Paul Harris, 2009, 318 p.

In 2005/2006, while my Mother was in end-stage Alzheimer’s, Dad hired some home care workers to help with the day-to-day caregiving.  Most of Mom’s home health aides were originally from Africa, and one of them was from Sierra Leone.  J___ was such a kind-hearted person; the day after Mom died, she stopped by and sat in our kitchen and wept.  She was genuinely concerned about Dad’s well-being, and it was so touching and special to share our grief with this beautiful woman.  Now, in retrospect, I wonder if a few of those tears were for herself and her family.  J___ had always been close-mouthed about her experiences in Sierra Leone, but I know she was haunted by memories of the recent war that had destroyed so much of what was good about her country.  I also know that she was very concerned about the surviving members of her poverty-stricken family, and was working very hard to help some of them make it to the U. S.

I’m enormously pleased I was asked by TLC Book Tours to read and review a novel about Sierra Leone, because of J___ and also because The Secret Keeper is the type of novel that is right up my alley.  The book is chock-full of intrigue and action, it has a well-developed plot and characterizations, and it left me wanting to learn more about the place and its people.

Here’s a quick synopsis:  Danny Kellerman is a British journalist who is tormented by memories of his experiences as a correspondent in Sierra Leone during the civil war.  His ex-girlfriend is killed in a suspicious “roadside robbery,” and Danny travels back to the place that has haunted his dreams for so long to try solve the mystery of her death.  Things do not go well for him, and…  That’s all I’m going to say about the plot, because I don’t want to give it all away!

Paul Harris was a correspondent in Sierra Leone during the conflict, so I’m pretty sure he drew from some of his own experiences while writing The Secret Keeper.  I’m glad he wrote about a subject that must be near and dear to him because it shows.  It’s obvious that his knowledge of the subject added extra depth and moral complexity to this novel.   It’s obvious, too, that he has been a writer all his life.  This doesn’t even seem like a first novel.  If I didn’t know better, I’d think that The Secret Keeper is one of several or many great novels written by Paul Harris.

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Knowing J___ for the brief period that I did, and knowing that things are often not as good as they appear, I decided to try to find out a bit more about the current state of Sierra Leone.  SL is still struggling to pull itself out of the abyss.  Several human rights groups have recently reported that poverty is as bad as ever, and many children, some as young as 10, are still being used for slave labor in the diamond mines.  {Sigh}  They are often abused, they receive little to no medical care or schooling, and they usually work for over 12 hours a day.  Child soldiers may be gone, but the children still suffer.

It’s such a dilemma–if we boycott diamonds, then familes will starve even more.  If we don’t boycott, these terrible abuses will continue to occur.  We should make Sierra Leone a “do-over” –move everyone out, clean up the mess, and start over again from scratch.  We should do the same with Texas, too ( =  

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Here are some photos of Sierra Leone, past and present:

 

I don’t know which are worse, the pictures of happy people or the sad photos.  They all make my heart hurt.

I’m feeling (and looking) a bit like this poor unfortunate, except I can’t even use addiction as an excuse!  There’s just too much work and not enough down time happening right now.

I have a traumatic brain injury presentation to give next week, so I’m kind of stressing out about that, especially since I haven’t even started preparing for it.  I’m presenting to a bunch of directors and administrators, and I’m really afraid that I’m going to f*#k it up, thus ruining my budding reputation (har) as a bad-ass speaker.  Actually, I HATE public speaking, but people keep wanting me to do it and I have problems saying no.  Hey, maybe I should totally mess it up so they never ask me again!

I’m a hospital librarian, and we are a dying breed.  Many of my colleagues are either having their hours cut or are losing their jobs altogether.  One of my closest librarian friends here in town recently lost her job, and she worked for her employer for over twenty years!  She found out that they were going to shut the library down on a Monday, and by Friday of that same week, she was out the door.  She had to fight for a severance package too (those bastards).  She fine, though; she’s now working at the Univ. of Texas, Austin.  They snapped her up right away.

