Almostgotit.com

I posted yesterday about the Mother-Daughter Book Club  my daughter and I have been part of for the past four years.  Here are the books we read during the last two of them:

5th Grade

• Ruby Holler by Sharon Creech
• Worst Enemies/Best Friends (Beacon Street Girls, volume 1) by Annie Bryant
• Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse
• Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson
• The Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
• The Witches by Roald Dahl
• Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell
• Princess Academy by Shannon Hale

6th Grade

• Catherine Called Birdie by Karen Cushman
• The First Horse I See by Sally Keehn
• Hatchet Gary Paulsen
• Rachel’s Journal: the Story of a Pioneer Girl by Marissa Moss
• The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup and a Spool of Thread by Kate Dicamillo
• The Doll People by Ann M. M. Martin, Laura Godwin, Brian Selznick, and Ann M. Martin
• Sahara Special by Esmé Raji Codell
• Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata

————
Related Posts:

Mother-Daughter Book Club List, Part 1
International Women’s Day: Toasting Pink

Smart, strong women read books.

This is the lesson I hope the daughters in our mother-daughter book club are learning.  We’ve just finished our 4th year together, and even though our daughters are growing taller than we are, we hope to continue.  We meet about once a month, and the girls take turns hosting and leading the discussion.  Moms help out by providing an activity and food. 

We’ve visited one author in her home and heard another one lecture about being a writer; we’ve marvelled over a local grandmother’s WWII rationing coupons while trying to bake without sugar; we’ve built tiny “Borrower” houses and been teased by our daughters when the books made us cry. 

These are the books we’ve read thus far.  You may recognize some old friends, but we discovered some really wonderful new ones, as well. 

—–
Creative Commons Photo, “Little Red”  by Flickr.com’s Aussie Patches, aka Ali J
—–

3rd Grade

• From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg
• Felicity (American Girls Collection Books) by assorted authors
• The Gadget Wars by Betsy Duffey
• The Magic Treehouse book #16. Hour of the Olympics by Mary Pope Osborne
• Molly (American Girls Collection Books) by assorted authors
• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
• Emmy by Connie Jordan Green

4th Grade

• Island of the Aunts by Eva Ibbotson
• The other side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George
• Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
• Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder
• Joey Pigza Loses Control by Jack Gantos
• The Borrowers by Mary Norton
• Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry

 - To see rest of list, click here -

I’ve been tagged by Ann of Compensation Force  with a new blogging meme.

Les Rules:

1. Provide a list of the books you’re currently reading. 
2. Pick up the nearest book, and open it to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence, and post the next three sentences.
4. Tag 3-5 more people by posting comments on their blogs. 
5. Link back to the person who tagged you. (It’s nice to leave them a comment, too!)

Les Books:

1. One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus.
   “What if” fiction based on a true event, when a prominent Cheyenne chief asked the U.S. government for the gift of one thousand white women in order to help his doomed people assimilate.
2. Why Mars & Venus Collide by John Gray
   Which recently flew across the room, causing John Gray’s Martian head to collide with the wall.  And hey, here’s a bit of John Gray intrigue…
3. Sahara Special by Esmé Raji Codell.   
   My daughter and I just finished reading this one in our Mother-Daughter Book Club  (Esmé is a certified Readiologist.  Really.  Here is her very cute website. And here’s the quote, p. 123:

I could have cried from feeling scared, and I could have cried for being so terrible, for nearly making the meanest, most special boy in school explode.

But all I could think of was how it would be at least a week before I had a chance to snoop in his journal again.  And how Miss Pointy was right: poetry is not for punks.

Les Tags:

1. Rachel at Fog to Fire  (who uses the same wordpress theme I once did)
2. Florinda at  The 3 R’s (cause she’s cool)
3. Cyn at It’s All On the Table (cause she never reads MY blog, either)
4. Stephen at The Photoshop Journal   (won’t he be surprised)
5. Zita at the Savvy Networker (because I’m NETWORKING, of course)

I’ve been tagged by Career Encourager.  Assignment: write a six word memoir.  Other rules: post your own memoir. Tag at least five more blogs. Link to them and leave comments. Acknowledge the blog that tagged YOU. Link to that blog as well. (Rules rewritten to fit my theme. You can also use original rules. Peggy’s better at rules than I!)

A terrific book inspired it all.  Not Quite What I Was Planning… Compilation from submissions to a contest.  My dad sent me a copy.  I have not thanked him yet.  You can buy one from here.   Good review in the New Yorker.   Entirely written in six word sentences.  Cleverly, they didn’t point this out. I’m not so clever, just slow.  

