Saturday Snapshot ~ May 14th

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Alyce of At Home With Books.  If you are interested in participating, just post a photo (new or old), but make sure it's not one that you found online. Add your link to Alyce's Saturday post for all to enjoy.

Profile poses of two friends we met on our Mother's Day walk in the park last Sunday.

Disturbing the Peace; Richard Yates

Title:  Disturbing the Peace

Author: Richard Yates

Publication Year: 1984

Publisher: Delta/Random House

Edition: trade softcover

Source: My Stacks

Date Completed: 5/4/2011 

Setting: New York

Rating: 4/5

Recommend: yes

I recently purchased several books by Richard Yates, after reading Revolutionary Road and the Easter Parade and loving them. Next up was Disturbing the Peace, and although it was good, it wasn't as good as the first two books I read by Yates.  I recently highlighted the opening paragraphs of this book, which seemed to have a sense of foreboding of bad things to come......

"Everything began to go wrong for Janice Wilder in the late summer of 1960. And the worst part, she always said afterwards, the awful part, was that it seemed to happen without warning.

She was thirty-four and the mother of a ten-year-old son. The fading of her youth didn't bother her--it hadn't been a very carefree or adventurous youth anyway--and if her marriage was more an arrangement than romance, that was all right too. Nobody's life was perfect. She enjoyed the orderly rotation of her days; she enjoyed books, of which she owned a great many; and she enjoyed her high, bright apartment with its view of midtown Manhattan towers. It was neither a rich nor an elegant apartment, but it was comfortable--and 'comfortable' was one of Janice Wilder's favorite words. She was fond of the word 'civilized', too, and of 'reasonable' and 'adjustment' and 'relationship'. Hardly, anything upset or frightened her: the only things that did--sometimes to the point of making her blood run cold--were the things she didn't understand."

In this story the protagonist, John Wilder, is an advertising salesman with a wife and young son. He is a very unstable man, who sometimes drinks to excess, and a womanizer to boot. From the very early beginnings of this story, he appears to be suffering some sort of a  nervous breakdown.  A friend drives him to Bellevue Psych hospital where he spends one week in an involuntary lockup, and his reflections demonstrate he is somewhat delusional at times as well.

"I've been a turd under everybody's feet all my life and I've just now figured out there's greatness in me."

When he is released from the hospital he, his unhappy wife Janice and their young, emotionless son Tommy take a trip to the country and try to pretend to be a family. It's evident that no weekend getaway can fix this family's problems.  In fact, it seems like John Wilder just can't make it as a husband and father.   He's a man who comes and goes as he pleases, and in the process of trying to find happiness and meaning in his life, he just experiences much of the same, just in different locales.

This is one of those novels where there are not any likeable characters, but yet the story is so well written that you'll be anxious to find out what happens to John Wilder and his family. Yet, another Yates book with more dysfunctional people and a story held my interest throughout.  Can't wait to read more by Richard Yates.

Waiting on Wednesday - The Good Muslim; Tahmima Anam

 Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine that spotlights upcoming releases that we are eagerly anticipating! Want to participate? Post your own WOW entry on your blog, and leave your link at Breaking the Spine. Here's my pick for this week.....

The Good Muslim; Tahmima Anam

(Harper - August 1, 2011)

One hot afternoon in a remote Bangladeshi village, a telegram arrives for Maya Haque ...Eight years before, a devastating war tore Maya's country - and her family - apart. Now Maya realises it is time to return home at last. She arrives to find that everything has changed. Her old friends have been seduced by the lure of new money, her city streets have been renamed and the freedom she had once yearned for is a long forgotten dream. Worst of all, her beloved brother Sohail has become a stranger to her, abandoning his liberal beliefs to become a strict religious leader. As she attempts to get to grips with her brother's radicalism, Maya will be forced to rethink what it means to be a good daughter, sister, friend and citizen - and a good Muslim. She must decide where her loyalties ultimately lie. Set in the dusty streets of Dhaka and the villages and river-islands of rural Bangladesh, at a time when the rise of religious fundamentalism was a whisper in the wind, The Good Muslim is an epic, unforgettable story of the challenges of peace in the long shadow of war. It is a novel that cleaves to the simple truths that shape all of our lives: that the bonds of family and love often strain to bear the weight of history.

The author's last book, A Golden Age (2009) was very good. 

