Devon Trevarrow Flaherty's Blog, page 33

Short Story Review: All This Want and I Can’t Get None

Image from neworleanswriters.com

At the writing conference I just attended, there were nightly readings by the teachers. Each teacher had their hour or so in the sun, and one night it was Tia Clark’s turn. (If what follows seems confusing, it is because Clark prefers the pronouns they/them. I am also still getting used to this pronoun-respecting writing.) Clark had time to almost finish their short story, and it was such a cliff-hanger! Plus, it was available online to finish reading, so I went to Joyland Magazine online (June 2021) and finished reading. Therefore, it became one of the only complete, published pieces I read (or was read) during the week and I would like to review it for you.

Warning: there is sexual abuse in this story, which means that it contains possible triggers as well as material inappropriate for younger people. And yet, the story is about a young girl because, quite frankly, kids are often exposed to too much, much too young. That’s one of the layers of the story, actually. Sexuality in middle-schoolers, particularly in the poorer areas of inner-city America, and among Black people specifically.

It’s one of those longer short stories. And when they first started reading it aloud, I thought, “This is nothing special” because the language is so simple and inobtrusive to the story. And there are things you definitely see coming in the story. I thought, “Ehn.” But by the time they left me hanging about two-thirds of the way in, I just had to finish it. Not because it’s some sort of dramatic piece, exactly. It takes place between two apartments and a school, to two normal people in (unfortunately) normal circumstances. Normal things ensue over a matter of days or weeks. I think part of the beauty here is, actually, the simplicity of the language. I often refer to writing as “clear” or “clean.” This is both. When writing is like that, there might be beautiful moments and a couple acrobatics, but you’re just hearing a story, not a poem. I wanted to know what was going to happen in the story. I could feel the tension, see the character and her setting, and I needed to know what next.

The story is quite heavy. It does deal with sexuality and abuse and neglect and poverty, but it does so by presenting us with a life that might as well be a memoir. (For them, I don’t know, but certainly for someone.) It can be crass, at times, but also beautiful at others. And it uses swear words and even slang to such effect, which is pretty rare. I can’t help but wonder what Clark would think about this review, but the point is it’s a good story. It might be buried in all the short stories that grace literary magazines this year, but despite its feeling straight-forward at first, I think it’s a wonderful return to story-telling—actually story-telling—to both entertain us and make us think.

Here’s a link to the story: All This Want and I Can’t Get None | JOYLAND (joylandmagazine.com)

Book Review: The Accidental Tourist

Image from Goodreads.com

It seems like just a second ago that I received the email congratulating me on a parent-writer fellowship for the Martha’s Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing’s annual conference. I don’t say this just to brag. Along with the email were some very nice words about my writing. Along with the nice words was a comparison to Anne Tyler. I had never read Anne Tyler. I quickly put a couple of her books on my Amazon wishlist (a receptacle for all sorts of thoughts and things)—after swiftly Googling her and smiling smugly at her Pulitzer. But the reason for the opening sentence here? When I was packing for the conference last week, I slid the one of the two books I had bought into my yellow bowling bag and chided myself for not having read that and the other, by then. Could it have been months?! This year’s sense of time and timing has been especially strange, no thanks to The Pandemic.

After I returned from the conference, where I discovered there would be almost no time for reading (unless you count the audiobooks I listened to while driving to and fro), I picked The Accidental Tourist back up and read. I just wanted to read and not write or think super-hard for a second. In just a couple otherwise summer-activity-filled days, I had finished and looped my husband into watching the movie with me (see below). The Accidental Tourist was the one title of Tyler’s that I recognized, by the way, which might have been from the movie in the 80s. (It also sounds intriguing, doesn’t it?) While it was nominated for the Pulitzer, it is her novel Breathing Lessons that won. (Does that ring a bell for you? Not me.) I will read that one later.

Tyler has had a long and prolifically novel-y career. While three of her twenty books were nominated for Pulitzers, I can’t help but notice that her name is not a household name and, quite frankly, I don’t recognize her books by name or sight. Her books are best-sellers, and yet they don’t strike me as very literary (cough-cough). I’m sure she heard plenty of that after Breathing Lessons. Maybe people are reading them, though. That’s something. She seems to get to keep writing and publishing.

Back to The Accidental Tourist. Published in 1985 (and almost immediately made into that movie we’ll talk about in a minute), it has a great hook: Macon Leary and his wife Sarah have suffered an unfathomable tragedy in the loss of their son and now Sarah is moving out. Macon is, well, eccentric in that he is extremely logical, conventional, and rigid, as are his three siblings. He is also a writer who produces a series of guidebooks that instruct businessmen (and women, I suppose) on how to travel so that it feels they’ve never even left home. Macon himself hates to travel, thus, as he globe-trots to write and update the series, the “accidental tourist.” (Of course there’s more to that, and we see metaphor after metaphor unfold in this book.) At first, he tries to re-organize his life in his own, lonely house, but circumstances land him back with his grown siblings in the old, family home, with his misbehaving dog in tow. In sweeps Muriel, the antithesis of Macon, his family, and Sarah, and boy is she feisty. She also doesn’t take a hint. Ever. Romance, the black moment, humor and healing ensue.

Accidental Tourist is not a difficult read. Tyler is better at many things than me, including clear writing and not gumming up a story with any experimentation, many flashbacks, or shifting POV. This is an eminently straight-forward book with crystal clear writing. It made me wonder, for a long time, how anyone could compare my writing with hers. I did eventually figure it out, I think. She is at times blisteringly insightful, she uses lists of odd things to paint scenes, and she balances on the edge of absurdism with a realism so bright it’s almost glaring. She’s also a character writer. Macon becomes as close to us as our own skin, in this book, and some of the other characters are extremely well-drawn. I think I had issues with how subtle all this was, though, like I couldn’t appreciate any of it until I stood back and gave it some space. I also really found some pacing issues with this book. I wanted to like it. It had some really great stuff, even if it was wrapped up in some pretty ordinary paper, but you hardly know what it is you are reading until you’re done. It comes across as a Hallmark movie of sorts until you start to dissect it, but long before then you’ve gotten whiplash three times as this book plods and then zips at lightspeed back and forth as many times. Thus, the chemistry suffers. (Like, at times you’re going hour by hour, day by day, and then at a crucial moment you skip weeks into the future. We’re missing scenes, is what it is.)

I wouldn’t say don’t read it. I can’t decide myself if I liked it or not. There were things I liked about it and things that I found dampened that enjoyment. One thing I did enjoy was reading a book set in the eighties and actually written in the eighties. I maybe could have used a little more magic, figuratively speaking of course, and a smoother ride. It may be a bit dated, but there are things I wouldn’t have wanted to miss. I am curious as to what I’ll think of Breathing Lessons and I wouldn’t mind someone else telling me what they think of Anne Tyler.

QUOTE

“Macon tightened the grip and felt a pleasant kind of sorrow sweeping through him. Oh, his life had regained all is old perils. He was forced to worry once again about nuclear war and the future of the planet. He often had the same secret, guilty thought that had come to him after Ethan was born: From this time on I can never be completely happy. / Not that he was before, of course” (p237).

