here's go you, rachel robinson. judy blume (207)

i picked up here's to you, rachel robinson, on blumesday.  my friend chandra said she was going to reread it in honor of blumesday.  i didn't recall the book so when i stumbled upon it at the library, i decided to check it out.

i don't remember reading here's to you, rachel robinson, but i did remember reading its predecessor, just as long as we're together.  as i was reading and came across the vietnamese friend and jeremy dragon, i thought it sounded familiar so googled and discovered here's to you is a sequel.  i also learned thanks to wikipedia that the title is a reference to "mrs. robinson" by simon and garfunkle, so now every time i read the title, i think of that song.

here's to you, rachel robinson is the story of rachel robinson, a smart, straight-a student, with a troublemaker for a brother.  the story opens with the rachel stressing out about her brother, charles, returning home.  he was sent away for school but was kicked out.  rachel was super stressed out about his return, which made me think that maybe he secretly sexually abused her.  i know that sounds outrageous but she was seriously freaking about his charles' return.  thankfully, charles' abuse of the family did not involve sexual abuse, instead he bullied his sisters by constantly making fun of them and was extremely disrespectful to their parents.  he also smoked pot, drank (i think) and may have been sexually active.  rachel did have an asshole for a brother but she seemed to be a little too sensitive about it.  i would be like sucks do be him screwing up his life versus worrying about him.  i know i am so loving, but he obviously did not want to help himself so why bother?

since it is a blume book, it does discussed the difficulties of growing up.  rachel, was super smart and involved and school, and as result felt overwhelm by her activities.  though i hate to seem like too much of a school geek, but i was super involved in school but never felt overwhelmed by all of my activities.  i was able to do everything and still get A's.  so i didn't really see what her issue was.  she should have taken that course for the credit, she would have managed, she was a genius according to her brother.

rachel's no new friends issue of just as long as we're together reared its ugly head in this story.  she was still jealous of stephanie and allison's closeness.  it's tough feeling like you are losing your best friend,  an issue all girls have and drake too.  

also rachel ended up kissing jeremy dragon which was super exciting but seemed a little random to me.  but i mean maybe rachel is a hottie.  sorry but lets be honest, rarely does the hot guy go for the school geek.

i also have to add that rachel thinking her night out with paul was a date was sad.  she is smart girl, shouldn't she know better?  and boo to blume sad for

having rachel's sleazy cousin ended up with him.  i loved that rachel dropped the baby bomb on them. lol

oh and in the end, charles started to grow up and got his act together.

all in all, an enjoyable read.  not the best of blume, but still a good story.  and hopefully girls take away the lesson about assertiveness, alot of rachel's problems stemmed from the fact that she didn't speak up for herself.

the pain and the great one. judy blume (204)

i picked up the pain and the great one because of blumesday and ended up reading it with my little friends, avery and audrina.  as a kid, i used to love this story because it totally reminded me of my little sister and i. jill was the pain one and i, of course, the great one.  as a kid, i enjoyed appreciated the lesson about siblings and jealousy.   it's a cute little story with an important lesson about sibling rivalry, that we really have nothing to be jealous of, our parents love us all equally.  i especially love how they both want to do things without their sibling but realize that they reason they have fun is because their siblings is there with them.

i will add that after i read this with the girls, i had them write a letter to their older brother about why he is so great.  we also discussed how we should be nice to our siblings and not be jealous of them.

(sorry this post is short, but nothing too short or deep to discuss.)

blubber. judy blume. (203)

june 17th is blumesday!  i wrote about it last year, it's a play on bloomsday which honors james joyce's ulysses.  blumesday is set on the birthday of judy blume.  i decided to celebrate it this year, with a quick rereading of blubber.

i remember reading blubber as a kid, but other than remembering it was about a fat kid and that i learned that the fat of a whale is called blubber from it, i didn't recall much else.

rereading it as an adult, i am surprised that it is not required reading for schools especially with the recent fight against bullying.  blubber is told from the perspective of a fifth-grader, jill.  jill is part of the "in crowd" though kids normally don't get that label until jr. high.  she is follows, what thanks to mean girls we know term as the queen bee, wendy and bullies a fat girl named linda.  linda had the misfortune to give a report on whales, in which she had to explain what blubber is. the kids, being cruel like they truly can be, start calling her blubber.  wendy is a real regina george, i mean the bullying shocked me.  not only did they force linda to kiss a boy on the cheek, but they also made her pull up her skirt and show her underwear!  in today's world, such actions would have resulted in a suspension and a sexual harassment lawsuit.  jill is there being a bully, though linda has never done anything mean to her.  jill did demonstrate some regret when she discussed with her mom how to deal with kids making fun of you.  her mom tells her to laugh it off, but also warns her that one day she could be the one that is teased.

