Browsing Archives for January 2009

A few weeks ago a reader asked me to compile a list of some of my favorite children’s books.

Of course, I am far too weak and shaky to take on such an arduous task and I would hope by now that my readers would understand that! Especially when you consider that I had to go back to work this week… only one day a week… but still… when you are give over to ‘spells’ and ‘fits’ and ‘spasms’ and you have been diagnosed over the internet as clearly having a delicate constitution, one four hour shift at work in a Garden Center in January during which only three customers darken the door, could literally mean death.

Still, for the sake of that one reader who asked, I am offering a few of my favorite children’s books in a giveaway today, as well as two books that are not children’s books but fit under today’s category quite nicely. That category being

Books That Feature the Weak and Shaky.
I love weak and shaky books.
They make me feel so welcome.

Have you ever read anything by Haven Kimmel?
She is HILARIOUS!!!
She is especially hilarious if you grew up in a small town surrounded by weak and shaky people.

No one brings to life the world of the weak and shaky like Haven Kimmel.

I came slowly to Haven’s book, A Girl Named Zippy. It was almost as if the book was haunting me. I saw it everywhere I went. In the grocery store, the gas station, the dollar store, the dry cleaners, the city park. Everywhere I went there was this book with the wide eyed baby on the cover staring back at me. That baby kind of creeped me out. Finally, in a sort of desperate attempt to ward off the wide eyed creepy baby ghost that was haunting me, I checked out the book and I read it.
I don’t know if I have ever felt more in sync with a writer that I did with Haven Kimmel in the pages of A Girl Named Zippy.

One night, I was reading the book in bed and laughing my eyeballs out and the Country Doctor asked me what I was reading. I read a few pages out loud to him, in between wiping the gush of tears that I was crying due to so much hilarity.
“She sounds just like you.” he said.

That may be the nicest thing he has ever said to me.

“She Got Up Off The Couch” is a sequel to “A Girl Named Zippy”.

This book tells the story of Haven’s mom finally… well finally… getting off the couch.

You see, Haven’s mom was very weak and shaky.

This book is also very funny and relates her mother’s triumph over difficult circumstances… in a weak and shaky way of course.

Which is the only way to triumph if you ask me.

NEXT!

Back when I was working as a children’s librarian, one of my jobs was to read through a cart load of new books every week in an attempt to stay familiar with the collection. Most of the books were picture books and most of them were TERRIBLE. It is truly disgusting how many horrible children’s books are published each and every day!

The true gems…. the timeless classics…. the moving, engrossing, adventurous, riveting, jewels are so rare that when you finally pick one up and open the cover and start to read it, you feel like you have entered a parallel universe.

Knuffle Bunny is one of the rare jewels. In this book, both Trixie and her dad are kind of weak and shaky and prone to ‘going boneless’ which is one of my favorite expressions in all of literature.

Sometimes when I am feeling especially weak and shaky, I also go boneless.

It is a wretched thing to witness. I hope it never happens to you!

This book won a Caldecott and it’s author – Mo Willems – is a writer for Sesame Street.
NEXT!!!

I have written of my love for Arnold Lobel many times. Frog and Toad may be the penultimate weak and shaky characters in all of literature.

Is Frog the weak and shaky one… or is it Toad?

Maybe they switch back and forth?

Nevertheless – the one always has the other to pull him through and isn’t that what friends are for?

I have both a Frog and Toad collection of books as well as a collection of Frog and Toad collection on CD up for grabs today.

My eldest son was soothed to sleep by the warm, fuzzy voice of Arnold Lobel reading from Frog and Toad on many, many nights, which was a weak and shaky triumph for me.

Thank you Arnold.

NEXT!!!!!

Avocado Baby, might be my favorite weak and shaky picture book of all time.

Written by John Birmingham, Avocado Baby tells the heartwrenching tale of one family that is almost impossibly weak and shaky.

You aren’t even sure they are going to make it!

They are too shaky to remove the toys from the fruit bowl. They are too weak to carry their newborn baby up the steps without help. And then… to make things even worse… the pathetic, puny, pale baby won’t eat anything!

Until one day, they feed the baby an avocado pear.

And wondrous things happen.

To win one of the books today, just leave a comment.

Winners will be selected at random.

Please note -my books are usually gently used, but occasionally they are new.

You never know what you are going to get.

Which weak and shaky character said that?

If there is a book you would particularly like, feel free to mention it in your comment, but I can’t make any guarantees. I am just too weeeeeeaaaak and shaaaaaaaaaaky.

