Looking for Calvin and Hobbes

Back in the late eighties and early nineties, one of my favorite morning traditions was to read the comics section of the newspaper my parents subscribed to.  I barely tolerated the boring and ancient strips like Beetle Bailey, Blondie and Family Circle, occasionally chuckled at Garfield, loved the quirkiness of The Far Side, but saved the best for last.  Calvin and Hobbes was always the best of them all, whether it was funny or poignant.  Sometimes both.  When Bill Watterson announced his hiatus from cartooning for nine months, I didn't know how I could stand waiting that long.  When he came back, it was with the most beautiful spreads, unbelievable colors and a structure unlike anything else.  When shortly after his hiatus Watterson announced the retirement of Calvin and Hobbes, I was devastated.  I did not want this good thing to come to an end.

A few years ago, my kids were re-reading my husband's collections of Fox Trot and ripping the covers and dog-earing the pages from use.  The thought came to me that I ought to get them some Calvin and Hobbes books from the library and see what they think.  The copies we checked out must have been read a dozen times each in the few weeks we had them from the library.  They guffawed and howled with laughter, they came running to read me passages, they needed dozens of words explained to them, and then acted out their favorite strips as an impromptu play.  My memories of joyful morning readings came flooding back and I couldn't believe it took me that long to introduce them to Calvin, Mr. Spittle, Moe the bully, the myriad of snowmen, and Hobbes.  Ah, Hobbes.  I had wished so many times that he was my best friend.

Biographies have been written before where the subject declined to tell their story, but poor Nevin Martell had his hands full in writing anything about Bill Watterson in his biography, Looking for Calving and Hobbes. In addition to being violently opposed to syndicating his comic strip or syndication in general, Watterson is a fiercely private person.  His family and friends have closed ranks around him, making it nearly impossible to find any personal information about him.  When Watterson was writing Calvin and Hobbes, he rarely was interviewed and never showed up for awards given to him.  Despite all these obstacles, Martell has written a wonderful biography of the creator of this iconic strip.  He explores Watterson's childhood, education, a brief career as a editorial cartoonist, and then his time as the genius creator of a decade worth of amazing comic strips.  Martell explores his own love of the strip and how it was part of his own life.  The interviews he was able to get from editors and some friends were filled with compliments on Watterson's talent and process, but it was all slightly tinged with sadness over Watterson's refusal to be interviewed by Martell.

Despite that bittersweet aspect, I loved reading this book.  I loved learning more about how Calvin and Hobbes came to be and I loved hearing a fellow fan enjoy the process of finding out more about Bill Watterson.  It was an enjoyable read and filled me with nostalgia.  I still love reading comics and though my list is pretty short of what I read regularly, the closest I've found to the greatness of Calvin and Hobbes is Sheldon by Dave Kellett.  He seems to channel that sense of fun that Watterson was a master at.  Plus, Kellett is an independent cartoonist, not syndicated by any newspaper and still popular and putting out collections.  I think he and Watterson could have been kindred spirits had the internet been around for Calvin and Hobbes.  Sheldon is always the last comic I read every morning so that it lingers with me, kind of like saving dessert for last. As much as I miss my buddies Calvin and Hobbes, reading Sheldon brings a little of that excitement for comics back to me.

I've got a project this week to help my kids spend their birthday money on Amazon.com.  Guess what they want to buy?  As many Calvin and Hobbes books as their money will get them.  Not a bad choice.

Left To Tell

For centuries, the two tribes that make up the country of Rwanda, the Hutus and the Tutsis, have been warring against each other.  The tribe in power has shifted back and forth between the two, often after many brutal deaths in the upheaval for control.  The tension between the parties came to a head in 1994 when exiled Tutsi rebels invaded the capital.  In retaliation, the Hutu government called for the extinction of the Tutsi people.  Hutus across the country took up guns and machetes and went to work.  When the mass murder was finally over after one hundred days, about one million people had been killed, more than 90% of them Tutsis.  That works about to be 10,000 people a day.  Most Americans never knew what happened.

My book group picked the book Left to tell : discovering God amidst the Rwandan holocaust by Immaculée Ilibagiza for our March meeting and I had no idea what an impact this book would have on me. Told in first person, Immaculee Ilibagiza describes her life in Rwanda, from her idyllic childhood in a loving, well-educated, and religious family to her time in college studying engineering.  It speaks volumes of her parents' goodness that Immaculee didn't know what tribe she belonged to until she went to school and was required to state her tribe.  There was some discrimination because she was a Tutsi, but not enough to stop her from getting a good education and making a life for herself.  

When everything came to a head in 1994, Immaculee was home from college, visiting her family.  As bands of Hutus began slaughtering Tutsis, thousands of Tutsis in her village camped out on her parents' property, hoping to be protected by sheer numbers.  When the Hutus came for the people, Immaculee's family was split up and Immaculee ended up in a Protestant minister's home, hiding with her brothers.  After the minister kicked out her brothers, he hid Immaculee and seven other women in a tiny bathroom off of the master bedroom in his home.  What started out as a quick solution to keeping them hid turned into 91 days of hiding, cramped and in constant fear of discovery.

 The horrific setting I've described to you is only half of the story.  This book is really the story of how Immaculee Ilibagiza came to commune with God during her months in that bathroom, her struggle to overcome hatred for the Hutus and being able to forgive the men who killed her family.  I was overcome so many times while I read this book with how she coped with her situation.  She could have descended into anger and madness while she was confined in silence in that bathroom, but instead she took that rare opportunity to pray on a constant basis and receive comfort and guidance.  While most survivors of the holocaust wanted revenge, or at least to stockpile weapons for retaliation, Immaculee strove to forgive and find peace.  

As horrific as the circumstances of this book are, it's a story of hope.  Immaculee's story teaches that anyone can forgive and that doing so can bring peace and comfort.  Her story is one that is heart-breaking, terrifying and also incredibly moving and uplifting.  I believe that reading this book gave me a better sense of my own need to come closer to God.  It was beautiful and compelling and my life is better from reading it.

A Boy Named Shel

A few years ago, I was talking to my daughter's teacher and I told her how much she enjoyed Shel Silverstein poems. Her teacher told me that her older sister had dated Silverstein and did I know that he had written for Playboy magazine for many years? My barely concealed reaction along the lines of "WHAT?!" is probably what most adults of my generation would say, considering that all we know of the man is his delightful poetry and books for children. I walked away from that conversation feeling slightly dazed and curious about this man I had categorized as very talented writer for children.

