Ilustrado by Miguel Syjuco

First things first:  This is a book for when you are feeling intellectual.  This is not a book when you are feeling lazy and unwilling to engage your brain, not that I find anything wrong with that.  99% of my reading time is devoted to lazy books.  My recent “review’ of a Molly Ringwald penned book is testament to that.  Sometimes though I want to feel like a smarty-pants.  I get overcome by an urge to relive my academic days and reassure myself that I’m smart!  I decide that I want to be an Ilustrado, an enlightened one… enter Miguel Syjuco’s awesome book.

I’ll confess I almost gave up on the book a few times.  It’s a bit dark and sometimes devoid of hope.  I’m not against any of that but since I can be a little bit dark myself I like to switch it up with the fluff.  This book had a great payoff though, I mean Borges good and in the end it unexpectedly carries a hopeful message, changing up the scenery just when you are sure you’ll find something else.  Isn’t real life like that though too?  A ray of light just when you think the darkness will overtake you?

Existential musings aside the truly special aspect of this book though is the narrative.  The story is framed in at least 5 different ways, through jokes, fake blog entries, the narrators childhood, the present day action and the fiction of “Crispin Salvador”.  I haven’t seem Inception yet but it feels like how everyone describes that movie: layers and layers and layers.  If you are up for a challenge go check it out and to read more about Ilustrado’s up and coming author Miguel Syjuco click here.

Celebrities command. I obey.

I love to read celebrity “advice” books.  I don’t know why, but I do.  Actually I do know why, the power of marketing and media is why.  I see it on TV and them I’m like “I have to do it!”.  Let’s call it Oprah syndrome or in Arnold’s case “Dr. Oz” syndrome.  If he tells me “Dr. Oz said we should…” one more time I’m going throw his neti pot out the window.  The media (for me anyways) is just incredibly persuasive.  I blame them for the following conversation I had with my two year-old last week.

Me:  Elian, I need you to hurry up and get bigger so I have an excuse to go to Harry Potter Theme Park

Elian:  Aglwoiejebleliya Buh-Bye. Ciao.  See you later!

Me:  So we’ll be going in like another 8 years?  2018.  Harry Potter Bound!

So, yeah, I’m pretty susceptible to the “celebrity advice” industry.  Alicia Silverstone has convinced me that it’s good to eat less animals and Tim Gunn is responsible for my properly hemmed jeans.  And even though I was trying to resist the following due to its dumb title, somehow I ended up checking it out at the library…

How perfect is her lipstick? I love aesthetics and this cover makes me want to procure a fluffy white dress, dye my hair red and curl up in search of my pretty.

I’m not even a huge Molly Ringwald fan or anything.  I mean, I haven’t even seen 16 candles all the way through which I’m sure is some kind of ethic codes violation against my Gen X status.  A few weeks ago though I saw her on Chelsea Handler and Chelsea said “read it.” and if you’ve ever seen Chelsea’s show you’d know it was wise that reading the book is the only suggestion I followed.

So I’m sitting there feeling a bit lame reading Molly’s book but you know what?  I kind of loved it.  It was fun and light and not too serious and pretty!  And we all know I love the pretty.  I wasn’t really planning on writing about this book though until she wrote something that I realize I’ve been thinking about lately.

“In your twenties you worry about whether or not a person likes you.  In your thirties you start to think about whether or not you like  a person.” (Quote probably not exact at all.  Sorry Molly!)

I’m just starting my 30s so I’m not sure I can be definitive but I think this isgoing to be quite true!  I used to constantly worry about other people’s happiness and well-being.  While it’s not bad to think of others’ feelings and want to help people out I used to do this a lot to the detriment of my own well-being.  I never really thought about whether I liked a person or a situation.  I just worried about whether the other person was happy.  This is problematic in a few ways:

1) I would be crushed and stressed out when other people weren’t happy and it seems that lots of people are unhappy a lot. In fact some people are professional Eyeores.

2) It justified a lot of bossy behavior on my part.

3) It’s a good way to attract crazies.  Sad sack whiners are intrinsically attracted to the happiness obsessed.

Over the past few years I’ve learned to be a little more balanced with my happiness crusade.  Or at the very least I’m learning how to apply it to myself.  I can’t make other people happy and realizing that has been a good, if late-blooming realization.  Now that I’m better at letting other people be responsible for their happiness I feel less need to boss them around.  See! It’s good for everybody!  Win-win!

Now that I’m 30 I don’t feel obliged to spend time with people just cause they asked me to.  I turn down social obligations all the time.  I rest when I’m tired!  I spend time with my husband and son!  And I have more time and energy to care for those whom I’m closest to.  Less people=more quality time=less insane me.

I know to some people this kind of stuff comes natural.  Arnold for example has absolutely no compunction to even return phone calls let alone to spend time with people when he doesn’t want to.  He is very, very good at saying no.  As for me… I’m getting there… learning that saying no sometimes spreads much more happiness than saying yes.

Except to Molly, now I know, I can’t ever say no to Molly.

