Review: What the Body Remembers

What the Body Remembers, Shauna Singh Baldwin
Rating: 3.0/.50

Here's a good example of how the TTC process can take a perfectly rational brain and turn it to mush. I read the part in the book's description about one of the main characters taking on a second wife because his first was unable to have children and thought, "hey, that sounds like something I can relate to! It would be right up my alley." Needless to say, that was a stupid idea. A really, really stupid idea.

It started off well; I really liked the first chapter. The writing was nice, almost poetic, and it drew me in. It was told from Satya's perspective, the first wife, and begins just as the second wife joins the family. I felt for her and wanted to know more. Unfortunately, the next chunk of the book switched perspectives (to that of the second wife) and went back in time about ten years. Things started to drag and when the narrative finally did return to Satya's POV, she had become much less sympathetic and the writing had become tedious. It was repetitive and seemed to be trying too hard at times. I could have made a drinking game out of certain lines that kept being repeated over and over.

Much of the time, getting through this novel felt like a slog, though this is not entirely the author's fault. Something so long (500+ pages) just isn't a good idea during the school year. Only being able to read a few pages a night before falling asleep is not ideal. On the other hand, I didn't particularly like any of the major characters, even though I did occasionally sympathize with them. The language also made it challenging - a lot of terms were used that I didn't know the meaning of and there was no glossary.

On the positive side: this turned out to be an appropriate follow-up to Committed since there is much discussion about the inequality between men and women and how women get the short end of the stick in marriage here. Also, all of the family drama is set against the backdrop of India during the partition. I knew a bit about it from my high school World Religions course but this novel approaches it from a Sikh perspective, which I knew next to nothing about. I ended up learning a lot more about what was going on in India during that time and about the Sikh religion.

TTC Friday: A New Record

It's about damn time:

(In case that's too tiny to read, it's a positive OPK on CD64)

I don't even have words for this anymore. Between this shit and the crap I'm dealing with at school on a daily basis, it's a miracle that I am still relatively sane.

Review: Committed

Committed: A Love Story, by Elizabeth Gilbert
Audiobook
Rating: 3.0/5.0

First of all, can we talk about the title of this book? Its original subtitle was "A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage." Between the time that I saved this book to my library wishlist and the time that I actually got around to reading it, it had changed to "A Love Story." I don't get the need for this, other than marketing. Considering that one of the most common criticisms of Committed is that it's not like Eat, Pray, Love, this seems to be deliberately misleading people. The original subtitle is far more accurate.

At the end of Eat, Pray, Love, Gilbert meets Felipe and the two fall in love. In Committed, they learn that if they want to live together in the United States, they are going to have to get married. As both of them are divorced and swore that they'd never remarry, this is not good news. Adrift in Southeast Asia while they wait for Felipe's fiance visa to be approved, Gilbert sets out to learn about marriage and to find a way to make peace with the idea of being married again. This is not a sequel to Eat, Pray, Love; the book is partially a memoir but is mostly a dissertation on marriage in a historical, social, and religious context.

It was an interesting read, especially against the backdrop of the same-sex marriage debate going on in the US. The people who argue against it like to argue that marriage has always been defined as being between a man and a woman, and that it's a sacred institution. As Gilbert discovered, none of that is true. In ancient Rome, for instance, it was perfectly legal for two men to marry when circumstances made it beneficial for them to do so. Most of the time, marriage was about politics or convencience. Not at all sacred. The church itself was initially against marriage altogether until it realized that people were going to do it anyway. Unable to prevent it, they began trying to control it instead.

Gilbert's research brought up several facts and ideas that I found interesting/thought-provoking:

• Western culture has a different view on the purpose of marriage than the rest of the world and we place a very high degree of importance in its role in our lives. We also tend to expect our spouse to be responsible for our own personal fulfillment. Not surprising, then, that we tend to be more unsatisfied and disappointed.
• The laws of coverture. Ridiculous.
• There is an actual genetic basis for the dad vs. cad theory. There is a particular male gene, the length of which can predispose a man to either father a child and take off (the cad), or stick around and raise his kids (the dad). 
• Seagulls mate for life. Who knew? But even among seagulls, there is a 25% "divorce" rate. I found it interesting that there is such a thing as a fundamental compatibility (or lack thereof) between individuals.
• Educated women tend to have more solid marriages. And in societies where women become financially independent, marriage is the first thing that changes. This is because a woman's "need" or motivation for marriage is lessened or removed.
• The Marriage-Benefit Imbalance. There is a study showing that while men benefit socially, physcologically, and physically from marriage, it has the opposite effect on women. When I tried to find more on this, I came across a series of articles on Psychology Today which debunk it instead. It starts here.

In addition to the research, Gilbert shares stories of her mother and grandmother's marriages. I enjoyed that and it was amazing to hear how much things changed in just one generation. The book was well written but did get repetitive at times. Also, as much as I like her, Gilbert came across as someone who, even after her journey in Eat, Pray, Love, is still insecure and worried about what people will think. There are many passages in the book where she'll make a statement and then, in anticipation of how someone might criticize or misinterpret her intentions, she'll qualify and defend it. That got annoying after a while. Finally, her entire premise was about making peace with her own second marriage but after laying out all of her research and reflections, Gilbert doesn't really discuss how she ultimately did make that decision to go forward and be ok with it. It just happens. I got to the end and felt like something was missing.

Overall, while it could have been better, the book was still a worthwile read. It was interesting and I learned some new things. It made me reflect on my own relationship and marriage.