I liked their idea, so borrowed. 

The book is clever, funny, poignant.   Here’s a few of my favorites:

I’m my mother, and I’m fine.  
I was born. Some assembly required.
It was embarrassing, so don’t ask.
I think, therefore I am bald.

My, this is a daunting task. Tried to sum things up: failed.  Advisors say don’t think too much.  I wrote a few, can’t choose.

• How did all of this happen?
• More I live, less I know.
• Clearly I am not an earthling.
• Figured a few things out, eventually.

I choose to tag these blogs:

• Karen at Working Girl
• Paul at Original Faith
• TrueVyne at The True Vyne 
• Emily at The Rocky Road of Love and Other Great Recipes
• Ursula at Working Mother Blog

Come on now - YOU try one!

* The “Invisible Woman* essay was, indeed, written by Nicole Johnson, is fully subject to copyright, and her publicist tells me they were “deeply sad” when it “went global” without Nicole’s name on it.

* The Mommy Monk is one of several blogs which posted Nicole’s “Invisible Woman” piece without her name on it. That blog’s tagline is “MommyMonk: A woman attempting to find inner solitude in the daily self-denial of motherhood.” However, the blog’s author also claims to be a speaker/writer/teacher in addition to being a wife/mother. Not really the MOST solitary or anonymous person, then..

* Julie, who was very kind to comment here a couple of days ago, also posted Nicole’s piece without attribution. She claims this is not plagiarism as she doesn’t claim to have written it herself. Nevertheless, she also cites it as the central premise of her “Building Cathedrals” series of telecourses , for which she charges $20 per hour ($80 for the series). Which she markets under her own name. Nor does Julie seem quite so sanguine about folks resyndicating her own material: at the bottom of each page of her website it says © 2008 Julie L. Ford, All rights reserved

* It took me about 20 minutes to find the author of “Invisible Woman,” and 24 hours to contact and hear back from the author’s publicist. And I was just writing a post, not setting up a business. I’m just saying.

* My history-professor-husband tells me that we do, in fact, know many of the names of the artists, architects and builders who worked on medieval cathedrals. I am not done with this topic yet!

But I can talk about other things, too…

* I went out to lunch today. Why do waiters ask if you want “lettuce and tomato” but never if you want “tomato and lettuce?”

* It’s very funny to accidentally fall in step behind a man heading towards an adult bookstore. I did that today on my way home, and he kept turning around to look at me, nervously, almost as if *he* were the woman and *I* was a large, threatening man. When I realized where he was going, though, it all made sense. I should have followed him right into the store to see what he would do. Some day I’m going to do that, have been wanting to ever since that place opened a few blocks from my house. I think I’ll get all dressed up like a nice church lady, with a cardigan and hand bag, wander in as if by mistake, and start poking around, asking all sorts of questions, like “what is THIS is for?”

Dale Carnegie is my flavor of the week.  The Universe dropped him into my lap a couple days ago when my daughter and I were rummaging through the “free bin” at our favorite used book store, where I found his How to Enjoy Your Life and Your Job – a perfectly good copy that was rejected by the consignment counter for no apparent reason. 

I do love serendipity so very much, when it happens!

Carnegie suggests we should always start by asking what’s right rather than what’s wrong.   Nevertheless (serendipity being one of your stranger animals) this week also brought me a good column by Mike Gunderloy called What’s wrong with web work?   While it’s already very difficult for any working person with a family to find the right balance, Gunderloy and subsequent commentors (me included!) discuss several problems which are particular to free-lancing and working at home.   Food for thought, indeed. 

Another blog I’ve been enjoying is “The Anti 9-5 Guide: Career advice for women who think outside the cube“  which is published in my home town (Seattle) and sort of makes me wish I could go back and live there just to participate in author Michelle Goodman’s world.  Even if I can’t,  the practical (if slightly anarchical) tone is perfect even as Goodman wisely avoids any temptation to jump into the Mommy Wars.  The “profiles” feature (of Goodman’s “fellow 9-5 expats”) is especially wonderful.

Don’t know yet if these are my peeps, but the journey’s kind of fun. 

What would you do if you had no fear? 
Living your dreams
while quakin’ in your boots

By Diane Conway,
with foreword by Anne Lamott

One of the things I’d do is be the first to comment on Powell Books’ website on a book I hadn’t even actually read yet. (they give random prizes for first-persons-to-comment, and ever since I won Door Prize #3 that one time, I’ve grown a bit cocky.)

