Lighter Book Club Reads for an Unmasked Summer

My book club has challenged me to choose a funny, light-hearted read for our June meeting.

Let me preface this with: These ladies are all amazing, intelligent women, who do a lot for their families and their their community, as well as each other. 
We refer to our book club as "book club," because the book is way down the list of reasons to get together, but having a "book club" meeting sounds official, to ourselves, as busy women with hectic lives, as well as to our families, who are stymied half the time when we leave them.
So the choice of book is something most of them would rather not think about, and they are happy to leave that job to me, since I love nothing more than thinking about books.

I love and read most genres. But light and funny is not really my cup of tea. 

I do try to read one a year. 
I think I should read more light and funny, rather than being so serious all the time, and looking for meaning in everything. It does the soul good, I'm sure. 

So, here is the list I presented to my book club (which they subsequently asked me to narrow down to ONE 🤣

This is a funny read about an anxious woman in her early fifties, whose husband has just left her, and how she finds herself again (I think there is overseas travel in this one!).

    

A funny, witty Indian family drama by Balli Kaur Jaswal. 

Three sisters come together to fulfill their mother's dying wish.
   

I read I Was Told It Would Get Easier by Waxman, and liked it well enough, so I'm ready to give this novel a try. It seems to be about an introverted woman who finds out about a father she never knew existed and what she does with that information.

  This has been on my list for awhile. A psychotherapist and columnist gives a behind-the-scenes look into the life of a therapist and her patients looking for answers.

And, because I can't help myself, I suggested this not-necessarily -funny-but-not-depressing multi-generational novel by Connie Schultz (who is the wife of our fine senator, Sherrod Brown):                                                          

Some other light reads I could have chosen:

A woman with a perfect life begins to have recurring dreams about a man, not her husband.

An Indian-American college professor is accused by his colleagues of being a reverse racist.

 

From Canada to Australia on a whim, a homesick wife must find a way to adjust to her new country.

*All photos and links attributed to goodreads.com

Salomé and Sunday Laundry

I do laundry one day a week, usually Sunday. Laundry time is my time to watch the TV I want to watch. If the kids come in they know I'll put them to work, so they tend to stay away. If they're still not deterred, putting a silent film on usually clears the room. 

My youngest is curious though. She will hang around and watch for a few minutes here and there. When she came in this past Sunday and saw what I was watching, she stayed longer than usual. My heart swelled with hope that maybe she was interested in watching something more cultural and historical. 

https://martinturnbull.com/

"Why does she have lights in her hair?" my daughter asked. "This music is creepy. Is this supposed to be a scary movie?"

It's not supposed to be a scary movie, but she was on to something. Salomé (1923) is one of the the most bizarre movies I've ever seen, up there with Eraserhead (1977), Naked Lunch (1991), and Santa Sangre (1989). 

In its review, at the time, Photoplay Magazine said, “A hothouse orchid of decadent passion . . . You have your warning: this is bizarre stuff.” (Turnbull) 

The movie is a cinematic adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s play of the same name.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alla_Nazimova

The movie stars Alla Nazimova, a Russian immigrant to the U.S., who, for some time, was one of the most famous, highest-paid actresses in the film industry.  She went a bit off the rails with Salomé though. She produced the film, and likely had a hand in every part of its creation. 

If Salomé had been made today, she would have found an audience for it. She would have been lauded as an avant-garde filmmaker. 

Part of the problem in 1923 was that Nazimova was one of “the most notorious Hollywood lesbian actress[es] of all” (White 1999) and she ran with almost every prominent lesbian in Hollywood, as well as connecting with gay male cultural icons such as Oscar Wilde and Rudolph Valentino. Not only that, she had begun to "embody a gay sensibility" that crept into every aspect of her work, which proved to be beyond the taste of her mainstream audience (Horne 2013). 