MOVIE

Oh, brother. With a cast of Geena Davis, William Hurt, Kathleen Turner and Bill Pullman, I’m fairly confident this movie did well in the 80s. In our bedroom, yesterday, it did not do as well. Actually, if you look it up, the reviews are consistently better than okay. Hmm. My husband and I were bored out of our minds. In a style that modern cinema has left far behind, it had a staged feel, a snail’s pace, and one, piano-tinkled song played through the whole darn thing. They caught most of the story of the book and most of the spirit (though Geena Davis’s character was missing a lot of her essential qualities, I thought), but man was it slow. They did some rearranging and cut too much of what happens in Davis’s space. The result is a lack of chemistry, which actually does come from the book but it’s even more so in the movie. I’m happy for you if you can enjoy this movie, but beyond my husband chuckling at the peccadilloes of the main character (would he be portrayed as having Asperger’s, these days, I wonder), he fell in and out of sleep and I stayed out the $4 rental just so I could give a review.

I’m a Fellow?

Photo copyright the author, 2021.

There are many things that writers dream of. There is this whole writer-life that exists out on the horizons, as seen from the vantage point of a beginning writer. For many of us, these dreams begin when we are still children. That would be me. Dreams of publication and book tours, meeting the editor for the first time and residencies, conferences and travelling for research, readings and book launches and write-ins and writers groups and an MFA and… these are all dreams that I have had. Many of these dreams I have seen come true in the way that many authors experience it: gradually. There are more dreams to be realized. This past week, I was able to fall headlong into one more writerly dream.

In one year from now, I will be putting my homeschooling days behind me. At least, that’s the plan. For the past year, in the pandemic, I have been “warming up” for this coming change of seasons by increasing my writing. I plan to continue this for the next year, even though life should be returning to a somewhat normal pace and then blastoff in a year. This past winter, as part of that warm-up while I was submitting short stories and a new novel at a snail’s pace, I decided to apply to a residency (which I have done before) and for a fellowship at a conference. While the submissions process is mostly discouraging news (although we are celebrating the rejections and I’m going to aim for 100 rejections this year!) I was thrilled to get both the residency and a fellowship for the conference.

There was this whole confusion with the fellowship, too, but it turns out they liked the writing I submitted (reminded them of Anne Tyler) and also the essay I wrote about being a parent writer. The bummer was when I found out that the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Conference was not going to take place in Martha’s Vineyard due to the darn pandemic. Nope, it was going to be virtual. Erg. First conference, ever. First time at Martha’s Vineyard, ever. First time being a fellow, ever. Aaaand go figure out a way to be secluded for the week, just make sure you have WiFi. You can make friends from thousands of miles away, right? I put out a social media message asking friends and family if they happened to have a spare house or apartment that I could stay in for a week without interruption. My mother-in-law almost immediately responded by connecting me to my husband’s aunt and uncle and their condo in Delray Beach, Florida. Honestly, I had my doubts because it seemed too good to be true. As is often true in life, I needn’t have worried.

Copyright the author, 2021.

Day one: I loaded up my luggage, groceries for a week, and my trusty laptop, journal, and pens in my Forester and pointed myself south. I turned Sense and Sensibility on Audible and punched the address into Waze. I drove and drove and drove and stopped for gas twice and at two rest areas. I arrived at the condo—a place I had never been in a city I had never been in—at 9pm. It was expectedly hot and humid, my lumbago was killing me (that’s what I’m calling it now to be funny because if I can’t be funny I’ll cry instead), and I couldn’t actually figure out how to get in the building for several panic-stricken minutes. Figured it out, proceeded to unload the car one manageable load up the elevator at a time, and shut the front door behind me at 10pm. Boy, was it hot! Actually, why was I still so very hot? Aha. I made a rudely late-night call to my uncle to tell him that his A/C appeared to be broken. He apologized, had me try a thing or two, and said he would get it taken care of ASAP. In the morning, when A/C people could be routed out. I unloaded the cooler, double-checked the locks, pointed a fan at myself, and went to sleep with Sense and Sensibility—the movie—playing on my laptop because I didn’t have the energy to figure out a new remote control.

Day two: The A/C guys had been alerted and were on their way. I was hot (obviously), smelly, and looked like something the cat drug in, but I just stayed calm and collected until he arrived and fixed it enough that it turned on. The swoosh sounded like heaven. A/C is a huge drain on the environment but it is wonderful to behold. During this time, I also took the liberty of making myself the first of my favorite meals (Eggs Benedict) and settled myself in, spreading what I thought I would need for the conference on the thankfully large coffee table in the living room, facing the enormous windows looking out at palm trees and blue sky frizzled with intense sun. Once I was cool and presentable, I wandered out of the complex, orienting myself to the beach, the downtown, and the pool. Made myself two more meals and settled in for the Opening Ceremonies with my prescribed elderflower cocktail. (The elderflower is a tradition to welcome in the muse (or maybe the fairies).) As the sun set, I melted into the couch as best as my back would let me, that cocktail in my hand, the laptop lighting the room, a notebook already being filled with frantic notes, and I waved goodbye to the critic and the slacker so that my real writer self could come out and play, all week.

Day three through seven: A Zoom conference is a few things that a conference is not: it is lonely. It is really heavy on screen-time. The tech and the tech-driven connections can be overwhelming. Turns out, all that Zooming and Whova-ing made it possible for some of the attendees to be able to “attend,” at all. So I was trying to be all make-the-best-of-it, but I did miss the in-person experience, for sure. Especially when I spent anywhere from seven to ten hours per day on Zoom, and some more time trying to check for meet-ups and messages and group things. Since I was there as a parent-writer fellow, I fell in with the parent-writer group and tried to let other things go (except very late in the week I discovered the early risers. If you know me, this is laughable, but it was a way for me to actually get in some writing). The parent-writers became my clique, my table in the cafeteria. (We actually had some Zoom lunches together.) Believe it or not, my normal life did not completely cease and so after the occasional errand or whatnot, I had between one and one-and-a-half hours a day to do some sort of vacation-y activity. I sat in the cabana at the beach (usually reading or writing), went for walks, visited a wildlife preserve where the sheer number, cacophony, and stench of the cranes made me shake in my tennies, swam alone in the blue pool, played with my camera on the streets of Delray, and even took a dip in an ocean pulsing with sargassum. As for the conference itself, the days went like this: 10am class one, break (which was sometimes a lunch meet-up), class two, break (in which dinner must be thought of or picked up/taken out), readings, short break (which was often another meeting), and finally lounges (which was really just more readings and an occasional “writing jam”). By this time, it was 10:00pm. Gathered my wits about me. Set down the journal and pen and closed the laptop. Did the dishes. Slid into PJs. Slept propped marionette-like on a sea of intentional pillows.

