be free where you are by thich nhat hahn

just that. be free where you are. the practice of mindfulness.
we create our own prisons, and we are the only ones that can allow ourselves to be
free. mindful walking, mindful eating, mindful anything. there is joy in every moment, if we choose to see it and live it. all we have is now, this moment.

food rules by michael pollan

a quick, worthwhile read. it's clear, concise, and indispensible.

surreal, violent, savage

So, just popped back in to write up a book I read in December that I completely forgot to write up. Savage Night by Jim Thompson. I love old school pulp mysteries: chandler, hammett, etc. but this was the first Jim Thompson book I have ever read. I'd like to read another because this one was just so messed up - and Thompson wrote such books as The Grifters, After Dark, My Sweet, among others. It begins when a short, damaged, youthful looking man (with tb incidentally) shows up in a small town and takes a room in a boarding house run by an excon and his wife, puportedly to start school at the local university. The landlord excon is rumored to have taken a deal to spill on his old gang and this young man was sent by "The Man" to kill him. So - a lot happens, steamy and perverse love triangle, betrayals, suspicions, moles, but the conclusion is so completely surreal, dark and excessive. There is a lot you can talk about in terms of symbolism, etc but mostly the end leaves you with this thought: that book was really fucked up.

little bee by chris cleave

this book was amazing, and heartwrenching and beautiful. the flap copy, because i don't want to spoil anything (but keep reading past the first couple of pages to get into it):

we don't want to tell you what happens in this book.
it is a truly special story and we don't want to spoil it.

nevertheless, you need to enough to buy it, so we will just say this:

this is the story of two women. their lives collide
one fateful day, and one of them has to make a terrible choice,
the kind of choice we hope you never have to face. two years
later, they meet again - the story starts there...

once you have read it, you'll want to tell your friends
about it. when you do, please don't tell them what happens. the magic
is in how the story unfolds.

and the flap copy is right. so please read.

after us, the deluge...

So I've been home a lot, trying to deal with this head of mine. I've been watching a lot of tv. I thought it might be kinder on my eyes. But, today I decided no more. Just books. I'll just stop if it is too much of a strain. With this in mind I sat down and finished reading the book that has been taunting me from my bedside table for at least 2 weeks. Zeitoun by Dave Eggers. The first time I saw this book I thought it was fiction and promptly ignored it. But then it caught some buzz, the good kind not the annoying kind and so I picked it up. It's a true story of a man who stays in New Orleans during Katrina and after. He is a builder and landlord and wants to be able to save things in his house and keep an eye on his properties and friends' houses. He has a canoe and he uses it to row around and help people get to safety and feed dogs left behind by their masters. His family left before the storm so he keeps them apprised of what is going on. At first you get his quiet version of what is happening and his wife's tv-fed comprehension of the horror of the sitch. So I am reading it and thinking what a cool story and how interesting and awful when BAM something happens that is just a mind blowingly sad and horrifying comment on the state of our fuckedupedness as a country (I know I know, you are as Canadian as Celine Dion). Anyhoo, I cried and I felt like I got a more useful idea of part of the experience of New Orleans after Katrina. This was a great read. Could've used a little editing in parts but I liked.

commit me

i have always been deeply intrigued by the concept of marriage. at 34, i have never been married, nor close to it. i bought committed by elizabeth gilbert, because i thought that it would be interesting to look at marriage from different perspectives.

gilbert wrote eat, pray, love - this second memoir picks up where the previous left off - gilbert had met and fallen in love with felipe - a brazilian born man, who grew up in austrailia, but who at the time they met was living in indonesia. they had both had previous sad divorces (i think rarely it is anything else), and swore to each other that they wanted to be together forever, but they didn't want to have to marry to do so. they start building their life together, living in the states, felipe traveling out of the country every three months so as not to overstay his visa, until one day homeland security kicks him out, and refuses to allow him entry. the only way he would be welcomed back into the states is if he is married to gilbert.

they spend the several months traveling, waiting for their case to come up - and gilbert uses this time to research and learn about marriage, to perhaps try to come to terms with it, and discover other ways of thinking about it.

the book is full of interesting facts, and touches the many aspects of marriage - many perspectives and cultures. she is searching desperatly at times, to find meaning and understanding in what being married means.

i like gilbert's voice - she is honest and open and shares so much of herself - that it's almost too much at times. she gets lost quite a bit, and deviates into diatribes on gay marriage and the like. she touches on children, and shares stories of her family and friends, and their marriages, divorces and life choices.

there was something nagging at me consistently throughout this book - she didn't believe in marriage and had no interest in doing it - what an anomlay she is - but gilbert had already been married once. that experience was awful and destructive and it destroyed part of her soul, as it often does. to survive the death of a loved one, or a divorce, are two of the most traumatic experiences a person can live through. i can understand, even having never been married, or divorced, why she would be so against marrying for a second time. i can understand her fear, because to me, that's what it boils down to. fear. and i think that she chose to leave that part out.