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Books Are My Boyfriend, Ed. 5: The One Where My Parents Will Never Ever Let Me Live This Down

January 19, 2010 By Jenny Ryan Leave a Comment

Those of you who have been reading me for a while are no doubt well acquainted with my stormy and tumultuous relationship with the game of golf. And how much everyone else around me seems to love it. And how I, do not. And how I live for opportunities to mock this fine sport. And so, for what I am about to tell you I can only plead prolonged illness and pain meds, plus my obsessive fascination with my new iTouch which, to my possible downfall, has an app for the Amazon Kindle and a one touch “get books” setup.

So the other day I was browsing the pages of books available for the Kindle, and somehow my eye was caught by this book called The Downhill Lie by Carl Hiaason. Now normally I would’ve run as quickly as I could in the opposite direction once I figured out that this book was about golf. But I kept seeing things like, “Humor!”, and “Funny!”, and, “One of the two most hysterical books ever written about golf!”, and so I was totally sucked in. Because you know that I CANNOT resist The Humor.

And then I came to the chapter titled, “Toad Golf”, in which Hiaason describes the unusual circumstances that began to bring him back to the sport after a thirty-two year absence.

“The next time [I swung a club] occurred one night…when my best friend and fishing companion, Bob Branham, called to report a disturbing infestation. The culprit was Bufo marinus, a large and brazen type of toad that had invaded South Florida from Central America and proliferated rapidly, all but exterminating the more docile native species. The Bufo grows to two pounds and eats anything that fits in its maw, including small birds and mice. When threatened, it excretes from two glands behind its eyes a milky toxin extremely dangerous to mammals. Adventuresome human substance abusers have claimed that licking Bufo toads produces psychedelic visions, but the practice is often fatal for dogs and cats.

Which is why Bob had called. Every evening a brigade of Bufos had been appearing outside his back door and gobbling all the food he’d put out for Daisy, his young Labrador retriever. It’s probably unnecessary to point out that while Labradors possess a cheery and endearing temperament, they are not Mensa candidates in the kingdom of canines. In fact, Labradors will eagerly eat, lick or gnaw objects far more disgusting than a sweaty toad. For that reason, Bob expressed what I felt was a well-founded fear that his beloved pet was in peril during these nightly Bufo encounters.”

So Hiasson, as any good friend would do, goes over to Bob’s house to see what he can do to help.

“When I arrived at his house, the onslaught was in progress. A herd of medium-sized toads hungrily patrolled the perimeter of his patio, while one exceptionally rotund specimen had vaulted into Dixie’s dish and engulfed so much dog chow that it was unable to climb out. It looked like a mud quiche with eyeballs.”

And so, what to do?

“Bob and I were discussing our limited and unsavory options when I noticed a golf bag in a corner near the back door. We had a brief conversation about which of his neighbors was the most obnoxious, and then I reached for a 9-iron. Bob chose a 7.

Before the PETA rally begins, let me point out that the adult Bufo toad is one of God’s sturdiest creatures. Bob swears he once saw one get run over by a compact car and then hop away. I have my doubts, but in any case we purposely picked lofted clubs to effect a kinder, gentler relocation.”

And then you know what happened next.

[Read more…] about Books Are My Boyfriend, Ed. 5: The One Where My Parents Will Never Ever Let Me Live This Down

Filed Under: CFG's Bookshelf, Golf Is Flog Spelled Backwards

Books Are My Boyfriend Mondays, Ed. 4: I Matter, Dammit!

December 7, 2009 By Jenny Ryan Leave a Comment

(Title inspired by Havi Brooks and her posts on The Dammit List.)

First, some guidelines:

1. No one has to read anything. There are no “shoulds” here. These are not assignments. This is just me saying, “Hey, I read this book and I thought you might like it.”

2. So therefore, it is impossible for anyone to get behind.

3. You can comment, or not. There are no “shoulds” there, either.

4. If you do chose to comment, you do not have to include passages from the books you recommend. (Although, of course, you can if you want to.) I just do that in order to give people a taste of what the book is like.

