Now, as she reflected upon her journey and the years past, she realized she had come this far and had no idea what might come next, or hwhat there might be for her to aspire to.  She understood that she knew only how to climb mountains; having reached a certain place of elevation, she was unaccustomed to  the view of the road already taken, and where her next steps might lead.  Losing the document case had been akin to losing a suitcase of clothes on a very long journey.  She knew neither the next destination, nor how she might prepare to travel (132).

In the middle of the narrative, to drop this soft, sad meditation in and further isolate the heroine…I truly enjoy the level of what’s at stake in Maisie’s path forward.  Suspense is heightened deliciously with the narrowing of the story’s focus to a young woman’s profile in the firelight, a deeply longing, memory-shadowed, anxious breath before heading back out into the mystery’s dangerous landscape.  Wonderful.

Question: What do these books have in common?

Answer: All of them are Banned Books!

Never fear, we are not banning these or any other books in our Library.  What we are doing is celebrating everyone’s right to read!

Every September, Banned Book Week gives us the opportunity to showcase challenged books, from the classic examples like The Catcher in the Rye (reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (reason: racism) to modern YA fiction like Twilight (reasons: religious viewpoint, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group) and The Perks of Being a Wallflower (reasons: anti-family, drugs, homosexuality, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit, suicide, unsuited to age group).  It’s an annual moment to stop and reflect on the power of the written word and to raise awareness about censorship issues in libraries and schools across the United States and around the world (“Top Ten”).

What do we mean by a challenged book?  The American Library Association defines a book challenge as a, “formal, written complaint, filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness” (“Frequently Challenged Books”). Each year the ALA publishes the top ten challenged titles in order to “inform the public about censorship in libraries and schools” while openly condemning censorship and working tirelessly “to ensure free access to information” (“Frequently Challenged Books”).

For more information about the number and types of challenges from 2001 – 2009, check out the ALA’s site at:

http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/frequentlychallenged/21stcenturychallenged/index.cfm

The HS Library will have our Banned Books displays up until October Break, so please stop by and check them out!  Read this week and every week knowing that your right to read is encouraged, supported and defended by your ASH libraries.

Serendipitously I stumbled across a scribbled note to myself on the back of a Sur & Plus Pure Architectural Living, Rambla sofa product sheet for a sofa Aaron and I saw in a shop window in Leiden last spring and never looked at again (couldn’t afford it if we had loved it, which we didn’t thank goodness).  I had written: “i thank You God for most this amazing day”, Eric Whitacre, ee cummings poem”…three or four lines, hurriedly written and shoved into the top right-hand corner in my usual scrawled writing. I remember now hearing Eric Whitacre’s setting for the poem sung by a choir on our favorite NPR station, Classical Minnesota Public Radio, and it had moved me to tears one morning over coffee with it’s thankful beauty and pure expressed faith in the present moment containing all we need to be comforted and content.

Despair not is the message here from my past self to me today, this day is perfect just as it is no matter the undone to-dos and the lurking worries about beginning the new school year:

“i thank You God for most this amazing”

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

And here the ears of your ears can hear e. e. cummings magically read the poem in 1953:

And here the eyes of your eyes can see Eric Whitacre’s amazing setting of the poem performed in 1999 by the Dutch VU-Kamercoor:

Love the cover! Perfect color of blue, and the pencil chignon is both exotic and academic. This cover sells the book really well, both for adults and YA readers.

