7-2-09 Inside Class Reading

I finished the book, Run by Ann Patchett. It was a good book, very easy read. On the back, the Chicago Tribune is quoted as saying "Patchett's finest work...Run is dazzling from the start." I don't necessarily agree with that statement. It is good, but not a book that you can't put down. If I had to choose between The Secret Life of Bees and Run, I would choose The Secret Life of Bees. The characters were better defined, and the story didn't take place over a long period of time.
I am on to a book by Barbara Delinski, called For My Daughters. I'm only about 50 pages into it, and so far it is good. The background on the 3 daughters is just being set. By reading the back of the book it looks to be good. Guess I will see.
I enjoyed writing the short story last Thursday. I felt like the bubble technique helped put my thoughts in some kind of order. Ususally when I sit down to write I revise a few times to make sure I have said everything I want to say and how I want to say it. I didn't like that we didn't have time for revisions. Ugh, it was like getting dressed in the dark. I hope I didn't walk out of the house with two different shoes on.

7-2-09 Outside Class Experience

At 9:49am on Sunday June 28th, I was woken up by my Mom texting and calling me. She wanted to let me know that Kep's Place in Washington was burning to the ground. Why do I care you might ask? My parents bought the building for Kep's in 2002. They gutted and remodeled the inside, my step father doing most of the work himself. The building originally was built as a racket ball facility, so in the basement were 4 racket ball courts, complete with flooring. My parents (along with many trips to Dr Delgado the chiropractor) took up the floor in 2 of the courts and refinished it. That floor became the dance floor, wainscotting and the top of the bar.
My contribution to the remodeling was nominal compared to theirs, but on the weekends you could find me there sanding and varnishing right along with them. We joked that that business was similar to the Field of Dreams movie. All of us would walk around repeating "If you build it, they will come."
My step father passed away suddenly on January 28, 2007. At the time we not only had the bar, but also a water distribution company in the basement of Kep's. He had been in bottleing water and left about 11:30 to take a quick nap before a meeting with the local liquor commission. He never made it to the meeting. My Mom who was in California with her terminally ill brother called and my son and I headed to the house. It was not me who found him, thank God.
Anyway, the reason I told the story about my step father is because not only did he spend so very much of his time in the remodel process, you could find him walking around Kep's at any time of the day looking around, or visiting with customers and that is the last place anyone saw him alive.
My mom sold it in January of 2008 and then bought a bar in Metamora. She said one of the reasons she needed to sell it was because it was too difficult to walk in there and not see him.
It is very bittersweet for me to hear that it is gone, burnt to the ground. The memories I have are both good and bad, like any you would have of a place that consumed 6 years of your life. As soon as I got the call I woke my daughter up and she drove over. She took pictures and sent them to me. It's devistating, the damage, nothing left but some of the outside walls. I heard that some of the employees are there rallying around the building. We did the same thing the day we found my step father, except now there is no bar to sit at and wonder how we were going to continue.

6/25/09 Outside Class

A couple of weeks ago knowing I was going to be home all weekend, I went to Wal-Mart in search of a series to watch. I ended up picking up the Showtime series, Tudors season 1. It's set in the 1500's and is about the reign of Henry VIII. It's pretty interesting. I recognized a few names, more than I would have thought since I've been out of school for so long. Besides Henry there's Ann Boleyn, Ann's sister, Mary and Catherine.
Peter O'Toole plays the pope. I think he is the biggest name in the cast. The sets are lavish and the costumes are so beautiful. I watched the credits after I finished the first season and it looks like it's filmed in Canada. Kudos to them, I'm completely hooked. It's definitely R rated, sometimes borderline what I would term soft porn.
I'm sure it's not historically accurate, but I don't really care. The characters are beautiful and sexy, unlike the real people were in the 1500's. Henry's teeth are white and his nails even though bitten are clean. Ann Boleyn is beautiful and has enviable cleavage.
I sent my daughter back to Wal-Mart late last week to pick up season 2, in anticipation of another weekend at home. It didn't quite work out that way, so I have only gotten through 6 episodes.
Season 3 started in April on Showtime, so I hope it's out soon on dvd.
The only problem I had with season 1 was that after watching 10 straight hours I thought I would go to bed and read a bit. Odd Thomas ended up with an English accent in my head. Poor Odd, I had to put the book away and go to sleep. It was such an injustice. I just couldn't stand listening to him any other way than what he had been.

