Nonfiction Five Challenge - Finished!

I finished Joy's Nonfiction Five Challenge earlier this month and am quite pleased with the results. While I didn't read all 14 that were on my original list, I did read the specified five. Here are the results:

A Three Dog Life by Abigail Thomas (4/5)

I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron (4.5/5)

A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson (3.5/5)

Loud and Clear by Anna Quindlen (4/5)

Consuming Passions: A Food-Obsessed Life by Michael Lee West (2/5)

I thoroughly enjoyed A Three Dog Life, I Feel Bad About My Neck, and Loud and Clear. These are all keepers and will most likely wind up on my Top Ten List for 2007. I liked A Walk in the Woods and am glad I read it, but it wasn't nearly as good as I anticipated. Consuming Passions was my only disappointment, although with all the tempting recipes I plan to test, it may turn out to be one I can recommend.

Thanks, Joy, for hosting this fun challenge. I was able to knock a couple of older titles off my TBR stack, as well as pick up some newer books I'd been eyeing.

Consuming Passions

Consuming Passions: A Food-Obsessed Life by Michael Lee West
Nonfiction - Cooking Memoir
Finished on 9/11/07
Rating: 2/5 (Below Average)
Nonfiction Challenge #5




Not all Sundays were spent in Mississippi, but our leisure time was still dominated by food. Sometimes we drove to Biloxi and searched for flounder in the cloudy Gulf. Other times my daddy took me to the French Quarter, where he bought a sack of oysters and a dozen cream doughnuts. At least once a month, we drove across another bridge to Westwego, where we were entertained by Alice and Emile, two middle-aged Texans who had a summerhouse in the backyard--built for the sole purpose of entertaining. The food would be lined up on a long picnic table--enchiladas, tamales, barbecue, and huge vats of boiled crabs, shrimp, and crawfish.

Since my mama's relatives lived in the piney woods, they were dependent on the New Generation to keep them on the cutting edge of fashion and food. They were especially fond of Jell-O salads, and casseroles made with cream of mushroom soup. Mama was always trying to introduce these country cooks to the cuisine of New Orleans. One afternoon she tried to explain how to make a roux. "Oh, stop putting on airs," said Aunt Dell. "Stop talking foreign."

Book Description

"Every Sunday, the whole family gathered at Mama Hughes's house in Amite County, Mississippi. They were ferocious eaters and talkers, devouring rumors and innuendo with gusto. Food was their common language, and everyone understood the dialects." -- Aunt Tempe, reminiscing about family dinners

From Michael Lee West, author of the acclaimed American Pie, She Flew the Coop, and Crazy Ladies, comes a delightfully quirky memoir of an adventurous food-obsessed life, laced with delicious secret recipes passed from generation to generation. Wonderfully presented and thoroughly entertaining, this warm and witty work unites West's evocative voice and humor with the uniquely American form of kitchen tales in the tradition of Laurie Colwin.

West lends her distinctive humor and often hilarious insights to stories about her trials and tribulations as a Southern woman who became an "accidental gourmet." In this irresistible memoir mothers swing from chandeliers, elderly aunts brew love potions, a South American nymphomaniac stirs up trouble at a Louisiana barbecue joint, Margaret Mitchell's bed is discovered during a routine antique hunt, a cabbage-eating ghost haunts relatives, mother and daughter peek under fig leaves on statues, and bees attack--all in pursuit of good food.

By watching a multitude of relatives cook, squabble, and carry on tradition, Michael Lee West went from a noncooking student to a full-on gourmet of food and words. Using her own experience and the witticisms of relatives, or clever inspirations overheard in parking lots on the way to the mayor's funeral, West fills these pages with insights such as:

"Potato salad is our friend. It will never let you down. It's a shame we have to eat it, but that's life" and "Live and learn. Die and get food. That's the Southern way."

Often bawdy and always entertaining, West is wonderfully outrageous, charming, and delightful.

"Anybody can cook. But it takes a special person to feed the souls of her guests."-- Miss Johnnie, sitting in a rocking chair, musing about hospitality, 1979

I picked this book up at a Fort Worth Public Library sale several years ago and finally got inspired to read it, thanks to Joy's Nonfiction Five Challenge. While it has close to a dozen Post-It Notes marking various recipes I'd like to try, I wasn't that impressed with West's foodie memoir. Perhaps a Southerner would find it entertaining, but for me it was a chore to get through and I have no intentions of reading any of her works of fiction. Just not my cuppa.

