Friendship Is Constant In All Things

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.” ― Groucho Marx

Our intern is on sabbatical. And I’ve just returned from a quick road trip to Vegas to see Rachel and John Mayer—both keep me where the light is.  Thirty minutes from now World Book Day and the Bard’s birthday will officially end.  Not before I have something to say about it. 

Hemingway said “There is no friend as loyal as a book.” Clearly, Ernest never met Rachel or some of my other faves.  But I feel you Hemmy.  I just finished The Bartender’s Tale yesterday and already I’m missing the flinty Montana bartender, Tom Harry. I feel like I know him and his likeable boy Rusty. I’m going to miss Tom’s wisdom—to learn from the worst of [his] past rinsed away by the passage of time.” So sad to see my friends go. I had to remind myself of one important truth when I felt semi-verklempt as the sun set on Gros Ventre and the Medicine Lodge: if I miss my quiet friends, I can access them. Easily. They will always be there for me.  

On a day meant to celebrate authors, illustrators, books and glorious reading, I’m up late night to say I’m grateful for fictitious friends, new and old. And for all the ones I’m sure to make at future dates.  How awesome is that? 

Posted by Tracy

Throwback Thursday

“My grief had been plain and unpoetic, and the hole in my heart would’ve grown wide enough and deep enough to consume me had my mother and grandmother not kept me with them, and still.”

Couldn’t agree more with Rachel regarding the book club conundrum.  Sometimes you trade good reads for good friends and good eats. Of course, if you can pick a winner every month you’ve got the whole world in your hands. Seeing as it’s Thursday and I’m thinking about winners, let’s throw it back to a legitimate prize.

Oprah Winfrey did not introduce me to Kaye Gibbons. (She chose a few of Gibbon’s novels for her insanely popular book club.) Finding Gibbons was more roundabout for me. It was part luck, part inquiry, and I imagine the larger part was grace. Reading her novels was a window into her soul; in fact, her authenticity and utter honesty make her books the best policy.  

While I have taught her award-winning debut novel Ellen Foster in some of my university writing classes, I’m recommending Gibbons’ fourth novel tonight: Charms for the Easy Life.  Charms makes me think that southern women are privy to secrets of life that we all need to unlock. Sophia, Margaret, and Charlie Kate are uniquely independent women who share the same DNA and progressive off-beat lives in a world where men almost always provide for women.  Supported by Charlie Kate’s medical practice of her own making, this all-female family develops an imperishable bond as they each experience love and heartache during World War II. The Birches remind me that despite difficulties, I should embrace life even if unorthodox methods are required to do so. I want to live like Charlie Kate: with my boots on, good books and family close by, and the ability to ditch convention when called for…oh, and to live free from regret. So glad you and I met, Kaye Gibbons. 

Posted by Tracy

My Kind Of Book Club

"I intend to put up with nothing that I can put down." —Edgar Allan Poe

You and me both, Edgar. Which is why book clubs and I have a complicated relationship. Gathering with good friends to talk books and eat yummy food? I've got nothin but love for that. Feeling compelled to read books I have zero interest in? Meh. Which is why I've been book-club-free for the better part of a decade and mostly happier for it. But dang. Sometimes I miss those nights with the girls, especially when we all loved a book. And of course, the food.

So imagine my glee upon learning there's a way I can have my cake and eat it too (literally). Word has it there's a new book club in town called the Any Book Club. Here's the skinny: you get together, you eat (if that's optional for you we can't be friends), and you talk books...just not the same book. Instead of discussing one book you've all read, you each show up with a recent read and share what you loved (or hated) about it. If a book someone shares sounds good to you, you add it to your TBR list. Brilliant! No guilt if you don't want to read a book someone picks. No putting up with a read you can put down. You read what you wanna read when you wanna read it and you all stay friends. And you eat cake. Sign me up.

Posted by Rachel

Ode To Roald

“George didn’t say a word. He felt quite trembly.  He knew something tremendous had taken place that morning. For a few brief moments he had touched with the very tips of his fingers the edge of a magic world.” 

“Lukewarm is no good.”  Right you are, Mr. Dahl.  So when my boys were feeling unenthusiastic about not one, but two of our recent book selections, we had to retreat and turn up the heat. Luke and Jonah showed little to no interest in understanding why Noah Barleywater Runs Away. From the author of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, I assumed the boys would be drawn in. I myself was beguiled by the fact that Oliver Jeffers was the illustrator. But the boys opted to snooze rather than cruise through John Boyne’s pages.  

Normally, I do my homework. I regret to inform you, however, that I’ve been dull.  Not sure why I thought The One-in-a-Million Boy was for young ones. Should have known better when Luke, a precocious reader, was having trouble following along. I moved the book from their room to mine. Cue Roald Dahl to the rescue. We read the skinny but highly entertaining George’s Marvelous Medicine. What’s an eight-year-old boy to do with a “most horrid, grizzly old grunion of a grandma”? The hypersensitive reader might feel like exasperated young George is out of line…what with concocting a toxic, popping, steam-releasing, swelling, shrinking medicine to cure inexcusable crankiness in an old bag. The truth is this should be a hilarious, light-hearted read.  Bless the gifted Brit who understood that reading should be fun and fabulous—splendiferous even.  

p.s. Thanks also Roald for your bewitching Dahlisms! 

Posted by Tracy

Good Books Are Like Good Friends

I can't adequately introduce Eliane Pohl. She's one of my most important and favorite friends. I've known her for decades now, lovely decades. And while she's lived far from me for far too long, she's still close to my heart. Eliane is an avid reader. A smart reader too. A mutual friend of ours once said of her: "She knows something about everything." It seemed selfish not to share her insight with all of you since I trust her thoughts...about books, about friendships, about life, and most all things great and small. —Tracy

“She measured time in pages. Half an hour, to her, meant ten pages read, or fourteen, depending on the size of the type, and when you think of time in this way there isn’t time for anything else.” 

