Great read:

I've just finished Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants and, I must say, I really enjoyed it. I was pleasantly surprised when I began the novel -- the narrator is a 93-year-old man and his voice intrigued me. Then, in chapter two, the story slips into the narrator's life in the circus, some 70 years in the past. I read a couple of chapters more, but my resolve to continue began to falter for two reasons: I don't particularly care one way or the other about the circus, and I don't much like history-related stuff -- I prefer forward, futuristic settings to a replay of things that have already taken place.

I picked the book up again on a lazy Saturday afternoon and, by chapter six, realized I'd turned a corner. I was invested. The story is compelling (even for those of us who have lived an obviously deprived childhood because we didn't attend a circus), the characters are likeable and flawed and real. But the prose is the kicker -- it ties the story, setting, and characters all together. It's straightforward and elegant all at once, and I found it utterly charming.

Turns out that Baraboo, WI, winter home of the Ringling Brothers circus, is just 145 miles northwest of where I live. Who knew?

Add this book to your must-read list.

Sci-fi!

I've just finished a couple of good sci-fi reads and I realized (or perhaps I'm just ready to admit) that sci-fi is my first love. Science fiction gets such a bad rap, and unfairly so in my opinion.  Sure, there are weird aspects of the genre (like swords or over-the-top human-hating aliens), but what draws me in are the possibilities - worlds, beings, ways of living, gadgets, things alien to our way of thinking. The possibilities are limited only by one's imagination, and I find this exciting and so compelling.

I've always been fascinated by the stars, by galaxies and universes, by all things cosmology, and so I guess it's no surprise, really, that I'm drawn to science fiction. Though there are many labels attached to the genre (things like hard/soft science fiction, cyberpunk, social science fiction, apocalyptic, time travel, space, fantasy, superhero), for me, there are just two distinctions: science fiction and/or fantasy. If you'd asked me last week which side I was more aligned to, I would have said without hesitation: science fiction. Fantasy, to me, always involves swords or super heroes - two things I don't particularly care about (though even as I write this HBO's Game of Thrones swims into my awareness - a definite favorite of mine and all about swords. So maybe it's super hero-wielding-swords that I don't like?) However, after doing a little research, I stand corrected: both sides appeal to me. For the record, here's what my research produced by way of definitions:

*  Science fiction: unlikely things that could possibly take place in the real world under certain conditions; no supernatural elements.
* Fantasy: a scientific veneer applied to things that simply could not happen in the real world under any circumstances; allows supernatural elements.

I definitely enjoy supernatural aspects as well as magical components, and, truth be told, sometimes all that technical mumbo jumbo by way of explaining how a science fiction world is possible is sometimes too much for me. So it seems, for me, the perfect sci-fi story involves a bit of magic or supernatural components (magical creatures, potions, voices or knowings from beyond, harnessing the power of mother Earth) as well as the grounding elements of a science fiction world (interplanetary travel, time travel, colonization of multiple planets). Oh, and one more thing - all of these elements need to be written with a literary bent. That's not too much to ask, is it?

Here are the stories I read:

Robert Reed's Five Thrillers - This story is included in The Year's Best Science Fiction, Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection published in 2009. Yeah, I'm a little behind, but in my defense, this collection is 639 pages long. Five Thrillers is a series of 5 short-shorts linked by a character named Joseph Carroway. I LOVED it. It's smartly written, suspenseful, engaging. I enjoyed it so much, in fact, that I'm going to seek out more of Robert Reed's work.

Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama - I wanted to like this more than I did. It's revered as a classic, and I purposefully sought it out after reading all the glowing reviews for it. It's very imaginative and the world building on the spacecraft Rama is astounding. But it left me feeling a little flat... we go through all of the exploration and discovery of an object that's entered the Earth's solar system only to have it leave again in short order. I'm guessing that the idea of other beings, of having other life confirmed and being exposed to that confirmation is supposed to be enough, and maybe 40 years ago, when it was first published, throwing the idea out there was enough. But for me, it wasn't. I felt like there was all this buildup and then... nothing. Perhaps this was intended to whet my appetite for the sequel, but I think I'll pass.

