M/D BOOK CLUB POSTS FOR 2023, MY BOOKS BRING GIFTS, THOUGHTS ON SEX EDUCATION
Winter sunrise over Olympics
I have written three unique books and all have found their own paths. The Butterfly ChaSu, published in 1995, led me to a few years of school visits, a trip back to Decatur, IL, my hometown where eighty people showed up for a signing. This inspirational story was often seen as a children’s book but also went to patients dying of cancer. Many women resonated to the butterfly and her desire for freedom. Now out of print and outdated, I have not been able to find the best way to republish this book.
Tiny Shooting Stars was a book of poetry that emerged after my two years in graduate school. The best part of this little book is the opening message about how to catch a tiny shooting star, a thought, and turn it into poetry or prose. I often use this when teaching. That book came out in 1998, and basically died quickly, so I thought. Then, a few years ago, when I began to promote Parsing the Dragon: A Memoir I joined the Kitsap County Writers and was invited to attend a six-month long journey of book fairs. I pulled out a handful of my poetry books. They sailed off the counter and were especially treasured by young people in middle to high school. I quickly released an entire box full of poetry books out to a wider world.
Parsing the Dragon: A Memoir got a rocky start as it was published by a popular part of AMAZON, called Create Space that folded a month after I published my book. My publisher quickly made a change and the book found itself on a two-year journey of book fairs and signings only to crash into the COVID pandemic in February of 2018, where the book died a quiet death, again, so I thought.
All three books have had an unexpected way of bringing me surprises, especially when sorely needed to cheer me on into other projects. Last week, when closing down my computer one night, I made a last-minute decision to check my “parsing” email account. I caught my breath when I found an email from a deeply cherished friend from high school, someone I had known from kindergarten. Those who have read my Parsing book will know her as the young lady my dad stopped for every morning when taking us to middle school in Decatur. She would struggle to come down concrete steps from her house to the street (and our waiting car) juggling her books, backpack and French Horn. Her mother was also mentioned as one of my “pretend” mothers. During the years we took my friend to school, her mother was in a tuberculosis sanitorium. Somehow, my friend googled me, found the title of my book, got an ecopy and read it and found my email address. What a Gift!!
MOTHER/DAUGHTER BOOK CLUB
Our MOTHER/DAUGHTER BOOK CLUB for 2023 had to insert itself between everyone’s busy schedules. Publication took precedence. Mindy’s new book The World Is a Sniff is having great success and Becca’s story was published in the newly issued Chicken Soup for the Soul: Lessons Learned From My Dog. Her story is titled: “The Neighborhood Dog.” That story has also been recorded in a podcast by Amy Newmark, collector and publisher of the Chicken Soup stories. Chicken Soup for the Soul: Lessons Learned From My Dog is available now for purchase: Click here for Amazon link and Click here to listen to the podcast
To purchase The World Is a Sniff, click here.
EACH YEAR one of us makes the book club picks and 2023 was my year. This is not an easy challenge to pick books for all of us. Mindy reads and writes primarily children’s books, (middle grade and high school), romance, environmental, stories of the sea. Becca specializes in self-help, especially tales of young women who struggle with anorexia and/or bulimia, plus spiritual books, books on quantum physics, animal stories, novels with favored authors being Kristin Hannah and Joyce Carol Oates.
I read spiritual books, inspirational, historical novels, current mainstream novels with an emphasis on best-selling books, fiction and nonfiction. I am currently working on an historical novel that takes place at the turn of the century, Civil War to late 1800s into first decade of 1900s so I read about that time period. I also treasure finding a great book of poetry from any time period.
Using all of that to inform me, I selected our M/D BOOK CLUB reads for 2023 as follows:
JANUARY: Books by author Fiona Davis. These included her historical novels as follows: Lions of Fifth Avenue, The Chelsea Hotel, The Magnolia Palace, The Masterpiece.
Becca also reported on a memoir by Jeanette McCurdy, I’m Glad My Mom Died, as well as Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, and Mindy covered Colleen Hoover’s It Begins With Us.
FEBRUARY: Starry Messenger by Neil deGrasse Tyson (Nonfiction)
MARCH: The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles (Fiction)
APRIL: Fairy Tale by Stephen King (Fantasy/Sci Fi)
MAY: Poemographs for Peace by the Union Poets
Also books by Luther Hughes, A Shiver in the Leaves
JUNE: Books by Sheila Roberts (suggested Icicle Falls series) (Romance)
JULY: The Book of Form and Emptiness: A Novel by Ruth Ozeki
AUGUST: Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout (Fiction)
Also suggested My Name is Lucy Barton
SEPTEMBER: The Women Could Fly: A Novel by Megan Giddings
OCTOBER: Horse: A Novel by Geraldine Brooks (also the author of The Year of Wonder about plague in Europe).
NOVEMBER: The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urea (from Seattle Reads 2022 selection) (Literature and Fiction)
Also author of The Hummingbird’s Daughter
DECEMBER: Come Fly the World - The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am by Julia Cooke (Nonfiction)
WILD READS (OPTIONAL)—STILL LIFE AND OTHERs in this Armande Gamache mystery series by Louise Penney. Newest one is Curiosities. Also, Fern Michaels A Season to Celebrate.
BOOK BANNING AND SEX EDUCATION
ONE LAST THING TAKEN FROM THE HISTORY OF MY OWN 77-year-old LIFE. I have lived through times of book banning and omission of teaching certain classes but find these are never progressive or future-looking times. Repressing the future is never a wise choice, in my opinion.
My first experience with book banning occurred during my years as a student at Douglas MacArthur High School, Decatur, IL, in the 1960s. Books were not specifically banned but some were heavily frowned upon. Such was The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Of course, this only made us yearn to read it. One day I found the book in the school library and checked it out! The librarian insisted she did not recommend this for me but was unable to stop me from taking the book home. I loved that book! We also had George Orwell’s 1984 as a “no no” read but eventually I read that as part of a literature class. Those of us who love reading and learning all find ways to expand and enhance our minds. Book Burning is never a sign of an educated country. Women who are uneducated find themselves consistently playing roles of drudge and servant, cook, cleaner, etc. caught in a role of making babies and subservience to men who control them. Recently, I read that the new advice for women reads this way—educate yourself as highly as possible, next find a good job and work there awhile. Then if you choose, have children, and finally, if you find a compatible partner, marry (last on the list).
SEX EDUCATION for me was delivered when I lived in La Jolla, California, while my dad was re-drafted into the U.S. Navy during the 1950s, to finish serving his time from World War II. I speak of this in my Parsing book. While in Fifth and Sixth grades, we were required to take a class in “Sex Education.” Thank you GOD or whoever! In this class, I received the best information about how male and female reproductive organs work! That was needed as many of the girls my age were beginning to menstruate. Some had information from mothers; others didn’t. One morning, my neighborhood friend Curly, appeared at our door when time to go to school (we walked). She was crying and told my mother she’d begun her first menstrual period that morning and did not know what to do! My mother helped provide her with the necessary apparatus and we trudged off to school and into life.
In the classes, we learned about the male and female organs through diagrams and explanations given by the teacher. This was kept simple, succinct. Years later, I found myself explaining how female organs work to my first husband who had no clue how a baby began and formed in a woman. Twenty years later, I found myself explaining this and drawing the diagram for my second husband, father of four in his first marriage, a Catholic, but with no idea how a baby was formed through fertilization in the uterus after the egg arrived there from the Fallopian tubes.
Why on earth, would anyone ever keep this important knowledge from a young person? Beyond me.