Margo Kelly's Blog, page 49

Happy or UNhappy Valentine's Day

Well ... there seems to be two types of people in the world:
1. People who LOVE Valentine's Day
2. People who hate Valentine's Day

Commercialism aside, I fall more into the "love" category. Whether you're in a relationship or not, let's use the day to spread love and happiness! :) And besides, Valentine's Day provides a valid excuse to eat chocolate.


So HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

Book Review: ETHEL MERMAN, MOTHER TERESA ... AND ME

Ethel Merman, Mother Teresa...and Me: My Improbable Journey from Châteaux in France to the Slums of Calcutta by Tony Cointreau

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I thoroughly enjoyed this book! And I highly recommend it to: anyone in a book club (great discussion opportunities within), anyone who is a fan of Ethel Merman or Mother Teresa, anyone who is poor wishing they were rich, anyone who wishes they were loved more as a child, anyone who wants to serve and love others … to anyone: I recommend this book.

This memoir is beautifully written. It is captivating, heart-breaking, haunting, and inspiring.

I honestly had no idea who Tony Cointreau was when this book was offered to me for review, but the title caught me: Ethel Merman, Mother Teresa … And Me

I wanted to know how Ethel Merman and Mother Teresa could share the title of a book. I wanted to know the details of that story.

And an interesting story it is.

It’s about a boy of financial privilege who learns that money, in fact, cannot bring true joy or love into your life. However, championing people in their most vulnerable moments with generosity and kindness … can … and does bring true joy and love into not only your life, but also the lives of others.

Not everyone is able to learn this, and this memoir is peppered with so many suicides of Tony’s friends, acquaintances, and relatives that I lost count of how many lives were lost as a direct result of sadness.

On page two he describes the privileges his mother enjoyed. “Even when she went for a stroll, the chauffeur followed her slowly with the car, in case she tired.” And then later, even after all of his self-enlightenment, Tony writes on page 203, “I felt quite ecstatic about flying first class halfway around the world, landing in a marble palace, and preparing to offer my services to the poorest of the poor dying in Nirmal Hriday—“Home of the Pure Heart.” What’s wrong with this picture? Maybe nothing. I certainly believe my motives were pure. Until then I had only known first class, marble palaces, and high tea, so it seemed perfectly natural to be staying in that environment, without realizing the irony of the situation.” But as Mother Teresa so clearly told Tony later, “… even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own …” (page 243).

That’s the truth of this memoir: we all want to be loved and wanted for who we are.

However, there is even more to this memoir. There is so much rich history and emotional story telling. I gasped and cried more than once.

On page 23, Tony writes of his maternal grandmother, “… she had been on the streets of Paris with her two children when a German aeroplane overhead dropped a bomb that exploded on the sidewalk in front of her, killing two women.”

And then on page 36 he writes of his paternal grandparents, who had left their chateau when the Germans occupied it, finally returning to their home. “The next morning when my grandparents entered the gates they were elated to see dozens of American soldiers asleep in the fields next to the house. They approached to greet the men with open arms before they realized that they were all dead.”

In addition to personalizing the details of war and history, Tony also addresses tough topics such as sexual abuse and homosexuality.

If you are someone who has not come to terms with the fact that child abuse exists and influences lives in very deep ways, you may not want to read this book, or you may just want to skip the mere three and a half pages in the chapter titled “My Annus Horribilis” where the author acknowledges his own personal horror that happened to him as a child. I hate reading and thinking about it, but the author did a great job of presenting the facts of what happened without going on and on in unnecessary details. He also did a great job of presenting his feelings about being gay without going into unnecessary details. I respect the fact that he has been on a lifelong search for love, peace, and happiness. We all have to choose our own paths as we search for these things in our own lives.

So what do Ethel Merman and Mother Teresa have in common? According to Tony, they both laughed, and they both made you feel like you were the only person in the world who mattered. They genuinely shared love.

As Mother Teresa is quoted on page 213, “If we look around us we will surely find someone in need. We needn’t go halfway around the world to be of service. There are people everywhere starving for our love.”

And on page 243, Mother Teresa is quoted again, “Be kind, show kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile. … To all who suffer and are lonely, give always a happy smile.”