I better go lie down now.

Sadly, this contest has come to an end.

My brother-in-law Clay is a man of many talents and much wisdom.

After all, he has managed to stay married to my sister April for a long, long, loooooooong time.

Dear Readers,

The book, Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, left a bad taste in my mouth. Something about it was off. Too ripe, too green, too moldy, too full of worms… I don’t know, but the book did not agree with me and it has resulted in a churning stomach for the past several days. Maybe my innards just don’t agree with a ‘locovore’ diet. Give me an orange, give me a pineapple, I never realized that eating fruit could do so much harm.

Ultimately I think it is because I simply don’t understand Ms. Kingsolver’s particular brand of lunacy, which quite frankly was not lunatic enough for my own personal tastes. If you are going to go off the deep end and live by an extremely narrow regime that revolves around eating for one entire year, only food that either you or your nearby neighbors produce then by cracky, you oughtta be able to make that experience a lot more interesting than Ms. Kingsolver did.

What makes a challenge, any challenge, interesting for people to read about is the suffering that occurs as a result. Personally, I try to avoid suffering at any cost. But I don’t mind reading about other people suffering… once in a while… maybe… not really.

Here is my definition of suffering…

Suffering – One single solitary second of discomfort.

The Country Doctor would disagree with that definition. His would be more like this.

Suffering – Proof that you are alive.

This is Barbara Kingsolver’s definition of suffering…

Suffering – Let’s not be unreasonable. Who wants another cup of coffee?

Kingsolver was not really willing to suffer for the sake of her ‘art’ in this book. Her family did not give up chocolate, coffee, olive oil, or spices. They ate out occasionally. If an item was really necessary to make a special dish they would purchase it. For instance, they were unable to find a local source for organic whole wheat flour, but they did not give up homemade bread. Just don’t ask for a banana at their house. It will result in a stern lecture in the car on the way to the store. Bananas are shipped on trucks from far away and that uses up gas. Evidently wheat flour, coffee, chocolate and exotic spices all fly to Virginia on the back of carrier pigeons.

The only time I felt the book had any intrinsic charm was when Kingsolver wrote about her chickens and her turkeys. A momentary spark would flicker and flare as she spoke of her birds. Her daughter Lily was the primary poultry farmer in the family and the chapters that revolved around her and her chickens were sweet and fun to read. Then Kingsolver would go right back to reciting depressing farm factoids, speaking of CAFO’s (whatever those are) and her one and only joke – the professional turkey masturbators .

Yes, I just said turkey masturbators on my blog. I have been de-sensitized to the term now that I have read it four hundred times in Kingsolver’s book. Everything else made me feel judged, paranoid, or wishing the book was over already.Oh and also – the book is almost entirely mirthless (except for the solitary turkey joke). Sorry Kingsolver fans, but I have spent far too many joyous hours wrapped inside of a book about one man or one woman or one family, embracing and rejoicing in a back to the land lifestyle . I have read too many wonderful books about people who live the dream of producing their own food, glorying in the natural world, and understanding their dependence on their neighbors and their community in a much more dramatic way. I am speaking of books like Green Mountain Farm by Elliot Merrick and We Took to the Woods by Louise Dickinson Rich. These books tell with arching beauty the struggle to survive off the land underneath the author’s feet.

Then there are books like Back to the Damn Soil by Mary Gubser and It Takes a Village Idiot by Jim Mullen which celebrate a life lived in the grasp of Mother Nature due to either economic necessity or to quit smoking (ha ha) with wit and humor.

These books mentioned above revel in the non-stop wrestling match of attempting to grow all your own food and they manage to delightfully scissor a story from the unyielding earth, the wily livestock, the crazy neighbors, and the inevitable visits from the green horn city folk.

Barbara Kingsolver does not even use the terms ‘green horn city folk’ in her book. Nor does she mention any crazy neighbors. Did she really live in the country? Or did she just make this whole book up?

Kingsolver is not the first person to attempt to live off a patch of land and subsequently write a book about it. She is just the first person to make that experience excruciatingly boring while at the same time passing judgement on everyone who grows a crop outside of her narrow ideal. (Except for the coffee and the chocolate farmers).

Now, who wants a copy of Animal Vegetable Miracle?

Anyone?

Anyone?

Seriously, lots of people purchased this book. Whether they managed to slog through to the end of it, I don’t know. I have two copies to give away today. It is possible that you will enjoy it far more than I. You could also give it away on your blog, or to someone who you are trying to impress with your ecologically sound choices.
 