But, oh, the recipes! They do look tasty! I'm anxious to try Mimi's Buttermilk Biscuits, Fried Green Tomatoes, Arny Jean's Red Beans and Rice, Mama's Shrimp Alfredo, Cousin Lula's Sweet Potato Soufflé, Fall Spice Cake, Brabham Family Chocolate Sheet Cake, Better Than Sex Cake, and Georgia Gingersnaps (which, according to the author, are just how I like them - crisp at the edges and moist in the center). Since fall is just around the corner (can y'all believe Sunday marks the first day of autumn?!), maybe I'll start with the spice cake and gingersnaps. Boy, won't that make the house smell cozy!

In addition to garnering a few new recipes to test, I also learned a couple of things from the author. I've always been curious about the name Chess Pie. According to West, "old Southern cooks used to keep their pies in a chest, or safe. The doors of the chest were made of perforated tin to allow air circulation." Well, of course! I happen to own two pie safes (one is an antique with punched copper panels and the other is a reproduction with tin), but never realized a pie would be named in association with these, particularly since I have always thought of them as pie safes, not pie chests. I think the first time I heard about Chess Pie, I envisioned a strange looking pie that might resemble a chess board! Go figure.

And that brings me to another misconception that I've held my entire life. I'm almost embarrassed to admit this, it's so silly. I have always thought "iced tea" was called "ice tea." I know it's a minor mistake, but I was so surprised to see it in print (where have I been?!) that I had to set my book aside, go downstairs, dig through the cupboard, and read the label on the Lipton ICED tea box. Well, whaddaya know! ;)

Consuming Passions starts off very much like a food memoir, but slowly transforms into what I would consider a full-blown cookbook. Not only does the author include close to a hundred recipes, but she offers all sorts of cooking advice. For instance, she devotes an entire chapter to the importance (and care) of a well-seasoned cast iron skillet.

As I love to bake cakes from scratch, this particular passage struck a chord with me:

A scratch cake is an emotional creation, thought to be superior to anything in a box. It is steeped in domestic rituals: measuring, sifting, creaming, beating, stirring. The procedure seems daunting; but as you study the recipe, adding up the long list of ingredients, you find yourself reading between the lines. Who dreamed up this recipe? Who served it and why? Was it a cake to impress a beau, to distract a husband, or to donate to a church bazaar?

If I really wanted to be fair, I'd wait until I've tried the selected recipes before rating the book. With three or four winners, I could conceivably raise the low rating. Unfortunately, Southern cooking isn't exactly low-cal, and after several weeks of dining out while on vacation this summer (and most recently, the consumption of numerous bowls of clam chowder while in Oregon), I can't quite bring myself to try all the recipes I marked in a short span of time. So, the rating will just have to stand. And on that note, it's Raffle Time!

As soon as I've copied down all the recipes I plan to sample, I would like to pass this book on to another reader. In order to enter the drawing, you'll need to pop over to my food blog (Kiss the Cook) and leave a comment on my most recent post. In order to give my "end-of-the-month" visitors a fair chance, the contest will conclude on October 6th. Remember, it's a hardcover library edition, but it's in excellent condition. And, I hope the winner will also be inspired to try some of the recipes, sharing the successful ones on his or her blog.

Happy reading AND cooking!

Loud and Clear

Loud and Clear by Anna Quindlen
Nonfiction - Essays
Finished on 8/27/07
Rating: 4/5 (Very Good)
Nonfiction Challenge #4



In her first retrospective essay collection since Thinking Out Loud (1993), best-selling author and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Quindlen continues to unscramble gnarly social issues with splendid clarity and pithiness, wit and compassion and uncommon common sense.... So true is Quindlen's moral compass, and so lucid, vital, and forward-looking are her insights, that her opinion pieces not only stand the test of time but also provide an invaluable gage of where we've been and where we're going....Quindlen is a tonic for mind and soul.
-Booklist

Quindlen . . . couldn't have picked a more apt title . . . Whether readers agree with Quindlen's opinions on everything from youth culture to gun control, these razor-sharp musings will open avenues of debate and discussion long after the book is closed. Quindlen is at the top of her game . . .
-Publishers Weekly

Fiction has always been my first choice in books. However, in recent years I've been reading quite a bit of nonfiction, specifically memoirs and collections of essays. I'm especially fond of those in which cooking, gardening, family and home are the primary material source. Anna Quindlen is both novelist and columnist (formerly for the New York Times and currently for Newsweek) and I've read most of her published works, so I was thrilled to receive this book from a dear friend last Christmas. It's the perfect sort of book to pick up and read a few essays here and there. (Or, what another friend refers to as reading in "sips and gulps.")