Fast forward a few years and into my e-mail inbox appeared my library's newsletter with biography selections for the month. I usually skim over those because it tends to be celebrities airing their dirty laundry or shocking facts about people that I never needed to know. But this time there was A Boy Named Shel: the life and times of Shel Silverstein by Lisa Rogak and I remembered that conversation with my daughter's teacher. I decided to find out more about this man whose poems and stories bring back some the best memories of my childhood.

Like so many artists born to immigrant families in the Depression era, Shel's artistry was seen as nonsense by his father, who wanted him to take over the family bakery in Chicago. His mother was always supportive, but his father disapproved, which fueled Shel's insecurities for his whole life. He fooled around at school and college and got by during his short time in the military by cartooning for the military newsletter. He was determined to make it as a cartoonist and never to be tied down to a family and there began his life as a wandering artist.

Shel wrote travelogues and drew cartoons for Playboy magazine for most of his career, though it tapered down as he got into songwriting, playwriting and books. The magazine was his jumping off point and the notoriety he gained there opened doors for him to explore other aspects of writing. Even though he explored so many avenues it always came down to writing. He wrote hundreds of songs for his own albums and for other artists. He drew and wrote many different books, not all for children and some of them downright pornographic. In fact, Shel loved shock value and didn't clean up his mouth for anybody. He was also a famous womanizer and fathered two children with casual sex partners. He didn't change his lifestyle for anybody and he was the type of person you took as he was or he didn't have anything to do with you.

In all, I decided that Shel was a genius at what he accomplished but I would never be interested in being his friend. He was too demanding, unpredictable, morally skewed and his attention span was way too short. But he was generous and loyal, his creativity was unparalleled and he worked harder than anybody else at what he did. It's too bad he died fairly young because who knew what else he could have created with more time. The biography was interesting to get a perspective on how he worked and how his mind functioned, but I'm content to enjoy his children's books and call that good.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

It's pretty rare for me to take a really long time to read a book, unless it's painfully dull or tedious and I feel obligated to read it for some reason so I just keep plugging through it instead of returning it to the library. If a book is interesting, I'll dive in and ignore the housework until I finish it. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A year of food life by Barbara Kingsolver was a rare book for me since it took me weeks to finish reading but was one of the fascinating reads I've encountered in a long time. Why it took me so long to read probably had something to do with the fact that I would read two or three pages and then have to sit and think about it, or hunt down my husband and demand he talk to me about whatever it was that I just read. Takes a long time to get through a 300+ page book when you stop that often.

This book documents the year that Barbara Kingsolver, her husband and two girls spent feeding themselves entirely on food they had grown or acquired within 120 miles of their Virginia farm. The project started and ended in March, which if you've ever grown even so much as a tomato plant, you know that gardens don't really produce anything to eat until late July or August. This fact doesn't stop them and they are very clever in their acquisition of food. The exceptions to their rules include coffee, olive oil and some spices, but they took great measures to make sure they bought these through fair trade sellers, which means the grower received the greater portion of the profit instead of some huge corporation taking the bulk of the money while some South American farmer gets a few pennies. They also eat completely organically, which really isn't all that hard when all your food comes from farmer's markets and your own soil.

Kingsolver's descriptions of how they grew their own food, including chickens and turkeys was fascinating to me, but that was just half of the book. She fills the book with facts about how farming has changed in our country, how narrow our diets have become because of the lack of variety in big, industrialized farms, our national health issues related to additives in food, how the use of pesticides has done more harm to the land than good, the extinction of heirloom plants and animals, and so much more. I found it all absolutely riveting. I would drop the book and feel desperate to talk to someone about it. But most people that I approached, beside my husband, found the topic baffling or weird or incomprehensible. A couple of people gave me blank stares. "What's wrong with eating bananas?" was the general attitude. Even if I started a discussion based on the concept of feeding a family only on food that was available nearby, it was treated as a lunatic's mission, like I wanted to start a compound in Idaho and stop paying taxes.

I was already primed for a book like this, I have to say. A few years ago I had several allergic reactions to the most random assortment of food. When I narrowed it down, it was food dyes. I soon discovered that food dye is in everything. As is high fructose corn syrup and soy products. I became an avid label reader out of necessity because it's no fun to have your eyes swell shut, but soon realized that I didn't know what half the ingredients were in my jar of spaghetti sauce. Everything was packed with additives, chemicals and preservatives. It started to worry me what I was putting in my family's bodies. Then, when I kept having little girls, I started to think about the hormones in milk. My kids were milk guzzlers and I wondered if all that gossip about early puberty due to milk consumption might have some merit. When I became a fairly competent gardener last year, I decided that I wasn't going to use MiracleGro or pesticides in my garden, even taking care to avoid using treated wood in my raised boxes and hand-pulling weeds instead of using chemicals to kill them for me. I make my own bread, have experimented with making my own yogurt and cheese, I don't use boxed mixes for baking, bought 1/4 of a pig from a farmer and over 100 pounds of fruit from local growers last year, and have a subscription to Mother Earth News. So you can see that I'm a bit fruity, as my mom would kindly say.

I also live in Colorado which is rich with local produce, meat and dairy products. This is the first time I have ever had milk delivery to my home out of the three different states I've lived in. Walking into the produce section of a grocery store you can find signs everywhere that say, "Grown in Colorado". Farmers' markets are accessible, along with pick your own farms and free range meat. If I wanted to undertake the same project that Kingsolver did, it wouldn't be that hard for me. I live in the suburbs, so I don't know think raising turkeys would fly, but my husband and I have seriously considered moving to a farm some day in the near future to do that exact thing: raise and eat our own food. But we are very unusual Americans that way. I could give up bananas, oranges, kiwis and mangos to know that my food wasn't using fossil fuels by being shipped from Chile. Or I would spend the extra money to know it was coming from a fair trade farmer, not some huge corporation.

Most of that is my ideal, though. I don't buy organic produce or dairy products (other than my milk delivery) because it feels like I can't afford it. I'd rather grow or cultivate it myself than pay $4 for a container of organic sour cream. But I don't do either at this point. Kingsolver and her family were much purer disciples of their ideals than I am. I still have a long way to go.

