What happens when my ADD of housecleaning spreads to writing

Posted by Dalene | July 29, 2010 | 34 Comments

What you almost got from me today:

How we come to terms with our own not-enoughness.

What it feels like to be a Republican deep in the heart of Utah County fearlessly campaigning for a Democrat in the upcoming election.

Funny things I observe or overhear while serving in my new calling in the Primary.

How I don’t so much care about having it all, but I really wouldn’t mind being able to get it all done.

What does it mean that all my girlfriends have huge crushes on Angelina Jolie’s character in SALT? (I’m serious about this one. I almost feel compelled to write an entire essay exploring women’s not-so-secret fascinations with ridiculously strong and überheroic women and why they secretly want to be those women.)

How I was green before it was trendy or there was a color assigned to it.

What I wish I were doing this summer instead of working and not going on any vacations–~~staycation~~ (nope, still can’t bring myself to say it) or otherwise.

How it’s about time: Häagen-Dazs five

Johnna’s theory that if you live long enough, you will, in some way or another, become everything you hated when you were growing up.

How watching a bunch of neatly dressed teenagers quietly moving about in the dark at 5:40am this morning, leaving to go do baptisms for the dead, gives me hope for the future.

What I love and really don’t love about cub scouts. (Do not get me started.)

How now when tears well up unbidden I can’t quite tell if they are tears of sadness because I am really missing my second-born, who left just over a month ago to serve a mission in England–or tears of joy–in anticipation of a sweet reunion with my firstborn, who returns from serving in England three weeks from today!

What you are getting from me today:

What’s on my nightstand at the moment

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

The Book Thief

Shades of Grey

The Host (but only because we’re reading it for Book Group and I’m making on honest effort to at least attempt to read the books on our to-read list)

Bird by Bird

I would include our own Angela Hallstrom’s Bound on Earth, but technically it’s not on my nightstand anymore because one, I finished it and two, I’ve been passing it around from friend to friend so they can read it and discuss it with me.

Well and of course Dance With Them.

(Justine kicked this off in May, but school starts (here) in about three weeks (Yikes!), so I’m checking in to see how it’s going and find out if there is anything new I won’t be able to put down.)

What are you reading right now?

What’s the worst book you’ve read this summer (or, if like me, you’re having a difficult time squeezing in time to read this crazy summer, this year)?

The best?

Most profound?

Funniest?

Where is your favorite place to curl up with a good book?

Oh, and if you want to discuss any of the above-listed topics I didn’t write about today, feel free. I’m always up for a good discussion.

Go!

Comments

34 Responses to “What happens when my ADD of housecleaning spreads to writing”

Melanie
July 29th, 2010 @ 6:55 am

I really liked The Book Thief and The Help, but my favorite read of the summer is Half the Sky.

This morning I started the book Strapless, about John Singer Sargent and Virginie Amelie Gautreau aka Madame X.

Love your comment about the missionary comings and goings.
Camille
July 29th, 2010 @ 7:08 am

I love My Name is Asher Lev. I need to go and reread that one. I’m happy for this post, I need suggestions.
Michelle L.
July 29th, 2010 @ 7:56 am

ah, I was looking forward to your Angelina Jolie discussion.
Melody
July 29th, 2010 @ 9:31 am

Fun post! If there is a discussion to be led, promted, or otherwise brought to life, you my friend, are always the best person for the job.

Angelina Jolie: gag me. really. shut me up right now.

Not-enoughness: on my blog. work in progress.

Book: Pebbles Thrown in Water. Chap book. Stacy Julin. Local poet.

Green = Dalene: that’s all.
Marintha
July 29th, 2010 @ 10:03 am

I’m just looking forward to Mocking Jay.
dalene
July 29th, 2010 @ 10:18 am

Has no one read anything terrible or trashy or terribly trashy this summer?
Stephanie2
July 29th, 2010 @ 11:01 am

I’m interested to hear why you are a Republican campaigning for a Democrat.
Eliana
July 29th, 2010 @ 11:09 am

Don’t read: THE WEIGHT OF SILENCE by Heather something really long.
But I kept reading. Hoping it would get better. Beach book, totally.
Kerri
July 29th, 2010 @ 11:25 am

I really have read some stupid STUPID trashy novels this summer because there was a time my brain couldn’t take anything but drivel. I’m still embarrassed by them, though, so I’m not going to name names. I’m also spending a lot of time with parenting books. Why? Because of my “not enough-ness”, so apparently I could use that post as well.

I like Jasper Fforde and haven’t read anything by him for a while. Thanks for the reminder. I also love Bird by Bird.

I’m reading On the Corner of Bitter and Sweet right now. I just finished What I Talk about When I Talk about Running and liked it.

