Ten Meaningful Books

My dear friend, Emily, tagged me in the “Ten Meaningful Books!” post on Facebook.  This is excellent, as I couldn’t decide what to blog about (plenty of things to write about, just couldn’t choose) and now I have something!  Yay!

(Harry Potter is my absolute favorite, but aside from that, the rest are not in any particular order.)

1. The Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling, of course.  I didn’t read much when I was little, and I struggle with it now.  Don’t get me wrong – I love reading.  But it’s hard for me.  That said, the Harry Potter books got me started on reading.  They’re the first books I remember being excited about and I absolutely love the stories and the characters.  I read these books about ten times a year, which is admittedly absurd.  But what-eva.  I love the portrayal of evil in the series – it’s made, not born.  I love the stories of redemption we get from death eaters turned good.  I love the triumph of good and the power of love in the stories.  And any and every scene with the Weasley family makes me feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside, which is saying something as I generally hate or at least pretend to hate anything having to do with family. 

2. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.  I loved the Lord of the Rings books, but for me, The Hobbit was the best.  No joke, while I was reading The Hobbit, I’d have dreams that I was going out on adventures every night.  I read before I go to bed often, but aside from nightmares of Voldemort trying to kill me, it’s not often I have such vivid dreams of the stories.

3. A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn.  I read this book in high school and it was hella uncomfortable at first.  It really sucks to find out that your history isn’t quite as nice as it’s been made out to be and even worse to realize that your country STILL isn’t what it ought to be.  But it was important to read and I think I’m a better person for it.  It was pretty much the gateway drug to information about the less than stellar reality of things.  It made me think more and question more.

4. In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez.  I love me some history.  This was one of the first novels I read that wasn’t based in an environment or sound I’m familiar with.  It’s a story about the Mirabal sisters, four women who fought against the dictatorship of Trujillo in the Domican Republic.  It shed a light on the struggle of trying to balance family and political action, it showed how different personalities could be helpful to a cause in their own ways.  It was a really exceptional book.

5. Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson.  This talked about people and nations and movements and it was great and things are a little clearer to me now when I’m reading about struggle or wars, etc.  It wasn’t necessarily a pleasant read, because I suck at reading and it was really difficult.  Worth it, though.

6. Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie.  I loved this book.  As maybe you could tell from my HP description, I’m a fan of the whole good and bad thing and of the complexities of humans.  I like reading about people (or characters) who we think are bad, but see that there’s still good in them.  Sometimes down deeper than others…….

7. The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis.  I wrote a whole post on this so it’s clear I loved it.  Let’s just say the writing was incredible and rocked my fucking socks.  And I want to write, so it’s helpful/inspiring to see good writing.

8. A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer.  Reading this sucked.  But I mean, like, yeah.  Glad to have read it when I did.

9.  The Giver by Lois Lowry.  I re-read this the other day, and I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as I did when I was 11.  BUT.  I still like it and I remember enjoying it as a kid.  Not on par with HP, but it was another book that pushed me to read more. 

10. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton.  I read this in school and as far as I can remember, this was the first book that I read that dealt a bit with class.  I remember being able to relate to some of the stuff I read for the first time and that was cool.  I also only recently learned that it was written by a woman, and that's pretty awesome. (Though I'm ready for an end to so many women using initials instead of their names so that their books will sell.)

I’m sure I’m missing some, or that later on I’ll be pissed because I’ll remember one that should have been on this list.  But all of these come to mind when I think of the books I’ve read that stick with me the most, and I think when (if I ever) I write, I’ll be able to take stuff from each of these.  I also very much look forward to the day when I have an eleven year old I can send a Hogwarts acceptance letter to. 

Reading is fun.  

_

Charlotte

Weekling: W.15

Or, lack thereof.  

