“So Big”, Edna Ferber (1925)

Title: So Big

Author: Edna Ferber

Published: 1924 (Pulitzer in 1925)

Recommendation: Check it out

If you like: Period Pieces, Early 20^th Century Dramas, Stories of Love and Loss

So Big is about beauty: the people who see beauty and the people who don’t; the things we sacrifice for beauty and what we ultimately sacrifice if we pursue worldly “success” instead of seeking the beauty in life.

Selina suddenly finds herself friendless and penniless at 19 when her father dies and leaves her almost nothing, having lost everything to gambling debts.  She leaves Chicago, the city she knows, to teach in a one-room school in the farm country to the southwest.  The first half of the book follows Selina, who is able to find beauty in even the most dire of circumstances.

The second half of the book follows her son, Dirk, or So Big as she calls him.  He rises above the poverty he was born into and enters a world filled with “beauty”.  He climbs to the top of the social ladder in 1920’s Chicago, where he is surrounded by wealth and luxury.  But he’s unable to see any real beauty.  And ultimately that is his undoing.

The book deals with themes of beauty in nature and in art, of dashed expectations and expectations met too well, of falling in love and falling out of love.  At some points it might feel slow to the modern reader, but the ending is worth getting to.

Mindfulness Exercises: Listen to Sounds

This week’s exercise was to listen to sounds.  Stop what you’re doing and just listen to all of the sounds around you.  Be mindful of them.  Don’t think about what you’re hearing, or narrate your experience to yourself.  Just let the sounds wash over you.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not great at remembering to do the exercise when it’s not tied to a specific time or place.  So I didn’t do this as much as I would have liked.  But I did manage to do it a few times. 

It’s amazing to do the exercise at a time you think of as quiet.  The first experience is a heightened sense of quiet as the many voices in your mind turn off.  (Every time I do a breath-centered mindfulness I’m always stunned by the quiet and, in retrospect, by the volume of the thoughts that were careening around my mind.) Then, as you become aware of all of the small sounds around you they become a symphony of noise.  The hum of the refrigerator.  The click click click of the dogs' nails as they prance over to say hello.  The kick of the heater as it turns on.  The bumph of the cat jumping off the counter.   The smack of Adeline pounding the bookshelf.  The bang bang bang of the books that she throws on the ground.  The hmph hmph hmph of her breath as she figures out a new toy.  The drip of the condensation on the humidifier dropping down.  The crack of a joint as you shift in place.  The vroom of a car driving by outside.

This exercise makes us aware of all the noises that we normally block out.  We do this for practical reasons: we could never pay attention to everything all the time.  But it’s nice to become aware of it on occasion, to notice what’s going on around us.  It’s also a great way to quiet the mind, because you have to be quiet internally to hear everything that’s happening externally.

This week’s exercise is: “Every time the phone rings (or buzzes or plays that annoying song), take three mindful breaths.”

“The Able McLaughlins”, Margaret Wilson (1924)

Title: The Able McLaughlins

Author: Margaret Wilson

Published: 1923 (Pulitzer in 1924)

Recommendation: Don’t bother

If you like: Old Books, Other Cultures

(This review contains spoilers)

Wully McLaughlin is the son of Scottish immigrants to America.  His father brought the family west to Iowa, where they’ve settled and spend their days farming.  Wully was a soldier in the Civil War.  When he comes home, he discovers that something terrible has happened to Christie, the woman he loves.  She was raped by Wully’s cousin and now she’s pregnant.  Wully does everything he can to “save” her.  He forces the cousin to leave the area without telling anyone what has happened.  Then he quickly marries Christie.  When it becomes obvious that she’s having a baby much too early, he claims the baby as his own and takes all the shame on himself.  The remainder of the book deals with the fallout.

The portrait of Scottish immigrants is interesting.  The dialect and accents are well done.  But the writing often felt simplistic.  The topic could lend itself to a lot of drama and tension, but it doesn’t really.  There was only one place where I found myself not wanting to put the book down (when the cousin comes back but can’t be found), but the tension fizzled without a satisfactory climax.

It’s not a bad book, but there are so many better ones out there.  With so many books and so little time, I wouldn’t bother with this one.

Mindfulness Exercises: Gratitude

This week’s exercise was to list five things that you’re grateful for at the end of each day.  This exercise was awesome!  I loved that it forced me to acknowledge all of the wonderful things going on in my life.  It definitely helped me focus on the positive.  And not just at the end of the day.  Throughout the day if something good happened I would think, “Oh, I can use this as one of the things I’m grateful for!”  So many of us (definitely me included) tend to dwell on the negative: regrets about the past and worries about the future.  It was nice because instead of just moving on when something good happened, it really made me take note of it and appreciate it.