Cleaving

Julie and Julia was one of my favorite books.  I used to read it over and over again and I suppose the reason why was that I really identified with Julie’s plight.  Just like her I was out of college, married young and aimlessly working at bureaucratic jobs with the somewhat egotistical gut feeling that I was born for something more.  Maybe I didn’t find myself through french cooking but I identified with her struggle and her relationship with her husband.  When I turned 30 my friends cooked me the cake she makes in Julie and Julia.  I mean that’s HOW MUCH I used to talk about the book.

So I was pretty psyched when she published a second book… but uh, it wasn’t for me.  The second book was about her foray into butchery and her affair.  To be clear, I know that stuff happens in life.  Marriages aren’t fairy-tale Taylor Swift songs and well.. stuff happens… but I just didn’t get this book.  I didn’t feel like it went anywhere and at the end it didn’t feel like she had clear perspective on everything that happened in her life.   To be fair maybe this is because I did not identify at all with her marital problems.  If anything I found them disconcerting?

So, uh… I can’t really recommend it which is a bummer because I think Julie Powell is a great writer and I wanted to cheer her on.  Seriously though, this book left me depressed and confused and not in a good way at all.

Storytelling Pt. 1

Last week I went to SoCal for a business trip and I took the opportunity to read a book, “Rockabye” by Rebecca Woolf. The story follows her through her unplanned pregnancy and the first few years of her son’s life. In the book she is so honest about the struggles of becoming a parent: the pressures of other people’s opinions, the exhausting guilt, the fear that you are no longer allowed to be yourself, the constant anxiety that you will make the wrong decision and fail your child, the simultaneous urge to run away balanced with a love so intense you think it will break you in two.

I read her book and I felt every single word.

Her book said so many things that were lying heavy on my heart. Things I was afraid to say aloud for fear that someone would agree, “You know you might not be the best Mom for him, we’re going to take him back and give him to a better Mom.”

Nobody can do that of course but it’s there always in the back of my mind, a fear that whispers at me constantly. When you spend so much time having to convince people that you’re a worthy parent with home studies, fingerprints and international background checks at some point you start to believe you deserved the abuse. That maybe you aren’t good parent material and that’s why you had to spend a year defending yourself. And when the going gets rough and you’re tearing your hair out that voice gets louder and louder. Last week the voice was overtaking me when I found her book. I couldn’t believe how brave she was to say the things she did. It was so comforting. Apparently I am not totally crazy. Or at least not alone in my crazy.

So then I wrote her an e-mail to tell her how much I appreciated her brutal honesty. It was the first time I’d ever written an author but I was just so grateful I couldn’t NOT write and say thank you… but here’s the thing. SHE WROTE ME BACK.

How awesome is that?

Not a bounce back form e-mail. A sincere, thanks for your note and I promise you will make it e-mail.

And that’s why I decided to be a little more honest and courageous on this blog, to share a little more about my real life. Her story reached me at a moment when I was feeling lost and needed her words. And I think that’s the beauty of writing, the opportunity to use your voice to give something beautiful to somebody else. Maybe it’s the birthday card with a personal note or the magical realism that gives everyone in a world a taste of your home country. Maybe it’s the information someone needs to balance their budget or the Jane Austen novel that gives you hope you’ll find your Mr. Darcy. And maybe sometimes, it’s just your story, honestly written, that reaches someone as they’re struggling and gives them the consolation of knowing they are not alone.

Getting Committed

You all read Eat. Love. Pray.  Right?  Of course you did.  Oprah commanded you and it was so.

I read it because I saw it reviewed in Newsweek when it first came out.  I have witnesses to this fact because I insisted on reading it out loud to Debi and Em during a road trip to Santa Barbara.  This is not relevant information of course.  Just an opportunity for me to pretend that I am not under Oprah’s sway.  But let’s get real… I am.  She is the one ring to rule us all.

Back to the point though.  Like everybody else in the world I loved Eat. Love.Pray and so I’ve been reading more of la Liz Gilbert.  I read Stern Men while I was in Colombia and I’ve been reading her new book Committed: A skeptic makes peace with marriage over the past few weeks.  I really liked this book, it’s the story of marriage and some of the ways it’s changed over time and in different cultures.  A few years after Eat. Love. Pray ends Liz and Felipe end up being forced to get married by US Immigration despite having promised each other to never marry.  Like any smart girl Liz goes bananas researching marriage to try to convince herself her second marriage won’t fail.  The book is kind of 1/2 biography and 1/2 sociology textbook.   As a Soc major who was also forced to get married on US immigration’s timelines this book seems written expressly for my demographic but there is also a less obvious reason that it appeals to me:  I like to seem marriage-smart.

Among my social group I was one of the first to get married: for someone of my age I’ve already been married like a million years.  I may be only 30 but among my peers I am a veteran married person.  My friends (despite my protests) insist on calling me La Senora.  Like you know “Is La Senora coming to the movies?”  You know your old lady wife? While most other people I know are still single or mooning about as newlyweds, Arnold and I are diligently saving up to go on a trip for our TENTH wedding anniversary.