The minimalist set design and costumes were created by Natacha Rambova (another Russian emigré, and Alla's "good friend"). The Art Nouveau style of artist Aubrey Beardsley was not what audiences expected either (especially of a biblical epic). 

IMBD.com

  The costumes were most bizarre, starting with     Nazimova's wig of lighted, bobbling baubles. 

There were enormous headdresses, some worn by child-actors who were treated as pets in the film, stiff dresses with elongated shoulder pads, bare chests with nipple stickers, and men in drag. 

I couldn't stop watching it. 

https://fromthebygone.wordpress.com/

It is mesmerizing and disturbing at the same time. The actors move like dancers. The music is eerie, a discordant arrangement of notes that accentuate the hedonistic, macabre scenes. The cinematography and lighting are deliberate and haunting. And then of course there are all those costumes, weird peripheral characters (including those little pet children), and the salacious gaze of Herod and some of his cronies who are clearly shocked at the events and trying not to get excited. 

The film flopped badly, and sadly, Nazimova could not recover from the losses. She made a couple more movies after that, but was unable to recover financially. She ended up leaving the movie industry and returning to the theater. 

https://wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-alla-nazimova/

I folded clothes very slowly that Sunday, transfixed by Alla Nazimova's movements and expressions, and everything about Salomé. 

My daughter, however, didn't last long. "OK, I'm out of here," she said as she hopped off the bed. "This is the weirdest one yet." 

Sources:

On Netflix, episode 11 of Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers:

Salomé. Prod.: Alla Nazimova, dir.: Charles Bryant, sc.: Alla Nazimova as Peter M. Winters, ard/cos. : Natacha Rambova (Nazimova Productions. US 1923)

Horne, Jennifer. "Alla Nazimova." In Jane Gaines, Radha Vatsal, and Monica Dall’Asta, eds. Women Film Pioneers Project. New York, NY: Columbia University Libraries, 2013.  <https://doi.org/10.7916/d8-ws0b-qz98>

Turnbull, Martin. "Salomé." Library of Congress,   https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/salome.pdf

White, Patricia. “Nazimova's Veils: Salome at the Intersection of Film Histories.” In  A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema. Eds. Jennifer Bean and Diane Negri. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002: 60-87.

Weeding Norman Rockwell

We weeded thousands of books from the middle school library where I work. Throughout the process teachers and staff glared at us. Some confronted us; How can you get rid of all these books? As a/n <insert subject> teacher, it would kill me to get rid of all these books.

As if I am a secret book burner who would love to have a book bonfire in the middle of the library if  allowed! 

The thought of weeding books is much worse than the act itself though. Once I got close to those books, and held each one in my hand, it was not so difficult to decide if it stayed or went. There were books with yellowing pages, disconnected covers, books that hadn't been checked out in a decade-or at all, ever. We had multiple copies of outdated books, nonfiction books on technology published in 2001, huge encyclopedias of American culture that had three pictures of Black people, showing only enslavement, not their contributions to art or entrepreneurism. Asians in those books were ignored entirely. We also had books that aren't interesting to a middle schooler of this day and age (or ever), like the fifteen books on gardening.  

Weeding books in a collection makes the books you keep more visible, and those books look better for it. Weeding also makes room for new books-yay!  

I did have quite a stack of nonfiction books that I found harder to get rid of: subjects of curiosity, books with beautiful pictures, or ones I felt were important for some reason or other. There was a psychedelic-covered biography of Frank L. Baum, a book called From Cakewalks to Concert Halls on the early history of jazz and popular music created by Black musicians, a tiny coffee table book of Norman Rockwell and his art.                          

  I picked up the book on Rockwell because I thought about how I'd taken him for granted as a great American artist and never paid much attention to his work. After reading about him, I can't help but like him. He suffered from the creatives angst, and probably depression. He was the type who always wanted to do right by others. He was a good person. He tried to make the world a better place through his art, he tried to bring attention to inequity and captured pivotal moments in American history. His artwork is stark reality tinged with nostalgia, even in the time of its creation. He painted scenes of everyday American life, capturing moments of frustration, pride, sadness, embarrassment, and elation.