then one day, the bullying goes too far.  the students lock linda in a closet.  (before i go on i must share that i was surprised how their lunch hour was ran.  rather then have lunch in cafeteria, the kids were left in the classrooms with an adult patrolling the hallways and sneaking her head in.  did schools really run like this?  this is outrageous!  again if this happened today, a lawsuit would definitely occur due to lack of supervision). they decided to put linda on trial for telling on jill and tracy, however, jill realized she was sick of wendy bossing her around, she stood up to the queen bee.  though jill was winning in the self-esteem department, she totally lost socially.

the next day, wendy and lisa become bff and begin to bully jill.  they call her baby, and pull the same things they did on linda (minus the skirt lifting and kissing.)  jill then pulled a cady, and makes wendy's number two, carolina jealous of wendy and linda's new found friendship.  this little tiff then results in all of the girls making new best friends and they all move on.  it appears as though nothing is truly resolved, but it's just like the mean girls' ending, each girl friends a new group of friends and life goes on, which is exactly how it is in life.  

having been a fifth-grader once in my life and a female and having queen bee tendencies, i can say that this is how life is in elementary school.  i mean i was never a bully, though i did get my 6th grade class to stop talking to my best friend because she once didn't invite me over to play at her house. (there are more details that somewhat justify my actions).  but we females, unfortunately, hate each other guts one day and then are bffs the next.  i would like to say at some point women grow out of it, but i have seen thirty/fortysomethings fight like the girls in this story.  sad, i know.

as i mentioned before it is a great book for kids to read.  blume shared at the end of this edition, how the story was based on an incident that occurred in her daughter's class.  she wrote it in hopes that kids will not keep their bullying a secret.  this is a book every kid should read, though i warn there is foul language in it.  jill calls her teacher a bitch (something i thought was mature for a fifth grader).  jill also used another cuss word though she explained that her parents let her cuss.  

i also have to give kudos to blume for having great maudie, such a health food nut.  i noticed blume being up on the health food treat in the fudge books, and her being from portland this all makes sense, but really these books are like thirtysomeodd years old.  but yay great maudie for being into wheat mush and juices!

back to the book, if you read it as a kid, give it a reread.  and if you have kids and need a talking point for bullying, use this book!

i know why the caged bird sings. maya angelou. (202)

with maya angelou's recent death, i sadly realized, i had never read any of her works.  i did have a copy of i know why the caged bird sings in high school, however, i never read it.  in fact, i'm pretty sure that it is packed away somewhere, i knew it was an important book which makes my deal in reading it even disappointing.  i truly regret not reading it though, i think a better age to have read it would have been 18, considering the episodes of her life that she shared.  but i must add that it is a truly amazing and interesting book, and if you haven't read it, you should.

i have to add that this is the first book that my friend julianna, who is in new york, and i have read together as part of our "long distance book club".  she also admitted to have never read it before either.  our plan was to skype about it last sunday but since skype wasn't working on my computer, we have yet to "meet".  but we will!  i promise.

i was really shocked by what occurred in i know why the caged bird sings and consequently angelou's life since it is an autobiography.  in my head, she was this proper elderly black woman with a great sense of humor (as seen in the chris rock documentary good hair).  due to this image, i imaged her with this very proper (sorry for the lack of an additional adjective, but it is what fits best) upbringing, with access to a education that was uncommon due to the era she was raised in and the color of her skin.  however, this was not the case.  and though shocking angelou's life was to me, it did make sense, the wisdom she had could not have been gained with a silver spoon in her mouth, but rather by the suffering that one has the unfortunate luck of having to encounter in life.