Oh, the WORST book I read this summer was Honor Lost (a supposed memoir about honor killings in Jordan.) Someone recommended it, I found it at the library and I read it in a night. I thought it sounded suspicious as I read it, so I did some internet research. It was a total scam. That’s a night I won’t get back.
Katrina
July 29th, 2010 @ 11:33 am

Just read and loved:

Bloodroot by Amy Greene
The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng

Just read and did not love: The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. I felt like this one dragged on too long. By the end I was tired of plot twists! and explanations! and revelations!

Reading now: Bleak House by Dickens. Because I have been meaning to for years. I love Dickens, but man, this thing is hefty.

Oh, and Johnna’s theory? No matter how I fight against it, it is true. Maybe it happens just to give the younger generation something to hate? If I was supercool they would end up hating that, too?
traci
July 29th, 2010 @ 11:45 am

We went to my MIL and read for days. It was heaven.

Rubyfruit Jungle – Rita Mae Brown
Phoenix – May Sarton

a terribly depressing book with the work November in it – was great tho, about the depression and dust bowl

2 Elm Creek Quilt Books – love them, love them , love them
she is especially good at Historical Fiction

nice to be back, traci
Amira
July 29th, 2010 @ 2:01 pm

Right this second I am finishing When the Wind Was a River about the evacuation of the Aluets during WWII. It’s an incredibly dry book, but there aren’t many other books on the topic, so I’m stuck. I have a lot of Wallace Stegner on my shelf to read next. Much better.

My favorite place to read right now is on the playground in back of our house while my 2-year-old runs around with all the neighbor kids. The temperature is usually in the low 70s so I sit in the shade and hope none of the neighbor kids’ moms want to chat with me.
Christine
July 29th, 2010 @ 2:51 pm

Just read A Thousand Splendid Suns and loved it. Found it very moving and beautifully written. Also read These is My Words and had a fun book group/discussion with all the ladies in the family at a reunion. These were my favorite from July!
Rebecca
July 29th, 2010 @ 3:28 pm

Just finished Dance With Them and LOVED it! I enjoyed savoring it in bite-size pieces, picking it up whenever I fed my baby. I so appreciated the real-ness of all the authors. I felt at home.

I have a hard time finding time to read (definite ADD in this area–I start in one direction only to have 3-4 more titles thrown at me), but I did manage to finish A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Nothing new there, but I was intrigued by the enjoyment I derived from that book. Even after discussing it at a book group (when I was only halfway through), I wanted to finish it.

(Note to Emily M.–why can’t I find a way to contact you on this website? I so enjoyed meeting you at the retreat but didn’t get to ask all my questions.)
Melissa Mc
July 29th, 2010 @ 3:50 pm

Best books read this summer:
The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway
Backseat Saints by Joshilyn Jackson
Bad Mother by Ayelet Waldman
One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams Garcia (juv fiction)
The Lost summer of Louisa May Alcott by Kelly McNees
I have a bunch of reviews on my blog…
Mrs. Organic
July 29th, 2010 @ 3:57 pm

Read and loved:
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
The Help
East of Eden

Well-written but horrible subject matter:
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The Mermaid’s Chair

Can’t think of one I hated, but dragon tattoo comes close. It was like a car wreck, I couldn’t look away.

I’m sure there are more I loved, I just can’t remember. Oh! I just started Atlas Shrugged for the first time. Also on my nightstand:
Little Altars Everywhere
Prodigal Summer
Funny in Farsi
Selwyn aka Kellie
July 29th, 2010 @ 5:35 pm

Angelina – can’t stand her (her face is weirdly linked to my divorce) and besides, I’m pretty uberheroic myself.

Loved the Book Thief. It’s not summer here (boo!) and am in the midst of catching up on a huge backlog of uni stuff, so fiction reading is rare to do, and not wasted on “trashy” (wait – what constitutes trashy?) Though I read the novellette “The Sagan Diaries” waiting at the doctors which made me want to jump right back into Old Man’s War series…. Like Marintha, can’t wait for Mockingjay.

I want a verandah with a big wooden Malaysian day bed piled with cushions to sink into as I read. Or an open fireplace, with rain against the windows.

My firstborn is off to his first YM camp tonight. My thoughts are with you and your elders Dalene!
jendoop
July 29th, 2010 @ 8:19 pm

Loved the Book Thief, it was recommended to me by a mysterious woman at the library. I haven’t seen her since to say Thank You.

I said “Staycation” on my blog several times, on purpose because it was supposed to be a VAcation but the in-laws took another sibling’s family instead of us. Yes, I am bitter.