Quindlen divides the book into five categories: Heart (16), Mind (19), Body (12), Voice (4) and Soul (18) for a total of 69 essays. Perhaps the most moving of all, though, is the Preface in which she speaks about September 11, 2001.

I knew that something uniquely terrible was taking place. I also had reason to believe that everyone I cared for was safe: My husband across the Hudson at his office. The children at their schools. My friend in the hospital across town. It was difficult for us to talk to one another, of course, with the New York City telephone lines out, the tunnels and bridges shut down, and cyberspace hopelessly jammed. One of the mementos I have kept from that morning are three identical e-mails from our son at college, who could not get through on the date of his birthday or for three days afterward. Each one is dated September 11, 2001, and says in capital letters I REALLY NEED TO HEAR YOUR VOICE.

and

Most nights, housebreaking the puppy we had picked up the day after our son left for school, I would run into a fireman who was heading home after working the wreckage, his eyes burning bright in a grimy face, his hands nicked and bandaged. He would pet our dog, rub her ears and muzzle, finally crouch to hold her squirmy little body close, and by the time he rose for the rest of the walk home there would be bright tear tracks in the dirt on his face. I tried not to cry until he was gone.

There are so many wonderful essays in this collective work; I've dog-eared dozens of pages, the majority of which can be found in the Soul section. Essays such as "Life After Death" which deals with grief:

Grief remains one of the few things that has the power to silence us. It is a whisper in the world and a clamor within. More than sex, more than faith, even more than its usher death, grief is unspoken, publicly ignored except for those moments at the funeral that are over too quickly, or the conversations among the cognoscenti, those of us who recognize in one another a kindred chasm deep in the center of who we are.

Maybe we do not speak of it because death will mark all of us, sooner or later. Or maybe it is unspoken because grief is only the first part of it. After a time it becomes something less sharp but larger, too, a more enduring thing called loss.

Perhaps that is why this is the least explored passage: because it has no end. The world loves closure, loves a thing that can, as they say, be gotten through. This is why it comes as a great surprise to find that loss is forever, that two decades after the event there are those occasions when something in you cries out at the continuous presence of an absence, "An awful leisure," Emily Dickinson once called what the living have after death.

Then there's "Anniversary" in which she writes about the loss of a mother, also quite powerful and thought-provoking.

In "Weren't We All So Young Then?" Quindlen returns to the topic of 9/11:

People are changed forever by grief, and changed people change the way the world is, the kind of place it becomes. Getting on with life is not the same as getting over a loss.

I especially liked the following quote from "Leg Waxing and Life Everlasting":

The youth produced by scalpel and laser is of a particularly arid sort, as much like the bloom of the real thing as the decor of those funeral homes is like a real live living room. But if the abs are tight, the eyes unlined, the hands unspotted, the hairline intact, if fifty-five is the new forty, then can't the inevitable be, if not avoided, at least indefinitely deferred? The answer is, of course, no. As Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was said to have told a friend when she became ill, "Why in the world did I do all those push-ups?"

"Watching the World Go By" (an essay about reality tv) provides humor with lines such as:

People named Kimmi and Colby and Amber (who chooses the participants, the writers for One Life to Live?) balancing on rafts, living on goat brains, turning brown in the outback? This is a stunt, not survival.

And then, of course, the column about Harry Potter and readership in America ("Aha! Caught You Reading"):

The next time someone talks about the narrow interests of kids today, how they attend only to the raucous cry of the computer calling across a stretch of cable to its mate the Internet, remember this week. Remember how the boys and girls of America went gaga over a book, a real old-fashioned black-letters-on-white-paper book, how they waited in line for it at the mall, cradled it to their bony little chests and carried it into their bedrooms, slipped into its imaginary world with big eyes and open minds as children have done almost since Gutenberg put the pedal to the metal of the printing press.

There's so much more to this particular essay, but I hate to spoil it for those of you who wish to read the book yourself. Most of the essays are between three to four pages in length, which does pose a problem when trying to share favorite passages. Taken out of context, they have a tendency to lose their significance and power. So, buy the book. Read an essay or two every few days. Don't do what I did and read it like a novel. These need to be savored slowly. And don't forget your highlighter!

