Book Impression: Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Liz

A few years ago I read an entire book before realizing I had already read it. I looked back at my Goodreads read list and realized I had no memory of about half of the books on there. So I built a new habit – (almost) every time I finish a book, I word-vomit my thoughts and emotions into a note on my phone. Sometimes they’re brief, sometimes they’re long-longwinded, sometimes they just ramble…and now I’m putting them here. Please enjoy the madness.

SPOILERS AHEAD…

This book was heartbreaking. It was interesting for me to learn about the historic relationship between the Japanese and Korean people, something I had no knowledge of before. I thought the way they addressed cultural differences was beautifully done. It resonated when the grandson brought his girlfriend from America to Japan with him and basically all the typically American things about her that made her bright and exciting when they were in school just made her too much in the backdrop of his home country. The story very gracefully navigates the shifting times as the story moves through the generations, showing how each one fits into each time period in slightly different ways and how the lives of family members can be different but still threaded together. I also enjoyed the way they played the siblings off of one another, two brothers who are so different and on such different paths but who end up with similar lives, one that affected them in dramatically different ways. 

Full disclosure – this was a book club pick.

Book Impression: Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Liz

A few years ago I read an entire book before realizing I had already read it. I looked back at my Goodreads read list and realized I had no memory of about half of the books on there. So I built a new habit – (almost) every time I finish a book, I word-vomit my thoughts and emotions into a note on my phone. Sometimes they’re brief, sometimes they’re long-longwinded, sometimes they just ramble…and now I’m putting them here. Please enjoy the madness.

I really loved the way this book asked difficult questions without pushing you toward a “right” answer and left the ending realistically untidy but somehow still satisfying. Life wasn’t fair to any of them but not in a horrible, tragic just for the sake of learning a lesson way. Sometimes the people who we love turn out to love someone close to us, sometimes people leave and we don’t get to know why. Sometimes we have to do things because of circumstances outside of our control and we can hate the decision while still making it.  

The author also did a lovely job of showing all the different perspectives throughout and making you understand why each person would believe they’re right. Most people do the things they do because they believe they are the right things to do and if you can listen and understand their perspective, you can see why they would feel that way, even if you disagree. The events in this book show nobody is perfect, how parents are just people doing their best and they have a past and while you gain a certain perspective as you age, everyone feels they know what’s best…especially teenagers who are too young to understand that they don’t understand things. The question of what it means to be a mother and what family means was a big one throughout and you don’t really come away with an answer because no matter what you choose, someone is shattered.

Photos & Words: June 2017 // Ashburn, VA

Liz

When I was a child, somebody put a big, blue plastic camera in my grubby hands. I got older and the cameras got fancier and I “studied” photography in high school then college and I took a LOT of photos. So now I’m going to post my photos in no particular order with stories that may or may not have something to do with what’s in them – my new experiment in creative confidence.

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In my junior year of college, my parents told me they would pay for a spring break trip to Florida OR my yearly sorority beach week…but not both.
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So I remained in Charlottesville for the week of spring break.
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My boyfriend at the time had graduated and was working in town. But he had his 9-5ish so other than our standing 45 minute lunch dates downtown I had the days to myself.
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My roommates, friends, and backup drinking pals had all fled for warmer climates.
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And there’s only so much to do in a tiny rental without cable television.
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I decided to play the doting housewife and prepare an elaborate meal every night (complete with contraband alcohol bought by my over 21 boyfriend). We had country western night with slow cooked BBQ and beer…some kind of seafood paired with cheap white wine…and I can’t really remember the other meals.
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But I remember how it felt to cook for the better part of every afternoon.
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I come from a family of cooks.
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My grandmothers were very different and very similar – one a Jewish mother of five and the other a Creole mother of seven. They both spent a lot of time in the kitchen.
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But I never spent time in there with them.
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I remember my dad calling me over whenever he made gumbo or jambalaya, saying “Here Liz, watch how I do this.” Sometimes I pried myself away from the television and sometimes I didn’t.
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I wasn’t interested.
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Until I spent a week alone at college doing nothing but cooking.
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Now I wish I could go back. A little time has made me see how important cooking with my family should have been to me.
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Now I’ll invite a group over for Sunday dinners or run the show at my family’s Thanksgiving.
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The more elaborate, the better.
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Things always come out at different times, the main course is often ready before the appetizer, and sometimes I forget about the salad until halfway through.
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But it’s usually delicious.
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📷  This photo is from the day I tricked Kate into baking me cookies by telling her it was for the sake of art.

