Book Number 6 of the Big Book Read 2010; "Loud and Clear" by Anna Quindlen

Loud and Clear by Anna Quindlen

Book Number 6 of the Big Book Read 2010

288 Pages

I've enjoyed Anna Quindlen's columns (which were featured on the back page of Newsweek magazine for several years) and was pleased to discover some compilations in book form... "Loud and Clear" is one that highlights her columns between 1993 and 2003 (which also includes some from her New York Times years as well) . Quindlen is a "fifty-something" like myself and someone on the same side of the political spectrum as well...she writes about things I can easily relate to..... from "Mom Quixote", describing her quest for a "must-have" holiday toy for her son , to "Life After Death" an ode to her sister-in-law dying of lung cancer at age 41..... pondering the impact of her death on her two young daughters. Considering this time period includes 9/11... there are of course several moving columns on this event as well.

Quindlen has written some fiction as well....I've read a couple of her books.... including; "One True Thing" which was turned into a movie with Rene' Zelwegger and Meryl Streep. I prefer her non-fiction. Her most recent book is a tribute to her departed beloved Black Lab, Beau......"Good Dog, Stay" which I haven't worked up the strength to read quite yet... love the line I read in the review though: "The life of a good dog is like the life of a good person, only shorter and more compressed"......

At any rate, I think Quindlen is at her best in her columns.......She divides them up in this book into sections labeled: Heart, Mind, Body, Voice, and Soul. I have a couple of favorites:

From the Heart section comes "No Privilege for Parents" .... in which she writes: "While the U.S. counts as commonplace privilege between attorney and client, priest and penitent, doctor and patient, and, of course husband and wife, there is no generally accepted protection for parent and child" ...and how, by not creating this protection: "we're suborning perjury" as she indicates that she would "be fully prepared to lie under oath if (she) considered it to be the best thing for my kid and I would consider that a more moral position than telling the truth." Wow.... this gave me something to think about.....

From the Soul section... "Imagining the Hansons" in which she focuses on a family of three on the flight from Boston to Los Angeles on September 11th.... mother, father, and two-year old daughter "sitting safe between them, taking wing" on the plane destined to be the second to hit the World Trade Center.... I love the paragraph when she talks about "when human beings allow their ideology to trump their humanity, when they elevate an idea above the lives of individuals. Anything can happen, and too often does." Thought-provoking stuff here... Most of Quindlen's columns really make you stop and think, or laugh, or shed a tear...

Finally, another from the Soul section, which brings me back to my re-immersion into poetry (see my review of Book Number 5 ) ... her column... "Poetry Emotion" which begins with the acknowledgement of recent (column written in 1994) Pulitzer Prize winner... poet Yusef Komunyakaa. Quindlen bemoans the lack of recognition in contemporary times for poetry in spite of the fact that we all grow up with the rhymes of: The Cat in the Hat, Goodnight Moon, and Where the Wild Things Are.

Her last line says it all: "Maybe it's (poetry) a need for us all and we just forget it, as we move past bedtime-story rhythms and into a world without rhyme or reason."

My grandmother once told me that she started every day with a poem..... In the spirit of my poetry-loving grandmother... I think I'll share a poem that I found while searching for poems to read at my mother's memorial service. Eventually we read a couple of poems by Robert Frost (a tradition at our family events) but in the midst of the search I found a poem by a poet my mother loved, Jane Kenyon called "Let Evening Come" It really spoke to me... in fact I have it on my desk at home and at work..... not a day goes by that I don't read it...

Let Evening Come

Let the light of late afternoon

shine through chinks in the barn, moving

up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing

as a woman takes up her needles

and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned

in long grass. Let the stars appear

and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.

Let the wind die down. Let the shed

go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop

in the oats, to air in the lung

let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don't

be afraid. God does not leave us

comfortless, so let evening come.

Jane Kenyon (1990)

Book Number 5 of the Big Book Read 2010; "Poets Corner"

Poets' Corner, The One-and-Only Poetry Book For the Whole Family

Compiled by John Lithgow with Commentary: 304 Pages, Unabridged Audio version

Read by John Lithgow and Very Special Friends; Eileen Atkins, Kathy Bates, Glen Close, Billy Connolly, Jodie Foster, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, Lynne Redgrave, Susan Sarandon, Gary Sinise, and Sam Waterson.

Note: Once again, I have my mother to thank for this selection..... when she was in the hospital in the final months of her life, one of her oldest friends sent her a couple of books on CD (as a result of a fall, Mom had become a virtual quadriplegic...... she could no longer hold the books that she loved so much...so she became a fan of audio books and read alouds ) She loved poetry intensely (a love passed down to her from her mother... both of them grew up among the generations of school-children who memorized poetry as a vital part of their education..... and for both of them, this fueled a life-long passion for poetry) I don't know too many adults who routinely read books of poetry... my grandmother and mother were two of them...

Ahhh poetry.......Lithgow rightly states in the beginning of this compilation that whether we acknowledge it or not... we have all grown up with poetry as part of our lives... from nursery rhymes to playground chants, to stage plays and musicals, to rap, and hip-hop...... it's all poetry, and with this compilation Lithgow invites us into his world of favorite poets.