Day eight: Sure, the conference had ended for most attendees, though there were still connections to made on Whova. But I was now looking windswept and pallid, staring down a temporarily-bachelorette living room strewn with wine glasses, hair ties, deserted books, a pile of bright, dirty sundresses, and a settled tornado of papers. Mostly, this tornado was as virtual as the conference itself, trapped on the jaundiced screen of my laptop. There was a literal storm brewing for the afternoon, so I made myself put on a bathing suit and enjoy an entire morning laying on a lounge under an umbrella, people-watching, reading about writing from Ray Bradbury (who just loves it), stretching my sandy toes into the sun, feeling the warm breeze on my face, tripping into the waves behind old women in shower caps doing the backstroke, and sinking down into the froth hoping the gators and sharks would see the old ladies first. In the afternoon, I cleaned up after myself, packed, but mostly spent time with all the notes and files I had acquired over five days of intense instruction and workshopping. I actually didn’t even finish, but I began to make notes on my notes, to-do lists, to-buy lists even, organizing bits and pieces of existing and new ideas, stories, and even poems. I’ll have months of things to do, just from this one week of infilling.

Photo copyright the author, 2021.

Day nine: Drove home with breakfast burrito and bahn mi and cherries, listened to Emma and The Great Gatsby, collapsed on the floor from back pain while my children graciously unloaded my car, took muscle relaxer, watched In the Heights with my daughter while my body went all leaden, fell asleep.

What I brought home: new connections, many of them; twenty-some-odd pages of notes on everything from running your characters through hypotheticals to good novel-ing software; a list of twenty-two books to read, three residencies to apply for, six apps and software to buy, groups to join; notes added into three existing novels; two new novel ideas; three new creative essay ideas plus another already rough-drafted; two new short stories begun; something like five poems; lots of new tools; tons of advice; fresh momentum; an organized project list; hope and community.

This is where I wrap it all up and put a bow on it. Was it worth it? What did I get from it? Would I do it again? Would I recommend this particular conference? My mind still feels like its spinning. I also know that my experience was very specific to this year with the whole pandemic-virtual thing. I was nowhere near Martha’s Vineyard or the experience writers have been having at the Institute of Creative Writing for years. And yet. And yet it was worth it, I would do it again, and I would recommend this particular conference without having experience of any others. I just told you a bunch of things I took away from it, and I am under the impression that this conference is special because it is intentionally non-competitive. There was almost no criticism, just encouragement and making space for all types (in our case, snapping and waving hands in our little Zoom-squares and typing “Nice!” and “Amazing!” into the chat as shaky-voiced writers glinted their eyeglasses and read “new” or “old” or “uncomfortable” fragments of pieces). I kinda think repeating this conference would give me some repeat advice, but I also think I could sink deeper into the writing part of it, for all that. Being in an encouraging community of like-experienced people, taking classes on things that matter to you and interest you, networking (oh! that word!)… I would actually love to go back when the conference is back to its non-virtual self, partly because I went this one, weird time. But we’ll see. We’ll see who loves my writing and puts gold stars on my applications by this time next year. By then, I’ll be done homeschooling and so much will be never-again-the-same.

Book Review: Sense and Sensibility

Image from Amazon.com/Audible

Rarely do I listen to a book as opposed to pick up a physical copy and read it with my eyeballs. (Almost never do I read with my eyes a digital copy.) The exceptions to this rule are two: one, when I have a migraine and I am laying there bored out of my mind and I can’t fall asleep. Then, I listen to one of the books I have in my auditory library, always a book that I am familiar enough with to permit me slipping off to sleep. In some cases, I’ve read the book tens of times. Two, when I am traveling a long distance and am the sole driver. There’s nothing else like listening to a book, for me, to keep me alert, awake, and to keep the time cruising by. Yesterday, I embarked on just such a road trip: ten-twelve hours, all by my lonesome, from North Carolina down toward the far tip of Florida. Not horrible, and just enough time to read yet another Jane Austen book, Sense and Sensibility.

It should be noted that I can not approach this book as a casual observer. Sense and Sensibility (1995)—the one with Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet and Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman and Gemma Jones (and Professor Umbridge!) and directed by Ang Lee—is one of my very favorite movies. Most the time, if you asked me my favorite movie, I would shoot off two or three and Sense and Sensibility would be one of them. I have no idea how many times I have watched it. It would be silly of me to even think that I could read (listen) to this book and divorce the reading from all that viewing. It did make it a pretty perfect book for me to listen to, though. I knew I would not really need to mark it up or take notes. I was already very familiar with the story. In other words, this book review is going to be more of a comparison of two Sense and Sensibility versions: one the 1995 Ang Lee movie and the other the Rosamund Pike audiobook. And I will try to address the original in there, somewhere.

Sense and Sensibility is the story of the Dashwoods: a newly-widowed mother and her three daughters. They are pretty well off as gentlemen’s daughters, but the father’s dying creates a situation where their older half-brother inherits all and wiggles out of helping them in any way. They end up in a cottage, indebted to the kindness of a cousin, in a removed country where there are few people to meet. Among them, of course, are plenty foible characters and just enough beaux to really begin the plot and the Austen dance of position, money, and love: Victorian marriage rights. With one sister so sensible she appears cold and the other so romantic she lacks self-censorship, we’re going to get two tastes of the same dish and a splash of fun besides.

Image from Amazon.com

The first thing I want to say is that the audiobook version I listened to was very good. Rosamund Pike is, of course, an accomplished, British actress. She read very well and she even did the voices. I can not prove this, but I am pretty sure she was aiming for the voices from the 1995 film. For a bit, I actually thought she was Emma Thompson, but then out came Kate Winslet, and Lucy, etc. It made it easy for me to know who was speaking, for sure. The reading was clear, pleasant, and entertaining without being over the top.

The movie’s not really a short movie, at 2 hours and 20 minutes. Yet, it does a fair amount of cutting, which is always necessary with book adaptations. I was not surprised that some of the characters disappeared in the movie, nor that some were combined. I was surprised that most of the cutting came from the second half of the novel (while the first half was crazy-recognizable to me), which led me to believe that the second half of the novel is actually too long and too slow. I mean, I really enjoyed the book and I am discovering I am a fan of Austen’s, but the pace of the first half definitely does not match the second. And I found myself drifting off and thinking, I already knew that. We all already knew that. Get on with it! Where are the big ta-das? Going back to those cut and combined characters, though, I did discover some characters that I will miss in the movie version. Though we get the idea in the movie, there is a wider breadth of human study in the book. Because it’s a book.

The book also has more humor. There are awkward moments in the movie, sure, but not nearly as much humor. Another thing I am discovering: Jane Austen is quite funny. I found myself chuckling aloud as I careened down the freeway. I don’t want you to think this is humor writing, exactly, but Austen has very keen observation that can be turned into a laughable moment, for sure. Her heroines tend to have a snark to them, too, even when they are all pure and sensible, that make their observations often funny. Which brings up another point: the book has a lot more explanation. At times, like I mentioned, I thought some of it was overboard. But there are other moments when the additional word-footage led to a deeper understanding of the story and a deeper meaning for the story. We definitely get to flesh out the characters more in the book, though we really hone in on just a few. And the meaning of the title is much more clear: the sensible daughter must come to a crisis of emotional weight and the sensibility (romantic) daughter must find some sense before she burns up. It’s kinda’ there in the movie, but much better in the book.