I’m one of two medical librarians in the Springs who is working full-time (or working at all).  The other full-timer works for the military, so she doesn’t really count.  Non-military folks aren’t usually allowed in her library, so it’s basically little ol’ me who provides most of the specialized medical info and resources for this neck of the woods, and it has become pretty demanding.  I’m getting calls from physicians I’ve never even heard of, and some of them are asking for complex and lengthy medical information searches.  I’m also starting to provide fee-for-service work to a couple of government agencies here in town (that have a biomedical focus).  It seems like I’m THE medical information broker for Colorado Springs and its surrounding communities.  Maybe I should ask for a raise!

I’m pretty burned-out at the moment.  If I’m not searching for CDC Tuberculosis guidelines for a freaked-out family practice physician, I’m providing telephone reference to a person who wants to find out about a drug-drug interaction, or I’m showing a group of nurses how to search for evidence based nursing information on one of our databases, or I’m trying to locate a very old medical book entitled A Treatise on the Scurvy, which was written in the mid-1700’s and can’t be found in any of my affliated lending libraries.

So, I’m going to take a blogging break for a week or two, and I’m going to try to catch up and de-stress a bit.  If all goes as planned, I will return to blogging a new gal, and I will be every bit as lovely as my alter-ego was when she was in her prime.  In case you’ve forgotten, I look almost exactly like this when I’m feeling rested and healthy, well, except for the hair.  And the pearls–I don’t do pearls.

(BTW — I’m a liar. I’m waaaay better looking than Grace Kelly)!

SEE YOU IN ABOUT A WEEK!

In case you haven’t noticed, I kind of follow my own agenda, so I’m many months late with this weekly geeks post.  I have 76 Bloglines feeds, and out of those 76, there are probably 20 or so I try to read the minute I notice there has been a new submission (unless I’m too busy to care).  Out of those 20, there are about 8 that I feel compelled to comment on more than any of the others.  I’m now going to list “The Excellent Eight”, complete with icons!  Someday, I may figure out how to add these pictures to my sidebar without making a mess of things. 

1. Eva — A Striped Armchair
Eva must be some kind of a genius. She reads quickly and critically and then writes great posts about her reading adventures on her blog. She’s just a young ‘un (early 20’s), and she can do practically everything! When I grow up I want to be like her. (For some peculiar reason, I always call her Evil-ah in my mind). I’ve even thought of this little icon for Eva:

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 2.  Heather – Age 30+…A Lifetime of Books
Heather appeals to my geeky science fiction/fantasy side.  I became an instant fan when I learned that she read The Hobbit when she was six years old and enjoyed it!  Okay Ms. Smarty-Pants, you may be my superior in the reading arena, but can you talk like such a convincing retro hippie chick that people will start hallucinating the moment you open your mouth?  I’LL BET NOT!  (Now that I think about it, they might start hallucinating as a means to escape my hippie chick impersonation.  What.ev.er).  Anyway, Heather is very erudite and cerebral and I love to read her blog posts.  Due to our mutual LOTR addiction, I always picture Heather as a lovely elf maiden:
 

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3. Jennifer — The Literate Housewife
I felt connected to Jennifer from the moment I became aware of her existence. There’s just something about her; a good aura I experience whenever I look at her blog and whenever she responds to mine. It’s almost like we’ve known each other all our lives.  If Jennifer lived here in Colorado, I know we’d be great friends.  I can just picture us giggling together like schoolgirls.  I know that Jennifer loves Jane Austen and old fashioned stuff, so if I were to choose an icon for her, it would be something like this:

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4. Verbivore — Incurable Logophilia
Verbivore has inspired my current reading life more than any other blogger I visit.  I think she’s probably WAY smarter than I am, and, I hate to admit it, but she may even be a bit cooler than I am too.  She’s very well-read and she writes beautifully and speaks French fluently and is a true aesthete.  She introduced me to Nadine Gordimer (I was totally blown-away by July’s People, BTW), and I’ve been rereading some of her reviews for more inspiration.  Whenever I picture Verbivore, I see a sleek, sophisticated “woman about town.”  Here is my Verbivore icon:

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5.  Lisa  — Books on the Brain
Lisa was one of my first readers, and she immediately drew me into her warm and cozy world of, well, Lisa.  She has such an ease about her that I feel like I’m home every time I venture over to her blog.  Her writing style is comfortable as well, and I really appreciate this, especially when I just want to relax and enjoy a few of my fellow bloggers’ observations during a stressful workday.  I’ve never met Lisa, but I have the feeling that she has some major charisma going on there.  I’ll bet she draws people to her wherever she goes.  It doesn’t hurt that she’s beautiful, too!  Here’s my icon for Lisa:

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6.  Care — Care’s Online Book Club
Care will probably hate me for saying this, but she seems adorably sweet and vulnerable to me.  She has told me that she’s not at all shy or demure, but I don’t believe her.  She’s lovable and cute and cuddly, dammit, and I don’t care what she says!  I enjoy reading Care’s blog because it’s a fun mishmash of humorous ramblings about what she’s reading, written in a kind of unique journal style.  She’s an original, that’s for sure!  So, Care Bear, here is my picture for you (and yep, it’s totally saccharrine):

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7.  Trish — Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin’?
Trish was one of my original commenters, and I remember thinking I had really hit the big time when I visited her blog and realized that she had a huge fan base.  That she would deign to speak to little ol’ me thrilled me to no end, and I continue to be thrilled every time I hear from her.  Trish has got it all:  she’s humorous, smart, creative and dynamic, and I’ve been told that she’s pretty amazing to hang out with!  Here’s my icon for Trish:

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8.  Jill — Fizzy Thoughts
I don’t remember how I met Jill here in cyberspace, but I do know that once I did, there was absolutely no turning back!  I think Jill is the one of the most humorous book bloggers out there, and she’s super creative too.  She’s always making up silly rhymes and songs, and her site is an absolute joy to visit.  I have the feeling that Jill and I may have strangely similar personalities.  If we were twins, Jill would be the funny one and I would be the evil one.  I’d get us into trouble, and Jill would joke our way out of it.  I just know we’d make quite a pair!  I now think of Jill as Jillora, and this icon matches the name perfectly:

  (Night elves can be pretty intimidating)!

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That’s it for now.  I’ll be doing this again soon because there are many more bloggers I want to celebrate.

Later, Gators!

 

Lisa See, 2005, 253 p.

Word up, dawgs!  I’m in the reading spirit again (thank goodness).  For awhile there, I just couldn’t get motivated enough to read more than 15 or 20 minutes a day, but now I’m chugging right along.  I’ve finished four novels in a fairly short period of time, and the first one is Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.

Lisa (Books on the Brain) recommended it to me, and I’m very grateful to her because I never would have chosen it on my own.  It seemed too “girly” for my taste.  Reading a frou-frou novel such as this could easily spoil my good-ol’-gal reputation (like I have one, har)!  Snow Flower surprised me because it isn’t frou-frou at all.  It’s about women, that’s true, but the women in this novel represent all of us, and the story is a universal one of betrayal and redemption.

Snow Flower is set in 19th century China before, during and after the Taiping Rebellion.  The central characters are two girls who are bound by society’s repressive restrictions in many different ways, the most obvious restriction having to do with the binding of their feet.

This disgusting practice occurred off and on throughout early Chinese history.  I’ve always been quite puzzled by the appeal of these tiny little feet.  If a person can barely walk, then what good is she?  The two things that  bother me the most about foot binding are these:

1.  Mothers agreed to do this to their own daughters.  What if they had refused?  Would they have been beaten?  Humiliated?  That would’ve been a small price to pay for the preservation of their daughter’s physical well-being.  Instead of a Taiping Rebellion, there should’ve been a Mothering Rebellion!

