Lazy W Marie

Carpeing all the diems in semi-rural Oklahoma...xoxo

read, watch, listen this week

Friends, I have enjoyed some fantastic input lately. From books and online articles and from Netflix to podcasts, the Universe is feeding me mightily. Here are some highlights. I would love to know what you’re soaking up, too!

Kim Swims, a Netflix documentary. I thoroughly enjoyed this. Treadmill miles click by so easily when I am watching anything about an athlete with gobs more endurance than me, and this lady certainly qualifies, wow! Kim Chambers was a ballerina who suffered a traumatic leg injury then discovered a passion for distance swimming and has been setting records since. The program follows her training and recent attempt to swim to a group of shark infested islands about 30 miles off of San Francisco. It teaches a lot about the sport of open water swimming (did you know this is the genesis of the term “Oceans Seven?”) and chronicles Kim’s personal grit and appetite for accomplishment. I loved it. Plus, she is from New Zealand so that entire afternoon after watching her story I walked around the farm speaking to the animals in my best fake Kiwi accent, ha.

Heads up: There is a surprise scene when Kim’s graphic injuries are shown pretty clearly. It was gory and startling. I literally jumped and yelped on the treadmill, ha!

Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. Miller writes about Christian Spirituality, a genre which I did not know existed, per se, before reading this book, but with which I whole-heartedly identify.

The truths of the Bible were magic, like messages from heaven, like codes, enchanting codes that offered power over life, a sort of power that turned sorrow to joy, hardship to challenge, and trial to opportunity.

In Blue Like Jazz, Miller shares his evolving relationship with God and with “church” and society at large. It’s a kind of spiritual coming of age story. He is simultaneously lofty with his ideas and downright funny. I would describe his writing style as a nice mix of Bob Goff’s affability and C.S Lewis’ seriousness, with some hippie-scented irreverence thrown in. I finished the book last week and keep returning to my notes to soak up certain passages more deeply. My biggest takeaway? Connection. Human connection is vital. We are designed to act as conduits for God’s perfect Love. It is possible, even though we on our own can only love each other imperfectly. Connection, connection, connection. Beautiful stuff!

Mom & Me & Mom by Maya Angelou: I snagged this book (and one other) at a very cool book store in downtown Los Angeles, for about three dollars each.

Easily the most fun book store I have ever visited!
Book sculptures & tunnels everywhere!

I had been hearing about Mom & Me & Mom plenty and thought that reading it near Mother’s Day would be perfect. Man, I really wanted to love it. Maya Angelou has always provided such poetry to her generation, you know? And elegance? But this book was disappointing. I ended up feeling physically ill while progressing through the final chapters, the parts of the author’s life when you might expect relief and redemption to feel really good. Instead of healing, it felt more like glorifying dysfunction. Clearly this review says more about me than it does the book (maybe I have some healing of my own to do), but there it is. I did not enjoy reading it. But I am still glad to have finished it.

I so truly wanted to love this book, but I just didn’t.

Here is what I shared with some Facebook friends. If you have read the book I would treasure your input, whether we agree or not!

It sat uncomfortably with me mostly because she seemed to grow not only more confident (would have been a good thing) but also more… I don’t know. Happy with the dysfunction in her family rather than resilient to it. And her long series of stories celebrated racism and made a joke of violence or the threat of it. I have always lapped up her eloquence and regarded her as someone with wisdom, but after reading this I feel like she has just lorded over people with wealth and controlled people with illusions about her power (not the same as confidence, to me). It all just made me so sad. Enduring a troubled childhood with trauma is actually pretty common. She just did not rise above it with as much love and grace as her reputation always had me believe. I am so sorry if that sounds horrible. It’s just how the memoir impacted me. Her writing was clean and propelling though, so I plowed through it in less than 2 days. She had it pruned back better than I could ever hope to do. And I did plenty of highlighting of beautiful turns of phrase, so I do not mean to diminish her actual writing skills. Just, I guess, her life/character/personality? Ehhh that makes it worse. Sorry.

