Who's picking for October?

I have a business trip coming up and want a good read...just curious.

Still reading...

This book is a slower read than I expected. I'm currently reading about their first few days in office as president.
But I find it fascinating to think about how many times they lost elections and kept going. Maybe it's because I don't have that kind of passion for anything, but I just couldn't imagine. How were they so willing to suffer disappointment after disappointment? He was basically a nobody in the West who couldn't even get elected by his state legislature yet somehow he became President of the United States.
It makes me think of Churchill and how he always believed he was destined to be in charge during WWII. I think he was right. I also believe Lincoln was the right man to be president during the Civil War.
But it's interesting to think about them as real people, who have made mistakes. I don't know if the rest of you do this, but I tend to think of the founding fathers, successful people, or even heroes in books to be perfect. I appreciate this book for reminding me that imperfect people can do great things.

Can I get any lazier?

I have to tell you all the coolest thing EVER! I work at Wake Forest University and I often check out books from the campus library. I just started using a service they provide...are you ready for this? THEY DELIVER BOOKS TO ME AT MY DESK!! All I have to do is log into my account online and tell them what book/books I want and they bring them to me at my desk. And they aren't due back for a year. Isn't that the coolest? Are you alll jealous? You should be.
"Love is Eternal" was delivered to my desk just minutes ago. Good choice, Kim! I'm excited to read it!

September Book

I made the mistake of asking my parents, brother, and sister-in-law for book suggestions. This led to a list of about twenty books. I narrowed it down to three, then decided to go for something older and less known (but still available in local library or amazon).

(picture borrowed from amazon.com)

Love is Eternal by Irving Stone

It is historical fiction of the relationship between Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln. My mom loves it. As a disclaimer, it is fiction, so it may not be entirely accurate.

If you get bored next month, my other two options were The Beekeeper's Assistant and The Spy Wore Red. :)

Love Walked In

I just finished the book and I really liked it; which is good because I needed a distraction this week. My house looks like we have been robbed. Even I am having anxiety about how messy it is. And that's saying a lot. We had a garage sale yesterday and got rid of a bunch of stuff, but there is still so much junk in here. what the what? blerg.
Anyway, as I read this book, I imagined the character of Cornelia as Kim Weed. Yup, I sure did Kim. Little; beautiful; sweet; kind; lovable; loving. I seriously just imagined everything with Kim in there. Someday you will be with a man who looks like Cary Grant, Kim. How lucky. Anyway, my favorite passage in this book was this:

"I sat up and rubbed her back with the circular motion I've always found soothing. After a while, she put her head in my lap and said,
'I want my mommy.'
I thought about those words, how they contained so much more than they seemed to contain, more than any four words could hold. They meant what they meant were also a universal cry, maybe the universal, plaintive, openhearted cry for comfort. Soldiers in the heat of battle; death-row prisoners; explorers stranded in deserts, jungles, on mountaintops; anyone sick or lost of just tired and bewildered: we all wanted our mothers."

Beautiful, right? Mothers. We all want our mothers. And that's one of things I liked about this book. There was so much love in it. People just loved each other. Patiently, unabashedly loved each other. Not only do we want our mothers, we need them. Just as we need each other. Viviana, at the end of the book, says something like a world with only two is not enough. We need each other! I am moving 4000 miles next month. I can't take everything with me. I called my mom to ask if she could make me some blankets since I had to basically give all of mine to Goodwill here (including my favorite one which I'm pretty sure we've all sat on at one time or another at Sunset Beach). No problem, she said. We can make as many blankets as you want. I LOVE LOVE LOVE my mom. That's what this book made me think of. Love didn't walk in, it was there from the beginning. We have our mothers. And we have each other.
How lucky are we?

August's Pick!

This was recommended to me by a roommate. Here's a synopsis:

Life has been pretty kind to Cornelia Brown, the college-educated twenty-something manager of the Café Dora, a comfy little Philadelphia coffeehouse. In fact, things have been so good and so free of responsibility that lately she's been thinking she should make something more of her life. It's as if she's been treading water, having risen no higher on the food chain than café manager because she just hasn't figured out anything better.