I did find myself asking the same question I’d been asking of the movie for decades: why does Margaret exist? Why have three sisters when the story is about two opposing sisters? I mean, the book is called Sense and Sensibility, not Sense and Sensibility and Something Else. I could find reasons for lots of characters to be there that were not even in the movie, even if just for a laugh. The movie gives Margaret more to do and more of a personality (though different from the book), sure, but it’s still weird. Until… The very last few lines make the whole thing make sense! Finally! And I’m not going to tell you, but there is a reason, artistically, why Margaret exists and I finally know (though I didn’t all the way through).

All in all I like Sense and Sensibility, just as I have enjoyed the other two Jane Austen books I’ve read thus far (Emma and Northanger Abbey). It’s still one of my favorite movies (I literally just watched it because of course I wanted to see it again after “reading” the book). It’s well acted, sweeps you away to the period with costumes and details, has great romantic tension and beautiful cinematography, and deserves to be a favorite of mine, and many others, for a reason. Rotten Tomatoes loves it! It was nominated for no less than seven Oscars. If you like romantic or period films at all, you must give it a look-see.

And one last thing: I found the villain of the novel to be much more villainous, in a delightful way. The truth is that in the movie you’re not exactly sure who the villain is, and it definitely isn’t who it is in the novel. Again, I won’t tell you, but there are conspiracies happening, deviousness abounding, and much of the pain and heartbreak are coming from one (perhaps unlikely) character.

MOVIE:

See above.

Book Review: Deadliest Enemy

I assigned two books as alternative reading for my Pandemic Book Club, for May. One of them was Deadliest Enemy. It was the one book that was holding my attention, for most of the month, but I kept sticking it on the back burner because there were always more books that I “had” to read and were taking me forever.

Image from Amazon.com

Not that Deadliest Enemy, by Michael T. Osterholm and Mark Olshaker is a wonderfully written book. It’s written just well enough to keep you engaged and reading, as long as this sort of thing interests you. (All the policy stuff at the end is what finally challenged my attention.) But it’s a science book, so the lack of breathtaking passages isn’t surprising. What is this book about? What is the “deadliest enemy?” Killer germs. Infectious disease. Which comprises a few different things: antibiotic resistance, bioterror, pandemics, and endemic disease, mostly. Osterholm has been at the forefront of infectious disease for decades. Olshaker is an expert in writing books about the criminal mind. Olshaker uses stories of case studies, medical science, policy research, medical history, hard-hitting quotes, and a whole lot of experience and trial and error to unfurl the scroll of writing on the wall for the layman: we’re in a heap of trouble and it’s impossible to say when the ax will fall. (Whew, metaphors!)

One of my favorite things about the writing in Deadliest Enemy is Olshaker’s truly scientific attitude: he’s curious, he’s hopeful, he’s full of questions, he is unwilling to give maxims, and he is completely willing to learn from his mistakes and the mistakes of others, even if that means eating crow. He frequently tells us what lesson he learned from some crazy, amazing experience, like trying to figure out what AIDS was or saving his own child from a mosquito-born disease. He is also unapologetic about what he does believe based on his many years in the field and his intensive knowledge of epidemiology. For example, he is straight-forward about what vaccines have accomplished, how they work, and how they can save us in the future: the (mostly) good, the bad, and the (not so) ugly. Anti-vaxxers can either listen politely while the expert speaks, or they can chuck the book across the room.

Admittedly, this might be a book you don’t want to read, especially during a pandemic, especially if you are on the left and, as the experts are telling us now, more prone to worry and overcompensate. I find all this info fascinating, but there is definitely a fair dose of doomsday-and-not-much-I-can-do-about-it. I mean, sure I can refuse unnecessary antibiotics and submit to vaccines, but the real issues here can’t even be touched by one person, let alone one nation. These are global issues and take absolutely enormous efforts, forethinking, science, money, cooperation, etc. I feel like even Osterholm struggles with what the solutions might be, though he often points to much more government effort. Our votes count. Our philanthropy counts. Our awareness counts. But can it possibly make a difference? This is why people read this stuff and then build bunkers. Or, if you are a billionaire, start a world health fund aimed at one of these problems. Alas, I am not a billionaire. To the bunker, then!

I like knowing stuff, so I can just tuck all this knowledge away, live conscientiously, shoulder some guilt, and speak my mind, spend my dollars and vote when called upon. I did enjoy this book, for all the seriously scary things he mentions. I liked his celebration of the scientists and innovators who have made life—and death—more humane for millions and even billions. But yes, I see, we have also gotten ourselves into quite a few pickles as the human race, and we’re pretty divided and prone to act irrationally and selfishly. Of course, some of the interest in reading this book during the Covid Pandemic was noting how much he pre-read our mail, back in 2017 when it was published. He saw all this coming. And it is also worth noting that this pandemic is likely not the worst one in 2017’s near future.

QUOTES:

“Once we knew what we were dealing with and how it was transmitted, we were unable to stop or warn off much of the behavior and habits that led to its spread. Evidence, knowledge, and logic aren’t always enough” (p20).

“…it also made me realize how easily data can be misinterpreted into flawed science and how important it is to get a number of perspectives on board. And it taught me to make sure you ask the right questions, lest you be led to the wrong answers” (p41).

“You don’t have to have all the answers to have the critical answer” (p47).

“There are more microbes in the human gut than there are cells in the entire body, and there are microbes virtually everywhere within us” (p60).

“The battle lines are well drawn: the microbes’ genetic simplicity and evolutionary swiftness against our intellect, creativity, and collective social and political will” (p63).

“It’s hard to overstate the impact of vaccines on our history and on our lives” (p80).

“So successful was the effort to curtail or eradicate the range of childhood diseases that the public started taking their absence for granted” (p84).

“What we really need is a game-changing influenza vaccine that will target the conserved—or unchanging—features of the influenza viruses…” (p91).

“But we can’t wait for an international consensus; the infectious bugs are now gaining on us at a breakneck speed” (p92).

“We keep coming back to the reality that what kills us, what hurts us, and what scares us are not one and the same” (p98).

“The possibility for a DURC research study using a potentially dangerous influenza virus should scare the hell out of everyone” (p122).

“…he calmly recalled his research and described the agents he had worked with: anthrax, brucellosis, glanders, Marburg, plague, Q fever, smallpox, and tularemia, among other toxic bugs. All of them had been bomb and missile ready. He said they had developed 2,000 strains of anthrax alone in an attempt to make it as deadly as possible” (p129).

“’Simply put, the Nation does not afford the biological threat the same level of attention as it does other threats: There is no centralized leader for biodefense. There is no comprehensive national strategic plan for biodefense. There is no all-inclusive dedicated budget for biodefense” (p140).

“’There is not a city in the U.S. with more than three isolation beds, other than New York. New York has eight’” (p156).

“I believe it was Winston Churchill who said, ‘It’s no use saying “We’re not doing our best.” You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary’” (p158).

“’We know that mutations or small genetic changes can dramatically affect the epidemic potential, and probably virulence…’” (p212).

“Zika and all the other Aedes-transmitted diseases are going to be a trench-warfare slog against the mosquito and the viruses it carries” (p214).

“Antibiotics are, in fact, a natural resource—or perhaps more accurately, a natural phenomenon—that can be cherished or squandered like any other gift of nature, such as clean and adequate supplies of water and air” (p217).

“What we are dealing with, to put it plainly, is a slow-motion worldwide pandemic. With each passing year, we lose a percentage of our antibiotic fire-power” (p218).