angelou did have a proper upbringing, due to her grandmother, momma, and her devotion to the church.  momma was so devote, in fact that she beat angelou for her use of the slang phrase "by the way" which turned out to also a phrase used to refer to christ.  i was very confused as i read this episode, not knowing that "by the way" was taking the lord's name in vain.  momma was strict but it was just this type of structure that helped make angelou the great woman that she was.  momma was, in my opinion, her saving grace since both her parents were unable to be proper parents (i will get to this later) to angelou and her older brother, bailey.  angelou and bailey were raised by their grandmother and their disabled uncle and given their dedication to the church and hard work, provided a stable home for the two of them.  this is not to say that angelou and bailey did not get into trouble, they did but it was the trouble typical of kids (though bailey's sexcapedes ,when they were older, behind the store are not included here. lol)

angelou's living with momma proved to be the best situation for her and her brother.  when given to the care of her parents, angelou experienced traumatizing incidents that strengthen her will as a person but would have destroyed a weaker person.   i, being an example of such weaker person, as i read what angelou encountered, i thought to myself, i would have never been able to survive.

the first traumatizing experience that occurred when angelou and bailey went to live with their mother.  i was surprised to discovered that she was raped by her mother's boyfriend at the time.  angelou's recounting of the episode was completely honest, sharing how she even longed for the comfort that being held by him provided her.  being a child, she had no idea the intention of his hugging, simply wanting to be held by a father figure.  it makes her raping even more heartbreaking because she was simply looking for love, not knowing how she was going to be taken advantage of.   luckily and thankfully, her family discovered what had occurred and the mother's boyfriend was put on trial, though he only served a year and a couple of months.  outrageous considering that he raped her!  but he ended dying, by angelou's uncles, i am assuming, as how the episode is shared.  though she did suffer a bout of depression and withdrew from the world, and stopped talking.  she ultimately overcame it, thanks to mrs. flowers, a family friend, who shared books with her and helped her find her voice again.  

the other traumatizing experience that occurred was when angelou went to live with her father.  his girlfriend at the time was very young, and disgustingly jealous of angelou.  they ended up physically fighting and as a result, angelou ran away and lived with a bunch of homeless teens in a junk yard.  i was impressed by angelou's ability to survive on her own.  i mean there was no way that i could have ran away from home and taken care of myself. i mean she was part of a little community but still.  

the last thing that surprised me was that i had no idea that angelou was a teen mother.  as angelou shared, she became determined to lose her virginity.  since she did not have a boyfriend, she decided to ask her neighbor to have sex with her.  he consented, they had sex, and she ended up pregnant!  she had the child, a son, and i know why the caged bird sings is dedicated to him.

i always knew maya angelou was an amazing woman, but she truly was!  to endure all that she did and to grow and become a better person from it as a opposed to become a victim, demonstrated what a strong heart she had.  

the stranger. albert camus. (199)

the stranger has been on my to-read list forever now.  i had a third grade teacher recommend it to me once and people are always praising it.  but what persuaded me was a book i purchased for "california bookstore day" which took place may 3.  (i will have to do a post on it because my purchases were adorable.) i purchased depressed, repressed, obsessed: 3-panel book reviews by lisa brown.  after reading the review for the stranger, i decided to read it.

this is an excellent review.

and now for my review, i am not sure to make of it.  i at first read camus as a nihilist since menursault didn't care about anything.  but then i read on wikipedia that camus was like anti-nihilism, but this work was suppose to promote his philosophy of absurd, in which the wikipedia page described as "the conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any." since i got this analysis from wikipedia, i will discuss my initial thoughts after i had finish reading and then my thoughts with this knowledge.

to start, i wasn't sure how to read menursault, i thought maybe he had aspergers because his social and communication skills were poor.  he was unable to articulate how he felt or what he meant, which the reader sees via his conversations and his testimony during the trial.  he had good intentions he was just unable to manifest them in his speech and actions.  for example, he did love marie, but it was as though she was asking him the wrong questions, he was answering her questions sincerely but he was too literal.  he also seemed to lack social graces as demonstrated in his behavior at maman's funeral which was later used against him at trial.

i also do not know how he got involved in the mess that he did with raymond but he did.  but i guess that is the demonstration of the absurd.  things happen and we don't know how or why but there is no need to look for deeper meaning but just take them as the way life turned out.