The point of this very long post is that Kingsolver's book opened by eyes. She did a ton of research to support her opinions, but a book about the virtues of industrialized, government-subsidized corn farms could accomplish the same goal. I'm saying that I'm not naive, anybody can support their opinions with well-researched facts from any angle of any topic. But it would do our country a great deal of good to examine where our food is coming from and how it was grown. Kingsolver's book is a pretty interesting place to start.

Freakonomics

I am currently engrossed in the southwestern frontier world of Sarah Agnes Prine, but I just realized that I have a stack of books that need to go back to the library this week and if I don't take some time to review them now, they'll soon be out of sight and out of mind. So I will tear myself away from Sarah's tale and the amazing voice talents of Valerie Leonard bringing it to life in my audio book, and try to stir up some recollections of something not related to frontier survival.

I'll start with Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, by Steven D. Levitt and co-authored by Stephen J. Dubner. What that really means is, Levitt provided all the brains and research that the book was based on, and Dubner presented it in a format that would be interesting to the average reader. This popular book really deserves all the attention it's gotten. It is fascinating, engaging, and easy to read. It reads like a conversation, or rather, like an interesting fast-paced monologue because really, when someone is throwing that kind of stuff at you, what can you really contribute besides, "Huh, no kidding," and then let them continue?

Levitt's position is that economics is basically the study of incentives; why people do what they do; what are the incentives that drive them? I can support this idea because I've seen it at work. My sister-in-law studied social work in college and is a master of developing behavior modification programs that use incentives to encourage desired change. It was a strength professionally when working with mentally handicapped young adults, but it's also been a powerful tool in her personal life in helping her with her children, her husband, her volunteer work, you name it. Everyone responds to incentives; the trick is to discover what incentives work for an individual and (assuming you have a conscience and don't believe that the end justifies the means) how to constructively use that knowledge to encourage them to improve.

Levitt's research leads to surprising conclusions. He makes unusual comparisons and turns conventional thinking on its head (even attacks the whole idea of conventional thinking). He tackles a variety of subjects such as the Ku Klux Klan, real estate agents, crack dealers, school teachers, the gameshow The Weakest Link, and even parents who give their kids stupid names -- all in an effort to get to the bottom of why people do the things they do. And ultimately to illustrate that we need to be asking more questions to try to see things the way they really are instead of how the news media or various experts and authorities would spin it.

Some of the material is controversial (e.g. saying that parents don't have as much influence over their kids as genetics), and some could be downright offensive (e.g. insisting that legalized abortion was the biggest force behind the big crime drop in the '90's). But I never felt like he was pushing a political agenda so I felt free to agree or disagree with him however I wished. And sometimes I just had to say, "Huh, no kidding," and then continue drinking my 8 glasses of water a day and reading to my children even though he claims that neither activity is proven to have any benefit. As a side note, one drawback of encouraging the reader to question everything is that I couldn't help but question him and wonder how watertight his conclusions really were. And since the supporting empirical evidence was a bit sketchy at times (which I suppose it had to be for a book like this -- I wouldn't have understood it anyway), it was hard to know how much to trust him.

But a few things were clear. First, Levitt is a very smart man who asks interesting questions of the world around him. Second, Freakonomics is full of compelling insights into human nature (both the good and the bad). And third, it's a fun, quick read that will entertain you and just might make you question some of your long-held assumptions about the world as we know it and your relationship to it.

And now, I'm sorry, but the Siren song of Sarah's western drawl is filling my head again and calling me away, so the other books will have to wait this time!

The Middle Place

I don't share Jenny's aversion to so-called "chick lit," and having had a sister with breast cancer I was interested in reading Kelly Corrigan's The Middle Place. It's a memoir of sorts detailing her personal story of how she fought breast cancer while at the same time her father (whom she idolized and is basically the center of her universe) was diagnosed with bladder cancer. More than a cancer story, however, it's a story of how becoming an adult means living in two worlds at once -- the world where you are the child who still needs her parents, and the world where you are the parent and everything you do revolves around your own children -- in other words, being in The Middle Place.

Things I liked about it:

- Corrigan knows how to tell a story. She draws the reader into the story with her strong voice, sense of immediacy, and intuitive way of making connections and stringing the stories together.

- She has profound insights and a way of articulating those experiences that give us meaning and identity, but which are hard to define or name.

- She speaks with a great deal of honesty, even portraying herself and those she loves in a negative light in order to really flush out the truth. As a result, it feels sincere and true even when I disagreed with her.

- She avoided oversentimentality. Though she discussed love and family and death and loss, it was done without drowning in catharsis. Instead, there was almost an edge to it, but an edge that I could identify with.

Things I didn't like about it:

- Lots of bad language and sex. Really, I didn't need that. I like honesty and all, but that doesn't mean that I need to have every last f-word replayed for me. It was way too much, and felt like she was insensitive to her audience.

- I didn't like her. I kept trying, but I just couldn't. Even though I could relate to many of the things she shared, I couldn't help but be irritated by her. Idolizing her dad so much grated on my nerves, her crassness was tacky and in bad taste, and I disagreed with a lot of her liberal and anti-faith sentiments. The more I got to know her, the more I just plain didn't like her.

But even as I write that, I can't help but remember some of the thoughts she shared about motherhood, marriage, and family that resonated so strongly with my own feelings and almost made up for the parts when she bugged me. So I have conflicting feelings about it. Overall I was glad I finished it (I almost didn't), but wouldn't ever read it again or recommend it to someone else.

Running with Angels

It's been almost three years since I started running. Before that time, I hated it. Loathed. Abhorred. I'm talking great enmity, folks. I was convinced that God made certain people to be runners, and I was not one of them. But after years of childbearing and not taking care of my body, I desperately needed to get more fit and lose the excess weight I was carrying. Needless to say, this was a huge lifestyle change for me!

Soon after I was peer-pressured into running my first 5K, a friend told me about Running with Angels by Pamela Hansen. After it was recommended several times from different sources, I finally sat down to see what it was all about.

Running with Angels (I'll leave out the very long tag line) is the personal true story of a young LDS mother who suffers one tragedy after another, including burying two infant children. Through the years she turns to food to cope with her stress and grief, which in turn leads to an ongoing battle with obesity. She tries repeatedly to turn her life around, but fails each time and sinks deeper into her destructive cycle. After some 15 years of this, the indefineable and elusive missing piece finally clicks into place and she begins to change. Through exercise and a drastic overhaul of her destructive eating habits, she manages to lose over 100 pounds and fulfills her lifelong dream of running a marathon. The story is told with the marathon serving as a backdrop for reflections on her journey to lose weight and adopt a healthy lifestyle.

