Conquering Fears

Sometimes, I can be quite picky about which types of books I read. As a mom, I tend to shy away from stories about the deaths of children or kidnappings or childhood illnesses. As a single mom, I stay away from books about things like breast cancer or spontaneous brain aneurysms...things that can strike at any moment and leave my kids orphans. So imagine my surprise when I read two different stories, back-to-back no less, that tackle several of those subjects. The first book, Before I Die by Jenny Downham, is the story of Tessa, a 16 year old girl dying of leukemia. She decides that before she goes, there are just some things that a girl's gotta do...like sex and drugs and criminal behavior. I lived Jenny's life and looming death right along with her throughout this book. It was eerie, how Downham was able to put herself (when she's obviously alive and kicking) into the character of someone who isn't going to make it..Now, I'm sure you're thinking that this sounds like a real downer of a book, and don't get me wrong...it's difficult to get through, and not something that all of us are going to want to experience, but the writing is just so impressive, that I kind of felt like, "If Tessa is going through this, at least I can read about it." The relationships that Tessa has with her parents, and her brother and her best friend, not to mention her new love are incredibly realistic. If you've ever experienced the loss of someone due to a lengthy illness such as cancer, you'll identify completely. I have to say, that the end of this book caused me to literally break down. I don't often cry when reading books, but I was a hot mess after finishing this one.



Since I hadn't suffered enough devastation with Before I Die, I then picked up The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan. This is a memoir about a young mother (!) who is diagnosed with breast cancer(!!). Oy. She comes from a very close family full of love and laughter and amazing childhood memories. She goes on to marry the perfect man and live an upper class existence on the West Coast. She finds the lump, begins the treatment, and is dealt the news that her beloved dad (who I want to adopt as my own father) has bladder cancer. If you haven't started running from this book yet, then stay put. I began the first chapter and thought, "Please, I don't want to like this book. I want to walk away and read some Junie B. Jones, or Ann Coulter for some gut-rumbling chuckles (at Junie's cuteness and Coulter's idiocy.) But I couldn't do it. This book goes between time frames, jumping from chapter to chapter between her childhood and adult life. By the end...you want to be a Corrigan. You want to hang out with your own family...even that strange uncle that smells like eggs. As the saying goes, I laughed, I cried, I checked for lumps in the middle of Chapter 6.



I can now say that after getting through these two books, I am headed over to the Juvenile Fiction section of my library for a good princess book. They were heavy reads, but I feel as if I've gotten past something and will now be able to be more open-minded with the titles I choose. If I've opened myself up to more book possibilities, what can be wrong with that?!?

Now entering the arena...

As a blog newbie, I am going to assume that the only person reading this is myself and the friends and/or family that I persuade to log in after nagging them to death. As an obsessive book lover, I am going to assume that eventually other book fiends out there in the land of cyberspace will find me eventually and have an interest in my thoughts on the pages I read. I am starting this blog as a place to discuss what I've read, what I want to read, what others have read and what I think of their thoughts...got that?!



So I will start with a brief intro...



I am, first and foremost, a mother to two of the most lovely and rambunctious boys ever to have graced this earth. They are 4 and 8 and keep me at once sane, and hovering dangerously close to the land of wack-oville. I am doing the child-rearing thing on my own, which is to say I am happily divorced. I work in the Children's Dept. of a public library, and I also...drum roll please, have a paper route! Wooo-hooo! I am in school for Elemen. Educ. with hopes and dreams and mounting debt of getting out with my MLS. Oh, and I wanna be a writer.



So, enough about me...let's talk books.



I will start at the very beginning...a very good place to start...

My favorite.



Have you ever read something, and immediately thought..."I love the person who put these words together." I don't mean, "I greatly admire their ability to convey the written word," I mean, "I could seriously love this person."

Ok, so, for me, that's Mr. Markus Zusak. Oy. The way this man has with words. He created a book which was narrated by Death...yes, Death (as in The Last Hurrah, and The Grim Reaper), threw in a lovely Nazi Germany setting, along with a foster girl with a love for literature and a German boy obsessed with Jesse Owens, and voila...masterpiece. I clearly remember my friend Kelly (who is as nutty about books as yours truly), handing me this book one day in the library and literally swooning over its contents. The girl may have had tears in her eyes for all the fuss she was putting into cajoling me into reading The Book Thief. So, as I always do, I took it home, and after putting the kiddies down, settled in to see what all the hoopla was about. 11 pages in I closed it and said "She must have been on some good hallucinagens because that is just too odd for me." I laid there for a minute, and thought about her pleading and lovestruck face. So, I picked it back up, and by page 25, I was hooked.

Now, if you're looking for fluff, or a mainstream bestseller, this is not the road you want to take. But if you are looking for a sentence on each page to blow you away with it's beauty...honest to goodness beauty...then look no further. I remember reading a line in this book where Zusak describes crying by saying something about a "gang of tears" welling in the characters eyes. "A gang of tears." Now that's some good writin'. The Book Thief will haunt you, I swear. Read it and then come tell me if the scene between Max and Leisel in the march will not stay with you until you're an old fart.

And if you love it...go find all of his stuff. You will not be disappointed. I've read it all and it's amazing. This guy writes about boxing and I'm hypnotized. One of my favorite things to say about Zusak is that he could literally write about asphalt and mashed potatoes and I'd be begging for more.

I hope I've either convinced you or annoyed you into looking into it...;)