An okay read

In all the books I've read (and posted about on here), I've never before labeled one "okay." I've always managed to declare it was at least GOOD. But I can't quite bring myself to proclaim that about Liane Moriarty's What Alice Forgot. I loved the premise (a woman wakes up from a fall at the gym and realizes she's lost 10 years of her life), loved the jacket (who doesn't love bright, bold colors with cutouts?), and LOVED the last quarter of the book. But the first three-quarters? Not so much.

It wasn't that the characters weren't interesting, because they were. And the prose was smooth and smartly written. The thing that did it for me was the premise - the very component that intrigued me and made me decide to give this book a go. Because of the setup (woman loses her memory) there's a lot of time devoted to what isn't. She wakes to find that her current life - the people in it, the activities, her surroundings - isn't what she thinks/expects/remembers it (them) to be. There's a LOT of time spent on this negative space and it got tiresome for me. I had to employ my daughter's 50-page-rule (which I've done a couple of other times: Elizabeth Strout's Abide With Me and Jael McHenry's The Kitchen Daughter) and then again, and again. At the halfway point, my husband (who never really pays much attention to what I'm reading) asked me why I was still reading this book... guess I must've been vocal about my displeasure!

There was also the let's-learn-about-a-character-via-letters-written device used that I found slightly off-putting in the beginning. We see not one, but TWO, characters this way. I did get used to it - maybe that's because the letters appear at regular intervals.

Perhaps my three-quarters declaration, above, isn't quite fair. Maybe it was just past the halfway point... or somewhere between halfway and three-quarters? At any rate, at some point I DID find myself interested and reading because I was invested. It all comes together marvelously at the end. And, strangely enough, the characters-revealing-themselves-via-letters segments seemed fitting somehow by the end.

No Sugar, No Diet Coke

These are fightin' words, right? Who, in their right mind, would willingly follow a "no sugar, no Diet Coke" regimen? Not me. I never really thought about the sugar piece of it, but the Diet Coke? I LOVED Diet Coke. I drank it all the time - as a pick-me-up in the middle of the afternoon, with a bowl of freshly popped popcorn, with pizza (let's face it: pizza isn't PIZZA without a big glass of soda to wash it down!), with a plate of grapes, sliced cheese, and a handful of potato chips. I drank it with everything. My favorite was the 20 oz bottle but, for economical reasons, I'd sometimes switch to the 2 liter bottles. I'd elevate it and bring some elegance to my experience by pouring the Diet Coke into a wine glass. Perhaps you're getting the gist of my love affair and dare I say - addiction - to Diet Coke?

Well, I'm here to say that it's been 3 months since I've tasted a Diet Coke. THREE MONTHS! Or, put another way: it's been 90 days - or - 2,160 hours... Okay, point made. The fact is that I survived, thrived, even.

Three months ago, my husband and I embarked on a wellness journey, one that was as radical as it was simple: eat healthy. That meant organic, whole foods. No chemicals. And, since Diet Coke is not a food, and is, in fact, nothing BUT a conglomeration of chemicals (albeit delicious tasting chemicals), I had to say goodbye.

We started with 21 days of gentle detoxing. It's amazing how much your palate changes when you eliminate toxins, sugar, starches and eat, instead, fruits, vegetables, protein. I began to really taste my food - the delicate flavors, the subtle spices. I realized how wonderfully sweet fruit is: a plump blueberry, or a perfectly ripe strawberry. It was an eye-opening process.

Three months later and I'm down 12 pounds. My husband lost 18 pounds. I feel great. Healthier, stronger. But the "no sugar" part is hard - not in terms of me wanting it, rather that sugar is added to EVERYTHING. Ketchup, salad dressing, peanut butter. The solution: we make our own (well, except for the peanut butter - I've found an organic peanut butter that contains nothing but ground up peanuts) and it's delicious. Really. The ketchup and mustard are better than anything you can buy. I know you're probably thinking hogwash, but it's true. In the interest of full disclosure, this new way of eating takes more time and effort than, say, tearing open a box of processed noodles or popping a frozen pizza into the oven. But the results are absolutely worth it. And delicious.

