Well-Mannered Frivolity

Tuesday Teaser

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Amy's ninety-fourth birthday is coming up, and I've decided that my present to her will be a set a comedy club. I'll have them put a chair onstage, and I'll take care of all the planning and organization.

Early Bird: A Memoir of Premature Retirementby Rodney Rothman

Wendy

The Sunday Salon 10/25/09

I must be a glutton for punishment. I read a second book by Barbara Ehrenreich. This time it was her new book Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. Okay, I didn't exactly read the whole thing. I read the first half and kind of skimmed the second half. Not only could the entire book have been distilled down to a longish essay, but, frankly, it was starting to bring me down. What on Earth has happened in this woman's life to make her so unrelentingly negative? For this review I will just hit on a few highlights that stuck out to me.

First, her battle with breast cancer. I understand her anger. If I was diagnosed with cancer I'd be pretty pissed off, too. But at some point you have to let go of the anger. It's just not healthy. I don't have any experience with cancer, but I do have experience with chronic illness. I am bipolar. I tend toward the depression end of the disease. I tend toward depression so far that two years ago I was hospitalized because I was suicidal. I know what it is like to be angry at the injustice of having a crippling condition that is completely out of your control. I could be bitter and angry about my mental illness, but I have made a conscious decision not to be. In fact I have used a lot of positive thinking and positive self talk to help overcome my depression. Guess what, Barb? It worked.

Second, her views on Christianity. She chose only to focus on the "prosperity" type ministry promoted by Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer. I know many Christians in real life. Not a single one of them are in it for the money.   The Christians I know, and I'd like to think that I fall in this group, follow the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount. Christianity does not magically solve all your problems, nor does it claim to. What Christianity can do is change the way you view your problems. It's amazing how much easier the blows life deals you are to handle when you view your life as a blessing.

Third, A Complaint Free World. Her treatment of this movement made me want to complain, but I didn't--I've gone a full 3 days without having to move my bracelet! This movement is not about ignoring the news or the injustices of the world. It's about stopping all the endless bitching and moaning we do for no good reason. It's about learning how to overcome road rage. It's about not complaining about every little thing that crosses your mind. When I made the conscious decision not to complain I was amazed at how much time I actually wasted needlessly complaining. I learned how to be more pleasant and how to treat others more kindly. What on earth could be wrong with that?

I think Barbara Ehrenreich could benefit from a little positive thinking, or at the very least maybe a high colonic. I'm just thankful I got both of her books from the library.

Wendy

Nickel and Dimed vs Scratch Beginnings

I just finished reading Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. In this book Ehrenreich sets out to prove that an unskilled laborer cannot get by in America. The biggest problem I had with Nickel and Dimed was that the author set herself up for failure from the beginning. She set up three 'experiments' in Key West, Maine, and Minnesota each lasting one month. Her rules were that she would not live in a shelter, she would set herself up with $1500.00 in seed money and she would rent a car with her credit card in each town.

In Key West she landed a waitressing job with housing a 40 minute drive away. She had to live 40 minutes away so she could find affordable housing. I get that, but has the woman never heard of roommates? When she was hired for her job she was told she needed two pairs of khaki pants. Did she go to Salvation Army? Did she go to Walmart or Kmart? No, she went to a department store and bought $60.00 worth of Dockers. To her credit, she did admit this was a mistake later on in the book. She ends up walking out and quitting one night because her waitressing job is more than she can handle. It must be nice to just play at being poor.

In Maine she got a job with a cleaning service @ $6.65 per hour. She complained that the franchise owner was charging $25.00 per hour per person. She fails to take into consideration that the franchise is paying for cars, gas, cleaning supplies, payroll taxes, and insurance. She states that an independent maid makes $15.00 per hour. Barb is having to work as a maid 5 days per week as a maid, and weekends at a nursing home. Here's an crazy idea--Find an apartment with a roommate to share living expenses, and continue working those two jobs until she has enough saved up to be an independent maid.

In Minnesota Ehrenreich is hired at two places--Walmart at $6.25 per hour and Menard's at $10.00 per hour. Inexplicably, she takes the Walmart job. Why would she take a job at nearly $4.00 less per hour? And, seriously, it's not a well-kept secret that Walmart is a crummy place to work.  It kills me the way she constantly pities her coworkers for working the jobs they do. She thinks they must be the most down trodden people on the face of the earth to put up with such demeaning work. Well guess what? My husband does the type of work she poo-poos and he really enjoys his work. Could it be that he and millions more like him have something she's not familiar with called a work ethic?

Adam Shepard was required to read Nickel and Dimed in college. He didn't agree with the premise of the book so he set out to do his own little experiment. After graduation from college Shepard decided to pick a random city and start over with the clothes on his back and $25.00. His goals were to, within one year, own a car and live in a furnished apartment and have savings.   He picked Charleston, SC. He took the train to North Charleston, moved into the Crisis Ministries homeless shelter, and set out to find a job. He succeeded all of his goals in less than 6 months. Shepard details his story in Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream. I will admit that Shepard's story is a bit unrealistic. He had several things going for him--no children, youth, good health, no substance abuse problems or criminal record.

I suspect the truth lies somewhere between these to books. I do feel like Barbara Ehrenreich dabbled at being poor while Adam Shepard really threw himself into his project. I also enjoyed the optimism in Shepard's book. Ehrenreich's book is very pessimistic and her lame attempts a humor often fall flat.

This post is already dragging on too long, so tomorrow I will share our story.

Wendy

Wendy

Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers

The happier and more comfortable he became, the sadder her felt. This could be his life--should be his life--with Lila, right now, not as a guest at the table but at the head of it and maybe some of those children would have been his, too.