Book Impression: Lamb by Christopher Moore

Liz

A few years ago I read an entire book before realizing I had already read it. I looked back at my Goodreads read list and realized I had no memory of about half of the books on there. So I built a new habit – (almost) every time I finish a book, I word-vomit my thoughts and emotions into a note on my phone. Sometimes they’re brief, sometimes they’re long-longwinded, sometimes they just ramble…and now I’m putting them here. Please enjoy the madness.

This book was ridiculous at times but I really liked it. I’m not sure if somebody more religious would not like it (but a churchgoing friend of mine said she did). Being Jewish, I don’t know much about Jesus. And being a bad student of religion, I don’t know much about the Bible and the stories. This book addressed them in a relatable way. And I like the way it treated the great religious figures as actual human beings because a lot of times when you read about ancient peoples, especially with the language used, you forget that all humans are essentially similar and children back in biblical times probably acted at least a little bit like children in modern times.

Even though the majority of the book was cracking jokes and pushing boundaries, it managed to be deep without feeling forced at times. It was nice to see a figure like Jesus humanized and show how he would have factored into real life back then, how some people would have perceived him differently, and how he could have been helped by somebody as “sinful” (but ultimately loving) as Biff. Particularly liked the bit where Maggie asks how Biff isn’t just awestruck all the time and he’s basically like “I can’t be awestruck all the time…he doesn’t need that. He needs me to be his friend and take care of him.” I didn’t love the ending. It felt too abrupt and like an easy out but I guess I don’t know what ending would have made it better. 

Welcome to 2019

Liz

My word for 2019 is Care.

  • Care in the way I move my body
  • Care in the food that I eat
  • Care in the products I purchase
  • Care in the information I am consuming
  • Care in the rituals I have let fall aside this year
  • Care in the things I surround myself with
  • Care in the relationships I have built
  • Care in where I place my time
  • Care in the work I do to earn a living
  • Care in the work I do to unwind

Book Impression: The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

Liz

A few years ago I read an entire book before realizing I had already read it. I looked back at my Goodreads read list and realized I had no memory of about half of the books on there. So I built a new habit – (almost) every time I finish a book, I word-vomit my thoughts and emotions into a note on my phone. Sometimes they’re brief, sometimes they’re long-longwinded, sometimes they just ramble…and now I’m putting them here. Please enjoy the madness.

SPOILERS AHEAD…

This book was the weirdest and I feel like there is something deeper that I’m not getting (I’m also realizing that I feel that way whenever I get something very out of the ordinary). The juxtaposition between adult and child was interesting though and I like the way the tone changes between the prologue/epilogue and the main part. I also liked the way it just slipped into him “forgetting” so smoothly and almost imperceptibly. It does a good job of introducing the question of reality and perception and how children can see more in the world around them than adults can because as adults we rely on a lot of assumptions. It reminds me of psychology when we learn about how your brain has to make certain connections and rely on templates that you have built throughout your life because to observe and try to assess everything fresh all the time would just not work. So you see two moons in the rear view then they disappear…you KNOW there is only one moon so you believe that it was a trick of the light. 

Book Impression: City of Women by David R. Gillham

Liz

A few years ago I read an entire book before realizing I had already read it. I looked back at my Goodreads read list and realized I had no memory of about half of the books on there. So I built a new habit – (almost) every time I finish a book, I word-vomit my thoughts and emotions into a note on my phone. Sometimes they’re brief, sometimes they’re long-longwinded, sometimes they just ramble…and now I’m putting them here. Please enjoy the madness.

Overall I think it was entertaining and suspenseful and I like the idea but it fell a little flat. This was an interesting take on WWII and its effect in Berlin. Most of the main characters are female but I think it fell short in being driven by women (in the same way most female-centric novels by men are). Instead of an intricate network of women helping the Jews, there are a few women who deal mostly through relationships with men. Sigrid is so caught up in her multiple relationships that it was hard for me to even get a grip on who she is beyond the shallow “I need to do something because killing people is wrong and I’m different because I understand that.” I think that elaborating on some of the other female characters in the novel – the mother in law, the officer’s wife, the lesbian, the photographer, Renate (really any of them) would have given the whole story more depth. Her closest relationship before Erika ended up being with her coworker and it seemed like they exclusively talked about men. And in the end, the author gives us the stereotypical series of men stepping in to save Sigrid. So yeah, for a book supposedly focused on women, it doesn’t really pass the Bechdel test.

