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  1. Beautiful way to be remembered….

    January 18, 2010 by shishnit

    “She showed and taught me by example. The books she was reading were all over the house. Books by her reading chair. Books in the bathroom. Books on her bedside table. Books on the screen porch by the rocking chairs.” From here.

    Maybe someday Keith will remember fondly all of his crazy mother’s books stacked and restacked and messy and glorious and oh so much a part of her world.  Yesterday I found a thrift store that sells books for 99 cents.  Good books..great titles…things that are still relevant.  I bought 10.  10!  That one find made my reading brain form into the curve of a smile.

     


  2. Cleaving: A Story of a Marital Affair that’s funny?

    December 1, 2009 by shishnit

    Someone recently asked me about reviewing books.  Do I review the ones I don’t like? I don’t officially do that. I don’t write about books I can’t promote because just putting the book cover up there is publicity.  And I hardly feel that bashing an artist’s work is my objective.  However, from time to time I must speak up and THIS is still my personal blog.  I cannot promote a book when I can’t find anything worthwhile within. Nor can I when my stomach turns and I cannot even finish it!

    “Her marriage challenged by an insane, irresistible love affair, Julie decides to leave town and immerse herself in a new obsession: butchery”.


    Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession by Julie Powell


    Ok that’s the blurb for the new book by Julia Powell called Cleaving.  I picked it up because I rather enjoyed Julie and Julia and this is NOT a full on review because guess what? I couldn’t read it.  Why? Because guess what? She’s a major trainwreck in this book.  The affair is her…she’s banging the hell out of someone else and her husband knows about it and she tells him and oh…”that’s just the way it is” is her attitude.  I didn’t buy the book, I read 40 plus pages of it and then skim read through the rest.

    Insane irresistable love affair?  Now, I have a tainted past when it comes to marital problems. My ex-husband cheated on me with his first girlfriend swooping my then 8 year old son off to New York State from Florida after advising me that he was going down the street two blocks to get some dinner. In actuality my son dissapeared for 2 days with his father before I knew where either of them was.  21 days later my ex called asking me for money to feed same said child and returned home, kicked to the curb by his “insane irresistable love affair”.  So the topic of extramarital love affairs is something I don’t take lightly and the way this publisher is providing that above blurb peevs me and makes my skin crawl a bit. 

    Now, let me admit this as I always have. I cheated on my first husband. A lot.  Both emotinally and physically (the a lot mostly emotionally with an online boy I called “him”) but it was after that 21 day debaucle and in my mind we were never a marital unit again. I could not trust him and I did not feel any bond with him, aside from our beautiful child.  I was a mess for a long long time over his and my “insane, irresistable love affairs” and it’s sad to me that we now live in a world where this stuff is exploited and used to sell books.  I love books but this issue saddens me.  The pages I read spoke about Julie getting text messages from her boyfriend (affair partner…not sure what she called him in the book) while sitting with her husband and how she felt them buzzing while husband was sitting there with her.  Disturbing at best.

    Shame on you Hatchette Book Group for promoting this as lighthearted!  Marrital affairs are lighthearted?  Really?  And described as “hilarious and ferociously articulate” by Entertainment Weekly.  Again, really?  Marriages falling prey to cheating is hilarious?


    I will never forget the pain caused by affairs.  If you’re the other woman, the woman, his woman, the one he won’t tell about, the online affair, the real affair, the emotional affair…AFFAIRS ARE NOT merely challenging, nor are they hilarious. If you’re the wife and he’s cheating chances are you’ll end up cheating back, becoming suicidal or at the very least be a train wreck for quite some time.  Nothing funny about any of those outcomes.  But hey I could be wrong, if you had someone cheat on you and you feel it’s hilarious or merely a challenge to your marriage feel free to contact me and set me straight.

    disclaimer: I only read 40+ pages and skimmed this book but geesh….hated the entire premise because I couldn’t get past feeling for the “husband” being cheated on. 

    p.s. personal disclaimer…”him” and I don’t speak any longer. I’m happily married these days, immensely happily married and to talk to “him” would be cheating….emotionally…but I still won’t do that to a husband who’s faithful to me.

     


  3. Death Bed -poem

    November 10, 2009 by shishnit

    Imagine beautiful words, imminently bountiful, all

    The one’s I have read

    While being sick

    And while simply wanting a fresh loaf of bread

    while drinking wine, coffee,

    fleeing from something wicked

    and divorcing myself of pain

    rejoicing in love

    gaining yet again and again

    while

    planning a purchase

    buying a house

    planning a wedding

    building a home

    birthing a child

    breathing a new dream

    coming together

    shattering apart like a scream

    when lonely, together and

    yet again feeling alone

    a page turned, a dog-ear

    a traveling mercy, a glance

    a memory, a gentle knowing look

    curved and straight and crossed over

    and under as I drink my tea

    the luxury, the challenge

    the ever present friendship,

    not just a cold book

    Imagine the sentences creeping out

    From the woodwork

    The curves in my brain

    Coming and gathering

    Humming once, yet again

    Characters, plots and drivel

    Of page upon page

    On the ocean, in the forest

    A princess, an imaginary stage

    The kiss, the sleep, the drivel

    The loss, and the gain

    Coming back to visit me again and again

    I’m in it, living with it, I am within it

    Imagine the little ones I curled through my tongue

    In whispers while waiting on diagnosis

    recovering from operations

    and lobotomies of the heart

    with plots cemented,

    I never did come undone

    Nor did I even dare fall apart!