Note: Archival copies of Anna Quindlen's Newsweek column, "The Last Word," can be found here. If you enjoy her writing and have read through all 77 essays, you can set up a Google Alert for future columns.

A Walk in the Woods

A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
Nonfiction - Travel Essay
Finished on 7/29/07
Rating: 3.5/5 (Good)
Joy's Nonfiction Challenge #3
Armchair Traveler Reading Challenge #1



It is such a strange contrast. When you're on the AT, the forest is your universe, infinite and entire. It is all you experience day after day. Eventually it is about all you can imagine. You are aware, of course, that somewhere over the horizon there are mighty cities, busy factories, crowded freeways, but here in this part of the country, where woods drape the landscape for as far as the eye can see, the forest rules. Even the little towns like Franklin and Hiawassee and even Gatlinburg are just way stations scattered helpfully through the great cosmos of the woods.

In many ways, living aboard a boat for 13 days was not all that different than Bryson's description of the AT. Cruising the San Juan and Canadian Gulf Islands, I easily lost all track of time and place. Sure, we visited small communities for fuel, provisions, and sightseeing, but each and every town had a laidback feel that makes one imagine that even the locals are on a perpetual holiday. Returning to the land of "gas stations, Wal-Marts, Kmarts, Dunkin Donuts, Blockbuster Videos, a ceaseless unfolding pageant of commercial hideousness" is quite a shock to the relaxed state of mind.

Bill Bryson has written close to a dozen books, ranging from travel essays to linguistics/etymology to science/history and most recently, his memoir of growing up in Iowa during the fifties. Several years ago, I listened to I'm A Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away and thought it was quite funny. We've had A Walk in the Woods in our collection for many years and thanks to Joy's Nonfiction Challenge and Lesley's Armchair Traveler Challenge, I finally had the motivation I needed to read it.

I have fond childhood memories of camping with my family. Dad and my brothers (I assume this, as I never really paid attention!) would pitch the tent and Mom would get the "kitchen" organized. Meals were magically prepared and clean dishes appeared whenever needed. The four of us kids roamed around the camp grounds making new friends, playing in the dirt or down by the lake. Camping was fun. It was carefree. Just the way it should be for kids.

Of course as an adult, my husband and I wanted to share the experience of the great outdoors with our girls. Rod had been a Boy Scout and knew all about building fires, pitching tents, following the North star and looking for moss on the side of a tree trunk -- wait a minute! This is the guy who gets lost in his own neighborhood!

Anyhow, we decided to take the girls camping in the Sequoia National Park. We camped near Hume Lake with our two tents, fishing gear, Coleman stove, flashlights, cooler, beach chairs (we had to sit on something!), baseball & mitts, and fannypacks. Yep, we were ready. However, Dad and Mom made it all look so easy back in the 60s. What I failed to learn was that camping is A LOT OF WORK! Bring out the ice chest, fix a meal, clean the dishes in a little tub of soapy water, put the food away so the bears don't smell it, and repeat two more times every day! And then there's the lack of an automatic coffee maker. Oh, and that minor detail about just how uncomfortable it is to sleep in a sleeping bag directly on the COLD, HARD, ROCKY ground.

Let's just say that I have a deep appreciation for Bill Bryson's attempt to hike the entire Appalachian Trail. Who can possibly blame him for taking an extended break from his endeavor? He managed to walk hundreds of miles through terrible weather conditions, poor trail markings, poorly detailed maps, with minimal provisions (thanks to his travel companion who felt compelled to toss away the unnecessary items that were deemed too heavy to carry).

While I did not find this to be "choke-on-your-coffee funny" as described by the Washington Post Book World, I did find a sprinkling of humorous passages. I also enjoyed the tidbits of historical information that Bryson incorporates so well in his narrative.

My favorite one-liner:

I was perched on the edge of the sleeping platform lost in a little reverie...absorbed with trying to get a small volume of water to boil--quite happy really--when one of the middle-aged guys drifted over and introduced himself as Bob. I knew with a sinking heart that we were going to talk equipment. I could just see it coming. I hate talking equipment.

"So what made you buy a Gregory pack?" he said.

"Well, I thought it would be easier than carrying everything in my arms."