This should actually be the 16th or 17th "weekling," but I've slacked.  And after sitting here trying to write this one, I decided I'm going to not write them for a little while.  Almost every week looks the same - wah, no job, wah, health is getting worse, and yay, some good recipes or movies thrown in.  So I don't really think it's worth writing an entire post for that.  That's not to say I won't ever write about the job sitch. or the health crap, but no point in writing the exact same post every single week.  Hopefully something good will happen soon and I'll have a reason to start writing them again. :)

_

Charlotte  

For more posts in this series, go here: Weeklings

The Twelve Tribes of Hattie

I’ve mentioned The Twelve Tribes of Hattie numerous times on this blog.  I believe I’ve called it phenomenal and wonderful.  And it was!  Oh, it totally was.  But, it also wasn’t. 

The writing was the best writing I have read maybe ever.  The story, though, could have been better. 

I think I forgot what imagery was, probably because it’s missing from a lot of today’s fiction.  (And non-fiction, I suppose.)  I also started to expect entertainment and a good story from every book I read, but nothing else.  None of the books I’ve read in the last few years have done a good job of conveying little details that can bring a reader into the story. 

I’m not sure if I’m even explaining it properly, so I’ll give some examples.  I work with kids at a before school program.  We have parties for each month and for a few holidays.  Last year during one of the parties, a teacher came into the cafeteria to talk to one of the girls.  The kids were sitting at tables we had set up to form a square, and the blinds were up and the sun was just starting to rise, so we left the lights off.  As the teacher was waiting for the girl, she came next to me and said, “Look how precious they all look sitting together, with the sunlight hitting their faces.”

And they did.  I’m not saying that the sentence was particularly poetic.  It wasn’t.  But the fact that she noticed the way the sun was hitting them and that she wanted me to notice, too, stuck with me.  You’ve got to be so mindful to notice things like that, especially when you’re busy.  Since then I’ve tried to stop and appreciate that kind of thing, no matter how much my mind is racing at any given moment. 

Writers should include such things in their stories.  It’s the kind of small detail that can transport you to the place they’re writing about. 

A few months ago my friend got married and I was at the rehearsal dinner.  Everyone went out onto the front lawn to practice the ceremony and I was taking some pictures.  When my friend started to talk, I had just finished taking a picture of her parents, and I noticed her mom look at her dad.  I’m not a parent so I don’t know what that feeling was, but it was clearly a bit of happiness and pride and maybe some disbelief because their kid was doing this great big life thing.  I may or may not have started to tear up when I caught that glance. 

Now, I read the Twilight books (regrettably).  Nothing from the wedding scene stuck with me.  I know they get married, but I can’t remember anything from the wedding.  That’s because Stephanie Meyer didn’t include those fleeting, precious moments.  And she certainly doesn’t use imagery. 

My point in all this is that Ayana Mathis, author of The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, is a master at employing imagery.  From the first pages I knew I was reading something beautiful.

Check this out:

Hattie clambered from the train, her skirt still hemmed with Georgia mud, the dream of Philadelphia round as a marble in her mouth and the fear of it a needle in her chest.

That is one of many, many examples of brilliant writing Mathis gives us throughout the novel.  There were several times I needed to stop reading and take a breath and wrap my head around the sentence I just read.  Really.  Her writing is exquisite.

My one complaint has to do with the plot, or lack thereof.  The story is structured in such a way that the chapters are each devoted to one of Hattie’s “tribes.”  Her eleven children and one of her grandchildren make up the twelve tribes of Hattie.  My problem is that it doesn’t read like a novel.  I felt like I was waiting for the climax for a very long time but never got to it.  In each of the chapters – stories – we hear a little about that particular child.  Sometimes other characters are interwoven into the siblings’ stories, but rarely and just barely.  Hattie is mentioned enough where we don’t forget that she’s what they all have in common, but we don’t get to see a whole lot of character development, for Hattie or the tribes.  Each of the stories aren’t necessarily related.  There’s never a sense of congruity.  To me, the book felt more like a series of portraits than it did a story. 

The good thing about this structure is that it lent itself to some of what I think Mathis was trying to depict: the lingering effects of slavery, the aftermath of emancipation and of Jim Crow, the trials of poverty and how it strains emotions, health, and relationships, and racism.  The struggles each of Hattie’s children face are different, but they all are caused or worsened by the effects of racism and of poverty. 