as horrible and indifferent, menursault sounded throughout the work, he was right.  nothing really matters, well more like everything do not matter.  i get it.  i was disappointed at first because i didn't have this profound "wow" moment like i thought i was (based on others' love of this work), but my lack of one could because my view of life has absurd tendencies.  every time i stress out about something especially regrets, i have to remind myself that in the grand spectrum of things, it doesn't matter because one day i will die and will cease to exist.  its sound horrible and makes me sound depressed but i think it's just a real outlook on life.  especially since i am an insignificant nobody in the grand spectrum of life.  i mean i have meaning to those around me but after my grandchildren die off, no one will really know me, so the decisions that i make day to day don't really matter.  i mean why do i even have this blog.  why do i even read?  i enjoy it so that should be reason enough.  but i think what camus is trying to address is this need to give significance to actions for this an idea of afterlife.  i don't believe in an afterlife, and i admired menursault for refusing to see the chaplain.  i mean he was going to die, god wouldn't be able to save him now.  and really should god be accepting last minute conversions like that?  i feel like god should be more strict about who he forgives and allowed into heaven especially since these conversion come from fear of death versus remorse of actions, but that is a whole other story.

back to the work.  so yes, i do believe in philosophy of absurd, i do have a tendency to be the opposite and also look for signs from the universe, but i recognize that it is absurd.  we shouldn't put some much value and meaning into things that do not have them but there needs to be a balance, you need to find something that makes you happy and it's okay to give that meaning and value, just not everything.  i don't know if this makes sense, but i guess i shouldn't worry because it doesn't really matter if this blog as value or not, since "existance is meaningless."

innocent eréndira and other stories. gabriel garcía márquez.

as i have mentioned before in this blog,  gabriel garcía márquez's one hundred years of solitude is one of my all-time favorite books.  when he passed away on may 17, i was sadden, and then next day on a visit to strand bookstore (i was in nyc) i purchased innocent eréndira and other stories in honor of him. it was in a book tote that i purchased and so kind of forgot about it, but i came across it and decided to finally read it.

i have mixed feelings about this collection of short stories.  the first three stories, i absolutely adored, but the rest of the stories bored me a bit.  his writing was not poor in the later, i did not find the topics interesting or compelling.

so lets start with the good.  the first three stories, "innocent eréndira and her heartless grandmother", "the sea of lost time" and "death constant beyond love" were written in 1972, 1961, and 1970 respectively.  they were written around one hundred years and contained that mythical, magical realism that caused me to fall in love with garcía márquez's work.  growing up, i went through a period in which i loved greek mythology, and this is soft spot for myths is why i  love garcía márquez's work.  one hundred years  and these stories remind me of myths, they are filled magical seas and lands, individuals with special talents and gifts, and the crossing between the dreamworld and reality.  i quickly become lost in these stories, caught up in their magic. 

the title story,  innocent eréndira and her heartless grandmother is the story of eréndira, a young girl who was a slave to her grandmother and as the title states, she was heartless.  poor eréndira, worked all day and night taking care of fat grandmother, and one evening, her wind of misfortune, caused their mansion to burn down.  since eréndira caused the fire, she had to pay her grandmother back.  i hate to be such a prude but i was shocked by how eréndira earned her money.  her grandmother turned her into  a whore, she sold her body! i know i was so shocked to read that!  eréndira did fall in love with a magical young man, and he saved her on his second attempt.  but they do not end up together, which i found disappointing but i think in order to escape her misfortune she had to escape everything.

"the sea of lost time", i enjoyed as well, specifically the actual sea, which held a village and the dead, including the most beautiful woman in the world, old jacob's dead wife.  the sex in this story shocked me too, there was a prostitute that slept with 100 at $5 a piece.  but i did enjoy tobias and his wife sex life being described as doing it as earthworms and rabbits.  lol.   i liked "death constant beyond love" for it's ending, though again my inner prude was shocked that a father gave up his daughter like that.  enjoyable tales though my inner prude blushed as i read.

after those three stories, i began to lose interest in the collection.  his stories from the 40's and 50's were not for me.  i didn't enjoy the topic of death.  i understand, as a child, i was always frightened of death because i imagined that i would be conscious of the world around me.  this fear would keep me up at night.  it was though garcía márquez's stories from this time was his confrontation of this fear.  each story is told from a spirit/ghost/energy's perspective that has died.  they were well-written, but the subject matter didn't interest me.  "eva is inside her cat" was just bizarre, why didn't she just return to the cat, reincarnation is better than nothing.  though i must admit that they were not all bad, i did enjoy "eyes of a blue dog", the story of lovers that meet in their dreams but can not remember the next day so they can meet in real life.  i also liked "someone has been disarranging these roses", this spirit was fine with his death and simply wanted to put roses on his grave.  all the other stories were good because they were written by garcía márquez but they did not remind me why i love his work.

check out this collection of stories, and i won't judge you if you only read the first three.