Cynical about some things, totally romantic about others, and ultimately believing that "true love is tops," Cornelia seeks succor in Cary Grant films, hoping that one day her very own Mr. Grant will walk through that café door. And he does, in the form of the gorgeous, gracious, and most civilized Martin Grace, who takes one look at her, falls in love with her, and immediately asks her to come to London with him.

Meanwhile, Martin's ex-wife, Viviana, has recently abandoned Clare, her eleven-year-old daughter. Wise beyond her years, Clare is an absolute marvel - resourceful, imaginative, even brave - the kind of girl "you usually find in books." A fan of romance fiction, she is a startling mixture of sweetness and pluck; it's almost as though she has been delved from the pages of Little Women.

Clare knows that something is terribly wrong when her mother starts exhibiting strange and erratic behavior: soon she is shopping compulsively, inexplicably pulling Clare from school, taking her to lunch in a fancy restaurant, even giving her red wine to drink. There's no explanation for Viviana's strange absences or odd behavior, but with her mind gradually slipping and skipping away between confusion and clarity, none of Clare's books have taught her what you do when your mother turns into "someone you don't know, someone who doesn't take care of you anymore."

When Viviana drops Clare off on the side of the road before disappearing, the young girl is set adrift, forced to find a home with Martin while trying desperately to imagine living with her father instead of her mother, and realizing that her father probably couldn't imagine it, either. Thinking, deciding, and worrying, it all becomes too much for the poor girl; she realizes that she is through with all of that: "floating and drifting, she did not want to think at all."

Almost immediately, Cornelia falls in love with the fragile Clare, adopting the role of semi-parent. But in the process, she discovers that Martin is not exactly the man she had hoped he would be; his chilly attitude toward Clare in her time of need has disturbed Cornelia. Wracked by doubts regarding his rightness for her, even though he is a "flesh and blood man," and with the less-than-fantastic sex on her mind, Cornelia's world is rocked when Tao, her distractingly handsome brother-in-law, arrives in town.

Moving between the voices of Clare and Cornelia, author Marisa de los Santos progressively charts the deepest and most poignant of these characters' emotions, revealing their flaws and exposing their hidden insecurities. For most of Clare's life, there has been so much distance between her father and herself, an empty space across which she could send stories, that actually telling him mattered so little - "he was just the near-stranger he'd always been."

Cornelia little by little becomes distracted about the nuts and bolts of Clare's well-being, the attributes of parenthood thrust upon her without warning. Yet she also worries about her relationship with Martin, forced to deny a steadily growing and brutally honest attraction to Tao. For Cornelia, Clare, and Tao, the world holds endless possibilities, but can the house of cards they seem to be keeping up through sheer force of will do anything but tumble down?

The author writes candidly and delicately, thoroughly in tune to the quiet domestic dramas of life. The characters in Love Walked In can little afford to leave their troubles behind, or even live in an in-between space where you think troubles can't find you. For all these characters, denial and defiance is not an option. It is where parenthood and its ensuring responsibilities crop up in the unlikeliest of places.

Only through her bourgeoning relationship with Clare and her surprise love affair with Martin does Cornelia realize that real happiness isn't what happens to you when you "whistle along," drifting through life, ignoring responsibilities and pretending that bad things just don't exist.

Happy Reading!

washington

So I really like this book. I wasn't sure what to expect of it. I mean, I wasn't sure if it was a novel, or like a boring textbook. Surprisingly, it's kind of like both, but awesome! My favorite quote so far is from the gold medal that was struck in Washington's honor:

"Those pages in the annals of America will record your title to be a conspicuous place in the temple of fame, which shall inform posterity, that under your directions, an undisciplined band of husbandmen, in the course of a few months, became soldiers."

BEAUTIFUL. George Washington was even more marvelous than I thought. I'm only at the part where the British ships have all entered New York and are seriously outnumbering our military. Even though I know we eventually win this war, I find myself seriously on the edge of my seat wondering how we're going to get ourselves out of this mess. I like it.