The book was fascinating and while some of the chapters were somewhat boring for me, most were interesting and kept me reading.  Of course I’d recommend it to everyone, as the writing alone is something every person should get to experience.  But I think a lot of folks who read this book were expecting it to sound more like The Help, and it doesn’t.  Not all books about race are going to read the same.  This book felt more like a string of stories, and if you’re someone who lives and dies with plot, you might not enjoy it.  I think I’m going to read it again just so I can circle the best passages and save them for later.  Overall, if I was rating this, I’d give it a 4.5 out of 5 stars.  If the writing wasn’t so exceptional, I’d probably give it a 3 or a 3.5.  English teachers everywhere should use this book to show students how to use literary devices.     

_

Charlotte 

Random, Random Things.

I have been a horrible  blogger lately.  I had all these great big plans, but life.  So as I'm getting back into it, I'm going to leave this post here.  One of my friends suggested a post like this, so to avoid coming up with any ideas on my own, I took her advice.  Here are some random facts about me: 

• I watched that documentary, Mitt, on Netflix, and now I like Mitt Romney (not enough to vote for him). 
• The Twelve Tribes of Hattie is the best book I've ever read.  It's beautifully written.
• My sports teams are as follows: 

1. Baseball – Yankees 
2. Football – Giants, Packers, Ravens (I only started caring about the Ravens after watching The Blind Side.  Pathetic.)
3. Basketball – Knicks, Bulls (I only started caring about the Bulls after watching Space Jam in 1996.  Not pathetic, I think.)
4. Hockey – Rangers
5. Soccer – whoever. 

• I also like watching wrestling or MMA, but I’m not cool enough and don’t watch it often enough to know people’s names.  When I was ten I could name all of the pro-wrestlers.  But now I can’t.  That’s a damn shame.  (But also it means I was a cool kid, so that’s fine.)
• I hate when men wear flip flops.
• I don’t mind when people choose to take shoes off in the house, but I will never be someone who makes people take their shoes off in the house. 
• I read the Harry Potter books about ten times a year.
• I don’t have one favorite movie – I have about five.
• Driving is my coping mechanism.  Which is real wonderful for my wallet and the environment because gas.
• There is nothing I dread more than making phone calls.  Which really bodes well for like, being a functioning human being. 
• I can’t decide if I actually like politics or not.
• My favorite prayer is the Memorare. 
• I cannot stand Taylor Swift. 
• I prefer swimming in the ocean to swimming in anything that isn’t an ocean.
• I start feeling nauseous the minute I tell people anything of significance.  Even the people I trust the most.  Because obviously I’m great with emotions.
• My dream car has been a green Subaru outback for years.  A few months ago I had to buy a car – the circumstances were really stressful and it’s still a huge expense that I’m not confident I can keep up – but the cheapest car relative to miles was a green Subaru Impreza Outback.  So I’m driving my dream car.
• My favorite food is mashed potatoes.
• I want, like, twenty kids.  By twenty I mean like, hopefully more than one.  Or even one.  Subfertility scares.
• Chili is my second favorite food.  I think.
• I’m 23 and I’ve lived in 11 different places.  Really the only thing I want, materially speaking, is one house that I can stay in for-eva. 
• I get death stares of mockery from a lot of my friends because of my views on abortion and birth control. 
• My favorite color is green. 
• My full first name has 17 letters in it. 
• I loved porcelain dolls as a child.  I had shelves full of them. (This means I loved both porcelain dolls and wrestlers.  Wide array of interests.)
• The crock pot is my favorite kitchen magic tool. 
• I usually read about 20 books a year, not counting Harry Potter.  I'm trying to get that number up to 50.  
• I really like baking.  And then having people over to eat said snacks. 
• Cards are my thing.  I really love sending cards.  Oh, it's Thanksgiving?  Let's send everyone a card! 
• I watch the Lord of the Rings movies about once a month.  Don't know if I should be proud of this or embarrassed.  Let's go with proud. 
• I'm usually super paranoid.  I check my place for predators before going to bed.  I still don't have an action plan for if I ever actually found one... 
• On that same theme of paranoia - when people tell me they can't swim I freak out.  What happens if you fall out of a plane and into the ocean or something?  (That's a reasonable fear, shush.) 
• And just to really solidify my candidacy for psycho of the year....... I have a fear of living anywhere other than the mid-Atlantic or the Northeast.  There are hurricanes in the south, earthquakes on the west coast, and tornadoes everywhere else.  I can't deal with the thought of that.  I can handle blizzards, but that's it.  It also freaks me out when other people decide to move to these places.  
• I own a folding bike.  Cool stuff. 
• I accidentally punched a blind girl once.  I still feel a little bad about that. 
• Going to the movies is my absolute favorite thing.  Which really fucking sucks since it's around $12 a ticket now.  Bull.  

