USA! USA! USA!

I was going to try to keep the hockey to a minimum when I re-started the blog, but I can't resist.

The US men's hockey team just beat Canada!  I'm not sure I'd call it a "miracle" (or even a "Millercle" as twitterers are doing in honor of the US goalie), but that was a truly amazing game.  It was like 60 minutes of overtime.  I was possibly too invested. 

The Olympic hockey tournament just got even more interesting.

Netherland by Joseph O'Neill

I didn't notice until after I started reading it, but my most recent read has a very famous and powerful fan.  The book had a lot of stickers on it, and I was so distracted by the square one touting it as "Buy 2, Get the 3rd FREE" that I missed the red circular one right over the title.

That's a Presidential sticker of approval!

It's a bit of an odd choice for an American president, really, as there are precious few Americans in it.  The narrator Hans, a Dutch financial analyst and his wife, an English attorney (or should I say barrister?) move to New York from London.  Their marriage falls apart, with Rachel taking their son back to England after 9/11,  purportedly due to the danger but really because of the growing space between them.  Hans finds solace in the city, cricket, and a cricket umpire/entrepreneur named Chuck Ramkissoon--the only American in the book, having earned his citizenship after immigrating from Trinidad. 

We learn early in the book that Hans moves back to London after several years in NY, and that Chuck has been murdered.  Oddly, the book mostly ignores this grisly fact; it's clear that Chuck is involved in shady dealings, but the book is not a whodunit or an exploration of how things went wrong for an ambitious man.  It's primarily about the dislocation people feel--dislocation between home and residence, between morality and expedience, and between love and disgust. 


I didn't enjoy the book quite as much as Mr. Obama apparently did.  It was interesting, but it doesn't feel like a book that will stick with me.  It certainly tells a story about an unlikely friendship and hints at the complexity of America and Americaness--but to what end?  It's a book that asks for rumination, but I couldn't connect with the things it was asking me to ponder.  I've never been outside the country, let alone lived as an expatriate.  It may be a book that I read the first time and don't quite connect with, then read again at a different point in my life and feel it's speaking directly to me.   


Bonus knowledge: The book led me to do a little research about something that had long confused me--do Dutch people come from Holland or the Netherlands?  Turns out that people are usually wrong when they say Holland---it's akin to referring to the United States as California or New York.  The country is properly called the Netherlands, and Holland is but a large and commercially important part of the country where most of the big cities are.  It started out as an honest mistake (most international traders did work with sailors who were Hollanders, and thus referred to the country of origin as Holland) but it's stuck over centuries.

Love and Books

I started strong with the revitalized blog, but this week conspired to be a bit busy.

My dad and youngest two sisters came in town Thursday night, so we had to get the house in visitor-friendly shape---then entertain our guests once they arrived.  Meanwhile, Dallas received an astronomical 12+ inches of snow. Then the Olympics started. My reading list has suffered as a result of all this activity.

Since I'm only about halfway through my next book (Netherland), I will provide a consolation prize in honor of Valentine's Day: some recommendations of books on love.

"It's better to have loved and lost:" On Love by Alain de Botton.  This is love that doesn't end well, but it's an experience the narrator wouldn't have given up.  (500) Days of Summer if it took place in London with less hipstery people. 

A woman's love for her country: The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell.  A book about loving something that also drives you crazy---like America.  Laugh out loud funny with sobering truths about the necessary evils of politicians and the media buried inside.  Not recommended for die-hard conservatives.  Bonus trivia: the author, a one-time contributor for This American Life,  is also the voice of Violet in the Disney movie The Incredibles.   

Love of life and the world: Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf.  "After that, how unbelievable death was!--that it must end; and no one in the whole world would know she had loved it all: how, every instant..." This a book for anyone who has ever had that feeling that the world is so beautiful it hurts a little.  For those who think they wouldn't like Virginia Woolf, if you liked the first 1/3 of Atonement (a book that deserves a post of its own someday), you will like Mrs. Dalloway.

Love, stereotypically: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.  It's a cliche, but a deserving one.  

If inquiring minds want to know, my Valentine gave me season 2 of Pushing Daisies today---a wonderfully adorable show about an unlikely romance.  I'll have to squeeze some episodes in when I'm not watching bobsledding or downhill skiing over the next two weeks.

When We Were Orphans

I finished reading Kazuo Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans last night.  It was a disappointment.

About 1/3 of the way through, my friend Hilary, who had recommended I read some Ishiguro, noted that it was her least favorite of his books.  She probably had told me that before I bought it at Half Price Books, but it was too late by the time she told me the second time.

