Sunday Scribbling #128: Coffee

The strongest smell of my childhood is coffee. Our home was seeped in coffee. My mother's percolator gurgled gently all day. My parents drank endless cups of coffee. Anyone who came over drank coffee. Bridge parties, Welcome Wagon, church friends, Mrs. Natti from next door with her thick smoke and raspy voice. All these cups I smelled perched on the red vinyl-and-metal kitchen chairs or sitting halfway up the staircase.

My parents' skin smelled of coffee. All grown-ups drank coffee. My mother and father each took a splash of milk in theirs. Coffee breath, coffee grounds in the plants for fertilizer, coffee in the thermos for long car trips. My mother spilling coffee on her lap while my father drove, both helpless. What to do but keep driving, stained in coffee.

And then in college, suddenly, I am a Coffee Drinker. The transition to independence happens as quickly as a heavy white cafeteria cup and one pull of the coffee urn's lever. I, too, take only a splash of milk in mine.

Late nights we study with the endless pot of coffee at the local all-night restaurant until we all shake with caffeine and exhaustion. Our breath is bitter, our teeth coated with sludge. Still, we persist.

After college there is coffee on the front porch and coffee after dinner. We buy mugs everywhere we go: Don't Mess with Texas, Cafe Du Monde, Disneyworld. We buy a grinder and beans and pretend to be coffee connoisseurs. We buy handfuls of chocolate-covered espresso beans, revelling in this bit of luxury. At dinners out, we turn our coffee cups right side up. Yes, please, more coffee.

There is graduate school, in which he drinks pot after pot, and now coffee pours from his skin like sweat. I drink my two cups each morning, a splash of milk. And then there is an abrupt stop: I am pregnant. I will eat healthy, sleep well, and exercise. But plagued by headaches, I add back in just one morning cup. Just one, until the baby is born and I am back to two, until the next baby and the next.

Those babies were seeped in the smell of coffee, warm and brown. It is natural that by 14 that the oldest begins claiming his own morning cup, and the middle one surprises us by making the morning pot now and then. Now we say things in the evenings we didn't used to understand: "Is it decaf?" and "No, thank you, or I won't be able to sleep."

But in the mornings we are grateful. Two cups of coffee, a newspaper, a clean smooth table. A smell that is as familiar as the bump on my finger or the curve of his smile, a smell that is my childhood, my coming-of-age, and my children.

( Check out Sunday Scribblings for more coffee thoughts.)

Book Review: A Million Little Pieces

As I've said a few times before, I love memoirs. But how should I feel about what is apparently an over-embellished memoir, with some episodes that just plain didn't happen?

Such was my state of mind when I began reading James Frey's controverisal 2003 A Million Little Pieces. I knew going into this that Frey went from Oprah's reading list (and thus, The New York Times Bestseller List) to The Smoking Gun's hit list in a matter of months. Apparently, a whole lot of James Frey's memoir didn't really happen the way he said it did.

But I liked it anyway. OK, this is not really a book you like. This is a hard book to read. Frey's mantra is: "I am an alcoholic, a drug addict, and a criminal." According to Frey, his drinking started at age 7, when he drank the dregs of wine glasses at his parents' parties, and escalated to pretty much constant alcohol and drug use by age 14. When the memoir begins he is 23 and about a day away from death, and on his way to an expensive rehab facility.

This is an ugly book because the subject matter is ugly. Even if Frey made up half the things in the book, he still lived a horrible existence. It is unfortunate that he felt the need to spice up his already hideous life by fabricating certain details; he really didn't have to do that. His writing is powerful, lyrical in its candid simplicity:

I want a drink. I want fifty drinks. I want a bottle of the purest, strongest, most destructive, most poisonous alcohol on Earth. I want fifty bottles of it. I want crack, dirty and yellow and filled with formaldehyde. I want a pile of powder meth, five hundred hits of acid, a garbage bag filled with mushrooms, a tube of glue bigger than a truck, a pool of gas large enough to drown in. I want something anything whatever however as much as I can.

I'm sorry that Frey didn't have the confidence and foresight to be totally honest in his writing. I hope he keeps writing, and I hope he has learned that he has enough talent himself without resorting to tale twisting.

I think I would recommend this book. It is not a pretty book in any form or fashion; in fact, the reader should be prepared for several graphic scenes and endless bad language. You certainly won't feel uplifted and happy after reading the book, but still: the raw emotions in Frey's writing maybe balance out the rest.

The Sunday Salon: Plugging Away and On the List

I've just now finished reading the final 10 of last week's Sunday Salon. I have found it impossible to actually read all the posts in one afternoon anymore, so I've taken to reading 5 or day at various points throughout each weekday. I'm tempted to give up on the Salon because of the sheer number of posts, but I get such good ideas and read such interesting posts that I just can't.

I'm having an extraordinarily slow reading week, as I've been crawling along with Mary McGarry Morris's Songs in Ordinary Times. I probably should have stopped reading it a week ago because I don't particularly like the book, but I'm to the point where I have to find out what happens to the characters. I've invested too much time to quit.

This week I reviewed The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Blah.

Here's what I've added the past few weeks to my TBR list, gleaned mostly from Saloners:

Monique and the Mango Rains by Kris Holloway (Reviewed at The Bluestocking Society)
What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn (Reviewed at Big A, Little A)
Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo (Reviewed at Bookstack)
The Girls by Lori Lansens (Reviewed on Reading, Writing, and Retirement)
Shattered Dreams: My Life as a Polygamist's Wife by Irene Spencer (Reviewed at Maw Books)
Who Killed My Daughter by Lois Duncan (Reviewed at Nonfiction Lover)

I've got The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway waiting in my library bag to read as soon as I finish the interminable Songs of Ordinary People.

