Life: It Goes On - December 7

It turned out, this week, that all I really needed to put me into the mood for the holidays was a quart of eggnog and some Handel's Messiah. The house is now decorated (although, as usual, it took longer than it should have) and I even watched "It's A Wonderful Life" last night. Now to start some Christmas baking!

This Week I'm:

Listening To: I've been catching up on podcasts this week, listening to some really interesting stuff. On Radio Lab I listened to an episode about autism that was incredibly thought provoking. I haven't had a chance to pick up new books yet (and won't again this week) so it will more of the same for the coming week.

Watching: The lady Huskers in the NCAA women's volleyball tournament this weekend. Tonight I've discovered all of the Christmas shows on Netflix so I'm watching "White Christmas" while the Big Guy is preoccupied. I foresee a Christmas movie being watched on a regular basis in the coming weeks!

Reading: I finally finished The Secret History by Donna Tartt and my review will post Tuesday. Let's just say, it won't be glowing. Following on the heels of Jane Austen's First Love, I've picked up Charlie Lovett's First Impressions: A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen.

Making: Fire-roasted tomato soup, a hamburger casserole I think my mom invented to make cooking while camping easier, potato soup, and sourdough grilled cheese sandwiches. Nothing fancy for us this week.

Planning: Now that the Christmas decorations are up, it's time to get back to my "office" and get it finished up. There are some things that still need to be brought in and then it needs to be better organized.

Grateful for: Jeans days on Fridays - my company just announced that we'll be having them all of the time from now on. This makes me ridiculously happy.

You know it's cold when you need
so many extra blankets!

Enjoying: Afternoon with Miss H yesterday. She made BG, Mini-him, and me lunch yesterday then we worked to rearrange her room. When she moved in, the guys had an idea for the room arrangement that just did not work. We got furniture moved, her Christmas tree up, and curtains hung. It's very homey now and we had a good time talking laughing and talking after the guys headed home.

Inspired by: Home blogs loaded with holiday ideas.

Looking forward to: Celebrating Mini-me's 23rd birthday next weekend! What are you looking forward to this week?

Windows on the World: 50 Writers, 50 Views - Matteo Pericoli

Windows on the World: 50 Writers, 50 Views - Matteo Pericoli
Published November 2014 by Penguin Group
Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary:
All of us, at some point in our daily lives, have found ourselves looking out the window. We pause in our work, tune out of a conversation, and turn toward the outside. Our eyes simply gaze, without seeing, at a landscape whose familiarity becomes the customary ground for distraction: the usual rooftops, the familiar trees, a distant crane. The way of life for most of us in the twenty-first century means that we spend most of our time indoors, in an urban environment, and our awareness of the outside world comes via, and thanks to, a framed glass hole in the wall.

In Windows on the World: Fifty Writers, Fifty Views, architect and artist Matteo Pericoli brilliantly explores this concept alongside fifty of our most beloved writers from across the globe. By pairing drawings of window views with texts that reveal—either physically or metaphorically—what the drawings cannot, Windows on the World offers a perceptual journey through the world as seen through the windows of prominent writers: Orhan Pamuk in Istanbul, Daniel Kehlmann in Berlin, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in Lagos, John Jeremiah Sullivan in Wilmington, North Carolina, Nadine Gordimer in Johannesburg, Xi Chuan in Beijing. Taken together, the views—geography and perspective, location and voice—resonate with and play off each other.

Working from a series of meticulous photographs and other notes from authors’ homes and offices, Pericoli creates a pen-and-ink illustration of each window and the view it frames. As we delve into what each writer’s view may or may not share with the others’, as we look at the map and explore unfamiliar views of cities from around the world, a new kind of map begins to take shape.