Photos & Words: August 2017 // Bath, UK

Liz

When I was a child, somebody put a big, blue plastic camera in my grubby hands. I got older and the cameras got fancier and I “studied” photography in high school then college and I took a LOT of photos. So now I’m going to post my photos in no particular order with stories that may or may not have something to do with what’s in them – my new experiment in creative confidence.

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Did you and your friends ever pass notes in school?
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I got my first cell phone when I was 11 years old. A friend’s family took me on their annul trip to Cape May and my parents wanted to be able to reach me directly so they bought this big, silver brick phone. Kerri and I spent almost the entire ferry ride standing on opposite sides of the same deck talking to each other on our phones. Yes, that was back when you had to pay for the number of  minutes you used. I realized 35 minutes in that mine had been on speaker the whole time.
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To send a text message on this prehistoric cell, I had to navigate into the web browser. There were twitter-esque character limits and I didn’t get a notification when someone responded. I had to keep going into the browser to check.
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There was no such thing as unlimited data. Or unlimited texting. Every month my best friend had to keep tally of the number of messages she sent or received and every month she exceeded her limit. Sending a message that didn’t consume every allotted character was a fireable offense.
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That’s why my friends and I wrote each other notes during class. It’s hard to imagine how we could fill so much paper with news for people we saw every 90 minutes or so. But my phone didn’t enable me to simply broadcast my Very Important Thoughts out to the world. It didn’t even take photos. I had to use a pen to write words, fold the page as elaborately as I could manage, and hand it off between periods. Erin was the best at folding. Thomas liked to draw pictures. Megan had the girliest handwriting…or maybe Thomas has the girliest handwriting…
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My friends said they liked my notes because I wrote them how I spoke which is the same way I think. Stream of consciousness, swerving all over the place and ending up nowhere near where I began.
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So, now you can understand my blogging…
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📷 This is a picture my mom took of me taking a picture of something in Bath.

Book Impression: The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith

Liz

A few years ago I read an entire book before realizing I had already read it. I looked back at my Goodreads read list and realized I had no memory of about half of the books on there. So I built a new habit – (almost) every time I finish a book, I word-vomit my thoughts and emotions into a note on my phone. Sometimes they’re brief, sometimes they’re long-longwinded, sometimes they just ramble…and now I’m putting them here. Please enjoy the madness.

I didn’t love this book. My mom loves Alexander McCall Smith and has read all of his stuff so I was trying but the characters fell flat for me. They all kind of fit too neatly into their boxes. And the ending, just kind of brushing things off after all that happened – it felt rushed and lazy. I’ll try another one of his to see if it’s a fluke.

Book Impression: The Dead Ladies Project by Jessa Crispin

Liz

A few years ago I read an entire book before realizing I had already read it. I looked back at my Goodreads read list and realized I had no memory of about half of the books on there. So I built a new habit – (almost) every time I finish a book, I word-vomit my thoughts and emotions into a note on my phone. Sometimes they’re brief, sometimes they’re long-longwinded, sometimes they just ramble…and now I’m putting them here. Please enjoy the madness.

This book made me want to explore and read and explore some more. And it also made me feel like I don’t think deep enough thoughts. I have this so marked up with post it notes at this point. I loved her thoughts and language around loneliness and suicide and being understood, especially when she talks about the fact that it’s not usually a rosy, eat pray, love situation that you need when you feel broken. Usually you need to see someone else broken, a sort of “yeah, we see you, me too” moment. Her thoughts on the way we paint the wives of great men without really thinking about what it would be like to live their lives was fascinating. I just think the whole book is full of gems. I think she did a great of job of tilting the whole “traveling to find myself” thing (which seems to be exploding these days) and made it feel substantive again. And authentic. Less like some overprivileged, millennial just fucking off to nowhere in the name of “Adventure”.