Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Autobiography of a Fat Bride, by Laurie Notaro
I’m trying to remember which friend said she loved Laurie Notaro. This is driving me crazy.
And Laurie Notaro has potential to drive a person crazy. She is hilarious and observant, but I think if I ran into her on my annual pilgrimage to Phoenix, I’d say “great book, Laurie” and leave it at that. She’s intense. And that’s not a criticism, but it’s something to keep in mind while reading this book. It’s not a sit-down-and-read-it-all-Saturday-afternoon book, it’s more of a keep-in-your-purse-and-read-a-few-pages-at-a-time-while-in-line book. And it really does lend itself to short spurts of reading, because it’s written as a series of 2 to 6 page essays.
Laurie has an impossible mother, a mind-boggling grandma, a sweet but very languid husband, weird neighbors, sisters (and thanks again to my brothers for being boys instead girls), pets, a job, and a body that might qualify her to be a plus-size model were she so inspired.
At her wedding reception, she ejected the videographer who thought the entire event had been planned just so he could play at being dictator. That alone is reason to love her. And how can you not giggle at someone who writes: “it looks like Stevie Wonder and Bo Derek jumped you in an alley and gang-braided you”? On the other hand, there were a few essays that did not enrich my life, to put it mildly. But most were fun. I would recommend this to anyone except stick-in-the-mud types. You know who you are.
As for animals, there are a very few unpleasant images, but nothing that’s likely to stay with you. And I don’t believe she really forgot to feed her dog – first, dogs don’t let you forget that, and second, she exaggerates so much that I believe she said that for effect. Still, Notaro is outrageous for effect, and the animals fall into her line of sight occasionally. I’m going to declare this book SAFE for animal lovers, but promise not to take her literally, okay?
Goldilocks and the Three Cousins — Vacation Part Two: Utah and Idaho
Some family history for context: Mom’s younger brother, Ross, married his high school sweetheart, Joyce, when they were both 18. This was back in the 1950s, when such things were closer to the norm. After a few years, Ross and Joyce had a baby, then moved from their hometown in Illinois to Colorado, where they had two more babies. Then they moved to Idaho, the kids grew up, Ross tragically died of cancer in his late 40s, Joyce remarried a nice guy named Sam, the kids married, at least one of the kids divorced and remarried, they all converted from Catholicism to Mormonism, they all had a bunch of children, two now have grandchildren or step-grandchildren, and they all stayed in Idaho. The last I saw of them was in Colorado, when we were all children. Mom stayed in touch with Joyce, however, so when we began planning this trip, a visit to Joyce, Sam, and the Idaho cousins became part of the itinerary.
I wasn’t sure how this was going to go down. I even fretted about it, because I that’s one of the things I do best — fret. But realistically, I figured we’d end up somewhere between a disaster and a fairy tale. It was closer to a fairy tale: Goldilocks and the Three Bears, to be specific. Cousin #1 was too perfect, Cousin #2 was too … something, and Cousin #3 was just right! The cousins are aligned by the order in which we visited them, which is not birth order.
However, first we visited Joyce and Sam. As you may recall from the previous post, Dave and I arrived hellishly late and Joyce had to meet Mom at the airport. So they had a nice morning reconnecting and talking about my late Uncle Ross and bonding and all that, while Dave and I tried to recover from our travel ordeal. We then drove from Salt Lake City to Sam and Joyce’s home close to the Utah/Idaho border, and officially began the “visiting relatives” portion of the trip. I can’t say enough good things about Sam and Joyce as hosts. They were wonderfully generous and cordial. Sam is incredibly easy to get along with, and Joyce fell all over herself trying to make us feel at home.
Then it was off to visit Cousin #1 in Idaho Falls. I have pictures, but there were major camera issues during this trip and so I do not have access to those pictures yet. They’ll be posted eventually, although I don’t post pictures of minor children, so it will just be the adults. So why did I deem Cousin #1 “too perfect”? That’s said with quite a bit of admiration, but also a sense that he’s not someone I’d hang out with if we lived in the same city. Different styles, different values, different modes of being. He’s a good guy, I like his wife, I’m sure the 5 boys — 4 of whom are 8 or younger — will grow up to be delightful young men, etc., etc. But really, their house is astonishingly neat and clean with no household help and all those children. This is mind-boggling. There’s a lot of regimentation in their home, which I suppose is necessary with that many children. Also, Cousin #1 gets Masters degrees as a sort of hobby, and his wife takes Serious Classes. I admire this to no end. They are like Vulcans. And I am no Vulcan. We had a lovely visit, we ate pizza, and I left hoping that one of the other two cousins would be from my planet.
