The Unfortunate Space Between Books.

I have been reading quite a bit this summer and I have found that sometimes I hate picking out a new book. Even if I have dozens in my room stacked and waiting to be read. Even if I have books I know will be good.

I've realized that I have a hard time giving up my shared life with the characters I've been so invested in. I find it not fair, sometimes, that they get to go on living, but that I have to journey back to my world. And I get so used to those characters that I find myself not ready to get to know new characters right away. This is a problem because I am a chronic reader--I always have a book in my bag.

This is an issue reading shorter books as well: as soon as I get to know the characters pretty well, the story ends. And if it's still early enough before bed, I will want to keep reading, but sometimes it is simply impossible to pick up a new book with all the old characters on my mind still.

Sigh. Reading on summer vacation. It's a tough life.

A Note on the Weather.

The past few days in Brooklyn have been amazing: blue skies, bright sun, little humidity, cool evenings...basically everything you want summer to be. Until this morning. I was awakened by the sound of rain around six am and it was the most welcome view out of my window. There is something about rain that allows me to relax and not feel like I need to go anywhere. Granted, I have that luxury as a school teacher on summer vacation. But I've written about this before. Though this particular Monday morning, it was quite nice to have the option to just lay in my bed and let the rain fall, enjoying the fact that I had no where to be. The overcast sky was comforting.

Ironically, I was also motivated to do a lot of the work that I have put off the past few weeks. Somehow when it's nice out, I feel like I am committing a sin if I am not outside in some capacity. I feel guilty and wasteful if I do not take in the full enjoyment of the summer sun that I long for so much throughout the year. Today, I felt motivated to curl up in my living room and do the writing I've been meaning to do, and now I love that I'm in the back of a relatively windowless coffee shop in my neighborhood about to embark on some school related work.

So let it be known. I like cloudy days sometimes.

It's Young Adult Fiction Day in the New York Times.

Not really, but there were two pretty interesting articles on a couple of the most popular books among my female students:

The Twilight Series
Writer Gail Collins looks at the legacy that Edward Cullen is leaving behind and it's impact on female readers


Gossip Girl
Writer Michael Winerip discusses the "brand placement" in teenage girl series and asks how adults should respond to the consumeristic mentally in such series.

Both are thought provoking and worth the read.

What is currently breaking my heart.

From Gourmet magazine, seen on Abigail Goes Design Scouting

"SMALL THINGS DONE IN GREAT LOVE BRING JOY AND PEACE." ~MOTHER TERESA

“It is perhaps not too much to say that, in the first decade of the new millennium, humanity has entered into a condition that is in some sense more globally united and interconnected, more sensitized to the experiences and suffering of others, in certain respects more spiritually awakened, more conscious of alternative future possibilities and ideals, more capable of collective healing and compassion, and, aided by technological advances in communication media, more able to think, feel, and respond together in a spiritually evolved manner to the world’s swiftly changing realities than has ever before been possible.” -Richard Tarnas

I found this book on my roommate's shelf a few months ago and was immediately intrigued by the title. In my urban life of over-commitment and busyness, Blessed Unrest sounded like the best example of an oxymoron. The subtitle made it so clear, though: How the Largest Social Movement in History is Restoring Grace, Justice and Beauty to the World. This book essentially discusses how the wide variety of social justice and environment groups are bringing about real change...and how we need small groups in all different places to be actively pursuing the health of our planet and its people.

I have long been convinced that so much in this world needs healing and that greed has done so much of the damage that afflicts humanity. Working toward this healing isn't restful, but it is good and blessed. This book challenges some of the accepted realities of the world and of the United States and asks the reader to reconsider his or her thinking. I cannot respond to this book as a whole because it is merely too rich in information...I can only recommend that others read and think about what it addresses.

I am convinced that our country cannot be about the only the financial bottom line--but that we need to figure out how people can be the bottom line and how markets can be a healthy way to support human dignity and what makes life worth living. Below is a list of some of the most thought provoking quotations that I read along the way.