Part of the problem may be that I don't know enough about Shanghai in the 1920s-1930s, the opium trade, or the clashes between the Japanese and Chinese.  The rest of the problem is that I find Christopher Banks unbelievable.  The main character is allegedly a "renowned London detective," yet he seems lacking in self-awareness and intuition, particularly as the book builds to a climax.  He is the Michael Scott of detectives---socially awkward without fully realizing it, arrogant if well-meaning, and selfishly insistent on his own childish way. 

This is established early in the book, as he reflects on an upcoming event to be attended by the rich and important personages of the day: "I was aware, of course, that this particular evening would be on a different level from anything I had ever attended at university; that I might well, moreover, encounter points of custom as yet unfamiliar with me.  But I felt sure I would, with my usual vigilance, negotiate any such difficulties, and in general acquit myself well."  (page 12, Vintage paperback edition)  Yet, when he struggles socially during the evening, he can't accept that the fault is more than marginally his own, and decides he has "every right to despise the people around [him]...they were for the most part greedy and self-seeking, lacking any idealism or sense of public duty." (page 14)

On one hand, it's a beautifully written book and Ishiguro does a fine job painting a picture of a particular type of person.  It's understandable that a child raised by expatriates, orphaned at a young age, and sent to live in his "native" but completely unfamiliar country would have trouble fitting in and be hampered by self-absorption.  His self-importance is explained by his idealism and his professional triumphs.  The issue I have is that I can't quite understand how he could be a successful detective when so hobbled by his seeming inability to see things from other points of view.  When things don't go his way, his reaction is to lash out at the people around him--even those trying to help him in the endeavor of the moment--and assert that he knows better.

Of course, I could be just as misled as Christopher, insisting the character makes no sense when I'm too blind to see a deeper truth.

Dressmaking dummy

I am a bit of an amateur seamstress.   

I come by it naturally--except for the amateur part.  One grandma has made amazing doll clothes for as long as I can remember--so amazing she sells them at craft shows, antique malls, and even a boutique in Branson if I'm remembering properly.  She and my great aunt made the veil for my wedding, my Junior year prom dress, prairie dresses so I could dress up like Laura Ingalls Wilder/Anne Shirley, and a medieval dress for a choir event. Another grandma crochets when she's not painting ceramics.  I've heard stories about my great-grandma, who was such a talented seamstress she would make clothes for my mom just by looking at them in stores. 

Every few months the combination of genes and childhood experiences coalesces into the desire to create something.  My first big attempt at voluntary sewing a cover for a chair I bought at the DAV before I left for college.  Grandma Mary Lou helped me create a zebra slipcover.  It was pretty awesome.  That $5 chair is actually still sitting in our living room, although the zebra is starting to look a bit worn.  For some time after that, my only projects were house related--pillows, curtains, reupholstering a couch. 

Then I found some adorable fabrics and started making little purses and tote bags.  Friends and family had these showered upon them.  They humored me like the fantastically kind people they are.

I made my nephew a patchwork blanket.  Then I made myself one from the purse scraps.  Ben adopted it as his own, even though the primary color was pink.  I decided to save my poor blankie from Ben by making him one in the fall.

Late in the fall, I crossed over.  I decided to attempt to make clothing.  I made an open, semi-wrap cardigan from excess fabric from Ben's blanket.  I ended up making another for my youngest sister.  Encouraged by my success, I decided to make a skirt. 

My budding confidence misled me, as the skirt was mostly a failure.  I don't really believe in patterns---partially because they are so expensive but also because it was easier to copy clothes I already owned rather than trying to be my own living dressform.  I took a stack of paper grocery sacks (thanks, Whole Foods!), pulled out my favorite pencil skirt, and started tracing.  The concept was solid, the execution beyond shaky.  The skirt looked fine from the front, but the back was a disaster.  I read through half a dozen online blogs about how to install zippers and still managed to make a spectacular mess of it, leading to a disaster of unflattering pleats, a back seam that zigs madly inward as if the skirt's only dream is to be a skort, and a gaping hole at the base of the zipper.  I shoved it into a sack in the guest room and swore off zippers.

Then my sartorial muse showed up again and I decided to take another stab at clothing.  I planned to avoid my toothed foe by recreating a pullover dress I bought on clearance that's made of a stretchy, almost sweatshirt-like jersey.  I've worn it to work, to the symphony, to church, out to dinner.  It's the fabulous everydress.  However, Max Azria apparently has more extensive fabric choices than I do, as my choices were either nice non-stretchy fabric or paper thin polyester cheapness. 