I keep googling this book. I’ve been wanting to buy it for about a year now but keep running out of book money (I’m a little bad).  But look: it’s got about the world’s best title. And it has a foreword by Anne Lamott, how cool and irresistible is that? Because that’s enough reason to buy the book right there. And another reason is because I wish I had written it. Do you think I could use the same title, and get Anne Lamott to write my foreword, too?

I did submit a review for Powell’s, and even rated the book. I give it a “4,” not because it’s not worth a full “5″ but because giving it a 5 at this point may have been getting a little ahead of myself.  I would have edged up to a 4.5 had Powell Books given that option, but it didn’t.  

Maybe you could read this book yourself and then you can give it a five on Powell Books, and that would pull the average up to where it belongs.   Or have you read it already?  If you have, please let us know what you thought of it!

Here is what the publisher says about the book (which appears on the product page on both Powell Books and Amazon)

For this book, author Diane Conway approached a police officer, a waitress, a politician, a lawyer, a cab driver, and many others, and asked them each the same question: “What would you do if you had no fear?” The results, chronicled in this book, were both surprising and enlightening. Her respondents told her their secrets, their long-hidden dreams, and their fears. Their dreams included quitting mind-numbing jobs, applying to medical school, buying tickets to South America, finding true love, quitting drinking, or having an affair. The distance between dreaming and doing, according to Conway, is surprisingly short. In What Would You Do If You Had No Fear? her fresh voice and “Studs Terkel in drag persona” challenge readers to stop, open their hearts, and truly live. Included are self-tests, quizzes, growth exercises, and inspiring quotes for realizing one’s fear-free potential.

The author, calling herself our “slightly neurotic, frequently shaky guide” (channelling Lamott for sure) adds on Amazon that

When I saw the profound effect [asking this question] had on people, I started asking people everywhere I went. I had to overcome the fear that people would think that I’m: a) delusional or b) trying to pick them up for kinky sex.

Now doesn’t that sound like a fun read? 

While I own my own comp copies of PhotoShop and Dreamweaver (if I said any more, I’d have to kill you), I’m ashamed to say that thus far I’ve only used them minimally for my web work. 

I am, at heart, a luddite and compost maker, preferring the Zen of Making Use Of Simple Things.  Nourishing a garden with re-purposed organic material (= old dead stuff) is a beautifully redemptive thing, and works better than chemicals anyway; I can strip code and manipulate photos with great facility using only the default “notepad” and “paint” features that come with every PC.  Moreover, I take a sort of perverse pride in doing so. 

But after a certain point, deliberate ignorance is just stupid.

The web is a great resource and I’m trying to use it as intelligently as I can.  Web Worker Daily publishes several good articles every day,  from practical advice on best practices, personal development and time management for the freelancer to esoterica only an obsessive-compulsive techy could love. 

I’ve also (finally) built and am populating a solid feed reader so I can better skim through the latest and best material in my field every day.   

Some of this professional development work is fun.  Some of it isn’t…  Feed readers, for instance, should be a lot more user-friendly than they are, but I am surprised and gratified to find that, even among my web-savvy friends, I’m not alone in finding myself put off or even daunted by many of these “necessary” technologies. 

In the end, there’s no substitute for a good book.  So today, I’m going to go buy a book about using PhotoShop.   Digital storage media becomes obsolete every few years, and can be wiped out by system or human error; books are always fully compatible with human eyes and last hundreds of years. 

Plus, you can read them in the bathtub. 

—-
Related posts:
In defense of thoughts
Copyright violation & blogs: a tricky subject
Book tour cancelled: taking my Damitol instead

Bloggers.  Can’t live with them, can’t shoot them.  (Warning: grumpy post)

If a blog isn’t about the latest browser plug-in, it’s about Paris Hilton (did you know they just let her out of jail?  Something medical, apparently.)  If a blog’s not about either of these things, it’s about someone’s damn book tour.

Don’t get me wrong. I’d love to be going on a book tour.  But if that time ever comes in my life, would someone please remind me not to be so breezily “as-if” about it, e.g.,  as if everyone else reading my blog is either a fellow book-tour-er or else a no-life, craven fan?  How about a little humility and gratitude?  I mean, allowing for the fact that blogging is already such an exhibitionist and self-indulgent exercise.

Here’s what we need:

New Medications for Women, Bloggers, Women Bloggers, and Paris Hilton

The Food and Drug Administration has just announced the following drugs have been released for trial in the US. These new medications are available only by prescription.