Exciting book news today!  Our friend Jean Kwok’s first novel Girl in Translation has recently received another kudo to add to her growing list of great reviews and “best of” lists, which includes being a NYT extended bestseller, a Barnes and Noble “Discover Great New Writers” pick, an Indie Next List pick by independent booksellers of the American Booksellers Association, and a Blue Ribbon pick for all of the following clubs: Book of the Month, Doubleday, Literary Guild, Large Print, the Lifestyle Clubs, Rhapsody and Book of the Month Club 2 (Kwok).  Girl in Translation has just been listed as one of the “Top 30 Books for 2010″ by Woman and Home magazine, one of my favorite fun reads to enjoy while traveling or with a glass or cup of something relaxing.  The editors’ call it a “Superbly written and observed coming-of-age novel” (“Top 30 Books for 2010″).  If you haven’t read Jean’s book yet, you are in for a treat:

“When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she quickly begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings. Disguising the more difficult truths of her life—the staggering degree of her poverty, the weight of her family’s future resting on her shoulders, her secret love for a factory boy who shares none of her talent or ambition—Kimberly learns to constantly translate not just her language but herself, back and forth, between the worlds she straddles (Girl in Translation).”

Kimberly’s story is a quintessentially American one that draws in echoes of Dickens’ gritty factory scenes, Cinderella-cruel characters, and even the sweet sounds of a violin being played to a little girl in the dark that immediately reminded me of the Little House on the Prairie books.  It is Kimberly and her mom against the world, and Jean’s amazing ability to describe Kimberly’s English to Chinese mistranslations  is one of the real strengths of her narrative.  It helps the reader share Kimberly’s confusion, her frustrations and, ultimately, her triumphs, rooting for her all the way.

In addition, Jean just published an article for The Mail on Sunday, “The Sweatshop Was My Second Home: How One Woman Escaped the Poverty Trap”, an autobiographical piece where, for the first time, she shares with her readers in-depth details about her life as a gifted little girl who was also a Chinese immigrant, lived in condemned housing in Brooklyn and worked at a sweatshop in Chinatown after school in order to help support her parents and three older brothers.  Jean’s personal story is the backbone of her novel and as American-Dream as you can get, a hard-scrabble immigrant life at home while at school her work ethic, talent and intelligence enable her to master English and then soar academically, ultimately landing her at Harvard where she still managed to work four jobs to support herself.  She graduated with honors in American and English Literature, but focusing her studies on the humanities and becoming an author wasn’t the traditional way to succeed in the Chinese community, particularly for a young woman.  She describes why she bucked conventional careers in “financially secure careers” that are highly sought after and concentrated on her writing instead:

“I felt it was important to write about the world I had seen – most children who work in sweatshops grow up to be adults who work in sweatshops. The ones who do manage to leave that world usually choose financially secure careers – medicine, engineering, accountancy – not writing. The one question people always ask me when they hear about my novel is: could it really happen in America? My answer is ‘Yes’.

Although most of the clothing factories in Chinatown have now moved back to China, there is still no shortage of low-wage labour. I am certain that many immigrants still work incredibly hard day and night, many with children in tow, simply to make ends meet” (“The Sweatshop Was My Second Home”).

The article in the Mail joins the flood of interviews, book signings, radio shows, photo shoots and conference appearances Jean has been participating in on her whirlwind tour of the States and the UK promoting her novel.  I have been following her press via her posts on Facebook and it has been fascinating to watch Jean blaze her trail through the publishing and bookselling world.  The poignant piece of Jean’s success is that her brother Kwan, brilliant in his own right and her “biggest fan”, was killed in a plane accident in 2009, but it is a comfort to know that he got to read a proof of his kid sister’s story before he died and that his encouragement of Jean’s writing enabled her to share with all of us who read Girl in Translation.

In the spring, Jean was gracious enough to make sure the HS Library received 10 Advanced Reading Copies of her novel, which I promptly and enthusiastically shared out to my teacher colleagues and high school students to take home this summer to read and enjoy.  There will also be plenty of copies of Jean’s book available when school starts in two weeks because we are looking forward to having Jean, her busy speaking schedule permitting, come and visit our school this Fall…the great news for us is that she lives so close in nearby Voorschoten.  We can’t wait to welcome her to ASH!

Morgan & Milo Blue Suede Shoes, sadly no longer available...but we'll keep looking!