Oprah’s podcast interview with Tara Westover, author of Educated: I already knew, from my sister Gen and her best friend Julia, some of what to expect from the book itself; but when I struck out for an easy run and hit play on Oprah’s Super Soul podcast, the author’s voice only made me want to read her memoir more. She is young but calm and wise. She is damaged but somehow disconnected from the damage. At once eloquent and pragmatic. She was enthralling. I have since started reading the hardback Gen loaned to me and will report back soon (can scarcely put it down), but in the mean time if you have half an hour or so, give this a listen.

Jess over at Roots and Refuge continues to inspire. Her casual country vegetable gardens and her open-heartedness are just so contagious. And she is admirably knowledgeable, too. Are you following her on You Tube or Instagram yet? I think she has a cult following, judging from her Facebook friends group, but it’s a happy cult. Like, not the kind you need to leave and call your Dad over. Just a cult about creative vegetable gardens with trellis arches and tomatoes and maybe dairy goats. Also lots of sunflowers. A very good cult.

Jess at Roots and Refuge in Arkansas

One more offering from Oprah! She hosts Brene Brown, who speaks on the anatomy of trust. So good, friends. And no kidding, I wept while running slowly and listening to this podcast episode. The story about her (then) third grade daughter and her young friends who had earned or lost her trust, the marble jar, grandparents, all of it, it got me right in my heart in the best way. Since listening to this I have been ruminating plenty over trust, marble jars, and intimate friendships. Good stuff. Love and intimacy built in small moments. Find it and listen! Oh this reminds me to find the study on “sliding door moments” and maybe a Gwenyth Paltrow movie by that title? Are you familiar with either?

Piggybacking by accident, another Brene Brown selection, this time her Netflix special, A Call to Courage: Handsome and I watched it together at the end of a fun, overstuffed Mother’s Day weekend. It has some repeat material if you have followed her for a while; but it has some fresh stuff too and a consistent message about vulnerability and just showing up for life. I bet she and Des Linden would click nicely.

Okay, that’s it for today! I have some yard work to finish before settling in again with Educated. Stories from our Mother’s Day weekend plus a fun recap of my trip to Los Angeles will be posted later this week. What are you reading and watching? Tell me everything!

“I always thought the Bible
was more of a salad thing,
but it isn’t.
It’s a chocolate thing.”
~Donald Miller
XOXOXOXO

late january reading update

Happy Saturday friends! I think this is a great week to pause and do some literary looking. The month of January was rife with excellent reading material, both digital and print, and I am happy to have made a small dent in my 2016 goal. A couple of these titles warrant their own full reviews, but for today, here are some nudges from me to you. Please share what you have been reading too. I love to hear all about that.

Books:

BIG MAGIC
by Elizabeth Gilbert

This book was lovely. I am letting it count toward one of my best-sellers reads of 2016, though I had sort of intended that to be best-selling fiction. Big Magic is sort of a creative’s manifesto. In it, Gilbert is encouraging, liberating, smart, sassy, and very much the feminine counter-balance to the more industrious guidance Stephen King offers in his creative memoir On Writing (my review of that is here). Gilbert really calls down the power of magic, after all. At least that’s how it struck me. And I loved it. Five of five stars, for what it is. Compared to her other books I have enjoyed (Eat, Pray, Love and The Signature of All Things) this one was not my favorite; but it did have the quality of sparking my writing-living-nest-feathering energy and of having offered a long conversation with the author. That was really nice.

One of the oldest and most generous tricks that the universe plays on human beings is to bury strange jewels within us all, and then stand back to see if we can ever find them. ~Elizabeth Gilbert BIG MAGIC

This quote is perhaps my favorite takeaway theme from Big Magic. How tantalizing!

My Life on the Run
by Bart Yasso

I nibbled this book last autumn after meeting the author at the Spirit of Survival half-marathon in Lawton, Oklahoma. I enjoyed my chapter nibbles then and have thoroughly enjoyed reading it cover to cover this month, plus a few chapters multiple times. I will post a full review next week. For now, I offer you this little treasure, part of Bart explaining how a burro race operates and what are the differences between all the creatures:

Mules are the domesticated offspring of a female horse and a donkey, and a burro is a small donkey. A jackass is a wild donkey or someone who runs a race with a burro. ~Bart Yasso, My Life on the Run

The Shack
by William Paul Young

Oh, friends. I can barely make a passing mention of this book without really diving in. Please please please tune in for my second review soon. The first one was way back in August 2011, when my life was so very different. Reading this same book now, with five years of life changes, growth, and spiritual enrichment along for the ride, was a completely new experience! At least two of my friends are reading it for the second and third times, too, and I am looking forward to comparing notes. How wonderful. Apparently this is something I will need to own in hardback in order to refer to it many times in the future, as life continues to evolve.