• D A M I T O L
  Take 2 and the rest of the world can go to hell for up to 8 hours.
• ST. M O M ‘ S W O R T
  Plant extract that treats mom’s depression by rendering preschoolers unconscious for up to six hours.
• E M P T Y N E S T R O G E N
  Highly effective suppository that eliminates melancholy by enhancing the memory of how awful they were as teenagers and how you couldn’t wait till they moved out.
• P E P T O B I M B O
  Liquid silicone for single women. Two full cups swallowed before an evening out increases breast size, decreases intelligence, and improves flirting.
• D U M E R O L
  When taken with Peptobimbo, can cause dangerously low I.Q. causing enjoyment of country western music.
• F L I P I T O R
  Increases life expectancy of commuters by controlling road rage and the urge to flip off other drivers.
• M E N I C I L L I N
  Potent antiboyotic for older women. Increases resistance to such lines as, “You make me want to be a better person … can we get naked now?”
• B U Y A G R A
  Injectable stimulant taken prior to shopping. Increases potency and duration of spending spree.
• Extra Strength B U Y-O N E-A L
  When combined with Buyagra, can cause an indiscriminate buying frenzy so severe the victim may even come home with a Donnie Osmond CD or a book by Dr. Laura.
• J A C K A S S P I R I N
  Relieves headache caused by a man who can’t remember your birthday, anniversary or phone number.
• A N T I-T A L K S I D E N T A
  spray carried in a purse or wallet to be used on anyone too eager to share their life stories with total strangers.
• S E X C E D R I N
  More effective than Excedrin in treating the, “Not now, dear, I have a headache,” syndrome.
• R A G A M E T
  When administered to a husband, provides the same irritation as ragging on him all weekend, saving the wife the time and trouble of doing it herself.

– Derived from something I saw posted on a coffee shop bulletin board this morning.  With my newfound determination to respect  copyrights, here’s a source but very much doubt it’s the original one — see also here and here)

We have a wonderful used-book store in our city, which until recently was within walking distance of our house.  One of our favorite pastimes was to rummage through the “free bins” parked outside the store. 

We found many treasures in it:  a whole entire set of encyclopedias, for instance, missing only “volume 11.”  Thousands of Martha Stewart magazines, back when she even still dared put her face on every cover.  Tattered books in Italian, or about calculus, with which to impress one’s older brother.  And once, an ancient copy of Atlantic Monthly, in which I found an essay by Marilynne Robinson about courage and the petty coercion of society that conspires against it.  It was gorgeous.

It drove me crazy to misplace it, which I inevitably did, almost immediately.

Anyway, a few weeks ago, in a fit of extravagance, I ordered several books from Amazon.com (to get the “free shipping,” of course) and among them I chose one by Marilynne Robinson called The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought.  I’d seen the list of contents and knew my essay wasn’t in it.

But tonight, after an exhausting day I started leafing through the book.  And there, at the very end, the final essay in the collection, I found it.  Really!  I don’t know how it got there, but it feels like a gift.  This is what it’s called:

“The Tyranny of Petty Coercion.”

Which (my usually good memory not-withstanding) apparently appeared in the August 2004 issue of Harper’s Monthly, not in the Atlantic, and here, moreover, is a quote:

Courage seems to me to be dependent on cultural definition.  By this I do not mean only that it is a word that blesses different behaviors in different cultures, though that is clearly true.  I mean also, and more importantly, that courage is rarely expressed except where there is sufficient consensus to support it.  Theologians used to write about a prevenient grace, which enables the soul to accept grace itself.  Perhaps there must also be a prevenient courage to nerve one to be brave.  It is we human beings who give one another permission to show courage, or, more typically, withhold such permission.  We also internalize prohibitions, enforcing them on ourselves – prohibitions against, for example, expressing an honest doubt, or entertaining one.  This ought not to be true in a civilization like ours, historically committed to valuing individual conscience and free expression.  But it is.

. . .

It is sad to consider how much first-rate courage must be devoted in this world to struggling out of the toils of sheer pettiness.  The Saudi women who first drove automobiles risked and suffered penalties, overcame inhibitions, and shattered norms, heroic in their defiance of an absurd convention. We have our own Rosa Parks.  That such great courage should have been required to challenge such petty barriers is a demonstration of the power of social consensus.  How many minor coercions are required to sustain similar customs and usages?  How aware are any of us, absent direct challenge, of how we also deal in trivial coercion?

Click here to read The Tyranny of Petty Coercion article