Overall, not a bad read. I'm not sure it was necessarily a good thing to read about bears while hiking through the woods on a nearly deserted island in the Pacific Northwest, but at least I was prepared if I ran into one. Thank goodness I didn't see any. I can never remember if you're supposed to play dead if you encounter a brown bear and try to run and climb the nearest tree if it's a black bear or the other way around! And even if I did, I couldn't remember which bears are native to which part of the country. It's no wonder I only lasted one year in Bluebirds!

I Feel Bad About My Neck

I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron
Nonfiction - Humor
Finished on 6/29/07
Rating: 4.5/5 Terrific!
Nonfiction Challenge #2

I've just surfaced from spending several days in a state of rapture -- with a book. I loved this book. I loved every second of it. I was transported into its world. I was reminded of all sorts of things in my own life. I was in anguish over the fate of its characters. I felt alive, and engaged, and positively brilliant, bursting with ideas, brimming with memories of other books I've loved. I composed a dozen imaginary letters to the author, letters I'll never write, much less send. I wrote letters of praise. I wrote letters relating entirely inappropriate personal information about my own experiences with the author's subject matter. I even wrote a letter of recrimination when one of the characters died and I was grief-stricken. But mostly I wrote letters of gratitude: the state of rapture I experience when I read a wonderful book is one of the main reasons I read, but it doesn't happen every time or even every other time, and when it does happen, I'm truly beside myself.

Sound familiar? It's pretty much how I felt as I read this hilarous book by Nora Ephron. I absolutely loved it! And my reaction was so completely unexpected. When I first picked the book from my stack for Joy's Nonfiction challenge, I had a vague recollection of a negative review posted on one of my online book groups, but I thought, what the heck, it might not be too bad. I should've known better than to worry. I loved Ephron's movies: When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, and You've Got Mail. And I read Heartburn three years ago and enjoyed it very much, too, although something about it put me in a foul mood for several days. Perhaps it was too similar to my first marriage and subsequent divorce.

I Feel Bad About My Neck hit all the marks of a great read. It's laugh-out-loud funny, although my husband failed to see the humor, which I couldn't resist sharing with him as I came upon yet another humorous passage. But then again, he doesn't have to deal with unwanted hair -- he's perfectly happy with his moustache -- doesn't have to worry about the frustrations of carrying a purse, and other female-related issues. This is the sort of book that I thought about when I wasn't reading, tempting me to call in sick until I'd read the final page (which, no, I did not do!). As I read, I thought of several women who would enjoy it as much as I did and had I read it earlier last year, would've bought it for several people on my Christmas list. Ah! And the true sign of a great read is all the dog-eared pages, full of quotable passages. Here is just a small sample:

I can't read a word on the menu. I can't read a word in the weekly television listings. I can't read a word in the cookbook. I can't do the puzzle. I can't read a word in anything at all unless it's written in extremely large type, the larger the better. The other day, on the computer, I pulled up something I wrote three years ago, and it was written in type so small I can't imagine how I wrote the thing in the first place. I used to write in twelve-point type; now I am up to sixteen and thinking about going to eighteen or even twenty. I'm extremely sad about all this. Mostly I'm sad about just plain reading. When I pass a bookshelf, I like to pick out a book from it and thumb through it. When I see a newspaper on the couch, I like to sit down with it. When the mail arrives, I like to rip it open. Reading is one of the main things I do. Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I've accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss. But my ability to pick something up and read it -- which has gone unchecked all my life up until now -- is now entirely dependent on the whereabouts of my reading glasses. I look around. Why aren't they in this room? I bought six pair of them last week on sale and sprinkled them throughout the house, yet none of them is visible. Where are they?

I hate that I need reading glasses. I hate that I can't read a word on the map, in the telephone book, on the menu, in the book, or anywhere else without them. And the pill bottle! I forgot to mention the pill bottle. I can't read a word on the pill bottle. Does it say take two every four hours or take four every two hours? Does it say "Good until 12/8/07" or "Expired. Period. End of Story"? I have no idea what it says, and this is serious. I could die from not being able to read the print on the pill bottle. In fact, the print on the pill bottle is so small I doubt if anyone can read it. I'm not sure I could read it even when I didn't need reading glasses. Although who can remember?

and

It seemed to me that if I lived in the building for twenty-four years, the fee would amortize out to only a thousand dollars a year, a very small surcharge -- only $2.74 a day, which is less than a cup of cappuccino at Starbucks. Not that there was a Starbucks back then. And not that I was planning to live in the Apthorp for twenty-four years. I was planning to live there forever. Till death did us part. So it would probably amortize out to even less. That's how I figured it. (I should point out that I don't normally use the word "amortize" unless I'm trying to prove that something I can't really afford is not just a bargain but practically free. This usually involves dividing the cost of the item I can't afford by the number of years I'm planning to use it, and if that doesn't work, by the number of days or hours or minutes, until I get to a number that is less than the cost of a cup of cappuccino.)