I suppose that since most our hurts come through relationships, so will our healing, and that grace rarely makes sense for those looking in from the outside. ~William Paul Young, The Shack

Online Articles & Blog Posts:

Lifeingrace:

Edie is blogging again!! This makes me so happy. A few days ago she shared a beautiful, thoughtful piece on why we should still bother building a family library. My Mom would probably appreciate this as much as I do. Welcome back, Edie! We are all so excited for your book release!

Meta-Marriage: Ten Big Truths for Every Committed Couple

I  would genuinely appreciate this series even if its author was a faceless expert in some far-flung think tank I will never explore. But the fact that this very meaty and nourishing stuff is a gift to the world from my friend and local writer Kelly Roberts? Well, I shouldn’t have to tell you how happy that makes me. Red Dirt Kelly, as most of us locals know her, really knows her stuff. And her delivery is warm. Go check it out! This is perfect timing for Valentine’s Day, too!

Vitamin D in January?

Nutritional supplementation is often on my mind, especially since discovering how much better I feel taking the right Iron (three cheers for slow-release!). When local running celebrity Camille Heron shared this Competitor.com article about Vitamin D and its connection to athletic performance, I paid attention. I groove anything old-fashioned and not trendy that could help me feel better, work harder, and just live a fuller, richer life. Sunshine has always felt great, but reading a little science behind that was nice. PS- yesterday at the pharmacy, while grabbing an anti-inflammatory prescription for my stupid ankle, I refreshed my vitamin D supply. Thanks Camille!

Thanks for staying to chat, friends! Please let me know what you have found to read, whether online or in print. Let me know what YOU have written too! That would truly make my day.

Wishing you a deeply nourishing weekend. Talk soon.

I think of life as a good book.
The further you get into it,
the more it begins to make sense.
~Harold Kushner
XOXOXOXO

reading plan 2016

How many books could you read in a year, and still keep your life in balance? What alchemy of books would you choose, to both challenge and comfort your mind and nourish your spirit as well as season your own writing? These are good questions to ask at the end of December, knowing that several weeks of cold weather and indoor cuddling lie ahead.

The owner of local book store Full Circle Books is known to read at least four brand new titles each week, while still running a successful business. My friend Melissa holds down a full time job, takes care of her parents and dogs, stays active socially, and last year read 85 books. Wow! I don’t know what the average is, but that sounds high.

This coming year I will pull away from Dinner Club With a Reading Problem and instead spend time reading my own lists of titles at my pwn pace. I am looking again at my “Want to Read” shelf on Goodreads to see what has slipped my memory. Plenty, to answer that question in a word. 289 books teasing my imagination, and that list is nowhere near complete.

So how to strategize? Here is my plan for the New Year:

2016 book plan BLUE

Twelve months, 36 books. That should be totally achievable and leave space for spontaneous finds along the way.

Four Difficult Books:
I am thinking along the lines of Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. One of these every quarter is fair, right? Maybe Don Quixote will happen after all. Not that the material of either of these is difficult; but the reading is awfully tedious. Also in the “difficult” category, though, would be The Shack by William Young. I read about 80% of it several years ago and stopped because of what was happening in my life at that time. Maybe now I can read it with wiser eyes, a stronger heart.

One Fiction Per Month: Easy-peasy. Talented authors abound. Fiction is what I want to write myself soon, so overdosing on a variety of styles is good. Plus so much fun.

One Non-Fiction Per Month: Lots of great choices out there. I love my friend Jennifer’s idea of going on a memoir safari and might diverge a bit on this theme. There are also, of course, so many great books out there on the creative process, lots of history, inspirational stuff, and on and on. Twelve non-fiction pieces should be almost automatic.