The first day or two was particularly easy as I went through all of the obvious ones.  Like these:

I’m grateful that my wonderful husband works so I can stay home with Adeline

I’m grateful that I have a beautiful, healthy baby

I’m grateful that my parents and sister are healthy

As I got further into the week, I had to think a little harder.  But I came up with some good ones.

I’m grateful that my beautiful kitty Cayman sleeps with me every night

I’m grateful that I live in a country with free speech so I can blog and write about whatever I want to

I’m grateful that the dogs are nice to Adeline, and that she loves them

And then there were ones based on specific things that happened during the day.

I’m grateful that the guy at Whole Foods remembers who I am and says hi to Adeline

I’m grateful to the woman at Target who brought all my bags out to the parking lot after I had a total mom moment and left them at the checkout counter

I’m grateful that I have friends who tell me I’m a gifted writer (please keep telling me this, I need to hear it)

And, of course, yesterday was easy again.

I’m grateful that I didn’t lose anyone I loved on 9/11/01

I’m grateful to all the heroes of 9/11/01

This week’s exercise is “Listen to Sounds: several times during the day, stop and just listen to the sounds around you.”

Mindfulness Exercises: Mindfulness of Posture

This week’s exercise was to be mindful of your posture; to notice now it makes your body feel and to correct it if necessary.  Wow – I really needed this!  I used to have good posture.  But nine months of pregnancy followed by nine months of life with baby (carrying her on one hip all day long, bending over to pick her up, sitting on the floor to play with her, etc.) left my posture, well, unfortunate.  I had been sort of aware of that before, but doing this exercise was really eye-opening.

Just noticing my bad posture was amazing.  Back bent, shoulders slouched, tummy out, neck tense.  Ugh!  As soon as I became aware of it, I would notice all the ways that having bad posture was making my body ache.  Most noticeable was my lower back, which was just plain painful, and my poor neck.  And all that bad posture is making it that much harder to get my pre-pregnancy shape back.  I weigh less than I did pre-baby, but my tummy is still poochy.  Carrying her on one hip with my back arched and my tummy sticking out is surely not helping.  Yeah, like I said, eye-opening.

So then comes the next step: correct your posture.  Ah!  It feels so much better!  It’s a little bit more work, but it really does make a difference.  I’m absolutely committed to trying harder at this from now on.  Jan points out the way that posture and mood/energy level are connected and it’s so true.  Sitting on the floor with Adeline with my back and shoulders slouched, I feel tired and grouchy.  But just the act of straightening up and taking some deep belly breaths really does help.  And this is the more traditionally “mindfulness” aspect of this exercise: mind and body are connected and awareness of the state of our body can improve the state of our mind.  So don’t blunder through life with you shoulders slouched; roll them back, straighten up and take on life with your eyes open!

This week’s exercise is: “Gratitude at the End of the Day: at the end of each day make a list of at least five things you are grateful for.”

“Interpreter of Maladies”, Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)

Title: Interpreter of Maladies

Author: Jhumpa Lahiri

Published: 1999 (Pulitzer in 2000)

Recommendation: Read it!

If you like: Short Stories, Other cultures, Intimate Portrayals of Relationships, Book Club Books

Reminds me of: The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, A Passage to India by E.M. Forster

What does it mean to be Indian in America?  How do you sustain a marriage in the face of distance and difference?  How can a poor woman in India survive?  These are the kinds of questions Lahiri tackles in her collection of short stories.

The first story, A Temporary Matter, is raw, heartbreaking and beautiful.  Shoba and Shukumar recently lost their baby.  When the power goes out, they spend more time talking than they have in months.  As the story develops, they learn more about each other and what their relationship has meant.  I was crying by the end.

The rest of the stories are lovely, too, but none is as good as the first one.  It’s an interesting editorial decision to put the best story first.  Everything else sort of felt like a let-down.  But they’re all good in their own way as well.  The stories are quiet and thoughtful and with just a few words Lahiri manages to show us the intimate and deeply personal lives of her characters.  A wonderful achievement.

This book won the Pulitzer in 2000 so I’m obviously reading it out of order.  But I was looking to read some short stories so I figured this was a good place to start.  I sometimes don’t like short stories because I feel like just as I’m getting invested in the characters the story is over.  For the most part she avoids that here.  I suppose that’s the mark of a good writer.