OK-on to the books

Of all the things I’ve lost since I’ve been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, one of the hardest ones I’ve had to deal with is the loss of my purpose; at least, the purpose I had all planned out in my head. And when  I can’t see past the pain, and the doctor’s appointments, and all the medication managment, that place of purposelessness-at least in my mind-is an impossibly scary place to be. That’s why I’m so, SO grateful whenever I come across books like these.

1. You Matter More Than You Think by Dr. Leslie Parrott

As she tells us on the second page, her message is very simple: “You are already making a difference-whether you know it or not-and the more you understand the difference you are making, the bigger that difference will be.”

As you might imagine I found the chapter on pain, titled “The Grinding Stone”, to be particularly helpful.

“A woman’s pain either makes her bitter or makes her better. I wince at even writing this hackneyed phrase, but it is true….Pain, in one way or another, eventually touches every woman’s life. And that pain either does us in or makes us the woman we aspire to be. Ultimately, the pain we carry in our hearts is the grinding stone that shapes us to love. It sharpens our capacity to be tender with another’s wounds and to empathize without judgment.”

She goes on to say that “Phillip Yancey thoughtfully calls pain ‘the gift that nobody wants’.” (Uh, YE-ah.)

“But make no mistake. It is a gift….Because of pain, you make a difference. Pain will give you permission to walk into places you’ve never dreamed you’d enter, and it can change your relationships like nothing else.”

And despite the fact that, Dear Universe: could I possibly have learned these lessons in a less brutal way?, I must grudgingly admit that she is right.

“So I ask you, friend, to consider the gift of your personal pain.” Um, ok, if I really HAVE to.

“I just want to encourage you to see that your pain is not without purpose.” I could hear this once a minute all day long, and it still wouldn’t be enough. But this is what I’ve desperately wanted to hear, so I’m willing to suspend my disbelief for a bit and take this on faith. At least for this moment.

“It can become the most powerful means you ever possess for making a difference. Consider whose life you can touch because of the pain you have endured. And consider how the pain of another person allowed them to touch your life in a way they would have never been able to do without it.

Pain, your personal grinding stone, has a purpose whenever it is used to make a difference.”

I really hope so.

2. She Did What She Could: Five Words Of Jesus That Will Change Your Life by Elisa Morgan

I stumbled across this little book by accident (or not!) the other day when I was just browsing around the bookstore. I skimmed through it and then put it back, but I kept thinking about it all the time over the course of a week or so, so I finally went back and bought it. And I’m so glad I did.

Once I read a couple of passages like this one, I was completely hooked.

“Most of us care, remember? We really do.. We care about our own lives, for sure, and also the lives of those around us. We care about poverty and injustice, about orphans and the sick. We care about the folks who live and work alongside us and about what happens in their families and their hearts and their heads.

We care. But too often we stop there because we think that in order for it to count, to make a difference that matters, we have to do something big. Or everything we could do. Or something no one else has done.” Hm, that sounds awfully familiar…

And so I’d like to pull out more amazing passages to share with you here, but the muscle burning is yelling, “Hey! Pain Meds! Right Now!” So I will just close by saying that her answer to this kind of “caring overload” is to examine each one of those five words: She, Did, What, She, Could-and give tons of real-life examples to show how I, in the middle of my fibromyalgia life, actually do have a purpose. That purpose being to ask myself in each moment, “What is here right now that I could do?”

I’ve been practicing this for maybe a month or so, and I have to confess that when I consciously ask myself that questions, there is always an answer. There is always something here that I could do to contribute somehow to what makes up my world. Important Side Note: I need to add a really important point here, which is that often the answer to that question is that what I could do right now is to take care of myself in that moment. That’s what I love about this question-my needs and others’ needs are equally important. This is not a one-sided giving on my part.

OK, off to rest now. As always, please feel free to suggest any books that you really like in the comments. And have a great Monday.

Filed Under: CFG's Bookshelf

Books Are My Boyfriend Mondays, Ed. 3: Totally Random Mystery Genres That I’m Making Up As I Type This

November 23, 2009 By Jenny Ryan 4 Comments

And this week’s Random Mystery Genre Is, “Fictional Female British Sleuths From the World War I and World War II Eras”.