I found the order of this book to be a bit jarring at first.... as Lithgow chose to list the poets in alphabetical order... so there's quite a bit of jumping from century to century... how does the leap from Edmund Spencer to Gertrude Stein sound? And then there's the culture shock.... imagine reading a William S. Gilbert "ditty" (from a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta) and then moving right to the work of "Beat Poet", Alan Ginsberg - not to mention odd side-by-sides like Lord Byron and Lewis Carroll, Dorothy Parker and Edgar Allen Poe, Edward Lear and Edna St. Vincent Milay. But after listening for awhile I got into a rhythm (rather appropriate for a book of poetry) and grew to rather enjoy the ebb and flow of the recitations.

Lithgow starts the whole parade of poets by sharing a memory of he and his "sibs" sitting at the feet of his beloved "Gram" who had committed stanza upon stanza of poetry to memory and could burst forth with lively recitations at the bequest of her grandchildren. To illustrate the power of poetry he recounts the time he read aloud some poems by autistic children and adults at a Autism fundraiser and brought the entire room, including himself, to tears.

He begins each poet with a brief bio... then a guest reader recites the featured poem. Following the poem, Lithgow launches into an interpretation featuring a lot of personal color comments .... all enjoyable. Then he himself reads another poem of the poet aloud and ends with a list of the most well-known poems of the poet plus a quote by the poet.

I am convinced that hearing this book and its poems read aloud is the way one should "read" this book. The readers do a beautiful job and Lithgow's commentary is entertaining, moving, and at times thought-provoking. I heard poems that I know well and love by long-time favorite poets Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson as well as poems that I had no familiarity with at all - for instance, a mesmerizing poem by Gertrude Stein about Pablo Picasso, and an incredibly infectious ode "To a Mouse" by Robert Burns.

All this reminded me of a couple of the first poems I ever remember committing to memory and I think I'll end this review with both of them... they're short and sweet and never fail to bring a smile to my face:

"I eat my peas with honey,

I've done it all my life.

It makes the peas taste funny,

But it keeps them on my knife."

And finally (and this poem was read aloud by Lithgow in his book),

"I never saw a Purple cow,

I never hope to see one.

But I can tell you anyhow,

I'd rather see then be one."

Book Number 4 of the Big Book Read 2010: "Game Change"

Game Change, by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin; 436 pages

I had an "aha" moment in the middle of this book... I realized that 3 out of the first 4 books I've read for this challenge have been non-fiction, and 2 have been political. My usual genre of choice has always been historical fiction and fantasy with a little mystery and biography thrown in..... So why the non-fiction/political focus I found myself wondering? Here's where the "aha" part comes in..... I have taken on this challenge to honor my mother (those of you who have found my blog will probably know this) .... she died a year and a half ago and was the most serious reader I've ever known (and I hang around with quite a few intense readers)

My mom spent much of her life in a wheel chair and she was never, ever without a book.... she had a book for each room of the house (really!) so it wasn't unusual for her to be reading 3.... 4.... 5... books at a time. Her genre of choice? Political/Current Events.......Usually at least two to three of the books she was reading at any one time were of a political nature. In comparison, I have read very few books of a political bent.... but without conscious thought, I have begun my year of reading with two of them.......

My mother spent the last few months of her life in and out of hospitals, Intensive Care Units, ER's and a variety of Rehab/Nursing homes. It wasn't a good time (big understatement here)..... in spite of all this.... she maintained an enthusiastic interest in the world around her.... CNN or NPR was always on in her room.... she was absolutely fascinated with all the hoopla around the Presidential campaign of 2008 and had fallen completely in love with Obama ever since his miraculous 2004 convention speech.... a friend who was active in his campaign in Massachusetts had sent her a photo of a smiling Obama and it became a little tradition between Mom and me that no matter what new facility or room she was moved to, the first thing we did was get that picture up on her bulletin board.... Mom didn't quite make it to election day........ She would have been so pleased.....

With all this in mind......the book I read this week was: "Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime". Loved this book! ...... Everything you ever wanted to know about the behind the scenes stuff that goes on in a big campaign is here - plus much, much more..... the huge personalities and the dynamics between them....not only the ones mentioned in the title but so many others.... Joe Biden, John and Elizabeth Edwards, Ted Kennedy, Joe Lieberman, Jeremiah Wright...... and the lesser known movers and shakers on each side of the campaign.... an absolutely delightful mishmash of characters. There's not one boring page in the entire book and that includes the index. Do these characters have anything in common? Well....they all have, without exception, huge egos, and they all are incredible control freaks... in fact really every character in this book is a control freak.... the biggest control freak?... probably a tie between Hilary Clinton and Sarah Palin.

I could barely wait for Sarah Palin to enter the fray and I was not disappointed. I can't tell you how many of my independent and conservative friends ended up not voting for McCain because they just could not believe he had chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate. Although the reasons the McCain campaign chose her are detailed (basically he needed a "game changer") it's still hard to get beyond what a huge mistake this choice turned out to be for McCain. Palin doesn't end up faring very well in this book but I actually think Hilary does.... her dedication, hard work,and loyalty (even to Bill and that's no easy task)... are well documented here...... It's easy to see why Obama is so determined to make her Secretary of State and this process is detailed in the book as well.

The most wacky character? (eliminating Pakub because she just won the control freak award although she's a major contender in this category too).... I'd say Bill Clinton wins this category with a lesser known character, John Robert's mistress, Rielle Hunter, and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright tied for second. Biggest surprise? ..... Probably Elizabeth Edwards..... not half as nice as I thought.....and, by the way......also a close contender in the control freak contest. Most "normal" couple?.... Barack and Michelle....by a landslide......

I don't think I'll ever forget the Presidential campaign of 2008 but if my memory grows a little hazy... I'm glad I'll have this book around to reread.....