2.  These deformities were considered to be erotic.  I’m pretty sure men would’ve been totally turned-off if they were allowed to see the unbound feet of their wives and concubines. 
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There’s so much more to this novel than just icky foot binding.  Snow Flower is essentially about very dysfunctional relationships in a very dysfunctional misogynistic society.  Every relationship in the novel is abusive to one degree or another.  Mothers deny daughters the affection they so desperately need; fathers ignore and/or mistreat daughters because they are lowly females; husbands and mothers-in-law abuse wives; sisters and girlfriends lie and manipulate and hurt each other in order to to advance their positions in society.  Where did the love go?  How did this place and time in Chinese history become so dystopic?  This is just another example of man’s inhumanity, and it further validates my personal philosophy about the human animal:  “Life’s a bitch, and so are you.”
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Now for a parting thought or two:

Foot binding isn’t the only stupid and ugly thing that women (and some men) have done in the name of “beauty.”  Here are a few more examples:

Sorry, everyone, for being a day late with the winner announcement.  Things have been Krazy with a kapital “K” around here.  This HAS to let up sometime!

I did my eenie-meenies, and here are the winners:

Vasily has won The Borrowers books, and
nomadreader has won the Westerfeld series.

Congrats to both of you!  It looks like you have blogs, too, so perhaps we can become blogging companions.  Please e-mail your snail mail addresses to chartroose at yahoo dot com.

Deuces, dudes!

 

This week is Children’s Book Week.  I’ve always loved kid’s books, and 
sometimes when I need a little pick-me-up, I’ll curl up with A. A. Milne or Rudyard Kipling and escape into a great adventure.  It works every time. 

Lately, I’ve noticed a vast improvement in teen reads (except for the current overabundance of ridiculous vampire romances.  They totally suck!  Yep, they’re bloody awful!)  Teen novels are much more realistic than they used to be.  Their themes cover everything from drug abuse to bullying to homosexuality.  Every once in awhile, I’ll read one and be very impressed by the sophistication of the story.  It’s wonderful that authors are acknowledging the humanity of teens, and it’s about time!

In honor of Children’s Book Week, I’ve decided to give some books away.  These were are favorites of mine, and I can’t wait to choose the winners. 

The first group of books I’ll be giving away is this series in paperback format:

 I LOVED these back in the day.  (I haven’t read The Borrowers Avenged yet, since I wasn’t aware that Mary Norton had written a later one).  They will be arriving at my house soon.  If it takes awhile for the winner to receive them, and the last one seems a little too dog-eared to be new, then please forgive my “borrowing!”

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The other series I’ll be giving away is this one:

These are excellent teen sci-fi novels–I enjoyed them almost as much as John Christopher’s Tripod Trilogy.  I haven’t read Extras yet, so it may be a bit more worn than the others, although you probably won’t be able to tell since I bought all of them used (and most are paperback) from abebooks.com.  Older daughter has taken my set of these books and refuses to return them.  Such insolence!  I’m surrounded by thieves!

If you’d like a chance to win either or both of these series, leave a comment specifying your desires.  I’ll do the eenie-meenie game at around noon or thereabouts on Wednesday, May 20.  Good luck!

I got this idea from Chris over at Stuff as Dreams are Made On.  It looks fun and easy, so here goes:

Da Roolz

1. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
2. Using only the first page of results, pick an image.
3. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker, or just do it yourself, like I did.

Now, the questions:
First name?
Favorite food?
What high school did you go to?
Favorite color?
Celebrity crush?
Favorite drink?
Dream vacation?
Favorite dessert?
What do you want to be when you grow up?
What do you love most in life?
One word to describe you.
Your flickr name.

The answers go left to right, top to bottom.

There are a few of these that I find to be quite humorous, like #3.  That’s right, young whippersnappers, I went to high school with Mickey Rooney.  The boys wore bowties and the girls wore hats and white gloves.  Cocktail hour started at 10 a.m. and lasted until school let out.  Those were the days!

The kid in the recliner popped up when I typed “race car driver” for what I want to be when I grow up.  Yes, young whippersnappers, I’m now too old and crotchety to race cars.  Racing recliners is more my speed.  Now, where’d I put my remote?  Dagnabbit!