OK, so maybe these are funnier when you read them in context with the rest of the book. I thought they were funny, but now as I type them they seem to have lost that feeling. You know, that feeling when you nod your head in agreement as you choke on your glass of wine, trying hard not to chortle and spray that delicious Pinot all over the pages and patio furniture? Maybe that's it. Maybe this book requires a glass of wine in order for one to fully appreciate its humor.

This is the sort of book I tend to categorize as an airplane read. It's divided into fairly short chapters (really, a collection of essays) and holds the reader's attention, yet doesn't require too much concentration. Ideal for long layovers or sitting on the tarmac (or helping the pilot keep the plane aloft through sheer force of will). Nothing like a few belly laughs to ease the stress of traveling. Highly recommend!

A Three Dog Life

A Three Dog Life by Abigail Thomas
Memoir
Finished on 5/7/07
Rating: 4/5 (Very good)
Nonfiction Book Challenge #1





Publisher's Blurb:

When Abigail Thomas’s husband, Rich, was hit by a car, his brain shattered. Subject to rages, terrors, and hallucinations, he must live the rest of his life in an institution. He has no memory of what he did the hour, the day, the year before. This tragedy is the ground on which Abigail had to build a new life. How she built that life is a story of great courage and great change, of moving to a small country town, of a new family composed of three dogs, knitting, and friendship, of facing down guilt and discovering gratitude. It is also about her relationship with Rich, a man who lives in the eternal present, and the eerie poetry of his often uncanny perceptions. This wise, plainspoken, beautiful book enacts the truth Abigail discovered in the five years since the accident: You might not find meaning in disaster, but you might, with effort, make something useful of it.

An excerpt:

This is the one thing that stays the same: my husband got hurt. Everything else changes. A grandson needs me and then he doesn’t. My children are close then one drifts away. I smoke and don’t smoke; I knit ponchos, then hats, shawls, hats again, stop knitting, start up again. The clock ticks, the seasons shift, the night sky rearranges itself, but my husband remains constant, his injuries are permanent. He grounds me. Rich is where I shine. I can count on myself with him.

I live in a cozy house with pretty furniture. Time passes here. There is a fireplace and two acres and the dogs run around and dig big holes and I don’t care. I have a 27-inch TV and lots of movies. The telephone rings often. Rich is lodged in a single moment and it never tips into the next. Last week I lay on his bed in the nursing home and watched him. I was out of his field of vision and I think he forgot I was there. He stood still, then he picked up a newspaper from a neat pile of newspapers, held it a moment, and carefully put it back. His arms dropped to his sides. He looked as if he was waiting for the next thing but there is no next thing.

and another:

Writing is the way I ground myself, what keeps me sane. Writing is the way I try and make sense of my life, try to find meaning in accident, reasons why what happens happens-even though I know that why is a distraction, and meaning you have to cobble together yourself. Sometimes just holding a pen in my hand and writing milk butter eggs sugar calms me. Truth is what I’m ultimately after, truth or clarity. I think that’s what we’re all after, truth, although I’d never have said such a thing when I was young. And I write non-fiction because you can’t get away with anything when it’s just you and the page. What would be the point? Who would you be kidding? Why bother writing at all? Once in a while you come too close to an uncomfortable truth, and your writing goes flat, and your instinct might be to change the subject. But this is the most interesting of moments. There is so much to be found out. You can either stare at the page and realize hot dog, this is a safe to be cracked, or you can crawl under the covers and take a nice nap.


I've always been fond of memoirs, but I've felt especially drawn to this area of nonfiction writing more during the past two years than ever before. As the author states, "Truth is what I'm ultimately after, truth or clarity." I previously read Joan Didion's memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, in which she shares the intimate details of the tragic loss of her husband. However, Abigail Thomas' stark honesty resonated much more strongly with me than Didion's, in spite of the fact that Rich Thomas' TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) didn't result in death. Thomas' writing reflects that of one coming to terms with a grief of sorts, yet unlike Didion's, her narrative is much more provacative and intensely emotional. Perhaps because she's living the life of a wife that isn't.