That's enough, I think.

_
Charlotte

Gets Me Every Time

Weekling: W.12, W.13, & W.14

For previous posts in this series, go here: Weeklings

Happenings (And pretty much nothing else)

I've been having some more health stuff going on (shocking), which is why I haven't been blogging regularly.  I have this freak pain that is worst when I'm laying down, so I don't sleep anymore.  And I'm a like a zombie during the day.  All of the coffee in the world can't help.  

I'm also going nutso over not having a job.  I'm so bored.  And I see like maybe two human beings a day.  Not good.  Since it's been three weeks without doing one of these posts, I can't really differentiate between the weeks and honestly at the moment I can't even remember if anything worth writing about has happened.   And I haven't really been keeping track of good links.  Told you, tired.  

What I can say is that I at least have some plans for posts coming up.  First of all, I realized I never wrote the review for The Twelve Tribes of Hattie.  Shame.  So I'll do that tomorrow, hopefully.  My friends and I were also coming up with literary names because the baby name posts seem to be popular and hey, it's fun.

I plan on (finally) getting another post up in the Hunger Games vs. Harry Potter series.  

You've probably heard about the teenager in Ferguson, Missouri who was killed by police.  For a while now I've been meaning to write something about cops because of all the horrible things officers have been doing, but I haven't done it because I'm always torn - when I was growing up the cops helped me a lot, and I know they helped a lot of other people, too.  But that doesn't mean that law enforcement as a whole doesn't have a serious problem.  That post will be up later this week.  

Alright well I'm not bothering to try for a smooth transition.  I'm going to go finish watching Blackfish now.

Totally unrelated, but wonderful.

__
Charlotte

Flowers & Herbs...

...okay, mostly herbs. 

I've wanted to grow herbs for a while now.  Living in the city, never on the first floor, I knew a vegetable garden was out and that I'd have to wait years before having a garden full of perennials.  Sigh.  But herbs!  Herbs I could do.  

When we went to North Carolina, we brought back a bunch of plants.  Like, an entire car full.  It was nuts.  We had about twenty pots.  I planted the herbs in ceramic pots and the rest of the plants went into plastic.  

And now a third of them are dead. 

The first blow was being crammed in a car for fifteen long hours.  When I unloaded them I could tell there were a few that probably wouldn't survive.  Sad.  

To make matters worse, some of the poor souls (yes, I know I'm talking about plants as though they're people) were planted in containers that lacked drainage.  No holes in the bottom.  Ordinarily, this is okay.  I put a bunch of gravel at the bottom of those pots so that if there was an excess of water, it would just surround the rocks.  But as fate would have it, the skies opened up for forty days and nights.  And by forty days and nights I actually mean about five days.  Still, that was enough to do the job.  Way too much water accumulated in the pots and those plants died.  There are two that are still alive, but they're pretty much at their journeys' end.  I tried to save them, but I could not.  

Poor bebes. 

The one labeled "completely dead" was MY FAVORITE.  (Not all time favorite, but favorite among the plants we have.)  Mexican Heather.  I love me a shrub-looking plant.  But what really does it is the dainty flowers.  Oh the flowers.  They're in a better place now.  Usually Mexican Heather's leaves are a vibrant green.  Not a baby bella mushroom color, as displayed in that picture. 

In the "almost dead" category, we've got two plants.  I don't remember their names.  One is a vine-like plant and the other was some sort of annual that was tall with just a few flowers.  The great flood killed the annual.  I'm considering transplanting the vine-ish one into a mason jar and keeping it inside.  

