Gold, Fame, Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins - A Review

Gold, Fame, Citrus is the apocalypse, imagined in a an eerily real way these days. Drought overtakes Southern CA (sound familiar), but to the point of barren wasteland, scavenging for anything fresh, water rations and abandonment. Most have left for greener pastures, but Luz and her boyfriend Ray hold out, their love enough to deal with the crazy.

Then, they find a little girl. Dirty, scruffy, indeterminable and irresistible, they take her from those whom have her. Ig, she is called, because that’s who she says she is.  A child, even if it’s not yours, makes your mind look towards the future, and they realize they need to leave.

On the way through, things happen. Bad things. Ray is gone and Luz is left with Ig, rescued by other hold outs, in an even more barren, more wasted wasteland were sand dunes constantly shift and grow, threatening to bury everyone at any moment. But there is a leader there, and he seems to have the answers.

This book is written like poetry, short, quip phrases and allusions, metaphors and fragmented thoughts that shift like the desert and sand in this story. It’s not for everyone, but for those people who can look deeper into the text, enjoy flawed characters and gritty wonder. It’s fantastical and realistic, all at once, and the ended leaves you lost and aching. 

Books should end like that sometimes.

(*this book was received for free as an ARC via Shelf Awareness)

Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim - A Review

Without You, There Is No Us offers a glimpse at the most secretive state in the world, North Korea. This is a very real, very powerful look at the sons of the elite in the DPNK, and author Suki Kim manages to give a human face to the faceless mass that is North Korean, sharing the underlying connections between all of us as human, and exploring the very real differences when you live in a place that refuses to let you think for yourself.

I read this book in a night, caught up in the same fascination that led Suki to seek out a way back to Pyongyang after her initial visit in 2002. Disguising herself as a missionary/teacher of English, she manages to land a position at PUST, The Pyongyang University of Science and Technology. This is her story of her two semesters teaching there.

My husband lived in South Korea, and I’ve always been fascinated by his description of his time there, and his trips to the DMZ. His father was in the military and the strangeness and sadness of a country quite literally divided has always gripped me, made me think about what we have here, and the simplest things, smallest freedoms, we experience every day and think nothing of.

Kim gives a honest, earnest look at the students she falls in love with, their trials and struggles and the incredible contradiction she sees because of where they were raised and the limits they face. She gives an honest look at the missionary/teachers as well, and the reasons they are really there.

What struck me was the irony of the missionaries, the desire to free these poor oppressed students under the rule and brainwashing of a dictator by planting themselves in North Korea so they can provide another set of dogma for them to eventually live by. Kim, an atheist, realizes this strangeness too. But money talks, and PUST is what it is because of it.

Kim leaves with a little hope, maybe something she said, something she did, in some way reaches her students. But she leaves, of course. 

Read this, and learn a little more about some place we can never really know about, at least not yet. But maybe reading this will offer some humanity and perspective on all we have.

*this book was received for free via Blogging For Books.

Review: Mark Bittman's Kitchen Matrix

I must say, I am bias towards Bittman. How to Cook Everything and How to Cook Everything Vegetarian have been my go-to's whenever I cook. By cooking, I mean looking in the fridge and seeing what's about to go bad, throwing it all together and making it work. Bittman's books have allowed me to make it work without it tasting like crap.

So I was excited to receive this book in the mail. First off, I gave it to my Chef husband, so we could dual review it, the thought being that his opinion about cookbooks would differ wildly from mine, but it wasn't as dramatic as I thought.

Him: "I like the layout of this book. It's organized in a way to make it easy for anyone to follow, and the base recipes allow people to expand upon their cooking techniques by providing a foundation. The variations on the recipes are pretty good as well. I do have an issue with some of the directions, for example, cutting meat. It's written, but there are no illustrations, and that's not something everyone would understand with written description only. "

Hrm. Good point, and something I didn't think about. So, that, coming from a Professional Chef. I looked over the book and read a bit, but then he snagged it and hasn't given it back, so it's apparently pretty sweet, regardless of any complaints.

 I appreciate the ease of all of Bittman's books, and this one allows you to be a little more creative, step out of your norm or go-to (which, for me, is something that ends up tasting vaguely Spanish). I also appreciated the 'what the hell to do with holiday leftovers' section, hehe. The photos, of course, are great, beautiful, clean, basically food porn, what I want to see in my cookbooks. 

OH. The cocktail section? That was pretty cool too.

(*this book was received free via bloggingforbooks.com) 

 

Cough/Cool

My week has been punctuated by violent, wracking coughs. It's interrupted my ability to work, my ability to create, and my ability to be present, especially for my children.

My oldest one is worried about me. He looks at me with concern, runs into the room when he hears a coughing fit, asks me 'Momma, are you alright?'

I look into big brown eyes and furrowed brow, sadness and worry evident. I remember waking up almost nightly since I was 5, listening to coughs overtake my mother, her hacking up phlegm and asking me for a glass of ice water. Starting the morning with a cigarette.

I used to throw away her cigarettes, break them, pour her beer down the sink, look at her with brown eyes and furrowed brow, worried and concern. 'Are you okay, Mommy?'

She said yes, she was fine.  Always fine. Every time I asked her, every time I said maybe she should go to the doctor. Eventually, I stopped asking, growing used to the sound, finding my new normal. This. Second hand smoke, arguments and pain.

She died of pharyngeal cancer a few years back.

'Momma, are you alright?'

Yes honey. I'm fine. I'm alright, and I'm going to the doctor's Monday morning. I'll be fine.

I will make sure I'm fine, because you and your brother don't deserve to grow up that way.

"Outside the Scope of Our Work, Sorry!"

What is work about, anyway?
I mean.. really, where do you draw the line?

I see it like this. With anything I do, anything I am, I give it my all. I try to provide the best possible 'service' I can. This can mean volunteering for my son's school field trip because they are short on chaperones, even though I have zero time, or going out of my way to make sure something is taken care of for a client, even though it's 6 PM Friday.

Because it matters to me. To be authentic, to be engaged and present in the work that I do. And the life I live.

Making money is a necessity. I need money to live, to feed my children, to keep delicious craft beer in my fridge and a roof over my head.

More important is my sense of pride, of sense of accomplishment and being the person I represent myself to be. Genuine. Authentic. Honest.



"Ama suwa, ama llulla, ama qhella"

Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace by David Lipsky: A Review

...Becoming Yourself is like having an intimate conversation with David Foster Wallace and realizing how truly idiotic you are, realizing you may or may not actually think the same things as Foster Wallace. Maybe you aren't clever enough to articulate them, roll them around in your mouth and have it make sense the way it does in your head. Or maybe you are claiming his ideas as your own because he's just that good.

There's still a humanity here, a rawness. This book either serves as a great introduction to Foster Wallace and his work or is awesome for someone who has read all of Foster Wallace's work and is craving more.

Lipsky relinquishes control, lets David speak, puts the words out there and you can image the road rumbling under your feet, the smell of chewing tobacco and chaos, calm. He did the right there here, and he knows it. He knows the power of this voice because he experienced it first hand, and felt the need to share it with others. His bracketed notes and interjections give just enough insight into his head at the time. It's perfect.

If only I could be so introspective and articulate.

Lipsky's words are powerful and clear, his intro and afterwards. I enjoyed his style, his realness and rawness.

Foster Wallace is dead. This is the end, this is what we have. The tragedy of mental illness and the brilliance of a mind that obviously had not explored this world long enough... what would we get, today? This world dominated by screens, mindlessness and precious, precious success.

Read this. And someone go see the movie 'End Of The Tour' for me, because I don't know if I can handle it without an unbias review first.

Thanks.