Suzy Q Homemaker

I’ve been putting off this post for a few days.  The other night, I was catching up with some of the book blogs I’m subscribed to, and when posts were popping up with “Dewey’s Read-a-Thon” in the title, I cried for a good long time.  The grief that has been rolling in and out over the past year is still fresh, and I honestly didn’t expect myself to react in that way to what I should have been anticipating for a few weeks.  Sure, I knew that the anniversary of Dewey’s death was approaching, but I completely forgot about the Read-a-Thon.  I shouldn’t have, and maybe that’s why I crumpled.  Now that I’m trying to piece together the last couple of months of her life–what I was doing, what we were talking about–I remember now that I had a hard time finishing even one book during last year’s Read-a-Thon.  We had a brand-new kitten, Corey had a soccer practice that day, and Jamie was working.  I still tried, though, because I loved participating, and I loved and wanted to support Dewey.

Dewey was a real-life friend of mine.  Her death was devastating, and there’s a small group of us who were her friends that are still struggling every day.  There are days when we laugh about things she wrote about her husband or her cat or the crazy birds in her backyard.  Then we turn right around and cry because we are so angry with the suddenness of it all, the fact that we didn’t get to say goodbye.  I remember the first time I got a package from Dewey.  It was filled with homemade chocolate chip cookies and I ate every one of them right then and there.  Over the years, we talked about so many different things, and I’m still honored to have been such a close friend of hers.

But I have a tendency to avoid uncomfortable situations, especially if they make me sad.  Dewey’s death was one of the saddest moments in my life, right up there with the death of Jamie’s dad, a childhood friend of mine, and a few other family tragedies.  The moment I heard she was gone, a part of me died, and I spent the rest of the day in bed, crying on and off, avoiding phone calls, mostly avoiding email, and asking myself “why” over and over.  And I had to move on.  Thanksgiving was painful because I didn’t know how to explain my “real life” internet friendship with Dewey to my family.  I had never talked about her to anyone but Jamie.  So I left it alone, pretended nothing was wrong, and just went through the motions required of any typical holiday.  And over the past few weeks, I have been avoiding the knit-a-long group, the book blogs in my reader, and even my friends.

This year, I want to participate in Dewey’s Read-a-Thon not just to read, but to honor her.  I’m telling you right now that she’s probably laughing it up in the after life, and would probably make fun of me for being so reverent in this post.   But I needed to write something publicly.  This year, when you’re reading for Dewey, read for her friends, too.  Those of us who stood behind her during the good times and the bad.  I loved that she was so passionate about her blog and her book blog friends.  She left behind a magnificent legacy in the blogging community and we’re so proud of her.

Sisters Lindsay and Kerrie Ann have known hardship from an early age. Without guidance from their neglectful mother, their only aid came from an unlikely source, a retired exotic dancer by the name of Miss Honi Love. When the girls’ mother was sent to prison, Miss Honi tried unsuccessfully to save them from being separated and sent into foster care.

Thirty years later, Lindsay is still trying to reconnect with her sister. The owner of a bookstore in the sleepy California seaside town of Blue Moon Bay, she was lucky enough to have been adopted by a loving couple. Unbeknownst to her, Kerrie Ann has suffered a very different life. Bounced from one foster home to the next, she ran away as a teenager before becoming a drug-addicted single mother. Now, newly sober, Kerrie Ann is fighting to regain custody of the little girl who was taken from her.

Neither sister’s expectations are met when they’re finally reunited. But as the two sisters engage in the fiercest battles of their lives, they are at last drawn together despite their differences, restoring belief in the unshakable bond of family. Read more…

It happens quietly one August morning. As dawn’s shimmering light drenches the humid Iowa air, two families awaken to find their little girls have gone missing in the night.  Seven-year-old Calli Clark is sweet, gentle, a dreamer who suffers from selective mutism brought on by tragedy that pulled her deep into silence as a toddler.  Calli’s mother, Antonia, tried to be the best mother she could within the confines of marriage to a mostly absent, often angry husband. Now, though she denies that her husband could be involved in the possible abductions, she fears her decision to stay in her marriage has cost her more than her daughter’s voice.  Petra Gregory is Calli’s best friend, her soul mate and her voice. But neither Petra nor Calli has been heard from since their disappearance was discovered. Desperate to find his child, Martin Gregory is forced to confront a side of himself he did not know existed beneath his intellectual, professorial demeanor.  Now these families are tied by the question of what happened to their children. And the answer is trapped in the silence of unspoken family secrets.

Read more…

My wonderful husband guest posts today a review of a new book of poetry.