6-25-09 For Class Reading

If you read my last post, I explained that I was just getting into The Secret Life of Bees. Well, last night I finished it. Saturday I took my book to the bar to read while I was waiting on my friends to show. It gave me 3 hours of opportunity to read. We installed a new point of sale system and I had some programming issues with it, so I had to go in and make the changes. Not to say that I haven't brought a book, or my knitting for that matter to the bar other times. Ok, this is my exciting life.
Back to the book. Wow, it was great. I said in my last blog that it centers around a 14 year old girl, Lily, in South Carolina in 1964. Deep inside me the 14 year old girl of my youth cried out right along with Lily. Like her I know what it is like to be abandon emotionally by your father, and feel like an island, alone in shark infested waters. The other women in the book are amazing.
They are strong women grounded in faith and family. I do not know first hand what it was like in South Carolina in the 1960's, the racial discrimination, women not having a place outside of the home. I know that even in 2009 racism exists and is colorless, and discrimination happens to everyone in one form or another.
The story tracks Lily's journey from her hometown in search of information about her late mother. She and her nanny find themselves in Tiburon, South Carolina living with 3 African-American women. Again, I don't want to ruin the story, in case you want to read it. I will just say that I completely fell in love with each of these women and would have been proud to have known them. I laughed and cried along with each of them.
The new book I am about to start is Run by Ann Patchett. I will keep you up to date on my progress.

6-18-09 Inside Class Reading

I finished my Odd Thomas book on Monday, and started on "The Secret Life of Bees" for one of the reading novels. I remember when the movie came out and seeing the advertisements on the TV, thinking that I wanted to see it. Imagine my surprise at Barnes and Noble when the book was sitting on a table in the middle of the aisle. I quickly snatched it up and added it to the growing stack in my arms.
I'm only about 75 pages into it, but already am "hooked". Of course I don't want to re-tell the story and ruin your chance to discover the characters for yourself. Right now the main character, Lily is fourteen years old. Because I don't know much about the book, I don't know if she will age at all. It's set in 1964 in South Carolina, right about the time of Brown vs The Board of Education. I can't wait to see how it turns out. Since I read the mostly in bed, I have a feeling I will be spending a considerable amount of time there this weekend. Bring on the bees.
This week I have thoroughly enjoyed the short stories. Some, like Nipple Jesus and Catskin were a little on the bizarre side. The Peed Onk story was very long. I became emotionally connected to the characters and because I am a mother really associated with them. One of my best girlfriends' son has Hodgkins Lymphoma, so having lived through that with her, this story struck very close to home. Fortunately he is in remission right now.
The Catskin story was interesting because children often dress up and pretend to be something or someone else. It seemed to me that maybe that is what Small was doing. I love the reference about house cats. That made me laugh out loud.
I cannot wait to dive into the rest of the stories for next Tuesday.

6-18-09 Outside of Class Experience

I have contemplated for a week what I was going to post for my out of class experiences. I was going to write about the movie "He's Just Not That Into You", but felt like I would save that for next week instead of posting 2 for this week.
Tuesday after I left class I headed to Peoria. If you don't know, I manage a bar/restaurant until the end of this month (then I'm unemployed, YUCK). I was driving down University headed to GFS, preoccupied with the mini book club discussions, when the light turned red at Lake and University. I stopped at the light along with everybody else. Just as the light turned green, a mini van in the other lane opened their side door. Then the suv 3 cars ahead opened their driver's door and a woman got out. The woman in the car behind the suv got out too. The mini van quickly closed the door and proceeded to drive forward. Because there was another car in front of me and cars approaching behind us, I was stuck watching this scene unfold. The woman from the suv appeared to be in her 50's with early graying hair. The woman from the car was younger, appearing to be somewhere in her early 30's. They met between the vehicles and began talking. Of course from my perspective I couldn't hear what they were saying, but you could clearly see that they were assessing the damage to both vehicles. By the time they were done, the car in front of me had pulled into the other lane and it was now clear for me to pull over and pass the ladies too. They obviously ascertained that there was no damage to either vehicle, because neither was on the phone calling the police to report it. As I was passing them, the ladies hugged. If I had been in mid conversation, I would have been struck speachless.
Never in my life have I ever been witness to such an event. The idea that as a result of this slight fender bender, two women connected with such compassion to hug at the conclusion. Probably because I had been thinking of my short story "Last Requests" before this, my thoughts returned to it and specifically of Maggie.
One of the questions I posed to each group was if they thought she was egotistical and thought she was better than everyone else. Most people in the class disagreed with me and said they thought she showed great compassion to make sure the last meals were everything that the inmates wanted. After seeing the compassion of these strangers who were standing in the middle of University near lunch time hugging I began to really see Maggie differently.
My original thoughts of her were that she was a contradiction. On one had she explained to Jean, her neighbor, that the inmates deserved whatever they wanted and it was her job or obligation to see that they got it. The other was that she would participate in making fun of the inmates spelling and judge them on what their meal choices were.
In the end she wasn't prepared for seeing the Califlower Cheese returned untouched. Before that she would prepare the meals and then leave for the night. When she returned in the morning the plates would be scraped clean, leaving the impression that the inmate ate it. It shows a lot of respect from the wardens for her that they never told her who ate the food and who didn't.
Like Maggie and the inmates, the ladies from the accident didn't know each other, but found a way to connect through unlikely means. Each of these women displayed unsolicited compassion towards each other. I can only hope that every time I am offered a chance to make an impact like them that I see it for what it is, and not miss the opportunity to touch someone else's life.