Cousin #2 is from my planet, but we don’t speak the same language. We visited her the next day. She lives in a modular home (used to be called trailers, but they really are modular homes) on a vast ranch with her husband and a few of their children. Two of her sons live in a house that the rest of the family abandoned due to sewer issues, but they come by each night for dinner. And a married daughter with children lives a short distance away. There are many dogs, some of which are “indoor” dogs and some of which are “outdoor” dogs. The younger daughter is 18 and in a 2-year program that will give her some kind of certificate deeming her beyond great with horses. She loves it, and hopes to work on a dude ranch some day handling the horses, possibly in Colorado. Dave and I liked her best, which seemed to throw her because she apparently gets lost in the shuffle and has been reportedly quite active doing the teenage-rebellion thing against her parents. Anyway, I asked her how many horses her immediate family owns, and it’s something like 20. But each horse is owned by an individual instead of there being “family horses.” So her mom has 3, she has 5, one brother has 2, another has 3, etc., up to about 20 total. Cousin #2’s son-in-law hand-builds awesome furniture out of rough-hewn cedar. There will be pictures, I promise.
Then it was off to visit Cousin #3, who was my favorite. He’s the one I’d like to get together with in the future, and he might be coming here in the fall, which would be great! His wife is funny and a bit sarcastic, so I could see bonding with her if I had the chance to get to know them better. He shares my love of cooking and made dinner using cast iron cookware, which is something I’ve gotten into lately. Their house was cozy (“just right”), the one son we met was independent without being annoyingly rebellious (“just right”), and we talked about our lives after dinner without it feeling like an interview with a stranger (“just right”). I wouldn’t exactly call this guy “Baby Bear,” but he matched my “Goldilocks” better than the other two.
Then it was off to Jackson, WY, and the Grand Tetons. That will be the next blog entry, some time early next week. I may even have recovered some of the pictures by then.
(Very) Odds and Ends
It’s another link day — cats, cooking, and common sense healthcare.
First, let’s look at the cats. Specifically, let’s look at 1,000 pictures of cats. Some of these animals are absolutely gorgeous.
As for cooking, a question that comes up now and then — and especially now, in the shaky economy– is whether certain items we consider panty staples are cheaper to make at home than to buy at the grocery store. An article on slate tells us one woman’s experience making bagels, cream cheese, yogurt, jam, crackers, and granola. She evaluates not just cost, but taste. The results might not be what you expect. I know I was surprised by one item in particular.
Finally, there’s common sense in health care, a hot topic these days with our devastatingly expensive “system” and the various thoughts on how to address it. This satire starring Fred Willard gets right to the point.
Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Bachelor Brothers’ Bed & Breakfast, by Bill Richardson
I have to thank my Internet friend, Karen from Nova Scotia, for this little gem. And it’s little–only 152 pages. But it’s packed, with hardly a wasted word and at least one quotable phrase per page. I loved it!
Narrated by 50-something fraternal twins Virgil and Hector and a few of their guests, the book takes us to a remote town on a forested Canadian island, where Virgil and Hector operate a B&B for bibliophiles. In fact, some guests visit simply in order to read Proust without distractions. Some of the stories are sad, some wildly hilarious. For example, there’s the man whose office goes on a retreat (is there anything so vile as the office retreat?), leaving him in the woods to talk to the trees — one of which orders him to “get the hell out!” Then there’s the ne’er-do-well cousin who, after an epiphany, “spent the rest of his days, and the rest of his income, traveling the world, seeking out musical eggcups. He picked them up in Istanbul and Paris, in Geneva and Beirut.” Waffle, the brothers’ cat, and Mrs. Rochester, the parrot they inherited from their mother, hunt mice together, with Mrs. Rochester calling “kittykittykitty” when she spots one. I laughed out loud about every other page.
This is great book for animal lovers. Mrs. Rochester has one salty phrase in her vocabulary, which she uses at some of the most inopportune moments. There are also some very happy chickens, a music-critic Pekingese named Valentine, and a vast assortment of other pets. The only sad thing that happens is a brief mention of a parrot — not Mrs. Rochester — who died elsewhere. Plus, Waffle is a mighty huntress of small prey. But I have no qualms about recommending this book as SAFE for animal lovers, including and maybe especially bird lovers. Enjoy!
Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Saving Fish from Drowning, by Amy Tan
I saw this book in Borders as a remaindered hard back. I remember when Amy Tan’s books flew off the shelves and occupied the best seller lists for months on end, but she seemed to lose her touch for a while, she shifted to children’s books, she became sick, and she sort of drifted off, or so it appeared. I bought the book for $5.99 and invested no expectations in it. And now that I’ve read it, I wonder why it didn’t sell.
Let me be clear: I can be a fan of a writer and still pick them to pieces while loving their work. I can certainly do that with Amy Tan. For example, she always has more characters than she needs and should consolidate some of them but doesn’t. She works at one level of realism for a while, shifts away from it, and shifts back, which is disconcerting to a reader. And for this book in particular, she seems to think people are pretty stupid. I have days when I’d agree with her, but not enough days in a row to write an entire book on that assumption. However… I loved this book.
The story is that of 13 tourists (should have been 9 at most, eliminating Wendy and Wyatt at the very least) organized for a private tour of China and Burma. (The jury is out on whether the sanctions against Burma have any impact, and we won’t go into that here.) But when Bibi Chen, the tour organizer and beyond-the-grave narrator, mysteriously dies, they decide to continue. Bibi had everything planned exquisitely, and once the group breaks from her plan, they immediately encounter trouble. Bits of trouble occur here and there, but then the big trouble happens: 11 of the 12 remaining tourists mysteriously disappear after an encounter with some boatmen from the Karen tribe.
What follows is sad and, at times, heartbreaking. But Tan can be very funny. For example, the 1 tourist who is left behind, Harry Bailley, is a Dog Whisperer sort with his own TV show. And he behaves and thinks like a dog. He’s easily led, he wants to please, he keep encountering women who want to “train” him, and he’s perpetually optimistic. This can be quite amusing – and exasperating. But while there are bits of humor, Tan makes it clear that the Burmest junta is brutal and destructive.
Anyway, I recommend this book. It’s not Tan’s best, but it certainly had no business on the remainder shelves.
As for animals, there are a few animal characters, the most prominent being Pup-pup, an abnormally quiet Shih Tzu puppy. Pup-pup ends up coming out of the experience in a way that should not upset anyone, so there’s no need to spend the book worrying that he’ll be eaten or carried off by a wild animal or anything like that. Harry inherits Bibi’s Yorkie, Poochini, who ends up well. Other dogs include a couple of “sniffer” dogs brought in to search for the lost tourists. Alongside, there is a water buffalo that’s worked too hard, a pig slaughtered for dinner, a kitten lost in one character’s back story, and the fish of the title. So I am going to declare this book SAFE for animal lovers. If you see it at the bookstore, remaindered or not, pick it up!
Dance, Dance, Dance! (And Update from the Groundcover Wars)
I missed my Wednesday posting because of work, I have a stack of books ready to be reviewed, and I want to write about dance. For this, I blame/credit my friend Dana. But more on that below.
First, last spring I wrote about planting several groundcovers in hopes they would overtake the useless grass, which I hate mowing. Well, folks, we have a winner: Creeping Jenny. In my back yard, it’s more like Galloping Jenny. A tiny plant in a 2-inch by 2-inch pot took over a space that is roughly 8 square feet. I love it! It can be invasive, which is fine. I’ll kill it where I want to plant other plants, and keep it everywhere else. I have the Golden variety, which is less invasive and, to my mind, more interesting. I’ve planted four of these in my tiny front yard, hoping that by next summer, my grass can be handled with mere weed-whacking.
Now, on to dancing! It’s a cold, cruel world, filled with wars and the military troops we use to fight those wars. The best soldiers are trained in a variety of skills. For example, from Pundit Kitchen:
Okay, so that’s pretty silly. But is it sillier than dancing scientists? As I mentioned, in another context, my friend Dana linked to the AAAS annual “Dance Your PhD Thesis” competition. This was the best, or so I thought. I especially like the guy who’s supposed to be the free cell or random particle or whatever:
Finally, from my friend Terri, we have Frosty, a dancing bird. There are several Frosty videos, but I chose this one because he seems happiest and most spontaneous here:
Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Eating Heaven, by Jennie Shortridge
Who wouldn’t want an Uncle Benny in their life? He was warm, funny, generous, and attentive to his nieces when they were little girls, and he remains that way now that they’re adults. They needed someone like Uncle Benny in their lives when they were small, because their father was a grumpy, cold-fish sort, and their mother was self-absorbed and somewhat neglectful. So the Samuels girls continue to love Uncle Benny, and when he becomes terminally ill, food-writer Eleanor Samuels — the protagonist of Eating Heaven — moves into Uncle Benny’s home in order to care for him. Isn’t that nice? Except Uncle Benny isn’t really an uncle. He’s the man with whom their mom had a prolonged affair, or so the girls suspect.