I commend her for her journey and I commend her for putting these very personal things out to share with the public in hopes of helping someone else make the changes they need to. But I was disappointed because I thought it would have more to do with her running, and less to do with her weight. While the weight struggles were very serious and evoked compassion, the stories reeked strongly of catharsis and a little of that went a long way. I actually started skimming (!) towards the end, and then perked up again when she started going into more detail about her marathon. I wish she could have explored more thoughtfully what that missing element was that finally made the difference in her success, because that is the key that eludes so many people who desperately want to change. A more experienced and skillful author could have done that in a powerful way without relying so heavily on sentimentality and cliché.

Okay, I admit that it probably wasn't fair to read this right after The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. Hansen is not a writer, and that fact is evident in every word just as Wroblewski's skill is evident in his. The strength of her message was hindered by her weak, inadequate prose, and the discriminating reader should be prepared to be unimpressed. But it was still a worthy message, especially for someone who feels trapped in an unhealthy lifestyle and doesn't know how to change. While my experience doesn't match hers in intensity, I think everyone who has made similar changes can relate in some measure to her story.

Six weeks ago I ran my very first marathon and it was an amazing, defining moment in my life. I am still not a lithe natural runner and am definitely not shaped for speed. But I know the thrill of accomplishing the impossible, the awe of discovering my body's untapped potential, and the victory of overcoming obstacles to finish a race of ultimate endurance. It was a surreal experience that I'm still trying to fully dissect and absorb. I could go on (and on), but I'll spare you lest I become guilty of publicly indulging in self-catharsis of my own!

Red-faced parents and uncomfortable conversations

My oldest daughter has been asking some pointed questions about the nature of babies and how boys and girls are different, so my husband and I figured it wouldn't hurt for us to read up on how to teach the facts of life to her without scarring her and causing us to die from embarrassment. After asking knowledgeable friends, I checked out the book How to Talk to Your Child About Sex by Richard and Linda Eyre. We read up on what was age appropriate and discovered that she was at that perfect age to be curious about things that so far we've glibly answered without really answering. She already knows the truth about Santa and the Easter Bunny, so it's only natural that our non-distinct answers about babies and bodies would make her slanty-eyed with disbelief. Also, she's at the perfect age to get the truth because she's old enough to understand, but not so old that she would be horrified and embarrassed.

Friday was the day of truth. We got the book that the Eyres recommend you have your child read and then answered her questions and explained more. She was fine until she realized that meant her parents were participants in this business and then she was embarrassed. But she got over it and we got over being embarrassed and it all went well. She's had questions since then like, "Why do you need the man to make a baby again?" Yikes, that was kind of a crucial part, but it shows how you can't just talk about it once. One thing that the Eyres reiterate over and over again in their book is that that conversation is the first of many and if you can keep an open dialog with your child, you'll be able to help them navigate through their teenage years with good communication. I sure hope so, because it's got to get easier from here on out. Those of you readers who are years away from this conversation, enjoy the time you have left.

A Girl Named Zippy & She Got Up Off the Couch

I owe Jenny big for introducing me to Haven Kimmel. I loved my first taste of her writing in The Solace of Leaving Early, but didn't enjoy her newest Iodine. That disappointment was more than reversed when I finally sat down to read her first book, A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana. I resisted reading Zippy initially because I couldn't get excited about a memoir. Which just proves how limiting genre prejudice can be!

I loved Zippy! It was a witty collection of stories that were absurd, delightful, and sometimes almost too painful to read because they resonated so deeply with tender childhood experience. Kimmel blends both the heart-breaking and the heart-warming aspects of small-town life, achieving a sincerity that avoids cliche and sentimentality. And all done in her gifted prose that turns it into almost a tactile experience.

I listened to the audio version of Zippy, read by Kimmel herself. This was a disadvantage in some ways, because I would be so struck by something she said that I'd have to replay it in an effort to let the language sink in. It would have been so much more effective if I could have read the printed word directly. But the advantage was hearing it told in her own voice, complete with Midwestern drawl and lisping demonstrations. It added an authenticity to the stories that made them even more inviting.

Then came She Got Up Off the Couch: And Other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana. This Zippy sequel continues in a similar vein as a collection of personal essays from Kimmel's childhood. But as Zippy grows up (these stories cover her early teenage years) there is a slight edge as she begins to develop an awareness about the world around her. While there are many stories about Kimmel (all delightful and witty as you would expect), She Got Up Off the Couch is really about her mother who turns the family's world upside down by getting off the couch and going back to college. As you watch Zippy try to understand what her mother is doing and why, you also see her coming to grips with her parents' troubled marriage and unhappy home life; all told with characteristic self-deprecating humor and insight that's all the more striking for its understatedness.

In the preface to She Got Up Off the Couch, Kimmel writes:

Indiana is not the state our national eye turns toward for fascinating narratives, strangely enough. Mooreland is definitely not a mecca for the literary arts, although it is rich with crafts. And no one cares about the reminiscences of one more child with one more set of parents and neighbors and friends. I myself have been known to wince as if stabbed with wide-bore needles when faced with yet another coming-of-age memoir.

This is how I felt before reading A Girl Named Zippy and She Got Up Off the Couch. Been there, done that, not interested. Keep your tedious childhood stories to yourself. But this is not the experience that awaits you in Zippy's story. Funny, poignant, and true in the deepest recesses of your childhood self, you will find yourself disappointed to reach the last page, and will carry a taste of her story in the days to follow.

Three Cups of Tea

"I've learned that terror doesn't happen because some group of people somewhere like Pakistan or Afghanistan simply decide to hate us. It happens because children aren't being offered a bright enough future that they have a reason to choose life over death." These words of Greg Mortenson as he appeared before Congress in 2002 sum up the pervading theme of the bestselling Three Cups of Tea -- the story of Mortenson's amazing journey from aimless rock-climber to fearless humanitarian who tirelessly fights to build schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Part biography, part promotion, it's impossible to read it without being moved.


Written by David Oliver Relin in collaboration with Greg Mortenson, the book opens in 1993 as Mortenson is returning from a failed attempt at climbing Pakistan's K2, the world's second-highest mountain. Brooding over his defeat, he loses track of his guide and ends up lost in the alpine wilderness. He stumbles into a tiny village where he's cared for and nursed back to health. He is moved by the people's generosity despite their crippling poverty. When he sees that they have no school, Mortenson leaves with a promise to one day return and build them one. Mortenson himself is homeless with no steady job, no connections, and no idea how to get started. But with his characteristic passion and tenacity, he forges ahead and his life is changed forever.