First Chapter~First Paragraph~Tuesday Intros

Hoping to read MOSTLY books I'll truly love, and books that are a bit different from what others are currently reading. I've begun selecting what I read next, by whether the first paragraph grabs me. I know this isn't very scientific and I risk passing over some good books in the process, but for now, this is my book selection method.

Every Tuesday, I'll be posting the opening paragraph (maybe two) of my current read.  Last week's choice was Faith; Jennifer Haigh (no review yet; it was pretty good.).
 
This weeks pick:  School for the Blind; Dennis McFarland.

"HIS LIFE'S WORK and ambition fulfilled. Francis Brim believed the only metamorphosis left him was a slow, affable decline toward death, and so at the age of seventy-three he returned to the town of his youth to retire.  He had been a news photographer--a witness, a messenger amid the world's fire and ashes--and he figured he had earned not only the right to let the world go, but also the poise to let it go with authority. He would read, write, sleep, visit the beach, fish, garden a bit, whatever he pleased--the pastimes, he imagined, of solitary old people of some accomplishment. The medley of images he assembled for this retirement included a cottage with a porch on which he might sit and muse over the prospects of the very next hour, but soon after he had settled into just such a place, he found himself absorbed in entirely different, unexpected ways."

Would you give the book a try, based on the opening paragraph?

(If you care to join in, feel free to grab the image.)

Mailbox Monday - May 9th

Mailbox Monday, which was started by Marcia at The Printed Page, is on blog tour—and the host for May is:  Mari @ Mari Reads.

Here are (6) new arrivals for the past week.

• The Great Penguin Rescue;  Dyan denapoli  (sent by paperback swap member)
• The Beauty DeTox Solution; Kimberly Snyder (Amazon Vine)
• Graveminder; Melissa Marr (Shelf Awareness)
• The Twisted Thread; Charlotte Bacon (Simon and Schuster)
• The Little Women Letters; G. Donnelly (Simon and Schuster)
• The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary; Andrew Westoll (Amazon Vine)

Hope your week in books was a good one too.

Happy Mother's Day

Taking a minute to wish all of the mothers a happy Mother's Day. Hope you have a special day, and that you get to celebrate with those you love.

I saw the above image on the web about "great moms", and got to thinking about my younger years (20's and 30's) as a mom.  As I think back, I don't think I was always a good mother.  I loved being a mom when my children were born and very little. I loved holding them, bathing them, feeding them, snuggling with them, and gazing at them in amazement at the perfect little wonders that were mine. Then I was a good a mom.

But, then life got in the way. When my (2) little ones were just (5) and (7), and starting school, I became a single parent, and had to go to work full time.  Fortunately, my own mom lived only (5) minutes away so that my little ones could get off the bus at her house, and I knew they were safe, and well cared for until I got out of work.  The few hours of free time that we had together before bedtime, I tired to make quality time, reading to them, coloring with them, and talking about their day at school. I still think I was an pretty good mom then, even though our together time was reduced.

But then life got even more complicated. I worked full time (2) jobs at one time for a few years, went to school (3) nights a week, and then my mom passed away when my children were only 12 and 9. This is when my world seemed to fall apart a bit. I left bitter and angry. I think I became a less than perfect mother as a result as well.  I had little time for making sure my children were involved in after school activities like other children. I was working, going to school, involved in a relationship, and my mothering skills, as I look back slipped. There were very very few home cooked meals and easy microwave dishes, frozen pizzas and macaroni and and cheese became household staples. Somehow, my children hung in there for the bumpy ride of life. They never made me feel guilty about the way things were, nor did they cause me any problems to make life any harder than it already was.

Before I new it my children were grown. High School graduations, college graduations, their own apartments and their own lives.  I use to wish for the days that life would be easier and the pace would be slower, and how quickly it came. Now life surely is easier, but sometimes I look back with just a bit of sadness for days that passed so quickly, the days I wished away.

For the two best children a mother could ever ask for, I love you and thank you for turning out to be the kind of adults any parent would be extremely proud of. And, if you my wonderful children happen to read this,  thank you for the lovely dinner last night in honor of me. It was wonderful.

Happy Mother's Day

Saturday Snapshots - May 7th

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Alyce of At Home With Books.  If you are interested in participating, just post a photo (new or old), but make sure it's not one that you found online. Add your link to Alyce's Saturday post for all to enjoy.

 A friend we met in Aruba - 1998