Something Translated to English: I recently listened to a Ted talk by Ann Morgan, who decided to expand her literary repertoire by spending a full year reading books from all around the globe, nothing written by British or North American authors. Totally inspirational. Check out her related blog A Year of Reading the World. With the exception of the first part of Don Quixote and a smattering of Greek mythology, I am pretty sure I have only read English literature, always. This shows great room for improvement.

Best Seller: I just want to hip and stylish, is that so wrong?

Rare Bird Lit: This is the publishing house in California where my friend Julia works. She has generously sent me a stack of books by several of her authors, and I have enjoyed every single one I have read so far, some more than others. This year I will dig into that stack again. 

New to Me Classic: It’s embarrassing how many widely accepted classics are foreign to me. Need to fix this.

Classic Re-Read: I can’t stop thinking of Nathaniel Hawthorne for some reason. Maybe because our perspective changes so much over time, and my tenth grade prejudices while reading The Scarlet Letter must surely have evolved by now. Gotta find out. No promises, though; another classic encore may suddenly seem way more important.

Summertime Guilty Pleasures: Three months of deck living calls for at least three guilty pleasure reads. Not sad about this plan.

f5f books lace

Okay, this is where my literary appetite is as of late December. I love the look and feel of a fresh, clean calendar, and knowing I have a year to explore this many different kinds of books is very exciting. What are your literary goals for 2016? Are you on Goodreads? I’d love to stalk you there.

“A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.”
~Chinese proverb
XOXOXOXO

when you don’t even recognize a chicken

Yesterday afternoon the hot sun returned to us. I changed into a swimsuit, took Hemingway’s A Movable Feast out to my favorite chaise lounge, and laid on my belly, propped up on my elbows to read. His simple but seductive descriptions of Paris quickly transported me to the New Orleans’ French Quarter (my closest approximation). It made me want to walk, write, explore, and express the thrumming affection for the French Quarter that has grown in my heart these past several years. Good reading always makes me want to write. It took some effort, but I quieted those impulses in order to really accept what he was offering.

The farm was quiet and calm, making it easy to slip away into another mental scene. The sun heated and seized at my skin until I could feel my pulse in my scalp and my legs were slack and relaxed. One bead of sweat formed between my shoulder blades and tracked in a zig-zag down my back. I was reading about Paris in early spring, when the cold rains threatened both bloom and joy, so the contrast was fun, interesting. It heightened the sense of transport.

Then, with no warning, I heard a scuffle to my left. A crunchy, leafy, noisy explosion from my peripheral there. A young red hen was running and kicking her legs, slashing a path through the undergrowth nearby.

The weird thing is that I was so transported, so disconnected from the farm at that moment, that I didn’t recognize her. I didn’t just not know which hen she was; I could not for several moments even think of what kind of animal she was. What the heck is that? I closed my book and stared at her until the word pulsed silently in the forefront of my mind like a digital cursor, chicken. 

Oh thank goodness, that’s right. Chicken. Okay.

It was a bizarre feeling. But it is also very in keeping with life lately. We are navigating so many unthinkable changes and ongoing heartaches that anything seems possible and nothing feels familiar.

Another bead of sweat formed and raced down my back and Sonia (our fluffy grey cat) mewed and twisted her way over to me, curling up beneath the chaise lounge. A rooster crowed nearby, and I was happy to know he was a rooster. I closed my eyes and took stock of other sounds around the farm, quiet as they were, reconnecting myself to reality.

I need to do this with all of life, too. Stop and take inventory of what remains, of what is real and true and knowable. Especially the plain, simple things. I need to stitch myself slowly and neatly back to the fabric of life, making the tears stronger and calming the frays. (Thank you, Anne Lamott for this easy metaphor.)

june maroon lily

What are you reading this weekend? Does it transport you this vividly? Have you ever felt so disconnected from life that you have to consciously stitch yourself back to what matters? Only you can do this for yourself. Be honest. Maintain clear vision and focus. Take it slow and steady.

And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow;
they toil not, neither do they spin. ~Matthew 6:28
XOXOXOXO

Seven Days in May (book review)

I’ve just enjoyed a fresh new slice of historical fiction, one I highly recommend you snag and enjoy for yourself. It is Seven Days in May by Jennifer Luitweiler, the same author who penned Run With Me which I reviewed about a year and a half ago.