Most of his paintings/illustrations were the covers of The Saturday Evening Post. He has many iconic illustrations; one could argue that all of his images are. His painting of Rosie the Riveter, is one of them. In Rockwell's painting she looks decidedly more masculine than she has been depicted in later years: 

image @https://learnodo-newtonic.com

I have many favorites now: 

"Girl at Mirror" seems to depict a young girl studying and comparing herself to Jane Russell, a sex symbol of the 40s and 50s. image @ https://learnodo-newtonic.com

"Shiner" was ahead of its time in depicting a girl as the proud combatant in a schoolyard scuffle. image @https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/

"Election Day" Dewey V. Truman image @https://totallyhistory.com

And of course, The Problem We All Live With that hangs in The White House:

We had about five books on Rockwell's art. We kept the two best in our collection and sent two to "the warehouse." The tiny book came home with me.

Do you have a favorite Norman Rockwell painting?

New Fiction to See You Into Spring

Just Out, and Most Talked About:

Goodreads says this is "A tense, page-turning psychological drama about the making and breaking of a family–and a woman whose experience of motherhood is nothing at all what she hoped for–and everything she feared."                                         

  This is a thriller that takes place in the English countryside in a village that has a past to protect...

This sounds like a fun, yet bittersweet novel in the vein of A Man Called Ove and Where You'd Go Bernadette?

The Latest in Historical Fiction:

An expedition of women trek through the Arctic to find a lost team of explorers in 1853--and then, there's a murder trial.                                                                                                      

A mail-order bride arrives in San Francisco to a mystery, a developing relationship and the 1906 earthquake that devastated the city.

It's Kristin Hannah. Set during the Great Depression. No need to know more.

Author of The Aviator's Wife and The Chaperone. Set in 1888 during the freak blizzard that struck the Great Plains.

Get a Little Cultured: 

Goodreads says: Part puzzle, part revenge tale, part ghost story, this kaleidoscopic novel set in Vietnam spins half a century of history and folklore into the story of a missing woman.

I haven't read this yet, but from what I've heard, it sounds like a cross between the movie It's a Beautiful Life and The Kite Runner.

   A new marriage, a crumbling mansion, and a dead aunty that can't let things go.

Currently Reading:

I've been so surprised by this book. I was prepared for this to be historical fiction chick lit fluff, but it is actually so rich and complex, with just the right grounding in the time period.

Author, Radha Vatsal 

On My Nightstand:

            

Watch for This:

Coming in April, a fast-paced survival story where three strangers are thrown together after a devastating earthquake hits L.A.  (sounds very like The Nature of Fragile Things (above)...

It would be interesting to read them back-to-back.)

Let me know if you read any of these. I'd love to know your thoughts! 

The Poisoner's Kitchen

I've been entering local and national writing contests lately. Most have hundreds of entrants, and little hope of winning. But that's okay, because winning isn't my main objective.

These contests have been a great exercise in writing outside my comfort zone. I am a slow writer and the contests have deadlines that are anywhere from a day to two weeks, to a couple months. So I am learning to write faster and without fretting over every word, punctuation, or idea.

Almost all of the contests provide a prompt or theme, which helps stretch my imagination, come up with ideas very quickly, and find new ways of thinking. 

"The Poisoner's Kitchen" arose from a contest where the prompt was given the same day of submission. 

The story had to start in a kitchen in the early morning. The character has to fake a skill where the results turn out much better than expected. 300-400 words.

I meditated upon the prompt while I did the dishes. I wrote a first draft in 2 hours, went over it in my head while I walked the dog and did random housework. I came up with an ending, edited as quickly as I could and sent it off before picking up kids.