I’ll end on a positive note. I’m reading Women Who Run With the Wolves, it is kicking my mental butt and I love it.
dalene
July 29th, 2010 @ 10:03 pm

More later–my brain hurts and I can’t see. But I love you guys. That’s all (for now).
FoxyJ
July 29th, 2010 @ 10:16 pm

I just read a memoir called “If I am Missing or Dead”; I’d heard it was good, but instead it was mostly vivid details about this woman’s abusive marriage and her ugly childhood. Like someone mentioned about another book, it was like a train wreck I could stop looking at even though it put me in a very foul mood. My husband kept asking ‘why are you reading that?’ At least now I’m very, very grateful for my marriage…

I did recently spend several weeks reading ‘Middlemarch’ and I loved it; definitely not brain candy, but a great read. I have also recently loved ‘In the Company of Angels’, ‘These is My Words’, ‘The Swan Thieves’ and ‘Yearning for the Living God’ by Enzio Busche. (I think Swan Thieves had some bad language/naughty stuff..)

(and yes I know that book titles should be italicized, but I’m lazy and have peach cobbler and bedtime calling my name…)
Melody
July 30th, 2010 @ 6:30 am

Women Who Run With the Wolves… excellent. I read it when it was first published many years ago. Re-read it last year.
Melody
July 30th, 2010 @ 6:37 am

P.S. “If I am Missing or Dead” – sounds like a woman telling painful truths… out loud, which takes a lot of courage.

Good for you, Foxy, for being willing to be a witness, of sorts, to her story. Jesus reads books like that… every day.
Emily M.
July 30th, 2010 @ 7:32 am

Rebecca:

emilymilner at byu dot net (just put the symbols where the words are). I loved meeting you too!

And as for books, I’m reading Septimus Heap #5 right now. And I need to reread In the Company of Angels for my book club. And I have a ginormous to-read list as I try to guess who the Whitney nominees will be, including:

Stephanie Black, Cold as Ice
Kiersten White, Paranormalcy
Dan Wells, Mr. Monster
Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings
Kimberly Griffiths Little, The Healing Spell
Heather Moore, Alma the Younger
Jessica Day George, Princess of Glass
Aprilynne Pike, Spells
Mette Ivie Harrison, The Princess and the Snowbird
Sarah Eden, Courting Miss Lancaster

If you go to ldsfiction.blogspot.com you can see books that are eligible for the 2010 Whitneys. Each book also lists its publisher, so if you are leery of LDS publishers you can still check out what’s being published nationally by LDS writers (mostly YA and speculative fiction, as far as I can tell, except for The Lonely Polygamist).
FoxyJ
July 30th, 2010 @ 8:47 am

Even though they aren’t ‘trashy’ or even that ‘light’ for some folks, my favorite summer reading is the Children of the Promise series by Dean Hughes, and the follow-up series Hearts of the Children. They’re great for people who like historical fiction and the perfect books to get lost in on a summer afternoon (if you want to borrow them I have both series–the library should have them too)
Carol
July 30th, 2010 @ 9:04 am

I reread “To Kill a Mockingbird” on its 50th anniversary. That book gets better with each reading. A true classic!
ClistyB
July 30th, 2010 @ 11:58 am

my daughter and her friend have been attending a bi weekly seminary class at one of the high schools this summer. They also got a group of kids together to do baptisms at the temple and it wasn’t a YW activity.
I wouldn’t have been caught doing that with my summer, but I guess this is where the parent learns from the child.
Kathleen Dalton-Woodbury
July 30th, 2010 @ 12:29 pm

I rely on the Atonement to make up for my not-enoughness.

For myself, I want to be strong and uberheroic so I can get it all done.

On this summer, do you mean what I could do if I could do anything this summer, or what I wish I could do within reason? If the first, I’d like to go to Ireland and England and do genealogy research. If the second, I am doing what I can do within reason.

I just posted on the AML blog about lists, and your list reminds me of my list of things to talk about on my personal blog, as I think about them–so I’ll have something to post each week.

Hooray for lists! At least they help us feel that we are getting some of it done.

Do you really want to know what I’ve been reading? Probably not, but what the heck. The two best books I’ve read so far this summer are both by LDS authors: I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER by Dan Wells (amazing look at overcoming the natural man, among other things) and PRINCESS OF GLASS by Jessica Day George (wonderful little reinterpretation of Cinderella). Trashy book (which I read for one of my book clubs–I have three–doesn’t everyone?): DEAD UNTIL DARK by Charlaine Harris–interesting characters, but I don’t think I want to read any more in the series.

By the way, I liked THE HOST a lot, and am excited to hear that there are two sequels in the works. (Of course, I am first and foremost a science fiction and fantasy writer and reader, so my preferences may not be indicative of anything.)

I’m interested in hearing what you have to say about ABRAHAM LINCOLN, VAMPIRE HUNTER. After reading PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES I decided to be very wary of that particular kind of re-interpretation. Such books may be clever ideas, but if the execution is shoddy, I find I can’t get very excited about them.