My Thoughts:
I love to get inside the heads of authors - their work process, their inspiration; Pericoli has, in Windows on the World, given me another way to do that. From Jakarta to Islamabad to St. Petersburg to Aberdeen, writers from around the world, who regularly give us new windows on the world, share the ways in which their own windows inspire them, put them into a mind to work, and even offer respite from work.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, of Lago, Nigeria, says of the view from her window:

"An ordinary view, with houses close together, cars crammed in corners, each compound with its own gate, little kiosks dotting the street. But it is a view choked with stories, because it is full of people. I watch them and I imagine their lives and invent their dreams."

Taiye Selasi writes of her window in Rome:

"My watch is the clock atop the Basilica of Our Lady in Trastevere, adding its chimes to the cheerful din of chatter, car horns, laughter."

Marina Endicott turns away from her window in Edmonton while she's writing but "When my eyes blear and I cannot focus any longer, the window is a way for my mind to blink, to clear my vision."

Matteo Pericoli's particular combination of experience, architecture and art, make for striking drawings to go along with the writer's thoughts and descriptions, putting the reader squarely in the writer's world.

This is the perfect book to keep on your end table or nightstand, to read a few pages at a time. Not only did it take me inside the minds of 50 writers, it took me around the world to get a real feeling for what life is like in each of these places. A real window on the world.

The List - Things I Must Do At Christmas

In an effort to try to get myself into the spirit of the Christmas season and to remind myself what's really important to me about it, I started thinking about what things I must do for the holidays. Because, let's face it, it's all gotten a bit out of hand these days. There is so much expected of us; such a push to spend, spend, spend; and it's all so in-your-face. And if those of us who celebrate Christmas get tired of seeing it and hearing it every time we turn around, imagine what its like for those who don't.

In no particular order, here are the things I must do for Christmas:

1. Find time to get the five of us together to frost cookies and dip pretzel sticks. It's absolutely one of my favorite things to do.

2. Decorate my mantel and put out my creche. Honestly? I'm getting a little tired of the hassle of rearranging the furniture to put up the tree. I'm sure I will but it's not something I feel I need to do for me.

3. Get Christmas cards sent. I haven't left myself enough time to get them sent the past couple of years. I want people to know we're thinking of them.

4. Find a way to balance finding gifts people will really appreciate and stressing about buying them.

5. Drink some eggnog and watch A Christmas Carol.

6. Enjoy one of the free events the city offers throughout the season.

In a perfect world, there would be time for hand-crafted gifts, perfectly wrapped presents, hosting a holiday party, caroling as we deliver goodies to the neighbors. But this is not a perfect world; it's my world and I'm going to do the best I can to make the next month as stress free as possible.

What things must you do in December to make your holidays work for you?

December: A Month of Favorites - Five Faves By Theme

The lovely ladies of Estella’s Revenge, Girlxoxo, and Traveling with T are hosting December: A Month of Favorites because, as any blogger knows, it can be tough to blog in December what with the reduced amount of time to blog and read. They've kindly provided bloggers with ideas to help make at least the blogging part of December easier. I'm passed on the introduction because I would have had to keep stats for the year and you may have noticed that I suck at keeping stats of my reading. Yesterday GirlXOXO asked us to list five books that are faves for any theme. So, of course, I'm posting yesterday's prompt today. Because that's how I live these days.

Five Books That Surprised Me

These aren't five books that necessarily surprised me because there were surprising moments in them; rather they are books that surprised me because of how much I unexpectedly liked them. 

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion - I knew what it was about, I knew it was an award winner. Still I was surprised by Didion's candor and by how profoundly this book impacted my thinking about grief.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami - Yeah, yeah, I know he's supposed to be a genius and beloved by many but I also knew that his stuff was out there. I was, honestly, peer pressured into reading this. I wanted to be able to say that I'd at least tried Murakami. I'm certain I didn't entirely understand it but that didn't stop me for enjoying it. It made me think...and that's a good thing.

Safe From The Sea by Peter Geye - Unbridled Books offered me this one and I have so much faith in them that I accepted it despite it being something I would not ordinarily have picked up. It's a story about a father and a son and their relationship and how was I going to relate to that? So, so well written and so moving. I cried. Twice. And I do not usually cry when reading.