TTC Friday: When Coworkers Need to STFU

One of the many things I didn't appreciate before TTC is all of the stupid, inappropriate things people say to women on the subect of TTC. They always mean well and I'm sure I've said my share of idiotic things too, but this is a subject that is best left alone unless you really know the person you are talking to.


Over the last couple of weeks, here's a sampling of what I've heard from one of my coworkers:

"When are you planning to have kids? You've been married for a while right?"
[Followed, of course, in the next breath by complaints about how her mother used to ask her that all the time and it drove her crazy]

"Don't wait too long to have kids. The older you get, the harder it is on your body." [She had twins at 38]

"How old are you? Seriously, just forget this teaching thing and go have kids. It's brutal when you're older."

It was no big deal at first, just casual conversation, but it is getting more persistent and really starting to irritate me. I'm now into month #10 and it's yet another long cycle - day 43 and still waiting for a positive OPK. The longer it drags on, the less patience I have for this crap.

I try to laugh it off and change the subject but what I'd really like to tell her is that it's pretty damn hard to do anything BUT wait and I'd appreciate NOT being reminded of the passage of time. I'd really like to tell her that my plans are none of her damn business. I'd really like to tell her that my body is giving me enough grief just trying to get pregnant, I don't need to hear how bad it'll be if I eventually do manage to get pregnant. And mostly...

Seriously. Why do people think this is ok?

Review: Dead as a Doornail

Dead as a Doornail, Charlaine Harris
Southern Vampire Mysteries #5 (aka the Sookie Stackhouse novels)
E-book
Rating: 3.0/5.0

If you haven't been reading the Sookie Stackhouse novels or watching True Blood (the show was inspired by these books), you are missing out. I'm not normally a fan of the vampire or supernatural genre but even I managed to get myself hooked!

Sookie Stackhouse is a bar waitress in Bon Temps, Louisiana. She's a nice, good looking Southern girl who also happens to be a telepath. Her "disability" leaves Sookie without many human friends, but with an inconvenient tendency to get drawn into the dealings of other supernatural beings in the area. In Sookie's world, vampires exist and are "out" to the general public. As the series progresses, we meet more "supes" but the main focus is usually on the vampires. Also, there is sexy time. In this installment, Sookie has to adjust to her brother's newfound supernatural tendencies and we learn more about the politics of shapeshifters. I'll leave it at that because I don't want to spoil the first four books.

These novels are meant to be light, easy reading and with your expectations calibrated accordingly, they are quite satisfying. Actually, up to this point, I thought Harris' writing was steadily getting better with each book. From that perspective, this one fell short. It felt like filler; things did happen but not as much compared to the previous novels. The pacing felt off. It was also shorter than I expected, which was great since things have been so busy, but also a little disappointing.

So, Dead as a Doornail is not my favourite in the series so far. But it's still a fun series and worth a try if you're looking for something easy and different.

March Bingo

Midterm reports are due at the end of this week. I should be working on those right now but procrastination is more appealing. Instead, I bring you the March Reading Bingo update:

I only hit one new square last month. My progress has remained steady with two books and an audiobook in March, though I had hoped for more since I had a week off. The books:

7. Little Princes

8. The Virgin Suicides

• A contender for Great First Line (I'll decide on that at the end of the year):  

"On the morning the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide—it was Mary this time, and sleeping pills, like Therese—the two paramedics arrived at the house knowing exactly where the knife drawer was, and the gas oven, and the beam in the basement from which it was possible to tie a rope."

9. Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You

• A book by a Canadian author

March also brought my first abandoned book of the year: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carre. I had high hopes for it given that it's supposed to be one of the greatest spy novels ever, but I just couldn't get into it. DH and I tried watching the movie but gave up on that too, despite the great cast.

April is shaping up to be a pretty slow month so far. The countdown to summer and uninterrupted reading time is on!

Review: Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You

Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You, Alice Munro
Short stories
Rating: 3.0/5.0

Alice Munro is one of my favourite authors. When it comes to short stories, she's tough to beat. That said, she is maybe something of an acquired taste. The first couple of times I tried to read her collections, I just couldn't get into them and didn't see what the big fuss was about her. One year, I was gifted a copy of Runaway for Christmas and something clicked. I have loved her since.

This collection, unfortunately, reminded me of my first few attempts at her work. It was hard to get into. It's one of her older ones, published in the '70s, which may be part of the reason. The style is not quite the same as her more recent work. I often found myself wondering what was going on, particularly with the first several stories.

As the title would suggest, all of the stories in the collection deal with the consequences of things left unsaid, things that were misspoken, or misunderstood. I did like "How I Met My Husband," "Forgiveness in Families," and I especially liked "The Spanish Lady," which is about a woman trying to come to terms with the break up of her marriage after her husband's infidelity. The way that story is told is what I was originally expecting from the collection and is the Munro that I love. She has a way of capturing female emotions and experiences that is so spot on, it's gutwrenching sometimes.

There were a couple of passages that I couldn't help laugh at. Munro was always a good observer of human nature. Consider that these were written long before social media or reality TV ever existed: 

From "Walking on Water":

...what he objected to in this generation , if that was what it was, was that they could not do a thing without showing off. Why all this yawping about everything, he asked. They could not grow a carrot without congratulating themselves on it.

From "Marrakesh":

Dorothy had seen pictures in magazines of this new type of adult who appeared to have discarded adulthood. Jeanette was the first one she had seen close up and in the flesh. It used to be that young boys and girls would try to look like grown men and women, often with ridiculous results. Now there were grown men and women who would try to look like teen-agers until, presumably, they woke up on the brink of old age.

Overall, not a bad collection but not Munro's best either.