11th, Booking through Thursday asked:

It’s National Book Week. The rules: Grab the closest book to you. Go to page 56. Copy the 5th sentence as your status

My sentence is from Kiss My Tiara by Susan Jane Gilman:

I’d been reading a lot of Rimbaud and I guess something about the situation struck me as daring and fantastically romantic and sophisticated.

Kiss My Tiara
Susan Jane Gilman
224 pages
Grand Central Publishing, February 2001
Buy this book from Amazon.com>>

Review: By Fire, By Water, by Mitchell James Kaplan

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By Fire, By Water

By Fire, By Water
Mitchell James Kaplan

Description (from Publishers Weekly, via Amazon.com):
Kaplan, a screenwriter, sets his debut novel in 15-century Spain, amid the Inquisition, the attempt to unify the kingdoms of Spain under Christian rule, and the voyage of Christopher Columbus to what the seaman expects will be the Indies. The action centers on the historical figure of Luis de Santángel, chancellor to the king of Aragon and a converso, a Jewish convert to Christianity at a time when the Inquisition sought to repress judaizing. Santángel is friend and financier of Columbus, surviving parent of young Gabriel, and more curious than is prudent about his Jewish heritage. While he learns about Judaism in clandestine meetings, a parallel story unfolds, centering on Judith Migdal, a beautiful Jewish woman who learns to become a silversmith in Granada, located in the last part of Spain under Muslim rule. Santángel’s attraction to Judith grows, even as the Inquisition closes in and the prospect of another world to the West tantalizes. Kaplan has done remarkable homework on the period and crafted a convincing and complex figure in Santángel in what is a naturally cinematic narrative and a fine debut.

Review:
When the author of By Fire, By Water, Mitchell James Kaplan, contacted me about reviewing his amazing novel set at the dawn of the Spanish Inquisition, I said yes, even though period novels really aren’t my thing, because the story intrigued me. I started reading it immediately, and loved it. I hadn’t planned for my life to go into a tailspin before I could write the review.

Still, this story, which is part history, part social commentary, and part romance, has stuck with me. It’s about religion and faith, and how they differ, and how they’re similar, but it’s also about wealth and politics and passion. The love story between Judith and Luis is poignant, but written with a lot of truth.

Maybe it’s Kaplan’s background as a screenwriter, but this book sings it’s vividness to the world. Reading it, I had such strong senses of place and time – I could see it as a movie in my head. (I could totally see this film as a Merchant Ivory production.)

This review is vague and disjointed not because I didn’t love the story – because I did. If all historical novels were this interesting and well crafted, and relevant to modern times, I’d read more of them. It’s just that I read it very quickly several months ago, and the details have blurred.

I do remember thinking, however, that if this book were a movie, the after-the-credits cookie would be a time jump to modern times and a connection to the Hidden Jews of New Mexico, or some such.

Anyway, buy this book. It’s brilliant. Epic, even.

By Fire, By Water
Mitchell James Kaplan
320 pages, Other Press, May 2010
Buy this book from Amazon.com >>

Review: A Widow’s Awakening, by Maryanne Pope

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A Widow's Awakening

A Widow’s Awakening
Maryanne Pope

Description (via Amazon.com)
A Widow’s Awakening draws you in from the first page as you listen in on a conversation one month before the death of Sam, a police officer. Readers are given a glimpse into an everyday marriage on the brink of a tragic event. Written as creative non-fiction, the story follows the character of Adri, Sam’s wife, as she learns to come to terms with the death of her husband. The story opens with what will be Adri s last vacation with her soul mate and grips the reader s interest until the end. A Widow’s Awakening is a page-turner full of conversational dialogue that reflects the feelings and thoughts of Adri, who is gripped with guilt over her last conversations with her husband, stunned by his sudden and needless death, and the path she is forced to follow that was not of her own choosing. A Widow’s Awakening is a tragic, heart wrenching, but humourous look at grief while giving the reader hope that life can go on after loss and it s what you do with it that counts. This book has something for everyone. It’s not a depressing book; it s an engaging, inspiring and powerful read. The book fits in several categories: self-help, biography, current events, politics, health, spirituality, psychology, death and dying, and grief. In addition, 20% of the proceeds of the sale of this book are going to the John Petropoulos Memorial Fund, a non- profit organization set up in memory of the author s husband. The Fund’s safety initiatives educate the public that workplace safety for emergency services personnel is a shared responsibility.

Review
This review is months overdue. I read the book early this year, after having a publicist pitch it to me via email. I loved every word, and despite the seemingly dark subject matter, found it to be uplifting and beautifully written. It’s a love-song to the author’s dead husband as well as a song of hope and new life.

Originally, reading this helped me accept the death of my brother-in-law, and I thought about sending it to my sister-in-law, because I thought she might appreciate the notion of having her husband’s presence as a sort of silent guardian, much as Adri did in this book, but ultimately, I decided not to.

So, if I loved this book so much, why am only posting the review five months later? Because just as I’d finished it, my nephew’s cancer was officially terminal. He would die about a month later, in mid-April, and during that time, instead of blogging, I was doing the bare minimum I could for work, and reading a whole bunch of escapist literature because I couldn’t cope with anything else.

My apologies, then, to Ms. Pope, because her book is wonderful, and I would recommend it to anyone who is dealing with grief, or who just wants a really candid look at a woman and her grief.

If you’re a writer, perhaps you’ll even take this book as a warning to find the time to really write while you still can.

A Widow’s Awakening
Maryanne Pope
312 pages, Self-published in September, 2008
Buy this book from Amazon.com >>

30-Day Book Meme #2: Certain Women

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Certain Women

I’ve been a fan of Madeleine L’Engle since a friend of my mother’s gave me A Wrinkle in Time to read while I was at her house. It was, quite literally, a dark and stormy night, and I was sprawled on a guest-room bed covered in a patchwork quilt, immersed in a story and unafraid of the storm.

I’ve probably read A Wrinkle in Time at least a dozen times, but the novel I’m actually using for this prompt – a book I’ve read at least three times – is one of L’Engle’s adult novels, Certain Women. I like it because it’s a story within a story – on one level, it’s about an adult daughter spending time with her dying father, but on another level it’s the story of the play that her ex-husband created for father and daughter to perform, about King David and all his wives.

As someone whose religious education has been rather eclectic, I read it, the first time, with very little frame of reference, save for the fact that I read the Catholic version of the Bible cover-to-cover when I was seven. In the years since my first reading, however, my knowledge has expanded, and I’ve gotten more from the book.

I think I got even more from it as I’ve aged, as well…you can read the same book at forty that you did at twenty-five and even fifteen, and always enjoy it, but experience it three different ways, and with this novel, I’ve done that.

30-Day Book Meme #1: The Wave

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The Wave

The 30-day book meme asked me to talk about the best book I read last year. I don’t really rank my books in “best ever/worst ever” categories. I either didn’t like something, liked it, or loved it enough to read again. One of the books that fit the latter category, was The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Ocean, by Susan Casey (review here).

This book alternates chapters, speaking with scientists and then surfers about finding the world’s biggest waves, predicting ocean waves and currents, surviving rogue waves, and even seeing waves from space – no really.

It’s a great book to go back to in weeks like this one, when it’s predicted to reach 109 today, and I’m really missing the ocean, but I’d recommend it to anyone who likes the science behind sailing and surfing, and why waves may be getting bigger and more dangerous.

Was it really the best book I read in 2010? Maybe, maybe not. It did, however, inspire me to download a surf report app for my iPhone.