“…within ten to twenty years, we could well be moving into the postantibiotic era” (p220).

“’Tragedy of the Commons’ applies to scenarios where an individual acts to significantly benefit [himself], and as a consequence accepts as a tradeoff a small amount of overall harm to society at large” (p222).

“Like many drugs that treat serious conditions, they have side effects—in the CDC’s example, by possibly wiping out the ‘good’ and necessary bacteria in the gut” (p223).

“So far, the [antimicrobial] problems have far outpaced the solution” (p228).

“…if antibiotics are a societal trust—if my use affects your ability to use them, and then your use affects my grandkids’ ability to use them—why are we allowing people to choose?” (p242).

“…it’s all bird flu; there’s no such thing as a naturally occurring human influenza virus” (p256).

“As far as pandemic potential is concerned, the most dangerous place on earth are anywhere people, birds, and swine are crowded close together in large numbers” (p257).

“[Pandemic influenza] has happened at least thirty times since the sixteenth century, and our modern world presents all the ingredients for an imminent return” (p257).

“…everything we use today is connected in some critical aspect to a production line far distant from our homes” (p262).

“One hundred percent of [the critical] drugs were generic; all were manufactured primarily or exclusively overseas, mostly in India and China; there were no significant stockpiles, and the supply chains were long and extremely vulnerable” (p264).

“’We need to realize right now that we do not have an adequate vaccine for influenza’” (p288, Tony Fauci).

“There are also several new studies that suggest it is actually better not to have the vaccination each year, that such a practice may actually cut down on antibody response” (p289).

_______________

PS. One question that wasn’t answered: does antimicrobial products (hand sanitizer, antibacterial cleaners and soaps) contribute to antibiotic resistance, in what ways, and how much? Otherwise, he answered all my questions and told me a whole lot of things I didn’t even think to ask about.

NOTE: I did not get a copy with the Covid introduction. I tried to find this intro elsewhere, but couldn’t find it.

Book Review: Bird by Bird

I have often recommended the book Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott and thought of it warmly. I was a little surprised, then, when I pulled it off the shelf to do a re-read and a review and my notes and markings stopped about two-thirds of the way through. Hmm… So, I liked the book a whole lot, but I was in a season where I might put down a book and forget to ever pick it up again? I have definitely had those seasons. Right now, I’m in the read-200 books in a year season. Maybe not quite that much. (It is also a season of balking at especially long books—like Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell—because of how much I am reading.)

This time I read the whole thing, cross my heart. I can hardly express how much I loved it. A nonfiction book (which most of Lamott’s are), the subtitle is Some Instructions on Writing and Life. It is important that the “life” is left in there, because Lamott just couldn’t help herself. There really is almost as much about how to live life in this book as there is about writing, and despite that she uses much of the same material here that she used to teach years and years of students, it’s not comprehensive. This book is not an A to Z, but more of a single writing class meant for students who have already decided that writing is for them. Newbies preferred, I suppose, but I loved every minute of Lamott’s ranting and raving, her acerbic advice, her seriously acidic outlook and messy life. Messy is too small a word for it, as Lamott uses hyperbole and a type of poetry to portray all the guts of living, and though her message is ultimately hopeful and light-filled, she mainly uses humor to deal with the startling darkness that she finDs around her and around us. The book, overall, is meant to convince us that the writing life is not meant for, and can not be for, fame and money. She encourages us, instead, to dig deep, really deep, and to come to terms with all the stuff inside so that we can be honest writers (the only kind of great writer). Writing is about decreasing isolation and writing from our experiences in a child-like way.

Not to give it all away, but it’s not really a writing manual, though she does deal with some practical things here, too. The book is broken into four sections: writing, the writing frame of mind, help along the way, and publication. And there is plenty of advice, but at times it feels less like a series of classes and more like a continuous drip of memoir and surprise. And humor. I really did laugh out loud repeatedly, which may mean I have a darker sense of humor than some or that I have been there, lady, both in life and as a writer. There was one passage where I lost it, I laughed like a maniac and then couldn’t catch my breath. Sometimes you need a laugh, you know?

I like this book for knocking some sense into aspiring writers (though they probably won’t believe it). I like this book for more seasoned writers to relate to. I like this book for teaching some important creative writing lessons. And I like this book for sheer entertainment value, especially if you can appreciate the stink of life along with redemption and a sort of bleak sense of humor. I will now be moving this book up in my estimation, though as a teaching book there is no big bang at the end or an increasing tension or anything. It is what it is all the way through, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

ANNE LAMOTT’S OTHER BOOKS:

Novels:

Hard LaughterRosieJoe JonesBlue ShoeAll New PeopleCrooked Little HeartImperfect Birds

Nonfiction:

Operating Instructions (memoir)Some Assembly Required (memoir)Traveling Mercies (essay collection)Plan B (essay collection)Grace (Eventually), essay collectionHelp, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential PrayersStitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and RepairSmall Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of GraceHallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering MercyAlmost Everything: Notes on HopeDusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage

QUOTES:

“…you hold an imaginary gun to your head and make yourself stay at the desk” (p7).

“Writing can be a pretty desperate endeavor, because it is about some of our deepest needs: our need to be visible, to be heard, our need to make sense of our lives, to wake up and grow and belong” (p19).

“So I’d start writing without reigning myself in. It was almost just typing, just making my fingers move” (p24).

“I walk along defending myself to people, or exchanging repartee with them, or rationalizing my behavior, or seducing them with gossip, or pretending I’m on their TV talk show or whatever” (p26).

“I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting every stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die” (p28).

“…there’s no point in writing hopeless novels. We all know we’re going to die; what’s important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this” (p51).

“A writer paradoxically seeks the truth and tells lies every step of the way” (p52).

“But whatever happens, we need to feel that it was inevitable, that even though we may be amazed, it feels absolutely right, that of course things would come to this, of course they would shake down this way” (p61).

“Nothing like a supercharged atmosphere to get things going” (p67).

“You have to move your hand across the paper or the keyboard” (p72).

“If you look at people and just see sloppy clothes or rich clothes, you’re going to get them wrong” (p97).

“The plot leads all of these people (and us) into dark woods where we find, against all odds, a woman or a man with the compass, and it still points true north. That’s the miracle” (p106).

“…if we sit [at the desk] long enough, in whatever shape, we may end up being surprised” (p111).

“Some of us tend to think that what we do and say and decide and write are cosmically important things. But they’re not” (p115).

“Money won’t guarantee these writers much of anything, except that now they have a much more expensive set of problems” (p124).

“I like to think that Henry James sad his classic line, ‘A writer is someone on whom nothing is lost,’ while looking for his glasses, and that they were on top of his head” (p133).

“…you don’t always have to chop with the sword of truth. You can point with it, too” (p156).

“It helps to resign as the controller of your fate. All that energy we expend to keep things running right is not what’s keeping things running right” (p180).

“But the fact of publication is the acknowledgement from the community that you did your writing right. You acquire a rank that you never lose. Now you’re a published writer, and you are in that rare position og getting to make a living, such as it is, doing what you love best. That knowledge does bring you a quiet joy” (p215).