Eventually he secures funding and learns through some painful experiences who to trust and how to navigate the complex Islamic world as an American infidel. Once the school is finally finished several years later, he realizes that this is only the beginning. So many Pakistani children suffer from inadequate education and it becomes his life's work to build schools for as many of them as possible. There are inspiring stories of students receiving their first books. ("I didn't dare to open them, they were so beautiful.") Or a clean school uniform. ("[T]hat day I held the first set of clean, new clothes I'd ever owned...And I remember thinking, 'Maybe I shouldn't feel so ashamed.'"). There are also troubling accounts of Wahhabi madrassas -- extremist schools that target millions of impoverished children with "a curriculum that emphasizes jihad and hatred of the West at the expense of subjects like math, science, and literature."


Mortenson is especially interested in the education of girls.

"Once you educate the boys, they tend to leave the villages and go search for work in the cities," he says. "But the girls stay home, become leaders in the community, and pass on what they've learned. If you really want to change a culture, to empower women, improve basic hygiene and health care, and fight high rates of infant mortality, the answer is to educate girls."

This attitude earns him some enemies from fundamentalists who don't believe girls should be educated. But I was amazed at how many of the conservative Muslims he met felt passionately about the need for their daughters to be educated. Indeed, this book challenged a lot of my assumptions about conservative Islam, reinforced others, and basically shaped a whole new perspective on life in that part of the world. From the other-worldly geography to the poverty to the politics, I felt like I was seeing things for the first time and realized how very ignorant I am about these things.


On September 11, 2001 Mortenson was near Pakistan's border with Afghanistan when he was informed that "A village called New York has been bombed." Mortenson had already been reaching out to the Afghan refugees who had been pouring into Pakistan for years, but after the US went to war in Afghanistan he felt even more drawn to help the innocent citizens of that country. His first-hand accounts of the things he has seen are stirring and call for accountability from our government to fulfill their promises for humanitarian aid.

"People in that part of the world are used to death and violence," Mortenson said. "And if you tell them, 'We're sorry your father died, but he died a martyr so Afghanistan could be free,' and if you offer them compensation and honor their sacrifice, I think people will support us, even now. But the worst thing you can do is what we're doing -- ignoring the victims. To call them 'collateral damage' and not even try to count the numbers of the dead. Because to ignore them is to deny they ever existed, and there is no greater insult in the Islamic world. For that, we will never be forgiven."

He continues to emphasize that our biggest enemy in that part of the world is ignorance. Desperate people will give their loyalty to whatever force (good or evil) promises them a better life. So goes the story of one young man he meets in Afghanistan:

"Like a lot of Taliban, Hash, as he told me to call him, was a jihadi in theory only," Mortenson explains. "He was a smart guy who would much rather have worked as a telecommunications technician than a Taliban fighter, if a job like that had been available. But the Taliban offered him three hundred dollars when he graduated from his madrassa to join them. So he gave the money to his mother in Khost and reported for weapons training." Hash had been wounded when a Northern Alliance rocket-propelled grenade exploded against a wall where he'd taken cover. Four months later, puncture wounds on his back still oozed infected pus and his torn lungs whistled when he exerted himself. But Hash was ecstatic to be free of the Taliban's rigid restrictions and had shaved off the beard he'd been obliged to grow. And after Mortenson dressed his wounds and treated him with a course of antibiotics, he was ready to swear allegiance to the only American he'd ever met.

Three Cups of Tea is full of such remarkable vignettes. It's also full of contrasts between what is best and worst in humanity. But ultimately, it offers a message of hope. Consider these words of Ahmed Rashid, author of the bestselling book Taliban:

"The work Mortenson is doing building schools is giving thousands of students what they need most -- a balanced education and the tools to pull themselves out of poverty," Rashid says. "But we need many more like them. His schools are just a drop in the bucket when you look at the scale of the problem in Pakistan. Essentially, the state is failing its students on a massive scale and making them far too easy for the extremists who run many of the madrassas to recruit."

Against that sobering thought, the words of Afghan refugee Fatima Batool shine like a beacon. "I've heard some people say Americans are bad," she says softly. "But we love Americans. They are the most kind people for us. They are the only ones who cared to help us."


Three Cups of Tea has given me a lot to think about. It was hard to keep track of the timeline sometimes, and the constant foreign names and places just sort of blurred together for me. The writing is descriptive and anecdotal to help keep the pace going, though I admit it did put me to sleep a few nights. Reading it during the holidays sure emphasized the polar opposites of our worlds and made me rethink things while I was doing my Christmas shopping! If the average American knows no more about life in Pakistan and Afghanistan than I do, then the average American had better sit down with Three Cups of Tea. I can't stress enough how strongly I recommend it. Through it, Mortenson's mission to fight ignorance in these impoverished nations is having the residual effect of fighting our own cultural ignorance here in America -- with a wonderfully compelling idea to use education to promote peace and change the world.

A Year in Elisha Cooper's Life

I'm a bit obsessed with documentaries. When a new red Netflix envelope arrives in the mail, my husband will ask, "Which documentary is it this time? Please tell me it's in English." Really, he's a good sport and I have watched an awful lot of action flicks over the years for him. My recent newest favorite? "King of King: A Fistful of Quarters" So, so awesome. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll wish that you could strangle the big cheater face that undermines the hero.

Elisha Cooper, who is actually best known as a children's book author and illustrator, wrote a couple of books that take on that documentary-feel. His first book was Crawling: A Father's First Year and the second is ridiculous/hilarious/terrible/cool: a year in an american high school and I much preferred the second. Now, if I had to examine a time of my own life, high school would not be preferred over the first year of my first child's life. I've never gone to a high school reunion and never will and much of that time I've repressed. It wasn't really that bad, I mean, it wasn't junior high. That's a black hole that has disappeared from my consciousness altogether. But it was high school. Yick. My first year as a mother was much more joyful and I have much better memories and more tender feelings about that time. There was a whole lot less crying during that time than there was in high school, that's for sure.

