Daily Archives: January 16, 2010
I Heart This Part Right Here…
I just finished watching Julie and Julia, and while it made me immediately want to pick up someone’s cookbook and battle my
way through it, and rekindle a passion for Paula Deen and butter, and start watching the Food Network again, and learn to cook beef bourguignon, and then blog about it, I probably won’t do the latter. It’s been done, and Julie Powell did a damn good job.
And I’m jealous. People took notice. She wrote a book. The book became a movie. A movie! Something Julie probably never dreamed of when she sat down and blogged about that first recipe.
But what the movie did teach me is that my life lacks direction. I need to find joy in something, one thing, and finish it. That’s my problem. I find myself pulled in so many directions and I just need to simplify. I work. I blog. I read. I cook. I eat. I watch movies. I sleep. I wake up and do it all over again.
I need one goal. One purpose, even if that purpose only takes a year to accomplish. It’s not like getting the groceries bought, or cooking one meal, or tackling the laundry. It needs to define me, even if just for a little while.
And I don’t care if anyone takes notice. The phone might not ring off the wall with agents and reporters, and that’s okay. I’ll take notice.
I just want to have the same passion as Julia Child had in cooking, the same passion that Julie Powell had in tackling all those recipes and blogging about them.
Any thoughts? What should I do? What should I live for, to blog about?
The Lovely Bones
The first book of 2010 that I started reading was Wish Her Safe At Home by Stephen Benatar. But after 100 pages I
quickly decided life is too short to read boring books. I threw it down and picked up Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones and I’m so glad I did. I finished it in one week, and just in time for the movie which is what I was hoping to do. I’ve owned a copy of the book for a while, long before I knew it was even going to be a movie. The trailers of the movie look great though and enticed me to choose to read this book instead. And as I said, I’m so glad I did.
You probably know by now that the book is about a 14 year old girl named Susie who is raped and killed and then narrates the book from heaven. She views her family, friends, and neighbors and explores the effects her death has on each of them. She even follows her killer and explores what type of person he is.
Now, I’m the first to enjoy a good ghost story of any kind, but I actually wouldn’t label this a ghost story at all. Still, there are passages in this book that I found to be absolutely haunting. The first of many was where Susie’s father uses a Monopoly game to help explain to his four year old son where Susie has gone. Sebold writes with such finesse and poetry, and yet totally respects and captures the voice of her 14 year old narrator perfectly. It’s quite innocent, and quite intense.
The reader is also treated to a different view of heaven. Susie’s heaven is made up of the earthly elements that made her happy, but perhaps she took them for granted or overlooked them like smells she liked, trees, and even gazebos. People and pets come and go, and all the while, Susie watches the lives of her friends and family go on without her. The reader also gets the feeling that there is another place just out of reach, which may be that cloudy white heaven where we all have wings, but Susie has to let go of the ones on Earth to reach it. And she’s not ready yet.
This is a book that will probably make you angry at times. It will also make you sad, but it’s the kind of sad you want to feel sometimes. It’s the kind of sad that makes you want to call someone you haven’t spoken to in a while and reconnect, and tell them you love them. It’s the kind of book you’ll want to read out loud from and make others around you listen. I did. This is a book that will make you speak out loud to the dead who’ve gone before you, and it will teach you that you should listen because they’ve been talking to you too.
What a great way to start the year! Yet another great book that I will remember, and be recommending, for a long time to come.
Tiger Shark Spotted off Australian Coast
Is it just me, or are these lesbians the same color as the water?
I love boobs.