“…good hours at my desk are as wonderful as any I can imagine. But joy for me is Sam and my church and my buddies and family, and more often it is felt outdoors than at my desk” (p215).

“When you’re conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader” (p225).

“You are lucky to be one of those people who wishes to build sand castles with words…” (p231).

“Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining” (p236).

“[Writing i]s like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea” (p237).

Book Review: The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street

Cover image from Amazon.com

I can’t decide whether or not I like The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street by Karina Yan Glaser. I have such opposite reactions to different aspects of it. When it comes down to it, I would recommend it for its merits, but I spent the first third of the book wanting to put it down because of its faults. By the end, it had worked its charm on me, but not enough that I was mesmerized (or needed to continue the series). And yet, I can see many middle graders loving this book. My own son, a reluctant reader, enjoyed it because “it was like normal life and I liked Oliver.” Indeed.

To be blunt, I found it predictable and boring. I mean, within the first couple chapters, an astute reader could map out the rest of the book. On the other hand, it is this “boring”ness that made me call it, the other day in conversation, “like modern Beverly Cleary.” You know, in reference to her stuff set in the fifties, like Ramona and Henry Huggins. And I love Ramona because of the normalcy and accessibility of both the characters and plot and also the family. There are other ways in which the series are similar: they both contain vibrant main characters that have a measure of zest, passion, artisticness to them as well as intelligence and motivation. So how can I call this boring? I just was lulled to it, at least for this first bit.

I also found, as in much of the literature for elementary through middle grades, that I was told things instead of being shown. I’ve seen much worse, but—despite that everyone keeps saying the Brownstown is a character—there was a lack of description. Of the Brownstown, the neighborhood, other things. There was some, though, and maybe as much as the average eleven-year-old would like. I don’t know. I wanted to look around me and see things, so that the place could become a character as much as the house in Knives Out, but without the need to slip in there occasionally that the house was figuratively talking to me. This plays well for English teachers, but not so much for reader absorption.

I do appreciate a book with a great, functional family, and Vanderbeekers is all about a functional family. There is no main character here, unless you count family as one. Despite what I just said, I found the Vanderbeekers to be too perfect. At times, they came across as flat and cliché because even their quirks—meant to be endearing—were out of some sort of character can. The nutty professor sister. The prodigy musician sister. The only brother who loves to read. The arts and crafts sister. And the shy, loving, baby sister. While trying to be so fresh and different, we recognize these characters and—besides being children—they don’t do much to challenge our initial assumptions about them. And mom and dad don’t have any faults that I can find. They always say and do the right thing and, while we’re on the topic, the mom does so much that it is, I believe, actually impossible. In just a few days, she packs an entire house, raises five kids, runs a baking business, and manages a meaningful Christmas while cheerfully reaching out to neighbors, giving perfect advice to her children, and generally beaming at everyone amidst an aroma of fresh-baked cookies. I like positive role models, but this is the every-woman (the one the Oprah theme sang about) that I hate seeing portrayed in the media. Yikes.

Still, the book has drawn a lot of fans and I’m almost one of them. It is charming (at least after you commit to it) and the characters are likeable. Eventually, the story grows some tentacles and subplots that have you turning pages. The setting is definitely a place you want to be, to be wrapped up in, especially the neighborhood. (This is, by the way, fiction, but set in real-life Harlem.) Not that it really plays out on the book, but the Vanderbeekers are (really) vaguely bi-racial, and their neighbors are (again vaguely) diverse. They “look” just like any family you might find in urban America, not playing into any stereotypes in that sense. All good stuff that will draw kids in, entertain them, and be a positive book experience.

My question is, was it too serious for how unserious it felt? There were a lot of deep things here. I was even crying (like one, lonely tear) once or twice. But was the writing deep enough? It was the characters, I suppose, that were supposed to take us there. Were they too perfect? I think they were, and the book didn’t end up being quite as meaningful as it wanted to be. It just ended up being light and playful, and for all that, I would expect more to draw us in initially and to challenge our predictions about the people and plot. And still I would recommend it, because there’s nothing to harm, here, and kids enjoy it. They may even learn a lesson or two (though getting in trouble for starting a petition was a little weird to me and some other readers. Actually, several of the parents’ responses were a little strange).

Here’s the schtick: The Vanderbeekers live in the apartment in a brownstone in Harlem where their father grew up. They love their house, their dog, cat and bunny, and their hard-working, loving parents. It’s almost Christmas, and they suddenly find out that their cranky, reclusive landlord upstairs has decided not to renew their lease and has given them less than two weeks—over the holidays—to get out. But the five Vanderbeeker kids aren’t going to just move out without a fight. So as the boxes pile up around them and their neighbors say tearful goodbyes, the kids go to the drawing board to figure out how to convince the Biederman that the neighborhood—and he—need them.

Nice cover. Also of note: first in a series of three.

__________

This was our final middle grades boys book club book for the school year, and it was my turn to host. The pandemic caused some last-minute panicking and changes, but in the end it came off okay. We tried to keep it light and it had to travel (so no decorations, for example), since the boys mostly like to run around making weapons out of whatever nature presents and I had to set up in a storm in a park. I fed the boys, first, then we went over some of the discussion questions (that you can find online) and talked about our favorite books of the year. After that, they made a lemon-powered batteries in pairs (which of course turned into a competition and then ways to destroy the lemons) and then filled out coupon books for their mothers (since Mothers Day was two days away). All of this was related to the book, as was the food. (I decided not to go the beef stew and roasted veggie route and instead pumped them all full of sugar and carbs.) We had a carrot cake decorated to look like Paganini the bunny, double-chocolate pecan cookies, jam cookies (which I call thumbprints), frozen hot chocolate (with whipped cream and frozen because it’s like 80 degrees here, right now), and then chocolate croissants and cheese bread from a shi-shi bakery. As a send-off, here are a few recipes for you to celebrate your reading of The Vanderbeekers.

Double-Chocolate Pecan Cookies

Preheat oven to 375F.In the bowl of your mixer, mix together 1 cup soft, unsalted butter with 2 cups granulated sugar for 5 minutes. Add 2 eggs, one at a time. Add 4 ounces melted chocolate (not too hot) and 2 teaspoons vanilla extract.In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together 2 ¼ cup all purpose flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1 teaspoon powdered espresso.Mix dry ingredients into the wet, just until combined. Gently add 1 cup chocolate chips and 1 cup chopped toasted pecan pieces.On a baking sheet, drop small-scooper balls of dough, a couple inches apart. Bake 12 minutes or more, until flattened some and cracked on top. Allow to cool for 5 minutes and transfer with a metal spatula to a cooling rack. Store sealed once completely cooled.

Thumbprint Cookies, aka. Jam Cookies

Preheat oven to 350F.In the bowl of your mixer, mix together 1 1/2 cup soft, unsalted butter with 1 1/3 cups granulated sugar for 5 minutes. Add 2 eggs, one at a time. Add 2 teaspoons vanilla extract.In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together 3 1/2 cups all purpose flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, and 1 teaspoon salt.Mix dry ingredients into the wet, just until combined.On a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or a Silpat, drop small-scooper balls of dough, a couple inches apart. Press a thumbprint into each cookie, making sure not to go too near the pan, and trying to create a crater that won’t leak out the sides. Fill each thumbprint with whatever jam or jelly you have on hand.Bake 20 minutes, until edges are just a little golden-brown. Allow to cool for 5 minutes and transfer with a spatula to a cooling rack. Store sealed once completely cooled. (They are delicious warm.)