My favorite is the Obama t-shirt.  Yeah, young whippersnappers, I exude street cred and book smarts out of every pore in my body.  Word up, dawgs!  I should be president instead of that guy!  Legalize drugs?  Yes.  Legalize gay marriage?  Yes.  Keep abortion legal?  Yes.  On second thought, I don’t think the U.S. is quite ready for a single atheist libertarian female to be the leader of our fine country.  I don’t think the U.S. will ever be quite ready for me.  More’s the pity, dontcha think? 

If you decide to do this, leave a comment and I’ll go check you out.

There are 3 winners for the twitter contest:

Heather J. will get the $25 B&N gift certificate.

Jill and Carrie K. will get something else.  I haven’t decided what that something is, but I think I’m going to make it kind of whimsical. 

Heather and Carrie–I need your snail mail addresses.   Send them to chartroose at yahoo dot com.  Congrats to all!

I’m not a twitterer, and I don’t really want to be one.  There is nothing I do that is so terribly important that I must announce it to the world immediately.  Also, I’m enough of a narcissist without resorting to this new “look at me, look at me” fad, not to mention that I’m a partial luddite at heart.  I refuse to carry my cell phone with me unless I’m traveling, and I turned down a free blackberry at work.  The last thing I want is to have a bunch of whiny physicians texting me all the freaking time.  Egads, I’m such an old curmudgeon!  Damn all those young techhies!  Why don’t they stay home and watch television like we did in the good old days?

Anyway, I would like to try a rather twittery game.  I got this idea from an NPR broadcast.  It was so incedibly funny that I thought I’d introduce it today.  It’s very simple:  I write a few easy “twitterish” lines about a book, and you guess the title.  Here are a few examples from NPR:

• “Times are hard.  Sister breastfeeding homeless guy.  I’m so outta here!”  The Grapes of Wrath
• “I hate that guy!  Actually, he’s kinda hot…”  Pride & Prejudice

I’ll write the twitters here.  You only need to write the book title in the comments section.  The first person to answer all correctly wins a $25 Barnes & Noble gift certificate.  Are you ready?  Here goes…

1.   You are not to think!  You are not to love!  We are watching you.

2.   Daisy, Daisy, have I got a mansion for you…

3.   Cannibals and flayers and FBI, oh my! (speaking of birds… Jodie Foster)

4.   Let go of my gonads!  Out, out, damn demon!  (author initials, WPB.  Linda Blair)

5.   Hey, throw this soda pop on the pony boy.  Maybe it will put the fire out.  (famous teen novel.  Matt Dillon & Patrick Swayse)

6.   I’m good, I’m evil, I’m good, I’m evil.  Dammit, where’s my lithium?  (This one is too hard.  It’s Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde) 

7.   It’s funny–one day you’re a man and the next you’re an insect.  Go figure…

8.   Do not eat those stinky pigs and hang your head in shame when you have your period.  This is nonnegotiable!

9.   Your hair is so soft.  Let me pet it.  Oops, sorry!

10.  When Irish eyes are infected…  (memoir tearjerker)

11.  Stay away from the maze.  You’ll freeze in there.  (watch out for that axe, Scatman Crothers)

12.  “Aargh, my ass is stuck!”  Let me help you, honey.  (famous children’s book(s), HUNNY!!!)

13.  How about a zipless quickie in the 1st class sink?

14.  Mom croaked.  Whatever. (author initials: AC.  He’s a French dude.  Life sucks and then you die.)

15.  Flies are yummy. (very famous horror novel.  Speaking of life sucking…)

16.  Have furry feet, will travel.

17.  I’m glad I was dressed as a ham.

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Hurry and answer now! 

Well. everyone, it looks like my yahoo e-mail account has been hacked.  If you have received an e-mail from me talking about a bogus business opportunity, just know that it’s NOT from me, and I will NEVER send you such unadulterated crap – not ever!

I’m going to head over to my yahoo account and see if this can be fixed.  If not, I will deactivate that account and start a new one.

DAMN!