From Michaele

This is a great idea, sharing ideas (and reports) on what we have read.

The ones I tried to add today were: Suite Française, by Irène Némirovsky. A French Jew she wrote this quasi-bio-memoir while hiding out, then later died in a concentation camp before she could be rescued. Judy V. first recommended it to me and it is so beautifully written (I think) that I couldn't believe it. It is translated from the French. So, the last time I was in Paris, I bought it in French (it's great that way too).

The other one I added is a bit dated. We all know of Pat Conroy's stuff--His long South Carolina novels and his one about the Citadel (I can't remember its name but that's one I'd like to "pan"). The one I recommended is his first book, about teaching, as a brand new teacher fresh out of college, in a poor South Carolina school and his challenges with administration and his multiple frustrations trying to do what was right. As a former teacher I "could feel his pain". (ed to add title: The Water is Wide)

And there's another one coming out by a relatively unknown author, Lockhart I think is the name, due out next spring.

Tea and turkish cigars. . .cigars and turkish tea. . .? I really am out of the loop!

Hugs,

Michaele

HEALTHY AT 100 by John Robbins (but I'd settle for 80-ish)

So now it's happened: I've officially entered middle age because I'm reading books with titles like this one. Most of us don't aspire to living a full century, but seeing what certain diet and lifestyle choices have wrought on the health of my parents' generation, I'm definitely interested in improving the odds for staying well and lucid (please the gods) while I AM here.

Some of you may be familiar with John Robbins, the presumed heir to the Baskin-Robbins empire who gave up his keys to the kingdom when he concluded that all that fat and sugar might not really be enhancing people's lives in the long run. Me, I'm all for a little fat and sugar and I like to eat the occasional animal, too, but this book still had plenty to offer me.

Robbins begins with several chapters about cultures where healthy longevity has been the rule, rather than the exception, and tries to identify what they have in common in terms of diet, activity and social connections. The rest of the book attempts to translate those elements into some workable suggestions that we might incorporate into modern American life. I greatly appreciated his refusal to romanticize these cultures. Instead, he uses their stories to illustrate the point that old age doesn't necessarily have to be what we've come to expect of it.

Obviously, there is no guarantee implicit in this book. But somewhere between the common belief that decrepitude is part of aging (so just accept it) and the equally irrational hope that we can defeat the aging process with the right "recipe," there is a truth. It is that we can educate ourselves about how to best care for our bodies and our minds and then know that, whatever comes, we have lived our lives as well as we could for as long as we could. I think I'd like to start that right now.

~Michelle

Cherry Ames, continued

I was more of a Donna Parker gal and loved Donna Parker in Hollywood! But I did read Cherry Ames, Student Nurse. Cherry Ames always reminds me of my Mom, Norma Jean who was a Cadet Nurse. That's the Cadet Nurse insignia on the sleeve of her "whites".

From the Cadet Nurse website: Many parents worried that the training in nursing schools and nurse duties might expose their daughters to infectious diseases, unsafe conditions, and unsupervised proximity to men.
Pondering that must be why these two look so serious.
That's Mom (front) sitting on the steps of the "Nurses' Home" with her best friend. They must have been 19 or 20 at the time.

The war ended before she finished her training (she's a "Mercy Grad" Portsmouth OH) so she never served in the Army but she went on to work for many years as an RN, retiring in 1979.
You make me proud, Mom!
Judy

Just for fun

This isn't exactly literary, but since so many of us are nurses I thought I'd introduce Cherry Ames (Robin & Judy at least have heard me talk about her, not sure about Amy or the others).

Cherry Ames is the chief character in a girls' mystery series that is much like Nancy Drew. The first book follows her beginnings in a diploma program at her hometown hospital, the second and third follow her as she finishes nursing school and enters the Army in World War II. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_Ames ) says the series was written to "encourage girls to enter the nursing profession" at that time, and boy did it work on me even 40 some years later!

I discovered her as a kid at the Sierra Vista library--but very few nurses I've worked with have ever heard of her. (exceptions-- Lisa Kiser and Alex on St. Joe's night shift[she of the tiniest script ever--somebody tell her I say hello], and an older nurse I worked with in Germany). My very favorite was always "Cherry Ames, Flight Nurse" --which is the fourth book. Here's an excerpt:

(contemplating her unknown future--she's in the Army Air Corps awaiting assignment)

"'To wherever our wounded soldiers need me,' Cherry thought soberly. 'To wherever I can keep a man from dying.'

Wherever people needed a girl with love in her heart and healing in her hands, that was where Cherry belonged. She wanted to serve, she had trained to serve. Sympathy or vague good intentions---these were not enough for her. Only a nurse, Cherry knew, could bring so much help and hope to others, who sorely needed her. Only a nurse could experience such broad human adventure, such profound inner reward. "

When I first read that I must've been about 11 or 12 yrs old. In high school I forgot all about nursing, but when the Air Force offered to pay for college to study nursing I abandoned my metallurgical engineering ideas and signed up. My mother warned me that sometimes our best beloved childhood books don't stand the test of time, but I still have love for these characters and their stories. Somehow Cherry's spirit of nursing, although it seems quaint, has never left me. I still wish I'd gotten to train in a diploma program!!

Olga

Excellent idea and thanks for creating it! We can possibly keep the running book list as a page element. Just an idea.

Having nothing to do with books but everything to do with getting together, I'm thinking of having an activity day at my house. Date would be in October when the temps have fallen out of the insane range. Activity? Either making hypertufa planting pots or something with paper. Let me know what you might like to do.

Judy

Basically No - Selah's Bed

Selah's Bed by Jenoyne Adams is a gutteral, slow, and disturbing book. Her writing style is interesting, if you can get past the disturbing story line. "Sex was a way to stop the crying, the powerlessness of not feeling beautiful..."

The book reads in a choppy, every other chapter way, meaning that one chapter tells of her life now and the next revisits her childhood. Two threads twist together by the end to help you know Selah in all her complexities, but it's far too troubling by the end of the book to even care!

Abandoned by her mother, and raised by a pill-popping grandmother, Selah consistently cheats on her minister-husband, somehow finding comfort or power in wielding sex. Childhood chapters reveal she charged boys a quarter to feel her up (and charged more to do other things) when she was just in grade school. Selah also writes letters to a child one would think she lost in late pregnancy or as an infant, however, we find out in the end, she has been referring to a fetus she electively aborted when she was a teenager (her now minister husband was the father). The ending is just WAY too trite...

~Robin