I think the difference in how I liked these books was how the stories were told. In Crawling, Cooper is narrating his experiences as a father, his bewilderment, frustrations, joys, and general overwhelming love for his baby girl. In ridiculous/hilarious/terrible/cool he is an observer, with no comments or opinions on his part. I found that in Crawling, I didn't really care what he thought. Sure, parenthood is hard, babies are cute, they spit up a lot and all their milestones are amazing, but I didn't really emotionally invest in his experience. Maybe I couldn't relate to him? Maybe I didn't really like his voice? I can't pinpoint it. Maybe it's because parenthood is my own well-traveled and documented experience over these last eight years and nothing he had to say was new or interesting to me. I'm not sure.

Even though I'd much rather not remember most of high school, I loved Cooper's high school that he observed over the course of a year. He also did sketches of the kids that were so simple and yet very descriptive. Maybe if there had been more sketches in Crawling... Who knows, moving on. Cooper followed and interviewed several students whose ambitions, quirks, goals and problems were all vastly different and all relatable to some extent. Daniel, the class president who is trying to get into Harvard and someday wants to go into politics. Emily, captain of the soccer team, perfectionist, and a much deeper thinker than those around her. Maya, the actress who has a lot of tics and fidgety habits that disappear when she's on stage. Diana, the swimmer and good student who is the first of her family to do well in school or even think about college. Aisha, the loner, has lived all over the world and this is the first time she's ever been the only Muslim in her school. Zef, the musician and caffeine addict who can't seem to show up on time for anything and finds school to be a far second to his art. Anais, the beautiful and talented dancer can't seem to see the point to school when all she wants to do is join a ballet company and get going with her life. Anthony, the drug dealer who has zero ambition even with dealing and knows something has to change in his life.

We've all known or been these kids and while I read this book, I desperately wanted each of them to figure out their messes and make good in their lives. I was emotionally invested in these kids. Cooper so beautifully depicts their body language and voices that I felt like I knew each of them. I loved that they were real kids and not some fictional construction. It made me realize that this will be my own children a decade from now, trying to figure out what to do with their future selves and how to achieve the goals they make for themselves.

I hope that if Cooper decides to dedicate another year of his life to a book project, he goes the observer route instead of the narrator route. It appeals to me so much more, and it gives me a documentary fix. Mmm, I love the documentaries.

The Last Lecture

Many of you probably already know the story behind Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture. Pausch was an innovative computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon who gave his Last Lecture (both honorary and literal) in Sept. 2007 after learning that his pancreatic cancer was terminal. The lecture was recorded and has gained popularity by circulating around the Internet, leading him to publish this book with Jeffrey Zaslow.

The Last Lecture book contains basically the same material as his live lecture, but gives additional insights into the content and backstory. Pausch's exhuberant personality comes out in the text as well as it does in the video version, and it's easy to feel like you really know him by the time you're done. The title of his lecture was "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," but that was just the background to sharing important life lessons that he wanted to pass on to his kids after his death. Some of the lessons are cliche, and some don't have the universal application that he implies. But overall it was interesting and if you haven't seen the online video, it's worth a couple of hours to read the book.

I didn't agree with everything he said, especially his heavy emphasis on childhood dreams. Good for him for having such specific ones and being able to fulfill most of them. But really, the value is mostly anecdotal. Those dreams didn't define who he was or determine whether he was successful or not. They were just little tidbits that made for interesting stories. Most people I've talked to don't remember their childhood dreams, or care whether or not they've achieved them. And I think that's okay. There are lots of ways to determine success, and that one is especially narrow. But I do think there is always value in taking a step back and looking at your life and saying, "What do I really want out of life? Am I moving in the direction I really want to go? If not, what do I do about it now?" Pausch doesn't ask these exact questions, but they are natural extensions of his thoughts.

It was interesting to see things from the perspective of a computer geek, and the unique way that he viewed the world. I wasn't keen on his arrogance, and there were times that I thought, "Boy, if I knew you I don't think I would like you very much." It made me wonder if most computer geeks are like that (my friend who's married to one says "yes"), and I felt sorry for his wife sometimes! But it was clear that he loved her and at the same time I felt irritated with him, I also felt very sad knowing that he had left a great void with his death. If nothing else, it's a poignant reminder that life is short and we need to make the most of it.

An Apology to Mary Roach

Dear Ms. Roach,
Recently, I checked out from my local library a copy of your book, "Stiff: the curious lives of human cadavers" that was published in 2003. I have always loved your column in the Reader's Digest and thought your books might be equally witty and good for a laugh, even though the topic wouldn't ordinarily lend itself to humor.

So here's the deal. I checked out your book along with "The Host" by Stephenie Meyer, "Mistborn" by Brandon Sanderson, "Austenland" by Shannon Hale, and "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" by Peter Reinhart. I mean, come on. You don't really have much to offer to compete with the likes of them. I mean, I love bread. I actually would pick to read about making artisan bread than about cadavers. Can you blame me? Peter Reinhart isn't as funny as you, but at least I can eat what he's writing about. Your book not so much.

I did read about half of it, but that's only because I had to chaperone a church dance and got stuck in the coat check room. In July. Needless to say, I had some time on my hands and I took your book with me, but only because my husband absconded with "Mistborn." It was funny and very interesting. Who knew what all was done after someone donated their body to science! I'm sure glad there are people who are willing to do that for humanity's benefit, even if it is totally gross and I hope I never have to witness it personally.

The book was due on Tuesday and since my library wouldn't let me renew it because somebody else has requested it, I'm taking it back only half-read. Hope you understand. I might try another one of your books later, when there isn't something more interesting and compelling in my book pile.

An admiring reader,
Jenny of the Red Hot Eyebrows

King George: What Was His Problem?

I know I'm a week late for a Independence Day-themed post, but what the heck. I found this title a few months back and put it in the back of my mind thinking I would get it for my oldest daughter to have a fun way to teach her about the American Revolution. "King George: What Was His Problem?" by Steve Sheinkin is a book that tells you all the good stuff that textbooks leave out. Sheinkin used to be a textbook writer and over the years, he accumulated piles of interesting facts that the textbook companies had no interest in putting in their books. It was a very fun read, but of no interest to my daughter. Oh well.

Most of what I remembered about the Revolution before reading this book included who was the general (George Washington), when the Declaration of Independence was signed (7/4/1776), and who won (Americans). Everything else was pretty fuzzy. After reading this book, I can tell you where the key battles were (Boston, Bunker Hill and Yorktown), who was the British general thought of as losing the war (Cornwallis) who was the coolest spy (James Armistead) and what happened to that nasty traitor, Benedict Arnold (became a British general, wandered about for a while, died in NYC). I know a bunch more but you should just read the book.