    Imagine…yes imagine!

    the ones recited to me when I was still very young

    joining together with those gathered

    in twenties, thirties and decades beyond,

    The ones marching in sunlight

    And those taken despite shaded by rain

    In sickness, and health

    In happiness and in pain

    Lined up soldiers forming words

    Stamping their directives like war games

    Across every page

    Characters created elsewhere

    Just for….

    for my own personal imaginary stage

    Picture them, a billion images

    Vital, viral and gore

    Them

    One by one

    Crawling into the blankets

    The sheets

    Of my death bed

    I really want for nothing more!

    Imagine those

    Lovingly gathered,

    Remembered with bliss

    Repeated, mattered, and sealed

    With a literary kiss

    The stories, their sentences

    The that’s and the things that happened like this

    Traveling across the miles of time

    Stroking the moon, your moon and mine

    The ones ingested in morning

    And regurgitated back, endeared to me

    By mid-afternoon

    The ones I saved, rewritten

    Painted on walls, left there with swoon

    Those must be saved

    For the wealth of visitors, one and then all

    There’ll be no phone call to make

    I will not be scared when

    Happily ever after arrives

    The sentences will re-warm me

    I will not be alone

    In “the end”

    When its time for me to die

    I’ll be covered in stories,

    Warmed by the sweetest fairy tale

    For all of those sentences

    Will gather together

    And forever remain

    Bury me with pages, one from every nook

    They will keep me, repeat to me

    And remove from me all pain

    Books have sustained me

    Bled with me

    Cried with me

    Please bury them in my blankets

    Sheet upon glorious well worn sheet

    Please don’t send me away

    With no literary relief

    Stash them, and stow them

    In each crevice galore

    When you think you have brought enough

    Please bring me some more!

             
    The sentences will hug me, protect me

    No lie

    Bury me under words, counted in thousands times more

    Please promise me

    For then you have no reason to cry

    As I will read through my death bed

    And forever after find joy

    And if you torch me

    Like I say that you really should and you just must!

    Add all of my pages, my books I adore

    Burn us together, together forevermore

    Then scatter us on beaches, on sand, and on the shore

    Like the prettiest sea shells, turned dust unto dust


    Note to Keith: Don’t forget to throw in the “leg” books…
     


  4. Remember these?

    October 29, 2009 by shishnit

    Remember how hot Rex Smith was?  He wasn’t?  You mean my teenage self was crazy?  Oh….  well since I’m thinking back to when I was in a training bra, do you remember these books?

    And the long anticipated sequel……god I wanted her jacket….so bad….I’m over that now.

    and then the 3rd in the trilogy. These were hotstuff books….long before Bella and Edward existed…there was Jesse and Michael.  *swoon*  I read all 3 way back when….and I’m not even too embarassed to tell you I own these books today…they are in my library.  Nostalgic novels….I’ll snap a photo of my own copies…..just to prove what a book dork I am to this day.  Michael and Jesse…c’mon that was my first encounter with love.  Oh no…wait…it was Katherine and Michael from “Forever by Judy Blume”.  My cousin Wendy and my Aunt DeDe smuggled that to me without my mom’s consent…ahhh the good old days when books were contraband. 

     


  5. 13 is too young to die

    October 29, 2009 by shishnit

    When I was a teenager (in the mid 80’s) I read a book about a teenage girl who had Lupus and she lives on the beach with her parents who decide to get divorced.  At the end of the novel she goes blind (or it’s inferred or perhaps she dies) due to the lupus.  Her mother is from the flower child era and much of the book is set on the beach setting as she walks the beach in angst of her disease.  I recall it being one of my favorite reads as a teenager.  She has a brief stint with a boyfriend and many day’s lying in bed and much angst about the skin patch that lupus causes.  I loved the book and read it several times.

    Now that I’m old..my memory fails me and I cannot recall the title of that book….tho low all these years nearly the entire story has stayed with me.

    Does anyone else out there remember it?  Ahhhh while writing this….something came to me and I found it….did you read this book as a teenager?  I did.  About ten thousand times I think. The thing that really made me suddenly feel old is…..look up in the right hand corner of this bookcover photograph.  $2.50!!!  That’s how much a YA book cost when I was a YA.  *sigh*  But man was this book sooo good. I still remember it, all these years later.  Even stranger is…I know I read it around the time I was 13 or so….perhaps even 11 or 12….and now I have my own child who will soon be 17.  So so weird…time warp.  Someone give me some Geritol…and a slug of whiskey now.  I almost skipped this post but thought there might be some other old lady out there trying to wrack her brain for the title of this book.

     

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