From My Sketchbook: January/February 2013

Well, hello there!
I haven't been exactly slacking off, but things have been PRETTY busy around the homestead.

I have had a little time to play with my sketchbooks, so I thought I'd post a few of what's been happening.  I checked out a book from the library on journaling... and it's got me going in all sorts of directions.  Ok, buckle up your seatbelts, let's take this thing for a spin:

oh yeah, gotta love that negative space!

A mantra that I am using to help in my meditation.

There is a song that we sing, "Who is in my temple?" The last refrain is "Darkness like a dark bird flies away, flies away"

Chile peppers and an envelope

Pat and Sue, envelope, journal entry

Journal entry about food

Journal entry about driving

Journal entry about McDonald's

Journal entry about taking my mom to Bed, Bath and Beyond

Journal entry about meeting my sister for drinks at Peet's

Journal entry about putting away Christmas decorations

Journal entry about a quote from Pema Chodron

Some of these are journal entries and some are from my sketchbook.  I am enjoying using lift-off images and something called "modge podge" which seems to be magical glue-like substance that conceived its packaging in the 70's.

Hope you enjoy!
Love, Kelly

From the Library: The Big Girls

Last week I finished reading "The Big Girls" by Susanna Moore.  This book follows a psychiatrist as she adjusts to her new job at a woman's prison where she looks after the psychological issues that caused women to commit crimes in the first place or are a result from being locked up.  Most of the book centers on one client who is incarcerated for killing her children.  The client's abuse from her stepfather and her husband is revealed slowly throughout the book as is her relationship with the woman who is now the live-in lover of the psychologist's ex-husband and father of her son.

This is a book of big characters.  Well-written to keep you involved in the on-going story while alternately caring of and disgusted by the people who inhabit this book, I am reading another of Susanna Moore's books by audiobook in the car.  What a writer!

I found "The Big Girls" to be a big slice of life, not necessary a life that I would want to inhabit, but life, nonetheless.  The characters do the stupid things that real people do.  Other characters react in the unpredictable way that people do.  There is no happy ending, maybe not even an ending, just as life, there is on-going living, where compromise and make do are the trail that characters follow.

I recommend this book, because it allows a giant keyhole to observe a corner of the world that is so different from any other.

From the Library: The Housekeeper and the Professor

The Housekeeper and the Professor, 2003, Yoko Ogawa, Pacador, New York

A one-day pleasure read, this book opens in the world of the housekeeper and her ten-year-old son.  A single mother, she supports herself cleaning houses.  The housekeeper is sent to the home of an elderly math professor who has only an 80 minute memory due to a car accident.

This is a sweet and endearing story of how people can make a difference in each others's lives.  Wrapped around the plot is some creative and emotional (!) mathematics.  The professor loved prime numbers and through his view of the world, he shares a page from God's notebook in how the numbers of the world weave in and out of our lives.  There is a gentle nod to the love that men and boys share for baseball and the collecting of baseball cards.

While the story has a bittersweet ending, it is well worth reading.  I do intend to find more from this author!

From Redbox: Think like a Man and Safe

Not such a bad movie after all.  The plot centers around six men friends who play basketball together their romantic entanglements.  It seems their girlfriends have read a book on how to get what they want from their men.  When the men find out and read the same book, the game is on!  I found it great fun -- with a happy ending to boot. 

Lots of money in the budget for bullets and fake blood in this action thriller with one of my favorite actors, Jason Strathman.  A disgraced cop who is enduring punishment from the Russian underworld decided to "save" a young Chinese girl caught between warring factions.  There is enough car chases, beating and tension to keep things interesting the entire movie.  Casting of the young girl was inspired.  This movie didn't get much play in the theaters, but it is definitely a decent rental!

From the Library: The Butterfly Mosque by G. Willow Wilson

The city of San Jose (California) has chosen two books for the city to read and discuss.  This is one of them.

An autobiography of journalist Willow Wilson and her conversion to Islam, The Butterfly Mosque chronicles her first year in Egypt as an English language teacher and Opinion writer.  During that time, Willow falls in love with a colleague and starts down the road of a bicultural marriage and life in a very different land.  Willow also takes a trip to Iran to compare differences between Islamic countries.

Willow is an excellent writer who draws the reader into her experiences with new relatives and cultural norms in a matter-of-fact manner.  I found her difficulties in obtaining food when she first arrived in Cairo particularly interesting.  Coming from a land of supermarket food, wrapped and presented all in one place, Willow needed to learn the art of buying live chickens from a butcher, fruits and vegetables from the souk venders and dry goods from small local stores.

I would recommend this book to any friend.  Willow writes of the beauty of Islam and communicates it on a highly personal level.  I loved it!

From the Library: The Companions by Shari S. Tepper

This is a very chewy book = good writing and imagination.  In my humble opinion, writing science fiction is one of the more difficult genres to tackle.  You have to build an entire world or gain the cooperation of your reader to agree that events have happened in a particular manner and had an effect on Earth in a certain way.

In this book a female protagonist is very involved in saving Earth's animals which are being euthanized to make room from elderly humans returning to Earth from colonized planets.  The reader is asked to believe in an overcrowded Earth filled with large multistory apartment buildings as well as a newly discovered planet called Moss.  There is just enough bureaucracy to make The Companions believable if you keep straight all the information on various aliens straight.

Although I really like this book, I felt it was about 50 page too long.  I was ready for the book to end and to get onto other things!  Maybe I've developed the attention span of the MTV generation, but about 50 pages out, I kept thinking, "Are we done yet?!"

I would recommend this book to an fellow Sci Fi fans.  There is a plucky heroine, lots of villains, and plenty of twists and turns, but have to give yourself over to a new world rise from our old one.

From the Library: The Recipe Club, (2009) Andrea Israel and Nancy Garfinkel

I can't believe I actually requested this book from my local library, but I was surfing their catalog for "recipe" and got hooked by a pretty cover, you know how that is!  This book is about a friendship between two girls, chronicled mostly by letters and recipes they shared, what could go wrong, right?

The two girls come with baggage in the form of four off-the-chart parents. One parent is agoraphobic, the other is her psychiatrist.  Rounding out the foursome is a self-absorbed actress and an enabler who wanted to invent something to ease their financial situation.  These two girls come in contact with each other as a result of their parents' interaction.  As in many cases, they play their lives without the knowledge of deep secrets that affect them both.  Although essentially different personalities, these girls maintain a friendship until college.  A betrayal by one of the other sends their friendship into an abyss.  At the death of one of the girl's mother, a reuinion is attempted with less than stellar results.  The situations in the book go from uncomfortable situation to uncomfortable situation and at some point, I began to wonder why I was still reading.  Later, I realized that I was bedazzled by the way that each girl was digging herself deeper into misery, helped by the environment in which she had grown.

Each letter they write comes with a recipe, but I didn't find one that was useable.  all in all, I found this book a somewhat disappointing read and wouldn't recommend it, unless you like looking at car wrecks that you pass on the freeway.