And that's what's happening this week at SmallWorld Reads! If you'd like to take part in The Sunday Salon, you can sign up here.

Book Review: The Five People You Meet in Heaven

I read it, finally.

I was under-whelmed.

I am not sure why this book by Mitch Albom was such a big deal. I liked his Tuesdays with Morrie; it was a beautiful and touching tribute. But this one? It was just okay.

In case you are one of the other twelve people in the world who haven't read the book or seen the made-for-TV movie, the story centers on Eddie: his death, his life, and his first "day" in Heaven. The premise of the story is intriguing: what lives are intertwined with yours in ways you could never imagine? I was ready to be "wowed" by this book, with all the talk about it a few years ago. I thought it was going to be more along the lines of "It's a Wonderful Life": happy and redeeming. But it really wasn't. Unlike Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey, Eddie isn't particularly lovable. He isn't revealed as to have profoundly affected anyone's life for the good. He's just a guy who traverses through life.

I read this book between two intense memoirs: The Liar's Club and A Million Little Pieces. I thought it would be uplifting—an encouraging filler. I should have picked something else.

The Sunday Salon: August in Books

"Fairest of the months!
Ripe summer's queen
The hey-day of the year
With robes that gleam with sunny sheen
Sweet August doth appear."
- R. Combe Miller

Not only was August a month filled with lazy summer days at our home, but it was also a fabulous month for reading—due largely to a long vacation.

Books read and reviewed in August were:
Atonement (Ian McEwan)
A Death in the Family (James Agee)
Liars' Club, The (Mary Karr)
On Chesil Beach (Ian McEwan)
The River King (Alice Hoffman)
Secret Between Us, The (Barbara Delinsky)
Serpent Handlers, The (Brown and McDonald)
The Miracle at Speedy Motors by Alexander McCall-Smith
Jimmy's Stars by Mary Ann Rodman

Books Read but Not Yet Reviewed
The First Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
A Million Little Pieces by James Frey

Favorite of the Month:
A Death in the Family
(First Runner Up: Atonement)

Least Favorite:
The Secret Between Us


Where I Played
Weekly Geeks: Bookish Photos and Author Photos
The Sunday Salon: Lakes and Snakes and Reading Bliss
Sunday Scribbling: How I Met..., Observations, Ask, and Do I Have To?
And most Saturdays at Semicolon's Saturday Review of Books


What Dr. H. Is Doing Right This Minute on His Vacation Day:
Assembling bookshelves (he's a good, good man)

Weekly Geeks #14: Bookish Photos

This week's Weekly Geeks over at The Hidden Side of a Leaf asks for "bookish photos" and I've got just the thing. Actually, I have a couple of boxes' worth, but I'll just feature a few here.

When I was in upstate New York earlier this month, one of my jobs, as my parents prepare to sell their house, was to go through boxes in the attic. And of course boxes-in-the-attic = books. I couldn't part with at least a few dozen books, even some that weren't mine. I just liked them. Most of my four brothers had already gone through the attic, so what was left would either go to the Salvation Army or to me.

Here's just a sampling of what came home with me.

I took a bunch of old storybooks like this. My kids are really past these kinds of books, but they are so old and colorful. I just love them. Old books make great decor.

How much do I love this Great Stories of the Bible? It's not such a pretty book on the outside, but … it's special because of what's on the inside. The inscription indicates that my grandparents gave it to my Dad in 1931, when he was six years old. And I love that my father practiced his own signature, too. I bet my grandmother wasn't too happy about him writing in the book. My grandmother often gave books to us kids as gifts. I have several nice hardback books with her inscription and also dated, which I love. I always forget to do that myself.

The next two sets of books are some of my own favorites from my early childhood. I was the youngest of five children, and I'm sure these books had all been well-loved before I came around. My mother read to me for countless hours, and I have sweet memories of looking at the pictures in these books while she read. I am always aware of what a legacy my parents and grandparents bestowed upon us children with their gift of shelves full of books and time spent reading aloud.

The Brave Little Tailor, Emmett Kelly as Willie the Clown, When I Grow Up, and A Little Golden Book of Manners: four of my favorite Little Golden Books.

And a few more of my childhood companions. The stories about the chipmunks Chap and Chirpy was for sure my favorite.

"He that loves a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counselor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter. By study, by reading, by thinking, one may innocently divert and pleasantly entertain himself, as in all weathers, as in all fortunes." —Isaac Barrow

Book Review: The Liar's Club

I've written before about memoirs and how I love them. Since that post I've read two more memoirs: The Liars' Club by Mary Karr and A Million Little Pieces by James Frey, which I'll review in the next couple of days.

I didn't like The Liars' Club as much as I thought I would, and I think I know why: Karr is a harsh writer. Heck, she survived an unbelievably harsh childhood, so her prose makes sense. I've read reviews that call this a hilarious book, but I didn't find much to laugh at. I've read that her language is lyrical, but I found it brutal and aloof.

Brutal, dark and aloof make sense, though. The memoir tells of Karr's volatile childhood in a nasty East Texas town that was ranked one of the most vile places in America to live. Her father worked hard and drank hard; her mother was depressed and unstable. Karr and her sister were basically left to tend to themselves, although their mother appears to feel responsible for them and their father adores them.

The writing is sometimes choppy. The stories start and then go off on a tangent, with time and place sometimes hard to follow. I don't require a linear story, but too much jumping around without a pattern can be tedious. Basically, I didn't connect with the author. My favorite part--the part that really got to me--was at the end when she finds out the reason for her mother's depression.

But who am I to critique this much-praised book? It's not that I didn't like it at all; I'm glad I read it. But I just think there are much better memoirs out there that deal with similar issues (alcoholism, child neglect, incompetent parents). The Sky Isn't Visible From Here and The Glass Castle are two.