I chose a black and white boucle, and faced the fact that I had doomed myself not only to installing a zipper, but an invisible zipper. 

However, my courage was rewarded.  It took a solid Saturday, but I managed to make a dress.  I found an online tutorial on invisible zippers that was more useful than all the regular zipper ones I'd read before.  Had it not been written in 2006 I would have e-mailed the writer with probably frightening gratitude. 

The end result is below.  I need to take it in a bit on the top, but I think it's pretty impressive for my first try at a dress.

The Blind Side

In honor of Oscar season, I thought I would start out with a book that is also a nominated movie.

I'll admit I was not convinced on this whole "The Blind Side" movie thing.  Looked a little too hokey and feel-good for me, although everyone who has seen it swears up and down that it's worth seeing.  I should probably trust my friends and family, but instead I remained a skeptic--until I found out that the book was written by Michael Lewis. 

Unless you are interested in finance and/or a man, you may not have heard of Michael Lewis.  I loved Moneyball so much, despite it being about baseball, that I (very) briefly had fantasies of diving into the field of statistics.  Liar's Poker seemed less polished to me, although eerily prescient of the current economic crisis despite it being published in 1989 due to its talk of collapsing investment banks, mortgage-backed securities, etc.  To borrow a phrase from Battlestar Galactica, this has all happened before and it will happen again.  

Anyway, I decided that I should embrace The Blind Side when I discovered I could absorb it in book rather than movie form as I trusted ML not to be too sappy or emotionally manipulative.  I received it from my Secret Santa at Spencer family Christmas (thanks, Jennifer!), and read it a few weeks ago.

What I liked about the book was its frankness.  The Touhy family adpots Michael Oher, and it's not perfect.  They make mistakes, Michael makes mistakes.  They swing between selfless do-goodery and uncomfortable materialism---Leanne buys Michael his first bed at least in part so he won't ruin the $10,000 couch he was sleeping on before moving in permanently.  The academic in me is appalled by some shameless exploitation of grade point average loopholes using the questionable academic standards for online courses at BYU.  Plus, I don't like seeing kids looking at college as a necessary evil to make it to the NFL (or anywhere else); young people should have dreams, but not at the expense of their development as thinking adults.  However, I think it's admirable that this family welcomed a teenager into their home and made the dream of the NFL--and a career outside of crime--a reality, and I'm happy that the book wasn't a saccharine canonization of a rich white family. 

I also now know what a left tackle is, and can say semi-knowledgeable things like "What was Flozell Adams thinking?  Did you see Tony Romo get floored by that blind side sack?"

Best chapter: Chapter 11, Freak of Nurture.  After hundreds of pages of "now," we finally get some backstory on Michael's early life.  It is very sad, but ultimately uplifting.  The fact that he endured so much yet managed to never give up hope is inspiring--as is the fact that sometimes people do the right thing for near strangers just because it's the right thing, and that it's sometimes a chain reaction of people doing the right thing that leads to great things.

Unexpected tie in to my life:  FedEx CEO Fred Smith makes a cameo.  Although really that shouldn't have been much of a surprise given its setting among the wealthy Memphis elite. 

Most memorable quotation: Oddly, it's from the acknowledgments at the end of the book.  It made me laugh, although Ben didn't think it was nearly as funny as I did.  "Delvin Lane would count as my highest-ranking friend in the Gangster Disciples, if he hadn't relinquished his title as gang leader.  When Delvin was Born Again, and decided to dedicate his life to Christ, he assumed he might be killed in the bargain.  (The penalty for a senior figure quitting the Gangster Disciples was, typically, death.)  So, I'm grateful, I suppose, to the other Gangster Disciples for making an exception of Delvin, and permitting him to live, and to educate me." (page 338, paperback edition)


Has anyone else read the book?  Should I relent and go see the movie?

Restarting the blog

I've decided to jump back into blogging with an updated format.  Since "Random things I'm thinking about plus updates on Dallas Stars hockey" are not terribly interesting or focused blog ideas, I'm going to base most of my posts around books I'm reading or have read.  I'll include occasional updates on what I'm doing when I'm not reading, but I think that having some guiding principles will help me out. 

I will be open to suggestions on books I should read or other topics I should write about,so feel free to comment.  (Although I don't mind innocuous stalkers.)  

In the words of Tobias, "let the great experiment begin!"