Here One Moment

Here One Moment by Australian author Liane Moriarty is unnerving. It poses a lot of questions about how we live our lives and think about death—the choices we make, coincidences, and how we react to challenges. It’s a mind-fuck of a book.

It delves into personality disorders like sleepwalking, OCD, depression, and introversion, all of which I am intimately acquainted with. It documents relationships between spouses, parents and children, roommates, coworkers and bosses. As SNL’s Stefon would say, “This place has everything!“

https://youtu.be/NctoAyRDtzU?si=nIsZO4M_PreImVF0

During an unexpected delay, an airplane full of people are trapped as an older woman systematically begins sharing the manner and timing of their deaths. That in itself is terrifying—stuck for hours inside an airplane full of stale air with kids puking and babies crying—then some random crazy lady in a trance starts spewing predictions about when and how every passenger will die. She approaches each person with her mantra, “Fate can’t be fought.”

I love this reviewer’s perspective: “A riveting story so wild you don’t know how she’ll land it, and then she does, on a dime.”—Anne Lamott

Hope's Revolutionary War Diary

 
A new reading unit inspired me to review  Five Smooth Stones: Hope's Revolutionary War Diary by Kristiana Gregory LEXILE 640. Many fifth grade girls enjoyed the book as an alternative to The Fighting Ground which I assigned to several boys. There is a newer version that is more appealing than the old-fashioned hardcover editions of the Dear America series. I also discovered two additional diaries that are sequels to the story: We Are Patriots and When Freedom Comes.

The Husband's Secret

I cannot recommend The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty.  DUMB book; Dopey characters; Absurd situations—I was hoping for profound, thought-provoking, and complex. I got contrived, cliched, banal, unimaginative, pedestrian, uninspired . . . Ah, this Amazon review says it best:

"What a disappointment. In fairness, I couldn't bear to finish this book. Gossipy, petty, predictable, and shallow. If you don't like to watch Dr. Phil or Jerry Springer, steer clear."

I did manage to plow through to the end because I downloaded the electronic version from the library and only had 14 days to finish reading it. It was the most disappointing and hackneyed ending of a book I have ever read!

House of Sand and Fog

I enjoyed reading the House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III, even though I feel pretty beat up by its ending. Why did it have to be soooooo sad? I guess down deep I'm just an optimist who like Rodney King, wonders why we can't all get along. Even though I didn't particularily like some of the characters, I cared about what happened to them because they were so real and thoroughly developed. Reading from the perspective of the exiled Iranian colonel and his family was enlightening. I actually empathized more with them than I did the recovering alcoholic American woman as they battle over the ownership of a small seaside bungalow outside San Francisco. This story truly is an American tragedy. I can't wait to watch the movie to compare the characters on screen to those lingering in my head.

The Hunger Games

I wanted to read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins when it was first published in 2008. Then I realized it was about teenagers in some sadistic, futuristic society killing each other. So I passed. Now that the movie has become a phenomenon, I wanted to see what all the fuss is about. It's still about teenagers killing each other.


That off my chest, I did enjoy reading Book 1 of this trilogy. It is an easy read with interesting characters and settings. I was a little unsettled when the ending deteriorated into a yucky love story between teenagers, but it left me wanting to see the movie in order to compare my own visuals with those chosen for the big screen.

Now I'm about halfway through Book 2 and not feeling as much love. Starting to lose interest, but still curious enough to complete the three volumes.

The Help

I miss Connie's Nook! I had a hard time lugging around this hardcover copy of The Help by Kathryn Stockett. And, it took me fooooreverrrr to read this cumbersome book.

The movie premiers on August 10, and I just finished reading last night. I hope the story comes to life for me on the big screen because it certainly put me to sleep every night in written form.

I like the premise of the story, although it did seem vaguely familiar—like I had heard of something with a strikingly similar plot recently. Trouble is, I lost interest in the characters who I felt were very stereotypical.

The author admits in her afterword, "I was scared that I was crossing a terrible line, writing in the voice of a black person." Rightly so, and I also think she was not particularly effective in capturing the nuances of the language. I found myself having to reread passages several times before I identified what the character was trying to say, even though I had no problem deciphering the African-American vernacular in Walter Mosley's book, The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey.

Overall, I was mostly disappointed by this book that received many rave reviews and recommendations from friends.

UPDATE:

Loved the movie. Saw it with teacher friends Saturday night and thought it presented the perfect combination of humor and reverence for the subject matter. This is very unusual for me, but I believe I identified with the movie's point of view more than the book's.

Half Broke Horses

It took me a long time to finally get around to reading Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel by Jeannette Walls. Now I might have to reread her sequel, The Glass Castle: A Memoir. Half Broke Horses is actually a prequel even though it was written three years after her best-selling memoir. It recounts a partially fictionalized version of her maternal grandmother's life growing up in west Texas, New Mexico and Arizona during the early part of the 20th century.

Reading about the adventures of the feisty Lily Casey Smith, I couldn't help but to search for clues to help explain the odd lifestyle of Walls mother, Rose Mary Smith Walls.

Walls writes in a smooth authentic style that captures not only the courageous journey of a spirited woman but also the grit of the early American west.

Hate That Cat/Love That Dog

LEXILE rating for Love That Dog is 1010. Hate That Cat was given the NP (Non-Prose) code.

A few years ago I read Love That Dog By Sharon Creech. Loved it!

This year we read aloud Hate That Cat during our fifth grade poetry unit. Loved it, too.

These books make poetry accessible to elementary students who couldn't be any further removed from the work of the poets that they are forced to read and analyze on standardized state tests. It makes sense to help them to connect with poetry in a way that they can relate to.