It was so gratifying and had a lot of fun writing it. Here it is, in its thus-far, unedited form:

The Poisoner's Kitchen    

Hanging from the low-slung rafters were herbs, like in any kitchen. But here, there were also drying toads and purple-headed flowers.

The girl’s mistress was ailing in bed with something their concoctions had not yet cured. From her bed, she gave the girl instructions to only mix Her Majesty’s infertility tincture, nothing more.

So when the short, round, lady’s maid glided in, looking on her with an imperious gaze, Marguerite should not have taken the leather gloves.

“On a day as hot as it is, I can have them ready and dried just before Vespers,” she told the maid.

“No, I will return at half past None,” the porcine woman said. “And my mistress demands they not to take effect immediately. It must take slow.”

Marguerite wanted to correct the Florentine’s French, but she held her tongue and began at once to think of some other way to get one over on the Florentine lady’s maid upon her return.

Marguerite had never laced gloves before. She knew it was a tricky business, but she had no desire to be sent packing back to the Provencal countryside to care for her drunk uncle and his dirty, lice-ridden brood. Besides, she knew how pitiless and brutal the Italian could be-and how impatient.

As soon as the maid left, she used the small iron tongs to take the digitalis flakes from the waxed paper. Was she to crush and sprinkle it? Or make a liquid attar of it? She made an educated guess and did her best. She even rubbed the gloves with jasmine oil for a pleasing smell, careful all the time never to touch the gloves herself.

She hung them out to dry where the sun beat down.

At half past None she went out to check on the gloves. They still looked dark with dampness in spots. She reached out a hand and felt the glove was just dry enough.

The Serpent Queen’s maid returned to find the girl from the Provencal countryside frothing at the mouth, taking her last gasp.

“Ragazza folle,” she hissed.

Coming Home-Short Fiction

 COMING HOME:

December 2020 Writing Contest: Hallmark Christmas Romance entry
and a winner of the Westerville Arts Council 'Celebrate the Arts' writing contest

The house looked alien to her after thirty-eight years away.

The sparse, yellowing grass and stunted palm trees seemed outlandish compared to the cold, inorganic habitat she had gotten used to. The yucca plants looked healthy and still grew out of the pebbled beds along the walkway.

A Christmas wreath hung on the door. The smell of the pine assailed her senses, so unused was she to little more than the acid-sharp smell of metal and the chlorine-tinged scent of regulated air.

Like her, the house did not look like it had aged almost four decades.

Christmas lights twinkled in sequence around the windows, and while they filled her chest with warmth, they also amused her, whisking her right back to the Georgiana and the blinking lights that communicated with the crew. Of course, the effect of the festive-colored bulbs was markedly different from the glaring, red warning of the Vital Systems Alert indicator, or the multicolor blinking of the air pressure sensors.

She had tried to make the Georgiana a temporary home. She had taken a few mementos, cozy footie pajamas, and even some artwork done by her nieces. But she missed unexpected things like the feel of carpet beneath her feet, weather, and variations of color.

But it was Jiro she missed the most.

She never expected their separation to be so painful. They were used to long intervals apart. After all, the second year and a half of their relationship had been long distance. When they reunited, it was always as if no time at all had passed.

They had met at the University of Kyoto during her international fellowship program. He was marine biology, she was physics. Days in Kyoto parks, temples, and the university libraries. Nights sharing kaseiki ryori, and reading to each other on the pillow-laden futon in his apartment.

She lifted her arm to knock at the door, but she changed her mind and grabbed the door handle—another strange sensation, to open a door manually. Her legs weakened at the emotions roiling inside her, and she reached out for the wall. It wasn't only the return to normal gravity that made her unsteady on her feet.

She remembered their first kiss. She had thought it would never come. He was so shy, such a gentleman, not like the men she had dated back home in the U.S. They were at a sushi bar, nestled in a booth side by side. He reached for the wasabi. It may have been her who leaned in to make his reach a kiss. That first kiss, and the way he nuzzled her cheek afterward, sustained her through every absence thereafter.