Seven Days in May by Jennifer Luitweiler
Seven Days in May by Jennifer Luitweiler

Once again, Dinner Club With a Reading Problem was dazzled and blessed to receive Jen as our guest of honor. Last Friday night she endured our girlish antics, warmed the room with her smile, and shed wonderful insight to this newly released book, her most recent labor of love.

Jen Luitweiler and me. (Look! DCWRP is so fancy we have t-shirts!)
Jen Luitweiler and me. (Look! DCWRP is so fancy we have t-shirts!)

Seven Days in May is a quick (237 pages) but absorbing read about the 1921 race riots in Tulsa, Oklahoma, including ramp-up action before that. It was an interesting and tumultuous time right between Emancipation and World War II, a time when race inequality, violence, and the oil boom in this part of the country both revealed and tested social norms.

Tulsa was the Magic City that erupted from the soil just like the oil that could make anyone, regardless of color or creed, a millionaire. With rapid prosperity come major growing pains. With so many people spilling into this boom town, we may guess that the riot was inevitable. It is against this setting that our story begins.

This novel tells the stories of several people, two families in particular, living the ground-level realities of this churning social atmosphere. Luitweiler does a wonderful job tethering the historical facts to completely relatable human nature. She illustrates cold, hard headlines with colorful personalities, family drama, and character background that, if they don’t make you sympathetic to the villains, at least make you step back to see them as part of a whole. Her storytelling makes it impossible to read about race division with a cold heart. The emotional landscape of the book is not only believable; it’s palpable. Absolutely engaging.

The two main characters are coming-of-age girls named Mercy and Grace. These names, by the way, are just perfect for their respective characters. One is white, one is black, and their families are intertwined in both common and fascinatingly uncommon ways. One of the elements of this book I most enjoyed was the author’s skill at so fully plumbing the feminine depth. The way these girls and their mothers relate to each other, especially their non verbal communication, was a long, soft poem to the reader.

In our conversations with Jen we learned that the feminine angle was a strong motivator for writing the book in the first place. Where were the women of this time? Who were the wives and daughters of the men in the newspapers? She did an incredible job conjuring up the feminine energies.

Is Seven Days in May suitable for all young readers? Maybe not. The story keeps its head well above graphic sensationalism, but still it contains violence and even one rape scene. It almost has to, as this chapter of history was not pretty. One thing I want to mention here is the author’s deliberate choice to not write with racially specific dialect. She explained to our book club that since it was not in her natural comfort zone to write it accurately, she did not want to risk using it inappropriately. I respect that. She handled so much delicate material with great care, this included.

Hydrangeas and coconut-lime cake for our guest of honor. xoxo
Hydrangeas and coconut-lime cake for our guest of honor. xoxo

Once again, I am pressed to say that this level of historical fiction is what will get the younger generation to learn from the past. It may also be exactly what gets the older generation to discuss it. (As Oklahomans we were all a bit stunned to realize how little we have been taught on this chapter of our own history.) Happily, we understand that several schools in Tulsa, where the author and her husband are raising their beautiful flock, are circulating the book as an annex to textbook curriculum. They are also accepting Jen as a guest speaker. How wonderful! What an incredible opportunity those classrooms have been given. Let’s all hope together that the material sparks important passions in the students there. Let’s also hope together that this generation learns something important from the hard truths of our communal past.

If you have time for one more hope, let it be that Jen’s work is picked up by the Oprah network. The same week that her book was released, the powers that be descended on Tulsa to collect interviews and do research on the 1921 race riots for a full-blown television special. We are all pulling for her that Seven Days gets exposure, of course, but also that the wide audience Oprah enjoys will benefit from Jen’s hard and loving endeavor.

Anger is the strangest thing. Anger is visiting a horrifying fun house, without the fun.
It is like wearing glasses in the wrong prescription or walking through life upside down.
It is an ugly mask, a veneer of venom that covers the open sore of hurt, disappointment,
betrayal, or misunderstanding.
Anger is alive and destructive like no war ever was.
~Jen Luitweiler in Seven Days in May
XOXOXOXO

How perfect that Mama Kat invited us to share a book review this week.
Click over to her cool site to see lots of other great posts.
Not the least of which is her own story about easy, comfortable friendship. I loved it.