View all my reviews

A to Z Challenge

That's right! The annual A to Z Challenge is just around the corner! It's a fun way to make new friends in the mighty blogosphere! :)

Even though the challenge doesn't begin until April, people are already signing up for the event. I signed up Sunday night, and I'm #631 on the list.

Check out the details at: a-to-z-challenge-sign-uplist-2014

And join the chaos fun!

Darkly Delcious YA

If you're not already following the Darkly Delicious Young Adult blog ... what are you waiting for?

Check out this behind-the-scenes post I wrote for the blog about creating book covers:
http://darklydeliciousya.blogspot.com/2014/02/dishing-secrets-about-margo-kellys-cover.html

What is one of your favorite book covers?

Have a great weekend!

Brianne Johnson is a Rock Star ... Just Sayin'

What's better than getting an envelope in the mail from your agent?


Well ... getting an envelope with a mustache sticker and smiley face ... of course!

  I'm telling you ... Brianne Johnson is a rock star. ................  And today is:   My advice for today? Hang in there. Keep writing. Keep editing. Keep plugging along toward your goals. Because the mustachioed envelope makes it all worthwhile. ;) That is all. Go write something good today (or write something bad and then edit it tomorrow). 

A Quote for Inspiration

 
“To write a breakout novel is to run free of the pack. It is to delve deeper, think harder, revise more, and commit to creating characters and plot that surpass one’s previous accomplishments. It is to say “no” to merely being good enough to be published. It is a commitment to quality” – Donald Maass (Writing the Breakout Novel, p.12).
Do you have a favorite writing quote to share?

TRY!

You know ... whether it is writing, exercising, achieving any other goal, or overcoming a trial, we all have to TRY. I am a Pink fan, and her performance at the 2014 Grammys was impressive. She didn't even look out of breath by the end of the six minute performance.

Here's the video in case you missed it (worth viewing!):

Book Review: FANGIRL

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Oh. My. Gosh. FANGIRL was the best book I've read in a long, long time. That is saying a lot considering I tend to be a bigger fan of scary thrillers ... and FANGIRL was a contemporary coming of age story.

The writing was excellent. (I even looked past the over use of those three little dots ... because the story totally sucked me in.)

The only thing I did not like about this story (and in the end, I couldn't ding a single star for it because the greatness outweighed this one detail): the book is peppered with the F-word, a lot. Most of it is in the first half of the book. And I found it more jarring in this story, because it reads like a young adult book.

However, this is NOT a YA book.

The main character, Cath, is attending her first year of college with her twin sister, but her sister wants to cut all ties and go her own way. Cath has a hard time finding her way at first and has a hard time finding the words to connect with the people around her, which is ironic because she can easily find the words to write a profuse amount of fan fiction for her favorite young magician series. Hmm. Yes, the author does a great job of nesting Cath's fan fiction within the story about Cath. Then when Cath turns in a piece of her fan fiction for her fiction writing class, her professor tells her it's plagiarism. Ruh. Roh. Then to make matters worse, her writing partner from the same class claims some of her writing as his own. Cath doubts her ability to ever become a writer, and she doubts her ability to ever be able to be her own person. But it not even just about her sister ditching her, or her settling into college life, or making new friends, it's also about her father's struggle with mental stability and her mother's abandonment and boyfriends and roommates and first loves ... sigh ... SUCH A GREAT BOOK. I didn't want it to end. I kept checking to see how many pages were left, and I tried to read slower to make it last longer, but at the same time I had to read faster to find out how it would end.

Granted, I would have loved a few more pages, a few more details, a few more closures, but I still enjoyed the ending.

My typical notes about sex, violence, and language: Even though this book is about college life, and parties were represented, there were no sex scenes. Some of the fan fiction sections have minor violence and a budding romance between two boys, but nothing significant happens within the writing. Other than the F-word, this is a very "clean" story.

This is the first book I've read by Rainbow Rowell, and I can hardly wait to read the rest of her books.



View all my reviews

Top 10 Tips for Surviving Relationship with a Writer

Martin Luther King, Jr.

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character".

Martin Luther King, Jr.


   Let's take time to celebrate the content of each other's character.

:)