In Denmark, where I live, winter doesn’t cover us gently, with crisp days and fluttering snow. We are pitched directly from luxuriously long summer days into a damp, windy, gloomy darkness that hangs on fiercely until April. It is the time for fires, for soft blankets, for comfort food. It is the time for reading. A good book is like a good friend – it entertains us, provides insight and advice, broadens our perspective, and hones our empathy. When we find one that we really relate to, we return to it again and again for comfort and guidance. So, there’s something magical when two worlds collide, and we end up with a good book about good friends. 

Last winter, I finally dove into the magnificent four-volume ode to friendship that is the Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante. If you haven’t read them, do. They are fantastic. But when I finally came up for air in February, I found that instead of being tired of thinking about what a good friendship is and means, I wanted more. I consider it fate, not coincidence, that Zadie Smith’s fifth novel, Swing Time, was published at the right moment to fill that desire.

Since she published her first novel, White Teeth, at the annoying age of 25, Zadie Smith has written countless essays and four more novels, in which she plays with form and language, always creating characters that seem real and whole. People you would swear you have met. Swing Time is no exception. The book focuses on an unnamed narrator and her friendships with Tracy, her working-class childhood friend in London; and Aimee, the international popstar she eventually works for. Like all Zadie Smith novels, it touches on race and culture, inequality and class, but it does so without ever being preachy or pedantic. It gave me a chance to spend the last, bitter days of winter luxuriating in relationships on paper that reminded me of the wonderful friends I have around the world. 

What a great way to spend time.

Posted by Eliane Pohl

April Book Club Selection

“I must be overtired," Buttercup managed. "The excitement and all."

"Rest then," her mother cautioned. "Terrible things can happen when you're overtired. I was overtired the night your father proposed.” —William Goldman, The Princess Bride

Lately, I live in a constant state of overtired-ness. While I can't say anything terrible has happened, my increasingly scattered brain did alarm my husband enough for him to send me this text: "There's going to be some nice men in white coats coming to get you. It's okay, just go with them." To which I replied: "A locked room with nothing but a bed and pillow sounds great about right now." Throw in a stack of books and I'll check myself in. Just think of all the time I'd have to read next month's book club pick: A Word for Love. 

Kind of going out on limb with this one. First, Tray and I are both overtired (Buttercup's mom would not approve), and second, it's so new that no one we know has read it. But Tray, who has an eye for winners, was sold the minute she read this review from Khaled Hosseini: "Told in quiet but elegant prose, each thump of this melodic novel’s heart (and what an enormous, rousing heart it is) attests to the timeless and life-giving power of love." Who are we to argue with Khaled?

Posted by Rachel

We Heart Patient Readers

"Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul." ~Joyce Carol Oates

I’m on the East Coast and it’s almost dar las doce time. Which means I’m officially tired. I know Rae is plum tuckered out too these days. What’s a blogger to do? We’re sorry for fading on all of you. But we plan to make it up to our patient readers. George R.R. Martin, fantasy writer, said “A reader lives one thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” George has got that right. Please don’t mistake our recent silence for living just one life.

Lest you think we’ve forgotten you, know this—I’m currently living the life of 104-year-old woman. Ona Vitkus is spunky and memorable.  The One-in-a-Million Boy is quite a delight so far.  We’ll report on Monica Wood’s best seller next week. Experiencing life as a bartender has been one fine ride. I’m finishing up one of Rae’s favs by Ivan Doig: The Bartender’s Tale.  What a listen! Can’t wait to write about Doig who personifies the great American storyteller. And my boys were having trouble with a read we chose, so we put it down. (Hate to do that.) To reignite our night-time ritual, we turned to Roald Dahl. He never disappoints. A trio of book reviews coming your way very soon. In the meantime, we’re hopin’ you’re living several lives too.

Posted by Tracy

Let's Change The World

"...the people who seem closest to God are often not dressed up and sitting in pews, but dressed down and sitting in folding chairs in recovery meetings."

I've been sick. Again. Winter 2017 will not go down as a favorite of mine. Considering we hit 87 degrees here today, I think it's safe to say the season is officially in my rear view. Hallelujah. I'll wait a good week or two before I start complaining about the heat. You're welcome.

Now with a head clear of cold meds and a belly fulla Tray's Mississippi Mud Pie, it's time I posted that promised review of February's book club pick: Love Warrior. This book left me with conflicted emotions—more on that later. Here's what I loved: her brutal and honest critique of our society's skewed and dangerous definition of beauty, especially when it comes to weight. The damage it inflicts on young girls and women of every age is staggering; her story of becoming a bulimic at age 10 personalizes the alarming statistics. A movement is afoot to drain the media of it's powerful hold over our girls of every age and I'm all in. It's time girls grow up confidently chasing their dreams instead of chasing after media-imposed ideals that are nothing more than myths. Read the article Starving and Stifled: Women are Counting Calories instead of Changing the World and you'll be all in too.

Glennon's story drew me right in, making me feel as though I was along for every bit of her beautiful, heart-wrenching ride. At times it felt like I was intruding on a life—she shared so much. I fell in love with her little family and therein lies my conflict: I wanted the happy ending, the one I got in the book. But this is real life, not fiction, and the end isn't really the end. Life goes on, their marriage falls apart just as the book is being published, and I feel robbed of my happy ending. And then I'm reminded it's their story and their idea of a happy ending doesn't have to look like mine.

Posted by Rachel