At only 150 pages, this was an easy read, but very informative. He writes in a storytelling style, making all the history much easier to absorb. There's pen drawings of the main players and my favorite was one of a German baroness. She looks so sassy and overfed.

I just read somewhere that Sheinkin wrote another book similar to this about the Civil War called "Two Miserable Presidents." It's going on the to-read list.

Across the Pond -- Some Short Reads

A little book I came across made my day this week. "The Uncommon Reader" by Alan Bennett is about the Queen of England. Not a former queen in a different century, but about the current queen. This is a work of fiction, but it was an absolutely charming bit of fiction. The Queen is out on the grounds with her corgies one day when they run away and over to a mobile library that parks there on occasion. To be polite, she borrows a book while making the patrons there extremely uncomfortable with her very presence. She's used to people being paralyzed with fear, so she takes in all in stride, but is impressed by the composure of a young man there who works in the kitchens of the palace. She borrows the book, finds it dry and when she returns it later, decides to make that her last book choice from the library. But this same young man convinces her otherwise and she picks something more worthwhile. She then discovers the pleasure of reading for fun. The Queen is one who does her duty first and foremost with sacrificing all personal indulgences. But reading has her hooked. She makes that young man be her personal assistant with his sole job being to provide her with books and to read them along with her. Her entire staff is baffled by her sudden change in habits and mannerisms and the Queen herself discovers how reading has changed who she is. At eighty years old, she figures it's better late than never.

I loved this book because of the person the Queen evolves into from reading. I can completely relate to getting so caught up in a book that very little otherwise gets done. I can relate to hunting down people to talk with about a recent read. But I cannot relate to being a monarch. Queen Elizabeth finds that reading makes her more sensitive to the people who surround her, but also isolates her. She keeps trying to bring up reading and books to everyone she encounters, including the President of France and various other world leaders, but she's usually met with puzzled looks. She has no use for fantasy (pity) and when she comes across someone who excited says they are reading Harry Potter, her reply is "Oh yes, well, one is saving that for a rainy day." One of the best parts is when she's reading while in a parade and when she gets out of the carriage, she sticks the book under the cushion. When her personal security finds it, they assume it's a bomb and tell her that they exploded it. Her wrath from this just goes to show how it can help to be Queen when somebody ticks you off.

A totally charming book. A short read, but worth an afternoon. On a completely different note, I got an audiobook by Stephen Colbert to listen to as I did housework. Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report (both with a silent "t") wrote "I am America (and so can you!)" with the sole purpose of offending every living person on the planet. It's satire, of course, but with how blind some people can be to what satire is, you have to wonder how many people he ticks off on regular basis. It's actually sounds like a fun job to have. I usually tick people off without any monetary benefit, so getting paid to do it has more appeal. Those of you who already watch The Colbert Report appreciate his humor, but it's new to me and I thought it was really well done. Not something I'd want to listen to every day, but a little bit of fun. It was an audiobook, so there were sections I skipped for the sake of smaller bystanders. He covers sports, politics, education, dating, and gender, but the best parts are when he gets "regular" Americans to do the "Stephen Speaks For Me" segments. Hilarious.

One book charming, one book slightly warped. I can whole-heartedly recommend the first for all readers, but Colbert is more of an acquired taste. Pick your continent and go for it.

Traveling Around the World From My Sofa

The thing about books about world travel is that it makes me slightly depressed to read them. I end up moping around for a few days and nagging my husband about how I never get to go anywhere. He then nags me about getting a passport so he could take me somewhere if he wanted to and I complain about not having a reason to get a passport since we're never going to go anywhere anyway. It's a ridiculous cycle, but I keep reading the books in the hopes that I will quit grumping and get a passport and someone will watch my children and we'll do some exploring. I'll let you know when that happens.

If you think that former paragraph is whiney and grumpy, it's nothing compared to Eric Weiner's book, "The Geography of Bliss". Weiner is a former correspondent for NPR and has lived all around the world. He is also a self-proclaimed neurotic grump and hypochondriac. In his lifelong search for happiness, he decided to research where the happiest place on earth is. It's not Disneyland, so don't bother saying it. First, he met up with the scientific expert on measurable happiness and looked over the database that held statistics on the happiest and unhappiest places on earth. Second, he traveled to the happiest (Switzerland) and unhappiest (Moldova) countries on the planet to see what made them so happy or unhappy. What he learned was very interesting in that each culture's perception of happiness was different and how they achieved their happiness was varying. But what made them unhappy was pretty much the same. Third, Weiner adopted some cultures' techniques for being happy, learned a lot about his own unhappiness in the process and tried out a few tools to up his happiness quotient. I have to say I did too, though I'd still like to do some travel to make sure it's not a lack of foreign experiences that contribute to my grumpiness.

The second book I read was Mo Willems' "You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When It Monsoons: The World On One Cartoon a Day" and it was world travel from a different perspective. Weiner tended to pamper himself as he traveled, in the name of science and trying to find the formula for happiness, while Willems' adventures after college had nothing to do with pampering or even bathing. He spent a year traveling around the world with his own two feet or on the cheapest transportation possible and drew a cartoon every single day. He writes in the introduction that while looking at the cartoons later to put them together for publishing, he often wondered why he picked the event he did for that day instead of something bigger or more significant. But oftentimes, the smaller events were more poignant. Or hilarious. Reading this book made me wonder how much of the world a tourist sees, since most of the time they never get out of their rental car or tour bus and sample the people up close. Willems did just that and he now has the memories drawn in pencil to remind him of it.

Someday I will see Bhutan or Costa Rica. It won't stop me from being happy in the mean time, despite the United States' fairly low ranking on the happiest countries list. I won't obsess about it, but I just might go get my passport, in case an opportunity comes up that I wouldn't want to miss. And find some more books to read that will transport me there, at least metaphysically.

It's Hip To Be Square

Huey Lewis hit it on the nose, as did Mel Bartholomew, author and inventor of Square Foot Gardening. Mr. Bartholomew was formerly a civil engineer, specializing in efficiency. After he retired, he decided to do some volunteering in the community by starting up a community garden. After the abysmal disaster that turned out to be, he decided to rethink how we traditionally have gardened and see if he could do it better. His first book was published in 1981, followed by a weekly PBS show, teaching the method in schools, and then he formed a non-profit organization. He did another brief stint on t.v., then looked at the twenty years of square foot gardening and re-wrote his book and changed some of his methods to make it even better. His book that was put out in 2006, "All New Square Foot Gardening" is even better than the early 80s version. I read them both. And I watched a video he put out after he published his book in 2006. I'm a nerd.