One other piece of this puzzle: acupuncture. We included this as part of our wellness journey and I'm astounded at the results. When we started, I was not sleeping. No exaggeration. I'd lie in bed every night, unable to fall asleep until 2 or 3 a.m. Come morning, it was all I could do to drag myself out of bed by 11 a.m. I now go to bed around 10 p.m. and am up around 7:30 a.m. Who knew that mornings were so wonderful! The caveat here: make sure your acupuncturist knows his/her stuff. It makes a huge difference.

Great read:

Have you heard of Susanna Daniel's debut novel Stiltsville? I saw a blurb about it in Poet's & Writer's magazine a few months back. I don't remember, now, what the blurb said, but it must've been enticing enough that I decided to take a chance. (For the record, I find it irritating and really disappointing when I ready myself to begin a new novel and discover that I don't like it, whether it's the style or the plot or a combination of the two. Such is the case with Annie Prioulx's The Shipping News, which I'm trying to get through... a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning novel for crying out loud and I'm utterly distracted by the fact that the majority of the prose is written in fragments!)

No such distractions or complaints about Stiltsville, though. Admittedly, I was a little skeptical when I saw that the opening chapter was titled "1969." Why, you ask? I have this thing about history, about things that are set in the past. I simply don't care; I don't want to rehash something that's already been, that's already taken place. I'm the same way with seeing the same movie twice or re-reading a book: I won't do it. Silly? Probably. Unreasonable? Maybe (or a resounding yes from my daughter who can read the same book 2 and 3 times). But I have to say that this opening chapter was delightfully written; it drew me in. I liked the voice, liked the location (Miami, which seems somewhat exotic to me), found the characters interesting. I was pleased and breathed a sigh of relief: I would continue on.

The novel covers a wide expanse of time - roughly 25 years, give or take. I think it's handled marvelously. Each chapter covers a chunk of time: 1969, 1970, 1976, 1982, 1990, 1992, 1993. Each jump in time is handled smoothly: we're quickly and deftly brought up to speed on the important details that might've happened in a missing year and it's done in such a way that it doesn't feel herky-jerky. Small details are given that allow us to see the passage of time. Just wonderfully done.

This novel felt quiet to me, quiet but powerful. It builds, each new era on top of the old so that I felt like I'd spent a lifetime with the narrator. The story is emotional and beautifully rendered. I highly recommend it.

Great read:

What did you do yesterday? I read Stephanie Meyer's The Host for 12 hours STRAIGHT. I started at 1 p.m. and finished at 1:15 a.m. Yes, it was THAT good. Awesome, really. It's also 619 pages long! I couldn't put it down, and yesterday was the perfect day to read: the kids were out of the house, the hubby was out doing some shopping, a fresh 6 inches of snow covered the ground. Just me and the cats curled up on the couch.

I loved this book, loved the suspense, the characters, the otherworldly touches. I cried several different times (6 or 7, maybe more) and felt completely immersed in this world. Such an amazing feat, imo, to be able to create a foreign, yet believable, world. And being able to lose myself so thoroughly, so completely in a story is pure, unadulterated joy.

Winter

It seems that around here we're on track for the 6th warmest winter ever. And with news like that, you'd think I'd be hip-hip-hooraying or engaged in some other sort of celebrating. But I'm not. Why? Well, because it's still winter. And, yes, temps of 39 or 40 or 45 are really mild for this time of year, and those kinds of temps are definitely better than, say, 20 or 0 or -10, but it's still winter. The grass is still brown and dormant, the trees are still leafless (though they all are sporting new buds, have been for several weeks, in fact, which is WAY too early and makes me wonder what will happen to the tender shoots when the inevitable hammer of winter falls), and the gray days still far outnumber the blue ones. Maybe spending the few extra dollars in my pocket as a result of this season's heating bills being less than last year's bills would be a good way to mark this record-setting year. But I probably won't. Why? Well, because -- say it with me -- it's still winter. Bleh.

February.

For being the shortest month of the year, I sure seem to have a hard time getting through it. If I were to look back at posts made around this time last year or the year before, I'm sure I'd find similar rants against winter, against the cold, sunless days in general. Even though I've lived up "north" for more years than I care to count, I'm still a Southern girl at heart. I need sun. I need warmth. I need spring flowers poking up through the soil, our arms joined and raised skyward heralding the end of winter.

When will we see spring around here? March? April? Yes, sometime in April. Too many weeks away to count.

It's clear that I live in the wrong part of the country.