6-11-09 Outside Class Reading

I love to read, and often have a book with me. It's one of the reasons I have to carry such a large purse. Well, that and I like to have a bottle of water at all times too.
I am currently reading a book in a series by Dean Koontz called "Odd Hours". It started with a book called "Odd Thomas". I believe this book is the 4th in the series. The name of the main character is Odd Thomas. It is written as a first person narrative. Odd is a simple kind of guy but multi-faceted. He has several psychic abilities, but nothing that would be thought of as outrageous. The conundrums he finds himself in are bizarre. It reads quickly and at the end leaves you with a pleasant feeling, but missing Odd and his quirky sense of humor.
In all of the books Odd, when explaining who he is and about his life aspirations, calls himself a "simple fry cook". He says that because of all of the weird situations he finds himself in that he should have a job as a tire salesman or the retail shoe business. He approaches everything optimistically and non judgmental.
The other characters help give Odd depth. Dean Koontz surrounds Odd with colorful people who allow Odd to use his psychic talents and once again become the hero of the story.
I won't ruin the story in case you want a great and easy read. The imagery and sensory words Odd uses really put you in his head. It's easy to see and feel his world thorough his words, like a movie playing inside your brain.
Unlike a lot of Dean Koontz's books, he doesn't use complicated story lines or totally out of this world characters. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading the previous books in this series, and hope Odd never dies, but just fades away like all legendary characters.

6-11-09 Class Reading

Reading pages 7-25 in the book and taking notes was rather time consuming. I ended up with around 6 pages of notes, and I write rather small (sloppy, but small). I started reading the book the day it arrived in the mail. Of course I couldn't help myself from opening it and familiarizing myself with the style in which it is laid out. Having been distracted by my grandson, I put the book down and didn't pick it up again until it was time to put it in my backpack for class.
I liked reading the introduction and learning about all of the different terms used to describe various short stories and their many parts.
Normally when I read a story I read it for entertainment purposes and do not analyze it. If a symbol jumps off the page, or I make a connection that is not readily apparent, I am pleased with myself. Seeing the different terms used to describe each part of a story gave me some new words to add to my dialogue.
The introduction is filled with terms describing different forms of short stories and what the individual parts of them are called. In the "Telling of the Tale" the author talks about the classifications of stories. He uses different stories as examples of the various types. After a brief history of those story types, he delves right into "The Short Story Genre".
The author relates that the origin of the short story is unknown. He does however credit the novella as being "one important influence". He follows the short story from "The Decameron" to more modern pieces of writing.
Throughout the introduction he uses the short story "Reunion" as an example of the various elements. I thought maybe he would include this story in the book, but I didn't find it. That being said, because he talked so much about it, I almost felt like I didn't need to read it. He described and analyzed it to death.
While reading this section, I was able to think back to what I normally read and apply the terms to different books by a wide variety of authors. He talks about there not being a new idea for plots, and that most stories are just retold over and over with different settings and characters. That also made me stop and reflect. I guess that's why I read a lot of the same types of books and mainly stick with the same authors.
I need to have a closed ending or closed denouement. What a great word, I wish I could remember without having to really think about it how to pronounce it. If I mistakenly pick up a story that has an open ending, I generally don't read that author again.
I can't wait to begin reading the short stories for the mini book club on Tuesday. I am not however looking forward to making notes and analyzing them.