For those new to our world here in The Netherlands, my husband Aaron and I are adopting two beautiful children from Ethiopia this year, most likely late this fall.  I have spent this morning opening Picasa web albums from our agency’s group account finding our little girl and our little dude’s faces in the photos and marveling again at how spectacularly unpredictable life can be.  In January, no kids and no kids on the horizon.  Fly to Tanzania in February to chaperone our international school’s service trip to Moshi.  Paint classrooms for a local primary school and spend one hot, dusty, momentous afternoon playing with a quiet little 3-year-old girl named Theresia at the Upendo Children’s Home, an orphanage run by the Precious Blood Sisters of Tanzania.  Return to the Netherlands committed to adopting from East Africa.  Research options for the region and land on Ethiopia.  Sign our contract with International Adoption Guides on April 14.  Receive two unrelated children’s referrals, the first in April, a six-year-old girl, and the second in early June, a 24-month-old boy.  Fall deeply in love with their eyes, their curly heads of hair, their shy smiles, their mismatched clothes.  And now we wait to bring them home, gathering up tiny bits of information about their personalities, their shoe sizes, their favorite crayon colors.

Every month or so, families fly to Addis Abeba to bring their adopted children home and on that trip they meet our children.  The traveling families play with the kiddos at IAG’s care center in Addis, deliver care packages from waiting parents back home to their waiting children and send precious messages back to expectant families about what their children are like, what they’re wearing, what their shoe sizes are. One family was charmed by the chubby toddler who acted like the care center was his own private social club.  They asked about this little boy, who turned out to be our little dude, and whether he had a family yet or not, they described him as “the little guy who looks like Elvis”.  Two years old, and our son has the look of the King about him.  I can see it in the photos, soulful eyes that downturn slightly at the edges of his long lashed lids, wickedly attractive smile, toddling around the center like he is its official ambassador, ruler of fun, probably up to no good.  When we tell him this story, which we are saving for him in his Life Book, how will he know why it’s so cool that he reminded someone of Elvis?

Serendipitously, I have an answer written by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy in stanza 5 or her poem “The Good Child’s Guide to Rock’n'Roll” from her 2009 collection New and Collected Poems for Children:

5 Elvis Presley (1935-1977)

Elvis was King,
he swiveled
his hips, wore
drainpipe jeans
with gold zips,
sang, danced,
pouted, sneered –
You ain’t nothin’
but a hound dog –
bowed, dis-
appeared.  Elvis
was King, drove
a pink Cadillac,
drank ice-cream soda
in the back.
His Mama said
her boy done well,
Elvis sang
Heartbreak Hotel,
died too young
still the King,
now the angels
hear him sing –
Love me tender,
love me true,
tapping on his cloud
with a blue
suede shoe (17).

Not a bad introduction to the King for our little guy.  I’ll make sure he has some blue suede kicks to tap his feet to when we crank up the poetry and the music.  Here, at home, together.

Link to this post @ The Uncommon Reader

US Edition Cover, great puppy although I do love the British cover's woodcut-look with the Corduroy Mansions coat of arms...

What’s not to love about a chilly, rainy July Saturday in the Netherlands?  Well, it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but for me, this weather is a gift, a full on English Breakfast with whole milk and two sugars cuppa.  I feel the cool breeze and absolute lack of sun and smile from under the duvet knowing that I have many good reasons to stay home, read in my pajamas (it is my job, after all, to read), and let Aaron walk Arthur Barker and eventually make brunch.  My to do list hums its way through my mind as I stretch and yawn, first I’ll read a little, then work on my Moodle course, then blog a little…for such a very cosy and domestic day, I ignore for the moment the other books I have going, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet and The Red Pyramid, and choose my new copy of Corduroy Mansions, the first installment in Alexander McCall Smith’s recent series, begun as a serial novel for The Daily Telegraph in September 2008.  I want to relax and laugh with some new characters as they ramble through their London lives, so this is the perfect read for this perfectly gray day.