"Not yet dead" is a type of fuschia.  Of course you can't tell from the picture, but the texture of her leaves tells me that she's fighting for her life.  Her container still has so much water in it.  I haven't watered it in two weeks.  I'm hoping that since she isn't gone yet, she might just make it.  If there's a drought or something.  

You might be asking yourself, "Why doesn't she just replant them?"  And the answer is 1. Lazy.  2. No more planters and no extra money in the budget for planters.  And 3. No potting soil and no yard from which to steal dirt.  Boo.  

But!  Evil doesn't win!  The coleus.  Sweet, sweet coleus.  Apparently nothing can kill coleus.  This bodes well with me.  Though there is another small coleus that fell victim to the squirrels.  More on that later.  It took me a while to really appreciate coleus.  At first I was very, "It's just a bunch of leaves."  

But then you throw thirty plants in a car and a lot of them die but you still have pink! from the coleus.  And then you humbly admit to the interwebs that you were wrong and that, hey, maybe leaves can be nice.  

I really love coleus now.  And there are so many varieties.  I mean, there are three in that pot alone.  Wonderful plant-species of wonder. 

We've also got some hanging fuschia (swoon), fuschia varieties in white and green, petunias (am I the only one who hates petunias?  They're undeniably pretty but they are so. sticky.  Ugh.  Sensory issues.), marigolds, littler Mexican Heather, spider grassy thingys whose name now escapes me, and a small tree.  But I'm not a responsible blogger and so I didn't get pictures of them.  Don't be too upset, none of them are spectacularly beautiful right now.  Water + squirrels = death to all plants. 

But now, the edibles/useful things.  Again, I was adamant about growing herbs.  And so I gots me some herbs.  Like, nearly twenty different kinds.  I also brought home a hanging basket of tomatoes.  I was so excited about them!  I love tomatoes.  And for a few days, I was able to go pick myself some tomatoes every morning.  But then, the squirrels.  The damn city squirrels.  They ate them ALL.  They destroyed the whole thing.  Eventually, I surrendered.  And now my precious tomato plant is a horrid looking thing.  It looks like the kind of plant one would find growing in Hell.  

Smug bastard.  

So that was the sad ending to my tomato dreams. 

Again, you may ask why there was nothing around it.  It just happened so fast.  One day I had a terrific plant and the next day the little tyrants destroyed most of it.  I considered going out to the store and buying something to put around it, but I didn't know what would work, since it's in a stand and I obviously couldn't stake anything into the ground.  Also, budgets.  

You may also be wondering why Satan's plant is still there.  It is quite the eyesore.  Honestly, I feel bad throwing it out because I figure there are still some (very few) tomatoes on it and the squirrels still come and eat it and I don't want to be the human being responsible for starving city squirrels.  If it was an opossum we'd have a different story.  No, just kidding.  Shouldn't starve anyone.  

Somehow, most of the herbs escaped the squirrels' invasion unscathed. Of course, there are some that the little buggers got to.  They aren't dead, but they aren't flourishing, either.  

***Woah sudden overwhelming urge to go read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, this is so weird and random, but I shall fight the temptation***

So yes.  Herbs. 

Not pictured: Lemon Basil, Sweet Basil, Sweet Herb, and Majoram.

These are thriving.  I know the basil looks like it's starving, and that's because I took these photos prior to watering.  Rookie mistake.  The ones that aren't pictured are the ones that are less-than-lovely.  I figure I already posted a picture of dead plants, I don't need to post anymore.  Rubs it in too much.  Damn rain.  And squirrels.  I'm so defeated. 

I've been using the basil and parsley in everything.  I don't use the others as much since I basically don't know how to cook anything.  But I'm learning and googling recipes and other uses for the herbs that are fairly new to me.  I did make some tea from the chocolate mint leaves today.  It was a little strong.  I'm used to straight up regular Lipton tea.  All things with time, I suppose.  Or should I say all things with thyme?  ;) 

Check it: 

Soooo out of my comfort zone.  

That's it!  Those are all of the plants.  Here's hoping some of them make it through August.  Fingers crossed. 

__
Charlotte