In my defense, it is a really cool way to garden. His revolutionary ideas use 80% less space than a typical row garden, hardly have any weeds and don't require you to till your ground. You can make portable gardens and have them close to your house, if you have the sun for it. You make a 4'x4' box out of untreated wood that you can either put on the ground, or drill holes in a sheet of plywood and put on the bottom to make it portable. You fill the box with 8 square feet of "Mel's Mix" which equal thirds of compost, peat moss and vermiculite. He also says that if you have a hard time finding peat moss or vermiculite you can garden in just compost. You don't use any fertilizers, so this is completely organic way to garden. There's much more to this, but you'll have to read the book. You grow large, climbing or spreading plants vertically. You can grow crops year-round. You can feed the world with this method!

Okay, so probably not feed the whole world, but not for Mel's lack of trying. His newer book comes across a bit self-congratulatory, as he writes about how incredibly awesome his method is. It's littered with people's testimonials, but the book is nothing compared to his website. When I read some reviews on Amazon about his book, that was the chief complaint. Well, shoot, if that's the only bad part of it, it's still worth reading. People also complained about the difficulty of finding vermiculite, but I found two garden centers where I live that carry it, so I don't know what the big deal is. Plus, he says it's ideal, not necessary, so quit your whining, reviewers. Sheesh.

I didn't think I would end up writing about any of the gardening books I read because most of them were completely intimidating. I felt like I needed a degree in horticulture in order to successfully garden. Most of my gardens start out as elaborate drawings on graph paper and end up as overgrown frustrating weed patches. This book gave me hope that it's possible to have an easy, beautiful, bountiful garden. I'll let you know how that works out for me.

Now if it could just quit snowing.

I give up. I'm going to Botswana.

I gave it a good try, I really did. I started out with it on CD and really enjoyed hearing Janeane Garofalo do voices for pretentious politicians and jaded Gen Y-ers. But then the president's salty language got too much for younger listeners that might be hovering nearby so I had to switch to the hard copy and it lost me. "Boomsday" by Christopher Buckley is political satire at it's best and good hilarious fun to boot. But I couldn't finish. It was too fun to listen to, but it just couldn't reel me in when I had to sit down and read it. Oh well. There's more books out there.

On to the next one! "Whatever You Do, Don't Run" by Peter Allison are true tales from a Botswana safari guide and absolutely delightful to read. Yes, I have a bit of a love for Botswana right now, but besides that I still would have loved reading this book. Peter Allison was an Australian teenager who went to Africa for a year to have some fun and see some big animals and never wanted to leave. He learned how to become a safari guide and eventually worked his way up to become a true animal conservationist and an expert at what he did. But you sure can't tell that could ever happen by what he gets into along the way. I've decided that he is either humble or honest because he comes across as reckless and slightly stupid. Actually, I take that back. He doesn't set up a pretense of having these great adventures because of his courageous exploration of the African wildlife. He has full disclosure that some of the things that happen only occur because he wasn't careful or made a stupid mistake.

His stories about the tourists he has to deal with are hilarious and frustrating. His stories about the animals are awe-inspiring, terrifying and vastly entertaining. You can just picture him sitting around with his buddies, swapping some of these stories, trying to one-up each other's adventures. I'm so glad he remembered enough detail to make such a fun book out of it. The best part is that you can tell that he really truly loves Botswana, the animals and the wildlife there. Africa probably needs more people like him.

Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters

If someone asked you to define evolutionary psychology, would you be able to do it? I wouldn't have either, but I have a better idea now after reading this book. "Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters" by Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa called out to me because of it's provocative title. It's a Evolutionary Psychology for Dummies handbook, answering questions about human behavior using theories based on this new brand of science. Evolutionary psychology explains human behavior through evolution. Why do men go after younger women? Because they have greater reproductive possibilities, making it possible for men to pass on their genes more successfully. Why are men more violent and predisposed to crime than women? Because their neanderthal ancestors had to compete for mates, making them violent and thus stronger and more appealing to the females. Does the media perpetuate the Barbie image, making women seek after an impossible ideal? Nope, we evolved that way, desiring blonde, curvy, young images on ourselves and others. The media didn't make this an issue any more than our desiring food only because the media bombards us with McDonalds ads.

The authors keep stating over and over again that all because it's true doesn't make it right, that you shouldn't put these ideas into a moral context. The evidence is convincing, but it doesn't excuse bad behavior, or good even. People are more than their evolutionary urges. And the authors don't come across as justifying behaviors, just explaining them. I have my own beliefs on these topics, but I found this book fascinating and thought-provoking, which is really what you want in a book.

By the way, I'm cheating by saying I read this book, when really I skimmed. I read all the theories and introductions, but the book is set up in a question-answer format, so I just picked the more intriguing questions to read. And why do beautiful people have more daughters? Well, that's based on the Standard Social Science Model and a bunch of other stuff that took me a while to understand, so I'm not going to venture into explaining it here. But you should read it, just to have a conversation starter.

Writing Motherhood

Sometimes I have a hard time with non-fiction books because there's no compelling finish that I'm racing towards. But "Writing Motherhood: Tapping Into Your Creativity as a Mother and a Writer" by Lisa Garrigues was so well-written that I found myself savoring each chapter instead of inhaling the pages, like I usually do with a fiction book. I would read a chapter and then sit and think about it for twenty minutes. Or I'd start to read and then just sit there and think instead of reading. Not typical behavior for me. This book is a great guide to writing well, writing more, and writing with a purpose. I'm not looking to become a professional writer and she's not gearing this book towards that. It's about channeling your creativity through writing and focusing that writing on motherhood. Since mothering is an all-encompassing task for me right now, I found this book to be a great help. She makes it sound so easy, so worthwhile and fulfilling! I always thought that my creativity will always and forever be expressed through music, but now that I don't have many musical outlets, I'm craving another venue. Mrs. Garrigues gives so many helpful exercises, writing starts and ways to get the muse fueled. Reading this book was like taking a writing class. I'm going to read it again and this time, try all the exercises, or "invitations" as she calls them. This book would be a great one to read for mothers of any age to find a way to express themselves.