I also have a copy of Elliot Merrick’s book Green Mountain Farm to give away today. Merrick is the author of the adventure classic True North. I have never read True North, nor the subsequent Northern Nurse, which told the story of his wife’s life in Labrador, but I have been utterly swept away several times, by the literary beauty of Green Mountain Farm. This book is everything that Kingsolver’s book is not. Merrick shows.. he doesn’t tell. If his book does not make you want to run to Vermont and buy a derelict, windswept farm just so you can crash through the ice on your cross country skis, when you are not chopping wood, planting a garden or attempting to resurrect a house and barn from scrap lumber, I don’t know what will. Like Merrick himself, this book is layered in lyrical beauty, sparkling with wisdom gained from extreme hardship and crosshatched in wit. Perhaps I should send a copy to Barbara Kingsolver?

This giveaway has come to an end.

Note to readers, I wrote this last year and never got around to publishing it. You will be happy to know that Drew’s Disease seems to have been wiped out… at least for the time being.

My third born has a gift. The gift of faking illness. He could easily win an academy award if they had a category for faking out your mom on Monday morning.

It took us a while to understand Drew’s reoccurring bouts of sickness – which we eventually began to refer to as ‘Drew’s Disease’. Drew’s scheming, I mean agony, often began on Sunday nights. He would suddenly roll into a tight little ball of pain. He moaned. He groaned. He twisted and turned. Trust me, to the uninitiated, it was quite alarming.

At first, the Country Doctor and I did not understand the cyclical nature of this horrifying illness. After watching our son writhe in pain for several hours, while the typical antidotes seemed to have no effect, I demanded that the Country Doctor take Drew to the nearest big city emergency room. We did this because we knew that taking Drew to the local hospital would only result in him being transferred, and also, the local docs are all a bunch of quacks.

As Drew and the Country Doctor drove an hour to the big city ER, Drew’s symptoms seemed to subside. By the time they checked in, he was still in pain but much better. Four hours later, when he was finally seen, Drew was unclenched and relaxed. They ran a few tests, took some blood, poked him, prodded him, but nothing seemed out of order.

Drew remained at home for several days that week, missing school, and getting stronger every day. I sent him back to school on Thursday. He was fine, healthy laughing, eating, playing…until the NEXT MONDAY MORNING!

Suddenly, without warning, the extreme intestinal, abdominal pain came back and knocked him flat again! Drew missed a few more days of school, but then bounced back with the alacrity of a toddler, eating cookies, kicking his brothers, complaining about what I had made for dinner. We greeted the old familiar Drew with joy, glad he was back and in working order.

UNTIL THE NEXT MONDAY – when the illness struck again with a ferocity that brought us all to our knees. Drew crept into our room before daybreak – clutching his stomach, bent double, tears streaming down his cheeks. I placed him in our bed, gave him a Pepto Bismol tablet, and crept off to Drew’s bed to get a little more sleep.

As I lay in Drew’s twin bed… I slowly began to piece the past weeks together. This wretched illness – occurring on or around every Monday. I reflected for a while on Drew’s innate dramatic talents, his Irish brogue, his jigging skills, his wily Spaniard, his opera singer, and I wondered… COULD MY SON BE A GIGANTIC FAKER!!!

Drew went to school that Monday and he has gone every Monday since. We are winning the battle with “Drew’s Disease” one fake attack at a time. He continues to work on and improve his act, but his audience has grown weary of the same old, same old. Doubled over, tears streaming down his cheeks, clenching his ribs in agony, moaning, groaning, frothing at the mouth. it no longer moves us. Our eyes glaze over as we reach for the remote and tell Drew to please move over, we can’t see the TV.

My appointment with the municipal judge was scheduled for five-o-clock in the afternoon.  Right around four, I started to get jittery.  I worried that I wouldn’t be able to find my tag receipt which was my only proof of having paid for my expired tag.  I worried that I wouldn’t be able to find the ticket the officer had given me which I needed to give to the judge.  I worried that I had the wrong time and kept checking and re-checking the e-mail that the clerk had sent to me with the new time and date.  I made a cup of tea to calm myself down and then left the house with plenty of time to find the municipal court.  Never having been accused of a crime before, I wasn’t sure where it was.

I recently placed a huge order at Alibris, my favorite on-line used bookstore for some new book giveaways. The new books will start arriving any day forcing me to clear some space on my desk for all the new books which brings me to the reason for this post…
THE CLEARING MY DESK OFF OF ALL THE BOOKS THAT I NEVER GOT AROUND TO GIVING AWAY LAST YEAR COUNTRY DOCTOR”S WIFE BOOK GIVE-AWAY!