1. Amelia Peabody created by Elizabeth Peters

Amelia Peabody is the sharp, pulls-no-punches protagonist created by Elizabeth Peters. Her story begins in the late 1880’s when she comes into a rather large inheritance and decides to go tour the world, despite being a single woman. She, unsurprisingly, receives a number of proposals of marriage, one of which she declined with the following explanation:

“I disapprove of matrimony as a matter of principle.” Mr. Fletcher’s pepper-and-salt eyebrows lifted. I added, “For myself, that is. I suppose it is well enough for some women; what else can the poor things do? But why should any independent, intelligent female choose to subject herself to the whims and tyrannies of a husband? I assure you, I have yet to meet a man as sensible as myself.”

Eventually she makes her way to Egypt, determined to see the pyramids. Upon arrival she makes the acquaintance of the Emerson brothers, Walter and Radcliffe, who are both archaeologists and Egyptologists. Happening upon them in the middle of a minor crisis, she decides to move into their excavation site and take charge of things.

I directed Walter to pick out a nice tomb for us.

He was staring at me in the most peculiar fashion. He did not speak, but he kept opening and closing his mouth. If he had not been such a handsome fellow, he would have reminded me of a frog.

“There is a nice tomb close by, I trust,” I repeated, resisting the desire to poke at him with my parasol. “Go along Walter, we musn’t waste time; I want the place all swept and tidy by the time our luggage arrives….”

“Nice tomb,” Walter repeated stupidly. “Yes. Yes, Miss Peabody, there are several other tombs nearby. I don’t know whether you would call them nice…”

“Walter, you are incoherent,” I said. “This is no time to lose your head. I understand your concern, but there is no need for it now. I am here.”

And so she was. And so she has continued to take charge of things through seventeen more books. You can find out more about the series here.

2. Maisie Dobbs

Maisie Dobbs is the creation of author Jacqueline Winspear, and we meet her in 1929 as she is opening her new detective agency.

Just a few pages in it becomes obvious that Maisie Dobbs is not your average, run-of-the-mill detective.

The tricky thing was going to be the nameplate. She still hadn’t solved the problem of the nameplate.

As Lady Rowan had asked, “So, my dear, what will you call yourself? I mean, we all know what you do, but what will be your trade name? You can hardly state the obvious. ‘Finds missing people, dead or alive, even when it’s themselves they are looking for’ really doesn’t cut the mustard. We have to think of something succinct, something that draws upon your unique talents.”

I was thinking of ‘Discreet Investigations,’ Lady Rowan. What do you think?”

“But that doesn’t tell anyone about how you use your mind my dear-what you actually do.”

“It’s not really my mind I’m using, it’s other people’s. I just ask the questions.”

As Maisie begins to work on her first case, sprinkled throughout the story are references to her mentor, Maurice, and the methods he taught her to use. For example,

“Truth walks toward us on the paths of our questions.” Maurice’s voice once again echoed in her mind. “As soon as you think you have the answer, you have closed the path and may miss vital new information. Wait awhile in the stillness, and do not rush to conclusions, no matter how uncomfortable the unknowing.”

And then later, once she has received a critical piece of information during her investigations:

Maurice had counseled her, in the early days of her apprenticeship, when she was the silent observer as he listened to a story, gently prodding with a question, a comment, a sigh, or a smile, “The story takes up space as a knot in a piece of wood. If the knot is removed, a hole remains. We must ask ourselves, how will the hole that we have opened be filled? The hole, Maisie, is our responsibility.”

Happily, the case is as intriguing as the detective. And even more happily, Maisie has appeared in five more books so far. You can learn more about the series here.

3. Phryne Fisher

And now for something light. Phryne Fisher is the protagonist featured in a mystery series written by Kerry Greenwood. Due to the death of various relatives in World War I her father has recently come into a large inheritance and joined the ranks of the British upper crust. His daughter, Phryne, is now quite  rich, in addition to being quite beautiful and quite smart, but she is also despretately bored.

“I wonder what I want to do?” Phryne asked of herself. “It has all been quite interesting up until now,  but I can’t dance and game my life away. I suppose I could try for the air race record in the new Avro-or join Miss May Cunliffe in the road trails of the new Lagonda-or learn Abyssininan-or take to gin-or breed horses-I don’t know, it all seems very flat.