Best Carrot Cake

Preheat oven to 350F. Prepare two 9-inch round baking pans with coconut oil, parchment paper, more oil, and flour. Set aside.In the bowl of your mixer, mix together 2 ½ cups all purpose flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1 teaspoon baking soda, ½ teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, ½ teaspoon clove, ½ teaspoon ground ginger and ¼ teaspoon nutmeg.In a large glass measuring cup, whisk together 1 cup safflower oil, 1 ¼ cup brown sugar, ½ cup granulated sugar, 4 eggs, 1 tablespoon fresh grated ginger and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Mix into the dry ingredients just until incorporated.Add 2 cups grated carrot, 1 cup drained crushed pineapple, and 1 cup chopped walnuts, just until combined.Evenly divide the batter into the two baking pans and spread basically flat. Bake for 45 minutes and check for doneness with a toothpick. Allow to cool for 5 minutes and flip and transfer to a cooling rack.Meanwhile, Beat 24 oz cream cheese with ½ cup softened unsalted butter. Beat in a scant 6 cups powdered sugar, 1 cup at a time. Add 1 teaspoon vanilla extract and a hefty pinch of salt. Taste. Add more sugar if consistency is not spreadable. You want it to decently hold its shape.When cakes are completely cooled, dot a cake tray with a little frosting. Top with one cake. Spread a layer of frosting. (Alternately, you could dam the edge and add a carrot-cake-friendly filling like a pineapple jam or a praline frosting.) Top with second cake. Frost with the remaining frosting. (You could color to decorate or use a piping tip after the crumb coat.) Keep refrigerated.

Frozen Hot Chocolate

In a medium saucepan over medium-low heat, whisk together 8 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips, 2 tablespoons hot cocoa mix, 4 tablespoons granulated sugar, and 1 cup milk. Continue whisking until chocolate has melted and sugar has dissolved. Remove from heat.In a blender, combine 2 cups milk with 8 cups ice (if possible. You may need shifts, or just use 6 cups ice). Blend until like a smoothie.In your serving container, mix the completely cooled chocolate mix with the smoothie. Serve right away (or chill and serve as cold hot cocoa instead of iced) with whipped cream and chocolate syrup or flake on top.

Publishing Seminar with Scott Reintgen

Image from Goodreads.com

A couple weeks ago I attended a (virtual) seminar. The speaker/teacher was Scott Reintgen and the title of the seminar was “How to Get an Agent and Navigate Publishing.” This was a lot to cover in an hour and a half on a Monday night, but the presentation was great and the information was quite helpful. With an audience presumably spanning newbies to whatever-I-am, there was stuff that I already knew, had already heard a hundred times. But Reintgen also had a lot of simple, practical insight that I hadn’t heard before, and he put a utilitarian spin on some of the more mystifying moments of the submission process. Brought it down to Earth. I’d love to just post my notes because they are full of good bits, but that would be going too far, taking the wind out of Reintgen’s sails since these seminars are part of what he does. If you are in the process of submitting, I would recommend taking advantage of one of his seminars, if one comes up.

I will go ahead and share a few things that I learned, but not until after I give Reintgen a little plug.

Image from Amazon.com

Scott Reintgen is the author of the Nyxia trilogy and other science fiction and fantasy books. His books are mainly for YA and middle grades, so he makes lots of appearances at schools and he is passionate about teaching writing. You can find his website at itspronouncedrankin.com. (Yes, it is pronounced “rankin.”) Every single one of his books on Goodreads has an over-4-star review. Here is a list of his books, consisting of three series:

NyxiaNyxia UnleashedNyxia UprisingAshlordsBlood SwornSaving FableEscaping OrdinaryBreaking Badlands

And here are some of the interesting things that I learned from him:

In your query summary, make sure clear stakes are outlined. What does your character stand to win or lose? Showcase your skill and include plot plus character plus setting. Give concrete details and focus on a main character, even if you have a cast ensemble. Hogwarts doesn’t sell the book. Harry does. (I will now be going back and rewriting my queries, before I send out another one.) Which brings me to this gem: query in waves. Send out a batch, rewrite the query, and send again. This makes sure that not all your eggs are in one basket. If you only write one letter, perhaps it is the letter that sucks and not the book or the idea for the book. (Genius!)

Image from Amazon.com

And here’s another gem that is going to change the way I submit: have a “thing.” I already had an inkling that my thing as a children’s writer would be to dress in a certain, cooky way for appearances (to go along with my nom de plume). But what could be my thing as a regular, ol’ novelist? Well, my husband and I did some brainstorming after the seminar—because I knew this was bound to be good advice—and we came up with this: my “thing” will be accessibility of further resources, which would include encouraging book clubs. I have already reworked my books webpage to reflect this, and now I need to come up with a way to weave it into my submission process. I think this works well. It helps market me, sure, but it’s also exactly the kind of thing I am passionate about and am in a position to do. I have been blogging book reviews for more than six years and I am always making these further resources as part of my process: music playlists, questions about the book, maps, process notes, etc. Plus, I’m not half bad at making appearances and doing readings. So book clubs it is!

And last but not least—what I’ve known a long time: you can get rejected because an agent had a bad day. Publication is a combination of luck along with time and practice. Hundreds of rejections are usually part of the process. And the show isn’t over with the publication date. The song and dance has just begun and, quite frankly, even after all this, this could still be a one-night Broadway run.

Book Review: Don’t Feed the Monkey Mind

Image from Amazon.com

April, which means we are on the fourth book for our Pandemic Book Club, that book club where we try to find mental health amidst over a year of stress, fear, isolation, strife, etc. After a couple religious books and a book about the science and biology of stress, we have now read Don’t Feed the Monkey Mind by Jennifer Shannon. Though only a few years old, it already seems to be a classic of self-help. I have been told by a counselor friend of mine that what Shannon has to say in this book is not exactly new, but emphasizing the “monkey mind” and packaging the concepts this way has made some of the ideas more accessible to the average anxious Joe (or nervous Nellie).

The subtitle here is How to Stop the Cycle of Anxiety, Fear, and Worry. Just what we need in a pandemic, because there has been more than enough anxiety, fear and worry to go around. Right now, people are even anxious about how they will fit back into society, how they will look friends in the face for the first time, and when they will feel safe to embrace their family. And there are still health and economic fears (and definitely inconvenience and discomfort and even social and political fears). Monkey Mind did deliver on the subtitle, and is a great read for a pandemic like the one we are currently in. Honestly, I can’t think of any person at any time who couldn’t use this book at least some. There are those who really could use this book a lot.