In The Sanctuary of Outcasts by Neil White - a memoir of an egotist convicted of a crime and sentenced to federal prison in Carville, Louisiana, a prison that is also home to the last people in the continental U.S. disfigured by leprosy. The story of these people was fascinating and White's own story of growth was well-worth the reading. 

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell - Sci-fi? Space travel? Me? Again, I was peer pressured into reading this one after so many people raved about it. It is far more about humanity, faith, and man's place in the universe. It grabbed me up and never let me go.

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
Published October 2008 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
Narrated by Phil Gigante
Source: this audiobook purchased at my local library book sale

Publisher's Summary:
At the heart of this vibrant saga is a vast ship, the Ibis. Its destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean; its purpose, to fight China’s vicious nineteenth-century Opium Wars. As for the crew, they are a motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts.

In a time of colonial upheaval, fate has thrown together a diverse cast of Indians and Westerners, from a bankrupt raja to a widowed tribeswoman, from a mulatto American freedman to a freespirited French orphan. As their old family ties are washed away, they, like their historical counterparts, come to view themselves as jahaj-bhais, or ship-brothers. An unlikely dynasty is born, which will span continents, races, and generations.

The vast sweep of this historical adventure spans the lush poppy fields of the Ganges, the rolling high seas, the exotic backstreets of Canton. But it is the panorama of characters, whose diaspora encapsulates the vexed colonial history of the East itself, that makes Sea of Poppies so breathtakingly alive—a masterpiece from one of the world’s finest novelists.

My Thoughts:
Do you ever read those publisher's summaries and wonder if the person who wrote them actually read the book? This summary says that the purpose of the Ibis is to fight China's Opium Wars. That may well be the purpose of the Ibis in the upcoming books that make up the trilogy Sea of Poppies is a part of but it was only just discussed in this book. The Ibis sailed into India to be refitted - in it's past it had been a slave ship; the intention now was to make it a ship to carry opium. First, though, it would carry a cargo of indentured servants to the Mauritius Islands. The very fact that the ship has these multiple identities allows Ghosh to delve into a myriad of subjects that helped keep the novel interesting despite sometimes long passages about the workings of ships and the very distracting voices employed by Phil Gigante.

Sea of Poppies is, undoubtedly, one of those novels which just should not be read by only one narrator. Gigante does a fine job of narrative parts of the book and the Englishmen's voices. But he struggles with the Indian characters' voices (the majority sounded like caricatures and one even sounded Asian) and there are just so many characters that it's difficult for one person to give them each individual voices. On the other hand, Gigante does an admirable job of pronouncing Indian names, places and phrases making the audio version of the book preferable what my brain might have done to them had I read this book rather than listened to it.

Ghosh has created a novel full of interesting, multi-dimensional non-Caucasian characters, with developed histories and motives. His English characters were more one-dimensional, interested only in money, appearances, and keeping up the British Empire. I know this kind of story's been told before from the British point of view, where the "white man's" motivations all appear noble and, perhaps, that's why Ghosh elected only to explore the darker side of their motives. No doubt about it, there were darker sides and I thoroughly enjoyed getting schooled on this part of history - the fact that it was the British that brought opium to China and that opium represented the only way that Britain could offset their massive trade deficit with China.

It's a grand adventure that really ramps up as the book gets going and by moving back and forth between characters Ghosh really pulls his readers along on the journey. With it's exploration of caste and color, blend of humor and drama, and historical setting, Ghosh has crafted a novel that feels much shorter than it is.

I enjoyed Sea of Poppies very much...right up to the end. Which doesn't feel like an ending at all. I wasn't aware when I started this book that it was part of a trilogy. Had I been, I'm sure I would have passed on it; I rarely start series, knowing how bad I am at finishing them. Other reviewers have said this book works well as a stand alone novel. I felt more like I had reached the season-ending cliffhanger of a television series.