…She was at a loose end. She did not want to stay in her father’s house and arrange flowers. She had tried social work, but she was sick of the stews and sluts and starvation of London, and the company of the Charitable Ladies was not good for her temper. She had often thought of travelling back to Australia, where she had been born in extreme poverty, and here was an excellent excuse for putting off decisions about her future for half a year.

“Well, I shall try being a perfect Lady Detective in Melbourne-that ought to be difficult enough-and perhaps something will suggest itself. If not, I can still catch the ski season. It may prove amusing after all.”

So she decides to take herself, her money, and her flapper lifestyle to Australia and set up shop as a private detective. You can find out more about the series here.

OK, your turn. Do you have any new detectives for me to meet?

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Filed Under: CFG's Bookshelf

Books Are My Boyfriend Mondays Ed. 2: People Who Wrestle With Angels

November 16, 2009 By Jenny Ryan 4 Comments

Many thanks to everyone who visited last week’s edition of Books Are My Boyfriend Mondays,  “Really Stinkin’ Funny Memoirs”. I really enjoyed picking out some of my favorite passages to share with you, and I also very much appreciated the suggestions for new books to try that people left in the comments.

This week I wanted to share some books related to a topic very near and dear to my heart, which is people who are in the process of working out their faith and personal spirituality. (Of course, there is no way we can cover this entire topic in one week, so I will continue to pop back every now and then whenever I find something new that I MUST share with you.) I guess we’re all actually in the middle of doing that ourselves, but these people have written books to give us a glimpse into a part of their own personal search. I love books like this, because all my life I have been a spiritual seeker. Speaking of that, I guess that in the interest of full disclosure, I should share my own religious background with you.

I was raised Baptist-Independent, not Southern (although I personally have no idea what the difference is). Then when I was thirteen we moved, and I spent 5 years attending a non-denominational church. Then at Wake Forest, which is actually a Southern Baptist institution, although it is not “officially” tied to the church anymore, I spent 3 years hanging out with the Methodists as a part of the Wesley Foundation. Then during my last year of college and my first year of graduate school I felt a real calling toward the Catholic Church, and so in 1995 I converted to Catholicism.

Then when I turned twenty-nine (2001, if you’re interested) I decided to have my “turning 30” crisis a year early, and started questioning just about everything in my entire life. It was during this time that I became a student of A Course In Miracles, which I have practiced on and off since then. And now, for the past 3 Sundays, I have been attending the Baptist church up the road because-and pay attention here, because I’m pretty sure that this is the only time you will ever read these words IN YOUR ENTIRE LIFETIME-I desperately missed hymns. So there you go.

I don’t know that there’s an Officially Still Catholic Yet Also A Student of A Course In Miracles Yet Surprisingly Also Drawn Back To The Baptist Church denomination. Or perhaps, maybe as of RIGHT NOW, there is. 🙂

So back to the books-the first one I have to share today has the amazingly fantastic title, The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance: a memoir by Elna Baker.

[Read more…] about Books Are My Boyfriend Mondays Ed. 2: People Who Wrestle With Angels

Filed Under: CFG's Bookshelf, I Love Books Tagged With: books, reading

“Books Are My Boyfriend” Mondays

November 9, 2009 By Jenny Ryan 10 Comments

So I had a new idea the other day. I’m still recovering from my latest fibro flare-up, so the funny is kind of being slow in returning. So in the meantime I thought it would be fun to start a little discussion about one of the other mad, passionate love affairs I have going on in my life (besides that between me and regular Coke): Me, and Books.

Today’s Category: Really Stinkin’ Funny Memoirs

I thought that I could share some passages from the books I currently have on my mind, and then hit you guys up for some book recommendations of your own.