The Given Day: A Novel by Dennis Lehane pg 387

Wendy

On the complaining front-I got my official purple bracelet yesterday. I'm bona-fide. I haven't had to switch it to the other wrist in 2 days. I'm on a pretty good roll.

The Sunday Salon 10/18/2009

Brad Thor is my new author this week. I have finished Blowback: A Thriller and am about 3/4 of the way through The Apostle: A Thriller. Thor's protagonist, former Navy SEAL Harvath, is to the war on terror what Jason Bourne was to the cold war. I'm not normally a war thriller type of girl,  but these books are so immensely readable that I can't put them down. I am constantly hounding my husband with weapons questions, because he was born with that male war knowledge collective unconscious gene. For instance, I thought RPG stood for Role Playing Game. Apparently, it stands for Rocket Propelled Grenade.  Okay, I'm just kidding about that one, but there is quite a bit of weapons terminology that I'm not really familiar with. I really think my husband would the Scot Harvath books, but all he wants to do is read Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time books over and over again. It think he has read that series 4 or 5 times in the span of our marriage. But I digress.....

What I really like about Brad Thor is that he is unabashedly conservative. You just don't find that very often in a bestselling author. In fact, (go ahead and throw tomatoes at me now) I first heard about Thor on Glenn Beck. That's right, I said it, GLENN BECK.  Maybe next week I'll review Arguing with Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government and lose readership completely. Bwhahaahaha!

Wendy

The Sunday Salon 10/11/09

I'll go ahead and admit it up front-I am totally addicted to Facebook. I update my status about 2 or three times per day, I love to read my friend's status updates, and I really enjoy playing with some of the apps such as Farmville. In fact, I'm not quite sure what I did with all my free time in my pre Facebook days. That made this weeks book,The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal, a great, fun read.  I'm on really sure how much of The Accidental Billionaires is true and you much is pure conjuncture. The author's note states that he based the account on "dozens of interviews, dozens of sources, and thousands of pages of documents, including several court proceedings." The author also states the that the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerburg, declined to speak with him.

Facebook was founded by two friends, Mark Zuckerburg and Eduardo Saverin, in a Harvard dorm room. The purpose of the website was for Harvard students to connect with each other over the internet. The deal was Zuckerburg, the brilliant hacker, would handle computer end, and Saverin would handle the business end. As Facebook moved to other colleges and grew more and more successful Zuckerburg left school to live in Silicon Valley and work on Facebook full time. Saverin decided to finish his degree at Harvard while working on drumming up advertisers for Facebook in New York. That's when things started to go south.

The Accidental Billionaires is not exactly The Great American Novel, in fact it reads more like an extra long People magazine article, but I think anyone who enjoys playing around on Facebook will find it to be an enjoyable read.

Peace,

Wendy

On the complaining front--I had to move my bracelet hair band once today. I said the 'S' word. I was involved in a near fatal lane change on Ashley-Phosphate Road. I tried to explain to Mary Jane that driving on Ashley Phosphate is exempt from the no complaining rule, but she didn't buy it.

The Sunday Salon 10/04/09

Attention: Extra-large, heavy duty, super-duper spoiler alert ahead

don't say I didn't warn you!

Leisure Seeker, The: A Novel by Michael Zadoorian is about a couple in their 80s who take a cross country trip in their Leisure Seeker camper. They start off from their home in Detroit and follow Route 66 to Disneyland in California. This no ordinary couple. Ella, the wife has cancer and John, the husband, has Alzheimer's. They have left on this trip against the wishes of their doctors and their two grown children. John has rare moments of lucidity, and Ella is in great pain most of the time. Their Leisure Seeker has a faulty exhaust system so they have to ride with their windows open all the time. Can you guess where this might be going? John and Ella have great adventures on their trip; some scary, some funny and some touchingly tender. Ella has promised her husband she will never let him live in a nursing home, but as she is rapidly approaching the end of her life, it is obvious she will not be able to keep this promise to him. When they reach the end of the road she quietly ends their lives by turning on the camper with the windows rolled up. Ella leaves both of their drivers licenses on the table along with a note explaining what she has done.

This book has really given me a lot of food for thought. I can't help but wonder if what Ella did was really so horrible. They were both dying. Did she end their lives too early, or did she alleviate the suffering and indignities they would have faced by prolonging their lives for a few more years. I, personally, feel like she was justified in what she did. Tell me what you think.

Peace,

Wendy

Sunday Salon 4-26-09

I only finished one book this week,  High Fidelity: A Novel by Nick Hornby, but I haven't been slacking off. I am currently reading 3 other books, including the ubiquitous  The Polysyllabic Spree, also by Nick Hornby. It seems like every other blog I visit mentions this book.

Back to High Fidelity--Rob is 36. His girlfriend has moved out to live with another man, and he owns a failing record shop.  He really is a desperate case.The book seemed to drag at times. I wanted to grab Rob by the shoulders and shake him and tell him to grow the hell up already. High Fidelity is full of droll, British wit, which more than makes up for any short-comings.  Eventually, Rob does start to grow up so the book has a rather satisfying ending. My favorite character is Rob's employee, Barry. Barry is a true music snob and will not sell an album to a customer if he deems them to be unworthy of the music.

I am nearly finished with The School of Essential Ingredients and The Polysyllabic Spree. I was hoping to finish them in time for this week's review, but, unfortunately my family life hampers my reading efforts. The selfish lot seem to expect things like "supper" and "clean toilets"

<3,
Wendy