All of this to say is that I have an important position to uphold in my social circle as the “married person”.  So I can’t be flaking around, I have to read books by Liz Gilbert and pretend to be knowledgeable.  I’m also obligated to read them at Starbucks while eating a rice krispy treat and sampling a dark cherry frappuccino.  I highly recommend you all do the same.

You might notice that I got the "big text" version. La senora doesn't like squinting.

Literacy Rocks – Potato Peel Society

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

I’ve been quite literary lately.  Have you noticed?  In case you didn’t I’m announcing it explicitly.  Please feel to praise me for my intelligence and commitment to wholesome pursuits like books.  Anyways, this book was recommended to me by Emily who got it from her Mom.  I thought it looked like something my Mom would read so I politely said thank you and then ignored it for like 3 months.  I don’t know why I am prejudiced about stuff my Mom reads, it’s not like she sits around reading romance novels.  Ahem, Grandma.

Anyways, back to the book.  It was SO GREAT.  It’s a series of letters between people who are re-building their lives after WWII. I’m frankly kind of shocked that I haven’t heard that it’s going to be made into a movie yet.  It’s that good.  I stayed up to 3 am several nights in the row because I just had to figure out what would happen in the next chapter.  It was funny, touching and suspenseful all at the same time.  A caveat:  There are A LOT of characters so it’s hard going at the beginning but reading through the hard beginning promises great rewards.  I promise.

Cabbage Convert

I’ve never really liked cabbage that much. I find it too… something. And then I learned about fish tacos! (I also used to dislike fish, but that’s another story). And then you know cabbage is all cancer fighting and low-calorie and healthy and what not so I started eating more.

But then cabbage and I had a little falling out when it started showing up too much in my CSA. It was there every week! And let me tell you a head of cabbage is a lot for two people. I was really about to tell cabbage, “I think we should go on a break”… and then Molly Wizenberg changed my life.

Molly is really famous for her food blog Orangette. Google it and read some, you won’t regret it. She recently published a book which is wonderful. It’s sort of a cookbook/short story book. I read it in about two days. I’m not too embaressed to say I cried a few times.

The real trick to the book are Molly’s seductive descriptions of food. She is so good that out of all the delicious recipes in the book the one I most wanted to try was cabbage braised in cream. I know, right? Ew……/weird. But I made it and Arnold and I ate a whole cabbage for dinner. Only cabbage. and it was DELICIOUS! Arnold is already hounding me for more cabbage. Normally it’s not so healthy to eat cream, but when the only other ingredient in your dinner is cabbage it becomes so not a big deal. Bonus points to Molly for that.

And to my friend cabbage. I’m so sorry, I took you for granted. Please come back, I’m down on bended knee.

Congrats I can read!

Since leaving the M.A. Program I can enjoy flights once again seeing as I don’t have to study on them anymore. Last week in Atlanta I read a WHOLE book and it was so good! (Refernce below for title/author, etc.) Highly recommended!

The book is about traveling in China and eating Chinese food, so obviously I can relate. I especially liked the chapter on Kashgar because it described the suffering and beauty of the Uighur people so succinctly. Many of the things she wrote about I saw or experienced during our three week in China. Also she ate A LOT of stuff that I ate too and loved. (I miss you Kebab’s, hand-pulled noodles and Sicuhuan peper!)

However all food porn aside the real reason that I liked this book is because it details that subtle loss of identity that happens as you become a bi-cultural person through living abroad. Anyone who has ever studied abroad, lived abroad or married into and really become a part of another culture will understand exactly what Fuchsia Dunlop is talking about as she finds herself stuck between China and England. I feel the same way sometimes my self, stuck between Colombia and California, unsure of why I sometimes seem to have trouble fiting into normal everyday American life.

The book also takes you through some of the recent changes in China (she lived there from ’94-present) and the impact they’ve had in every way on the lives of Chinese. Lots has been said about how China is modernizing etc. but it gives this strange veneer of everything being shiny and perfect in China which isn’t the whole story or even the most important part. I got my book from the local library.

“Shark Fin and Sichuan Pepper – A sweet-sour memoir of eating in China” – by Fushia ( I wish my name was Fuschia! Dunlop

I can read.

Okay recently I have been reading two books.

The Devil wears Prada by Lauren Weisenberger?

and Living to tell the Tale – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Living to tell the Tale is a biography by one of the greatest living South American writers, it is full of colorful stories about prostitution, famous authors, politicians etc. The Devil wears Prada is chick lit about powerless abused 20th somethings torutured by their maniacal boss. Guess which book I like?

Of course the fluff! Even though I am currently studying Latin american literature, I can barely make it through Living to tell the Tale despite the fact that every Colombian I know has raved that they “Read their lives story in that book”. I’ve read it for like months but I was able to read The Devil wears Prada in like 3 days. I like to comfort myself in thinking that at least I aspire to be culturally classy I mean I even tried to read something by Umberto Eco, but still if you gave me the choice between finishing Living to Tell the Tale and reading Bridget Jones Diary for the 53rd time I would pick Bridget every time.

However if you are smart, Colombian or have a burning desire to be an author, I bet you would really like Living to Tell the Tale. If you are twentysomething and in the process of being crushed by the realities of work life read The Devil wears Prada.