"To those who carp about low wages and poor working conditions in developing countries, free market advocates argue that freedom and prosperity require time and sacrifice. But whose time and whose sacrifice?...The world's top two hundred companies have twice the assets of 80 percent of the world's people." (page 119)

"Why must such groups [that argue, demonstrate and litigate for human rights] operate at the margins of society simply if they believe that social justice and human rights should not be sacrificed when corporations shift their manufacturing to the lowest-wage countries?" (page 126)

"As effective as markets are, they are tools, not reality. Markets make great servants, but bad leaders and ridiculous religions...Trade is not the salient issue; the critical question is: Who sets the rules and who enforces them? There can be no sustainability when institutions whose primary purpose is to create money are dictating the standards." (page 135)

"When small things are done with love it's not a flawed you or me who does them: it's love. I have no faith in any political party, left, right or centrist. I have boundless faith in love. In keeping with this faith, the only spiritually responsible way I know to be a citizen, artist, or activist in these strange times is by giving little or no thought to 'great things' such as saving the planet, achieving world peace, or stopping neocon greed. Great things tend to be undoable things. Whereas small things, lovingly done, are always within our reach." (page 188, quoting Duncan)

So I suppose my closing thought is that change is within our reach--because if we bring this love of humanity into each of our spheres in life--our homes, our friendships, our workplace, our places of worship, our neighborhoods--that is when change will begin to occur. And that is when we will all begin to remember--on micro and macro levels--what makes life valuable, and that it typically has nothing to do with money at the end of the day.

Human Rights Watch
Natural Capital

Franny.

I'm not going to lie. This picture that my friend Shannon posted on her blog along with the following quotes are what made me most intrigued to read Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger; that and my love of Catcher in the Rye and Nine Stories.

"Just because i'm so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else's values, and just because i like applause and people to rave about me doesn't make it right. I'm ashamed of it. I'm sick of it."

"i'm sick of not having the courage to be absolutely nobody."

The novel is grouped into two sections, "Franny" being abour 45 pages and "Zooey" being 150. In the first novella, Franny is on the verge of an emotional breakdown of sorts. She has met her boyfriend Lane for a big Ivy League homecoming game. Lane is very into having the right girl at the right place and being perceived as very intelligent; he calculates his facial expressions to remain elusive. Franny is at a place where she realizes that she may share similar tendencies, but is cognizant enough to know she doesn't want them--but does not know how to communicate that to Lane or herself. It is difficult to watch her continually apologize for herself while simultaneously exhibit physical symptoms of her inner state.

"Zooey" picks up with Franny at her parents' home, and is mostly a conversation between Zooey, her brother, her mother and herself. It continues with a dialogue between the different family members about Franny's state of mind and what to do with her.

Franny's struggle is not unique, though. She has grown up with expectations placed upon her and a certain understanding of what she would do with her life. All of a sudden she has realized that she doesn't necessarily have to do those things or be dictated by them. Such a realization can be life changing or life shattering; both incredibly freeing and confusing. I just think that most people choose the safety of what they know rather than rebuilding a new world view...hence the quotes mentioned above. Her actions is both stories beautifully typify the physical manifestations of this inner tension, and Salinger has really done a brilliant job.

Best Read of 2008 So Far.

I almost feel like to write about this book would trivialize it. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is haunting; it's characters so endearing that they break your heart and his attention to poetic detail about people hard to match. Set in Nazi Germany, the story follows the childhood of Liesel and is based in her learning to read and write and her love of story side by side with the attempted destruction of the human spirit. Death is the creative, omniscient narrator who himself becomes haunted by her story. While collecting the souls of the lost, he comments that not only does he see the worst of humans, but the best and beauty of them and can never quite figure out the contradiction.

I really can't say anymore at this point, except that my train ride this weekend and my arrival at home was filled with sobbing over some of my most favorite characters since Oskar (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close), Owen (A Prayer for Owen Meany) and Philibert (Hunting and Gathering). Sigh.

I am meeting to talk about this book with some really fabulous people next week, so I may follow up then...(most likely with a rant on why we need to live for what matters and take care of people's souls and really learn from our past), but until then, all I can do is beg you to read it.