One of my favorite things about Don’t Feed the Monkey Mind are the supplemental resources that can be found online. The links in my copy of the book were not quite correct, but I found it all at jennifershannon.com and printed it out. At eleven pages, front and back (plus some copies I made later of some of the pages), it was well worth it to print out the stuff, especially if you are a hands-on, interactive kind of person like I am. It’s hard for me to take an idea and make it mine without some sort of charting, practicing, maybe even teaching. So I really appreciated reading a chapter and then doing the worksheets that went along with it. Then spending a few days implementing the ideas. Though we were reading this book in a month (and officially, on my reading schedule, it took up a week), this is the kind of book that would be best done with a friend/therapist/support group and at a rate of one chapter per week. That way you have some accountability and also some time to think about things and “practice,” aka. do strange social experiments (mumbling mantras under your breath, taking deep breaths, making strangers look at your messy family room without apologizing or explaining, going on trips without making lists, and performing without taking a backup outfit. Well, that’s partly just me).

I’m going to give you the back-of-the-book copy, to give you a better idea of what this book has to offer, besides just saying cognitive behavioral therapy and your mind is like a monkey and your worries are monkey chatter.

“The very things we do to control anxiety can make anxiety worse. This unique guide offers a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)-based approach to help you recognize the constant chatter of your anxious “monkey mind”, stop feeding anxious thoughts, and find the personal peace you crave ….

Written by psychotherapist Jennifer Shannon, this book shows you how to stop anxious thoughts from taking over using proven-effective cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), and mindfulness techniques. By following the exercises in this book, you’ll learn to identify your own anxious thoughts, question those thoughts, and uncover the core fears at play…”

I think it’s a great book. It is written tolerably well and is just barely straightforward enough to a practical person like me. I chuckled at the little illustrations of the pesky monkey and I found the personification of my amygdalae and hormones to be very helpful. It is not very long. It could use to be revisited time and again. As a book, I’m not really singing its praises to the skies, but as a tool with the goal of thriving in mind, I would happily and sometimes even heartily recommend this book.

QUOTES:

“We cannot relax and be at peace unless we feel safe” (p6).

“…your monkey mind is always watching and listening to those around you, looking for signals telling you whether you are respected, whether you are loved, and whether you belong” (p8).

“…your anxiety does not define you. It is a distinct part of you that is beyond your direct control” (p13).

“…keeping you alive and safe within your tribe—is best accomplished by eliminating all uncertainty …. From its perspective, the only time it’s safe for you to relax is when you can anticipate and control every outcome” (p17).

“As a result, out daily agenda consists of a hundred little failings that need to be prevented” (p21).

“The only way we can get what we want in life is to override its warnings with our behavior” (p32).

“When you cannot be happy until everything on your list is checked off, you are not allowing much opportunity got yourself to be happy” (p48).

“The default, go-to strategy to fend off anxiety in our everyday lives is, drumroll please… Distraction” (p55).

“When we replace strategies that keep us sage with strategies that help us expand, we disrupt the cycle of anxiety and make new things happen” (p65).

“You must create an expansive mind-set to go with your expansive strategy” (p66).

“All sensation and emotions, even the ones that overwhelm us, have a beginning, a middle, and an end. They will pass like a thunderstorm” (p81).

“Sensations and emotions, too, will burn themselves out and that we don’t need to control them” (p81).

“Remember that when you do welcoming exercises, you are not attempting to get rid of or control the feeling, nor are you trying to like the feeling …. Breathe in to accept the feeling. Breathe out to let go of control” (p89).

“We try to be certain, to be perfect, to please others, but these are poor substitutes for the real purpose of being alive” (p105).

“…we learn best when we are consistently rewarded for what we are doing right” (p132).

“Praise everything about your practice except the outcome!” (p137).

“As you become less limited by the monkey’s bias toward safety and more resilient to its alarms of perceived threats, you will begin to take the risks necessary to meet your larger personal goals” (p145).

“The ability to tolerate your own necessary [negative] feelings is a superpower” (p147).

“Trying to feel good is feeding the monkey. Just let these pleasant feelings flow through you, like you let the unpleasant ones flow through” (p149).

NOTE: I happened to be reading this book while also reading Wired for Love by Stan Tankin (a relationship/marriage book) and Winning the War in Your Mind by Crain Groeschel (the Christian version of all this, as a sermon series). These three fit together nicely, covering the same topics with different angles.

Book Review: Treat Your Own Back

Treat Your Own Back by Robin McKenzie is a book that my doctor recommended to me years ago, during my first big back failure. I have a genetically “bad disc” in my lumbar region, and right after I had my second child, I found myself face-down in the mud of my driveway, unable to move for pain (which was worse even than migraines or even unanesthetized labor). After several days on my friend’s couch and a couple times at the physical therapist’s, I got the book my doc told me to get. I used it, I went back to yoga, I bought the things recommended in the book, and then I loaned out the book. The book stayed on my second friend’s bookshelf until the pandemic. As the year progressed, I found my back getting more and more stiff, sore, and vulnerable to debilitation. So I asked about the book, and it found its way back to me. (I included this book in a blog I wrote about the top ten self help books I had read, HERE.)

I have a couple things to say. This book, as a book, is only okay. It’s a really quick read with some explanation, some diagrams, a couple quizzes, and a lot of direction. Unfortunately, it seems to be always trying to sell you something, which is funny because it’s also trying to get you out of dependence on costly medications, doctors, and alternative therapies. Ultimately, I think McKenzie is really looking out for your comfort, functionality, and even pocketbook, but she can come across as a real sales(wo)man. Toots her own horn a lot. Says her way is the only way. Has some products she can exclusively sell you for just $29.99 plus tax. Yeah, that. On the other hand, as far as I can tell, she’s in the field of science and she’s right. There were old ways of dealing with back pain that didn’t work. (The book is also a little dated, and is on something like the 10th edition.) Science was done, time passed, and McKenzie’s hunches were proven right for most cases of back pain. There are simple things that can be done (religiously, for best results) that can “heal” you of pain and incapacitation that otherwise could ruin your life or at least really inconvenience you now and again throughout your life.

I will admit to using McKenzie’s lumbar rolls, including the fancy, little innertube for night-wear. (Yeah, it’s not attractive.) Combined with the emergency exercises and then a lifetime of good posture and daily (quick) exercises (or the right yoga), this book really can change the life of a back pain sufferer like me. My problem is very most likely mechanical in nature, and yet Treat Your Own Back certainly works for me.

Why do I say the book itself is only okay? Besides the sales-pitchiness of it? It could be laid out better and also presented a little more clearly. Mostly, I just wish there was a section at the back that you could quickly reference for either an acute pain day or a normal day or whatever kind of back pain day you were having, and—with tiny illustrations or perhaps just more clever names than “Exercise Three”—an infographic would walk you through the steps. She sort of does this in the book, it’s just not as accessible as it could be.

Overall, I would recommend this book because it could be exactly what you need. I find it to be integral for me to live a normal life. My doctor was correct in telling me to purchase it and I have been right to follow its advice. Here’s to your health and wellness, and the possibility that this may be what you need, as well.

QUOTES:

“The focus is now on exercise and activity, both of which have the potential to allow patients to manage their own problem and become independent of therapy and clinicians” (p6).

“As long as the ligaments are intact, you can prevent significant displacement by standing upright and bending backward” (p16).

“If you stand fully erect and bend fully backward once a day, you need never become bent, stopped and impaired in so many ways” (p25).