The truth about Uncle Benny is a prominent and intriguing subplot in Jennie Shortridge’s story about Eleanor’s journey of self-discovery. And really, this book is about who we choose to love, why we choose to love them, and why we sometimes love people in spite of what we know about them. (I especially like that last part, because I’ve always thought the “in spite of” test was the best indicator of true love.)
I’m a new fan of Shortridge’s. I don’t know if she’s written anything else, but I’ll be looking into that. I thought her characters had great depth, her plotting was excellent despite a few too many coincidences, her sense of place vivid, etc. Having watched my father’s final days last May, I was particularly taken with her descriptions of dying — it was as if I’d given her a checklist of symptoms and behaviors that she then incorporated into a narrative. On another note, with Eleanor being a food writer who cooks quite a lot, there are some of “her” recipes at the end of the book. I like that — if your characters are going to keep going on and on about how great the spice cake is, give me the recipe for the spice cake!
So this book comes with a strong recommendation. As for animal lovers, there is an animal character, a cat named Buddy. Shortridge uses Buddy to amp up the tension a few times, but animal lovers shouldn’t worry about reading this book, which, in keeping with the purpose of this blog, I am declaring SAFE.
Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris
This book was fun to read! And yet I’d resisted it for several years, in part because I didn’t really care for a more recent book by Sedaris, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. Me Talk Pretty One Day was much better, and I wish I’d picked it up sooner. Oh, well. Better to read it late than not at all.
“Me Talk” is a series of humorous essays, some of which first appeared in the New Yorker, Esquire, and other magazines, as well as on National Public Radio. Part One of the book is about Sedaris’s family and his adult life B.H. — Before Hugh, the partner who literally led Sedaris to France. And France is the setting for Part Deux, where Sedaris struggles with the French language, discovers the best way to watch American movies, and visits a local fair where hostile cattle are unleashed during a soccer game.
Generally, humor makes me smirk. It’s quite hard to get me beyond the smirk to the laugh-out-loud state, but Sedaris succeeded several times. His droll wit, his stranger-in-a-strange-land outlook (even while living in the U.S.), and his refusal to pretend to be anyone other than himself — fantasy life aside — add up to endearing comedy. For a sample of something from the book, go to this NPR site and click on The Sex of French Nouns. It’s 7 minutes long and hilarious.
From an animal lover’s perspective, this book is Mostly Safe. In an episode from Hugh’s childhood, a piglet is killed. On the other hand, when they lived in Africa, Hugh’s family had a pet monkey who went on vacations with them. Sedaris also recounts the lives and deaths of his family’s many pets in the sweet but sad essay entitled “Youth in Asia,” which you may want to skip if you still get weepy about having had to put down a pet.
One of the best chapters, both in general and from an animal lover’s perspective, is “I Almost Saw This Girl Get Killed.” First of all, no one dies, and second, that’s the chapter about the cantankerous cattle and the soccer game. The cattle, from a breed called “vachette,” were taken to various small-town fairs in Spain and France, where they were displayed in what was essentially a reverse bull-fight. Volunteers did a variety of strange activities — the aforementioned soccer game, stacking inner tubes, etc. — and the vachette attacked these defenseless individuals, sending a few off in an ambulance. Whether they were attempting to avenge their bull-fighting brethren or just attacking for the fun of it, the vachette were certainly diligent in their efforts, and the whole scene perplexed Sedaris to no end. In and of itself, this chapter is worth the price of the book. Enjoy!
About
This is a picture of Priscilla, who lived to be an old lady cat of 19 1/2 and passed away on July 21, 2008. As Dave put it the next day, she was a great cat. I was privileged to adopt her in 1994, when her first family moved overseas and decided they couldn’t take her along. I don’t know if there’s an afterlife or a real “Rainbow Bridge” or any of that. But love lives on, and so I would like to dedicate this site to Priscilla and my first two cats, Hillary and Rabbit.
Like most blogs, this one includes random thoughts and observations, but its primary purpose is to provide book reviews for animal lovers. Please feel free to add comments or make suggestions of books that are animal-friendly.