The length of the deep space survey mission meant six years of cryosleep each way. She told him she would understand if he couldn’t wait for her. But he had. She had watched him age through the video messages he sent for each week of her sleep. She relished those images and his one-sided conversations during the many years of the mission’s blackout communication. When she woke up the second time, another six years later, his salt and pepper hair had made him look that much more distinguished, the crease above his left eyebrow had deepened to be that much more endearing. They remained who they were in each other’s eyes.

He had stayed in this house waiting for her despite the drying landscape around him, their friends moving to the ever-dwindling greener lands, and the places with more abundant water.

She walked the hallway, passing the antique Chinoiserie mirror, the Edo-period wall panel they had chosen together before leaving Japan. She paused at a framed photo of her and Jiro, taken just before she left. Their brindle mutt, Nova, sat between them. On the console table was a flowerless vase, some unopened mail, and a photo of Jiro and a new dog, Atlas. A dog she had never met. Further down the hall hung another photo; Atlas graying around the muzzle, Jiro with lines between his brows and crisscrossing the hands that cupped the dog’s face.

She could see the flickering light of the fire from the den, hear its crackle and pop. She imagined she felt its warmth already kissing her skin.

She turned into the room, and there, sitting on the ratty brocade loveseat, was an old man. There was no denying it. His skin was sallow and sagged, but his dimples were just the same, as was the crinkle above his left eyebrow. He stared back at her with the same sense of wonder she was sure she exhibited.

“Mallory?” Jiro whispered as she turned into the room.

“Yes. It’s me.”

And before he could rise, she raced, on still-unsteady legs, to throw herself beside him and into his open arms.

This house was a vessel, as sure as the Georgiana had been. It was in his arms that was home.

The Requisite End-of-Year Post

 What is there to say about this year that hasn’t already been said?

What can I write that could possibly convey enough to encapsulate this strange, brutal year?

There’s been a lot of anxiety, fear, and disappointment.

For some, there has been loss, sadness, and struggle.

It’s been a hard time to be a parent, weighing every decision and saying no, a lot. 

The election was an ugly time for me. I was judgemental, afraid, and demoralized. I swung back and forth from thinking I was on the right side of things, to wondering if I was one of the crazy ones.

I don’t see 2021 being much better than 2020. I don’t think that, just because the calendar page turns, things are going to be different. At least for the first six months.

I think it will be a year of hope, and tentative steps toward normalcy. 

There is still much to learn from this event, and I hope changes come about because of it.

(Now, I'm going to make a big, honking chocolate cake and eat it in the middle of the day!)

There were some positives too.

Time. More time to reflect (and worry), and to write. There’s been more time spent with family, and enjoying nature. I've spent time with friends in the rain, and in the freezing cold just to be together.

Celebrations. Birthdays, holidays, and milestones celebrated in memorable ways.

                   Gigi:

She’s given us such joy, and taught us patience, and the art of making people feel loved and special. 

Also:

Democracy won

Carbon emissions went down

Racial injustice protests

LBGTQ inclusion

The 1st female vice president!

Trends I tried, and even liked: a hot chocolate bomb, TikTok dances, and wearing yoga pants in public.

Favorite Books:                                                                                                                                    

The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton:

magical realism meets gothic mystery.

The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue: superb writing

Circe by Madeline Miller: all around great read

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell: disturbing story of student/teacher relationship that blurs the lines of what is a victim. 

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson: how prison systems are intrinsically flawed businesses with no interest in reforming people

TV Shows:

Dark (Netflix): a mind-bending puzzle

The Queen's Gambit (Netflix): who knew chess could be so compelling?

The Spy (Netflix):

Modern Love (Amazon Prime): not the sentimental love stories you expect

What were some of your positives from 2020?
Or, if you need to rant, complain, or whine I'm here for that too!

My 3-layer chocolate cake with chocolate nibs sprinkled on top.