I know… it has a certain ring to it doesn’t it? 

Earlier this Fall, I was all hyped up to do a James Bond Giveaway. I had the books, I took the photos, I prepared a James Bond survey where readers could choose their favorite Bond, I rehearsed my speech, I chose my outfit, I brushed my hair, I groomed the cats… and then I went to see the Quantum Solace, the new James Bond movie.

It was such a disappointment to me, that I lost heart and could not bring myself to post the give-away. Then I felt like such an old fuddy duddy for not liking the new James Bond movie that I struggled with even looking at myself in the mirror for several days. Then I read several reviews that basically felt the same way that I did -that the missing gadgets, and the quirky characters, and wondering if James Bond was suffering an identity crisis and thinking he was actually Jason Bourne, that I started to feel a tiny bit better. I did appreciate the scene in Quantum Solace where Bond refused to stay in a run-down hotel and moved over to more glamorous headquarters as that’s my James! I recognized that guy! But everything else was weird and new and all cutting edge and trying too hard… and it seemed that the real James… the suave James… the cool, collected, debonair James… had disappeared into a new James… a moody James… a brooding James… and I didn’t quite know how to connect to him.

So I put the give-away on the back burner and moved on with my life.

Now that I have had sufficient time to grieve and to heal, I really need to give away these James Bond Books.

They are not just any James Bond Books. They are James Bond for kids books!

Charlie Higson, a writer for British sit-coms, is the author of the series. The books are wonderful action/adventure/thrillers that tell the stories of a young James Bond, orphaned and residing in an English boys boarding school where he manages to get himself caught up in world wide intrigue and espionage on a regular basis. I have the first three books of the series to give away today. The first book, Silver Fin is really the best one, but the others are also entertaining reads.

I also have a copy of Where the Red Fern Grows up for grabs today. The Country Doctor read this book aloud to my kids several years ago and the boys loved it. It is a great classic adventure tale of a boy and his beloved dogs.

I have two books (possibly three) that were unclaimed from previous give-aways. If you are the winner of one of these books and you would like to get the book now, you can certainly e-mail me at countrydoctorswife@live.com. Otherwise, this copy of House Dreams by Hugh Howard is up for grabs again. I wrote about it here – but in quick synopsis, it is the non-fiction story of a man building a house. I have probably read it six times… but please remember, I have a slight “people building houses and writing a book about the experience” addiction problem.

Also never claimed, was this copy of S. J. Perelman’s Acres and Pains, a true classic. Acres and Pains is the hilarious story of a city man taking on country life with nothing but a ruddy handy man, a pitchfork and his sterling wit. No one does it better than S. J. Perelman. I wrote more about this author here.

I gave away a few Jeanne Marie Laskas books a while ago. Ms. Laskas is another one of those crazy people with the ability to move from a well established city life to the crazy turmoil of country life and write about it with style and humor. In this book she also writes of her attempt to start a family and the eventual arrival of her little girl.. or maybe that is the other book??? I can’t remember! Either way, Jeanne is a wonderful writer and I am pretty sure that this is a wonderful story. Oh… she likes dogs and horses and other animals too and manages to collect quite a menagerie. Something for everybody!

>
And now for something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!
This book has come up frequently in the lists of favorites among the comments of the crazy people who read this blog. A Confederacy of Dunces is really one of those books everyone who likes to read… should read… yes… should… mostly because I would hate for any “reader” to be at a cocktail party or a backyard barbecue, or a book club meeting, or checking out at the grocery store and for this book to come up in the course of conversation and for you not to have read it and not be able to talk about it like a well versed expert.

For what would life be if one can’t occasionally be the expert?

Or at least pretend to be the expert.

There is so much to be said about this book, and I am running out of time because I am meeting a friend for lunch today and I still haven’t fixed my hair or brushed my teeth! So please – click this link here to read about the book, the Pulitzer prize it won, as well as the tragic and sad ending of the author John Kennedy Toole’s life prior to the book being published.

To enter the give-away, simply leave a comment. If comments are just too infuriating for you, you may also e-mail me at countrydoctorswife@live.com. You may request one of the books in your entry, but I can’t make any guarantees. Winners will be chosen randomly. This contest will end at 9:00 am CST Thursday January 8th.

Off to lunch!

Rechelle

Sorrowfully and with much wringing of the hands, I must tell you that this contest is over.