I’ve already met and, as expected, become fond of the main characters as the series opens, William the 51-year old widower wine merchant and his friend Marcia the caterer who has her eye on William as a “prospect”. They are hatching a scheme to get William’s 24-year old, “dreadful”, indolent son Eddie to finally move out of his father’s flat.  Their plot involves time-sharing a Pimlico terrier named Freddie de la Hay, a dog that resembles a Jack Russell terrier or any other little terrier you might imagine.  This was Martha’s great idea, again she sees William as a future “more-than-a-friend”, so getting the son out of the way is a solid first step towards the possibility of “something more”.  Eddie, as it happens, is terrified of all dogs big or small, plus dogs tend to make him sneeze and itch if they lick him.  This particular dog has been blessed with owners who only really want a part-time dog.  William isn’t sure he wants to try the dog-scheme at all.  The Pimlico Terrier option is perfect.  What could possibly go wrong?

William and Eddie live in the top floor flat of a four-story, down-at-heel yet not-quite-shabby mansion block surlily nick-named Corduroy Mansions by a disgruntled person at some point in the past and then was forever after known as Corduroy Mansions.   The first floor flat is shared by four young women, each with her own quirky lifestyle and odd circle of acquaintances.  Jenny works as the PA for a rather nasty politician named Oedipus Snark, an MP who offends everyone he meets and has an annoying habit of ending sentences with “See?” as in “Did you get it?”.  Through Jenny we meet Oedipus’s mother, Berthea Snark, who detests her son just a little bit more than he detests his voters.  Back at the flat, Caroline, clad in sweaters and pearls, is studying Fine Arts at the Sotheby’s Instiutute and hoping to live the lifestyle that the degree requires, namely one full of money and leisure.  Dee is a holistic medicine junky, hooked on vitamins and self-diagnosis and not afraid to diagnose others. The fourth roommate, Jo, likes to go paintballing in Essex on the weekends.  The ground floor flat is home to an accountant named Mr. Wickramsinghe who keeps to himself and puts fresh flowers in a vase in the entry hall.  There’s definitely a story there as well, so there’s a lot to look forward to this afternoon!

The Daily Telegraph has a wonderful online world for Corduroy Mansions, including a summary of book one which I’m going to ignore until I’ve finished the novel, and the complete second novel in the series, The Dog Who Came in From the Cold with both text, illustations and audio chapters read by Andrew Sachs.  There’s a Facebook community for the series, interviews with McCall Smith, character summaries, reviews and, of course, loads of further reading from the Telegraph’s Expat book club and latest book news.  Lots to enjoy on a rainy day!

Screen capture from The Daily Telegraph

Roth tells us to remember two things, to eat what we want when we’re hungry and to feel what we feel without stuffing those feelings down with food (I think instead of “food” you could also substitute any other problem drug or behavior here, also works)  (101).  Simple, right?  She reminds us that that is the way we ate naturally when we were, oh, four-years-old.  Eat when hungry, push plate away (sometimes violently) when we were done.  And then go do something else that made us simply glad to be alive.

To help describe the behaviors that accompany what Roth refers to as the natural way of eating, since many of us as adults have incredibly distorted notions of what hunger is and is not, Roth created 7 guidelines which seem pretty easy to understand and do until you realize you aren’t allowed to veg out with a bag of chips in front of the book/magazine/TV/movie screen anymore:

1.  Eat when you are hungry.
2.  Eat sitting down in a calm environment. This does not include the car.
3.  Eat without distractions. Distractions include radio, television, newspapers, books, intense or anxiety-producing conversations or music.
4.  Eat what your body wants.
5.  Eat until you are satisfied.
6.  Eat (with the intention of being) in full view of others.
7.  Eat with enjoyment, gusto and pleasure (211).