The book's epigraph explains the meaning behind the title:

Australian Aborigines slept with their dogs for warmth on cold nights, the coldest being a 'three dog night.' - Wikipedia

Some favorite passages:

I seem to be leaving in the road behind me all sorts of unnecessary baggage, stuff to heavy to carry. Old fears are evaporating, the claustrophobia that crippled me for years is gone, vanished. I used to climb the thirteen flights to our apartment because I was terrified of being alone in the elevator. What if it got stuck? What if I never got out? Then there I was one Sunday morning in the hospital, Rich on the eighth floor, the elevator empty. What had for years terrified me now seemed ridiculously easy. I haven't got the time for this, I thought, and got right in. When the doors closed I kept thinking, Go ahead! Try it! What more can you possibility do to me?

I know this is something my husband and I have both experienced since the death of our daughter. We've been through the absolute worst. All the minor worries of day-to-day living are pointless.

and

One day I look out the hospital window high above Central Park, and I feel as if there's a tightrope connecting Rich's hospital room to our apartment, and all I do is walk back and forth on it, the city far below. I can almost see it shivering like a high-tension wire above the trees. This is when I learn that I have to take care of myself, even if my leaving makes him angry, or worse, sad. I need to eat and sleep. I need to do something mindless, go to a movie, fritter away an afternoon. And I realize something even more startling: I can't make everything all right. It's his body that is hurt, not mine. I can't fix it, I can't make it never have happened.

and

Time has gotten skewed, as tangled as fish line, what means what amymore? How could it be two years since the accident? I calculate it in months, weeks, but the numbers don't feel real or important. One hundred and four weeks. Twenty-four months. Whole handfuls of time have slipped through my fingers. Seasons rush by before I have grasped "winter," "spring." Somehow I have gotten to be sixty, in no time Rich will be seventy. We would have had parties to mark the place, but the last birthday slid by unnoticed, the lat anniversary. Twenty-four months since the accident. If it were a child, it would be talking, walking, climbing into everything. "Time flaps on its mast," wrote Virginia Woolf in Mrs. Dalloway. For us time hangs off its mast. Sometimes I'm not even sure about the mast. Something stopped ticking April 24, 2000. Our years together ended, our future together changed. In one moment of startling clarity he told me, "My future has been dismantled."

I found myself nodding my head as I read the above passage. In many ways, it feels like we lost a huge chunk of time after Rachel's death. I've found myself in the middle of a conversation, talking about an event that took place three years ago, yet thinking it was only a couple of years past. It's as if we were living underwater, anethesitized from the real world, for almost an entire year. Time passed, but we stayed locked in our own world of grief. Of course, more time has since passed and we've returned to the real world, making plans for a new motorcycle, a kayak, road trips and living life to its fullest.

I first heard about A Three Dog Life from Nan over at Letters from a Hill Farm. Her lovely review piqued my interest and I immediately ordered a copy. Not only will I re-read this gem of a book, but I plan to buy copies of Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life and An Actual Life.

Nonfiction Five Challenge

After much deliberation, I have finally selected my stack of books for Joy's Nonfiction Challenge. This was no easy task! I wanted to pick from our already existing stacks and, as my husband is a voracious reader of nonfiction, I literally have hundreds of nonfiction books to choose from.

I've put together a list of thirteen possibilities (it is Thursday, after all) and will not only attempt to read the required five in five months, but have hopes to continue with my personal goal of at least one nonfiction read every month for the entire year. I'm off to a good start. I've already read four in the first three months.

So, here's my list:

Consuming Passions: A Food-Obsessed Life by Michael Lee West

On Writing by Stephen King

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

Loud and Clear by Anna Quindlen

Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss

Long Time Gone by David Crosby and Carl Gottlieb

Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island by Greil Marcus

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir by Bill Bryson

Capote: A Biography by Gerald Clarke

Stuffed: Adventures of a Restaurant Family by Patricia Volk

Counting My Chickens...:And Other Home Thoughts by The Duchess of Devonshire

A Three Dog Life by Abigail Thomas

I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron

Ooops. That's 14. Oh, well. I may need an alternate or two! That Capote bio is pretty big and I may wind up saving it for next year's Chunkster Challenge.