Have read THE BOOK THIEF, and thought the choice of narrator was particularly interesting, and A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS, and loved that the author is male–how cool is that, after all? I also read THE HELP, but had a hard time because I could vividly imagine what would have happened to those women if they had ever been caught, and I really didn’t want to read about that.

Finally, I am always ready to suggest books that I have read recently and LOVED. So how about HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET by Jamie Ford, and THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG by Muriel Barbery, and WHEN CRICKETS CRY by Charles Martin?
annegb
July 30th, 2010 @ 6:11 pm

I’d like to read those posts. About Angelina Jolie, this guy who came to our work to do some training did a hokey introduction thing asking “Team Jen” or “Team Angie” and he said he liked Aniston better and people started kind of agreeing with him because he’s well, a big cheese, and I said, “are you kidding me? Angelina Jolie, no contest! If I were gay, I would totally ask her out.” And the subject changed.

I mean, come on, Angelina Jolie is much sexier than Jennifer Aniston. I think I’d probably rather be friends with Jennifer, but it was a rhetorical question.

I loved The Help, Bloodroot, The Host; I also re-read East of Eden and thought once again what a great writer Steinbeck was. I didn’t like The Lost Symbol, either. I thought it was rather boring. I thought, “this is what all the hoopla was about?

I enjoyed Jodi Piccoult’s book about the boy with Autism. Can’t remember the title.
QueenScarlett
July 30th, 2010 @ 11:17 pm

… trashy and fun… Sookie Stackhouse series… read 1-9 in less than 5 days. In the hold line at the library for book 10… gimme some Eric.

Loved The Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Peel Society. FELL IN LOVE with the characters. So charming.

Addicted to all things Brandon Sanderson, Jessica Day George…

Fablehaven the fifth book – YAY Brandon Mull. My fav of the series.

Reread Screwtape for book group – always love me some C.S. Lewis.

…and a plug for one of my fav YA books – Keturah and Lord Death by Martine Leavitt – many symbols of Christ…but only if you’re looking. A very lyrical story.

I want to be Sydney Bristow… if I was single, un-attached… I’d love to kick some a$$ in the defense of kids, truth and light.

Also… I was always idignant about the lack of recycling at BYU and UT when I was a student back then… that was back in the 90s. Coming from Calif…it’s always a way of life.

Love you C-DUB.
QueenScarlett
July 30th, 2010 @ 11:17 pm

indignant… not idignant
Kay
July 31st, 2010 @ 3:59 am

My favourite place to read is in bed. I also do my sewing there and make long phone calls from its’ sanctuary.

I loved looking through the lists and writing down some to try to get from the library. I haven’t been reading much recently, concentration low and children are around. Next week we have book group and so I am struggling my way through Number 10 by Sue Townsend. I think it is meant to be funny, but I find it unpleasant to make fun of others so much as it is obviously based on real people. I recently reread and enjoyed A Gathering Light by Jennifer Donnelly, and The Glassblower of Murano by Marina Fiorato.
Jennie
July 31st, 2010 @ 9:54 am

I loathe cub scouts. On so many levels.

My computer has been broken for a month (horrors! I have been using my kids’ computer) so I have plowed right through my gigantic pile of books that has been languishing for a very long time.

My favorites of the last month (in order):

Recipe for a Perfect Marriage by Morag Prunty (it’s fiction. And WONDERFUL! I don’t generally care for fiction but I loved this)

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I’ve been avoiding this one for a while but figured I needed to read it before the movie comes out. I so loved it (!!!) that I went straight to the bookstore and bought the sequel “Committed” which tops the list of most disliked books of the summer.

Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and The Weed that Strings . . . by Alan Bradley. The guy wrote his first novel (sweetness) at almost age 70. His books are the most charming mysteries.

Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani

My Life as an Experiment by A.J. Jacobs. A.J. is my very favorite humorist ever.

My least favorites:

Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert. It should be titled “A Survey of the Horribleness of Western Marriage”.

Dreaming in Hindi by Katherine Russell Rich. I really wanted to like this but she was just so all over the place. I couldn’t follow it.
Lisa
August 3rd, 2010 @ 11:42 pm

I’m an Elm Creek Quilt book fan and have one to read and haven’t because I had to read The Hunger Games & Catching Fire-which I did each in a day. I loved The Host and hope you do, too. The Help has been on my nightstand for some time, too. And after reading this, I am adding The Book Thief. I have a few more, but have moved put them away because I don’t want to dust them anymore.
Ann
August 12th, 2010 @ 11:01 am

Right now, I’m reading “Don’t Hex with Texas” by Shanna Swendson. I’ve been reading her whole series this summer (started with Enchanted, Inc.), and I love them! They are quick reads, but just really fun entertaining books.

The best thing I’ve read this year was “The Help”.