To make this work day after day, Roth gently insists that we need to first understand that our “relationship with food is a direct path to coming home after a lifetime of being exiled” (26).  That sense of home, of reunion with ourselves, Roth likens to finding God after losing our way.  According to Roth, God is in the present moment where there is all the food, love and acceptance we need to be content.  We can eat whatever we want, whenever we’re hungry, and stop joyfully when we’re satisfied.  Not full, satisfied.  We can lay our criticisms and doubts to rest once and for all and begin to live our lives full of joy and thanksgiving for the food and love and forgiveness we deserve. Women, Food and God isn’t about losing weight per se.  It’s really about coming to terms with living in the present moment, re-learning to listen to our bodies and re-focus our minds on the here and now.  All the tools you need to  “stop bossing yourself around” (104) about your weight are here, as well as mindfulness techniques that women and men can use to let feeling come and go as they occur without abusing the escape-hatch of compulsive eating or other numbing behaviors:

“…what we believe about food and eating is an exquisite reflection of all our beliefs.  As soon as the food comes out, the feelings come out.  As soon as the feelings come out, there is an inevitable recognition of the self-inflicted violence and suffering that fuel any obsession.  And on the heels of that recognition come the willingness to engage with and unwind the suffering rather than be its prisoner.  The exquisite paradox of this engagement is that when the suffering if fully allowed, it dissolves.  Weight loss occurs easily, naturally.  And without the self-inflicted pain and the stories about what is wrong, what’s left is what was there before they began:  our connection to meaning and that which we find holy” (12).

I will confess that the hardest rule for me was the “Eat without distractions.” What?!  That means no eating while reading anything, preparing for anything, avoiding anything, no eating on the couch in front of the TV, no pigging out on popcorn at the movies, no eating in the car on a road trip…hmmm.  Well, I did call it pigging out at one point.  And you know what?  These rules are working for me, keeping me centered on when I’m actually hungry and when I’m feeling…bored, nervous, tired, overwhelmed…so far, so good.  I recommend this to anyone who is struggling habits they’d like to break, whether food, drink, too much TV, any escape hatch that has outlived its purpose.

Today’s featured birthdays were: Arianna Huffington founder of The Huffington Post which I read occasionally for political commentary and, mostly, for trashy celebrity gossip, then Iris Murdoch who I haven’t been able to read ever since reading John Bayley’s intimate, sorrowful Elegy for Iris: A Memoir (1999) about their long love affair and her eventual, gruelingly slow decline and death from Alzheimer’s, and then Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstructionism and one of the key writers that ruined graduate level literature study for me in the nineties.

Flashback.  Deep shudder.  “There’s nothing outside the text.”  “Everything is text.”  Derrida and his followers were required reading in my graduate courses at Miami University, and reading their essays and treatises felt more akin to playing a semester-long mad lib round where for every normal verb in the course you would use “deconstruct” or “subordinate” or “subvert”, and for every adjective you would use “contradictory” or “logocentric” or “irreducible”.  The “apparent systematicity” of a text would be, under the sharp scrutiny of Derrida and his believers, which included my distinctly frog-like professor who was angling for tenure, ripped apart to uncover the ellipses and gaps in the text that are fraught with meaning and, ideally, subversion of the text itself!  Wow, that’s a lot of pressure on an author and their work, but hey, we were taught that it wasn’t about the author, the author was dead…um, wait, that was Barthes.  At any rate, it was all very interesting enough for a course or two, but when I think about my career in libraries and literacy, I send a quick, loaded prayer of absolute thanksgiving for dodging the bullet-lure of university teaching.  I wanted to live literature, not just deconstruct it, and here I am!

The poem selected for today was one everyone who lives in Holland can enjoy, “Black Umbrellas” by Rick Agran, where the images of rainy Seattle and coffee shops and lost umbrellas flow through the lines reminding us that lives lived here by the North Sea make us “intimate with rain and its appointments” as well.  This poem reminds us that we should take advantage of the days inspired by rain, the interruptions of our routines a thunderstorm requires, the diving into warm hallways to escape a downpour.  We should embrace the poetry of the drops every now and then, indulge the impulses that make children jump into puddles and make us forget our umbrellas or rain pants for our bike rides home, because it lets us be reborn somehow, lets us go home the way we came into the world “wet looking.”