1. Mennonite in a little black dress by Rhoda Janzen. I knew this book was for me the minute I picked it up off the New Nonfiction table at Barnes & Noble and read the first page:

“The year I turned forty-three was the year I realized I should have never taken my Mennonite genes for granted. I’d long assumed that I had been genetically scripted to robust physical health, like my mother, who never even catches a head cold. All of my relatives on her side, the Lowenes, enjoy preternaturally good health, unless you count breast cancer and polio. The polio is pretty much a done deal, thanks to Jonas Salk and his talent for globally useful  vaccinations. Yet in the days before Jonas Salk, when my mother was a little girl, polio crippled her younger brother Abe and also withered the arm of her closest sister Gertrude. Trude bravely wnet on to raise two kids one-armed, and to name her withered arm Stinky.

____ Yes, I think “Stinky” is a cute name for a withered arm!

____ No, I’d prefer to name my withered arm something with a little more dignity, such as Reynaldo.”

2. A Million Miles In A Thousand Years by Donald Miller. I just picked this up a couple of days ago after reading passages like this:

“I wrote a memoir several years ago that sold a lot of copies. I got a big head about it for a while and thought I was an amazing writer or something, but I’ve written books since that haven’t sold, so I’m insecure and things are back to normal.”

Then he was contacted by a studio who wanted to turn his book into a movie, and a couple of filmakers, Steve and Ben, fly to Seattle to meet with him about it.

“We didn’t start talking about the movie right away. We stood on the porch and watched snow make magic of the sky.”

Then later, “You have a sled, man?” Ben asked, still reading the snowflakes.

“No. It doesn’t snow much here.” I wondered whether I’d have a sled if it did.

“We could use trash can lids,” Steve said.

“I have two kayaks,” I said. I said this because I didn’t want them to think I wasn’t an outdoorsman just because I didn’t have a sled. But I did have kayaks.

…”Kayaks are nice. Kind of a summer thing,” Steve said. He was crossing his arms to stay warm.

“Let’s have a look at them,” Ben said. “Anything will slide, really. Some things slide better than others. But anything will slide.” We started walking up the driveway toward the garage. I wondered what we were going to do with the kayaks. My driveway sloped down toward the street, but it wasn’t a steep drop. Ben kept looking back at the slope as if it were a river, as though there were rapids flowing over the cement and ice.

“Did you do a lot of drugs when you were younger, Ben?” I hoped he wasn’t offended at the question. He stopped as we walked up the driveway.. I turned toward him, and he stood and thought about it for a second. Then he kind of punched me in the chest. “I did, man, I did,” he said. “Wow, man, it’s like you know me.”

3. It Sucked and then Then I Cried, by Heather B. Armstrong, aka “Dooce“.

It’s pretty much impossible to find a passage in this book that doesn’t make me snort so hard that I must keep checking to make sure I haven’t disgorged one of my eyeballs. For example, here Heather and her husband have just found out that she is pregnant, and this is their response:

“I had hundreds of ideas for names, most of them stolen directly from the cast of The Dukes Of Hazzard as there was no other show on television that has more accurately captured the spirit of my Southern upbringing, where my mama knew everyone’s business and my cousins routinely took each other to prom. If my kid wasn’t going to have my last name, he or she could at least look at their driver’s license and be reminded of their maternal Tennessean heritage, one where wearing shoes to the grocery store is totally optional by law.

…Jon wanted nothing to do with a Bo or a Luke because he knew too many of those who had communicable diseases, and the act of calling our child one of those names would force him to lose four teeth. Which, okay, fine, we both had to agree on this, so I let him list his favorite names: SnigSnak, Qranqor, Styrofoam, KidNation, Frontline (after the television show or the flea medication), One (or First, or Premiere), Palette, Alphamask, Format (for a boy), Formatte (for a girl), Profile, Tweeter, Peavey. Possibly Wrench if the baby came out with an interesting nose.

While all of these ideas were teeming with originality and flair, two very important qualities in a baby name, we couldn’t help but think that what our work in progress needed was something more Utahn. You cannot live in Utah and give your baby a boring name that some other baby in Wisconsin might have, and we couldn’t get over the nagging feeling that someone in Wisconsin was naming their first-born child Alphamask as we lay there debating.”

All right. I’ve given you some of my favorites-now it’s your turn. What Really Stinkin’ Funny Memoirs do you recommend?

Filed Under: CFG's Bookshelf, I Love Books Tagged With: books, reading

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