Patricia Neely Dorsey’s Reflections of a Mississippi Magnolia-A Life in Poems is “a true celebration of the south and things southern.” The author states , “There are so many negative connotations associated with Mississippi and the south in general. In my book, using childhood memories, personal thoughts and dreams, I attempt to give a positive glimpse into the southern way of life. In my book I try to show that there is much is more to Mississippi and the south than all of the negatives usually portrayed .I invite readers to Meet Mississippi (and the south) Through Poetry, Prose and The Written Word.”

It may sound odd that, as a student of literature and a writer, I have no idea what I really want from a poem. I know what I like and I know what I don’t like. I know why I like what I do and why I don’t like what I don’t. Sometimes, though, everything that would normally work toward making me like a poem just gets broken down. Perhaps it is an intriguing subject that gets overshadowed and lost in a forest of predictable meter and rhyme. Perhaps it is an interesting meter devoted to a subject that doesn’t quite measure up. Having said all of this, I can now say that I have a very mixed opinion of Patricia Neely-Dorsey’s Reflections of a Mississippi Magnolia.

I do not believe that there is a poem in this collection that Mrs. Neely-Dorsey did not honestly feel, that does not spring from who she is as an individual who wants to share her own understanding of life with the world at large. However, very many of the poems that book-end this collection fall into the category of “poems whose subjects are not well-met by their structure.” Mrs. Neely-Dorsey has an affinity for her Southern life – an affinity with which I can sympathize – that is clearly expressed, sentimental as it may be. But sentimentality can go two different ways: sappy romanticism and cut-me-to-the-quick art-that-can-be-nothing-less. Sadly, this volume is opened and closed by pieces that fall into the “sappy” category. The meter, matched with the subject matter, in a strange sort of way, reminds me very much of Phyllis Wheatley. This can be taken in many different ways, so let me declare my stance on Wheatley: I believe that she was a brilliant poet who severely limited herself by her use of meter and rhyme.

If one is seeking to buy a volume of “Southern Literature” for someone who takes a simple joy in their Southern Life, this would be a perfect piece of literature. But one who is seeking to gift a poet, or one cultured in literature and its affects, needs to have the following as a disclaimer: one must seek one’s treasure. What I mean is that the incessant iambic feet and ABCB… rhyme scheme get a bit… well…monotonous, amateur, and boring. Someone seeking poetry for the sake of experiencing art, were they impatient in their endeavors, would most likely put the book down after a few poems. The problem is that this is a very sad truth. If the book were filled with this type of poem, setting it down so soon would be no great loss, but it isn’t. There are several real gems buried here, some poems that honestly made me stop reading for a second to say “wow” and then hope to find another so beautiful for its mere simplicity.

This is the spark of this collection: its simple moments. What Mrs. Neely-Dorsey is trying to capture here in so many of her poems is the simple beauty of Southern life. When she gives up on trying to portray that through the frills of what a naïve reader would consider the necessities of poetry and just writes, she honestly captures something: form matches content and the beauty that art can manifest shines through. I would like to close with two short poems that I think really express my point, where attempts at meter and rhyme are dropped and the only thing that holds the poem together as a poem are its words and the idea they are attempting to communicate, to capture.

Avid Reader

I want to be

Your favorite book,

That you read

Over and over again,

From cover to cover,

And get lost in the story.

Not a fairy tale.

Not a mystery.

No cliff hangers.

Just

A Plain

Old Fashioned

Love Story

Partyline

Do you remember

Picking up the phone…

“Excuse me”

“Could I make a call, please?”

“It’s an emergency.”

“Five minutes?”

“O.K.”

“Thank You.” Click.

Or listening in on some juicy gossip,

Or some steamy love talk late at night,

Easing up the receiver …Slowly…Carefully…

(muffled giggles)

“Shhhhh”

“Be quiet, they’ll hear us.”

“Hey you kids, quit playing on the phone!”

“Uhhh..ohhhh, we’re caught.” Click.

Partyline.

I pretty much failed the Book Awards Reading Challenge II. I only read one book for this challenge! I read part of A Passage to India, but I kept putting it down to read other things. You know what, though? I actually started Life of Pi three days ago.

So here’s what I’m going to do. I’ll take off some of the books from the last challenge and see if I can actually read all the ones on my list for this one! Here’s my list:

1. The Road, Cormac McCarthy
2. Schindler’s List, Thomas Keneally
3. Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynne Truss
4. Watership Down, Richard Adams
5. Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis De Bernieres

Think I can stick with it? A short list doesn’t look quite as scary.

Sign up for the Book Awards III here.