See Gina Blog

12/365, originally uploaded by gina.banina.

When Mockingbird (written by Charles Shields) came to bookstores I immediately picked a copy up. As a huge fan of To Kill A Mockingbird I was very curious about the infamous Harper Lee –what her own childhood had been like, what she had done since TKMB, why she never wrote another novel, and so forth.

Mockingbird did not disappoint. Charles Shield offers up a well-documented portrayal of Harper Lee’s life, including extensive accounting of her childhood (which is surprisingly similar to that of Scout and Jem in TKMB), her family, her school years and professional development. In addition to his coverage of all of that, the author provides a glimpse into Harper Lee’s friendship with Truman Capote and the adventure she shared with him in putting together In Cold Blood.

For those who enjoy delving into a good biography or for those who have innate curiosity about the authors who write the fantastic books we read as well as for those who write and want to be inspired by another author’s story I highly suggest picking up Mockingbird. It is interesting from cover to cover and leaves the reader sure she (or he) has a better grasp on who Harper Lee is and even why she chooses to hide from the public eye.

Curiosity did not in fact kill the cat, originally uploaded by gina.banina.

I apparently took an unplanned hiatus from my blog. Winter has left me a wee bit uninspired and wiped out, I’m afraid. To kick off my attempt at a return to blogging, a bullet post:

• Appetite. One of the ways I know when some part of my life is askew is via my appetite. Suddenly I am eating less, hungry less, and determined sometimes too to choose to eat less. Anxiety, emotions, and relationship muck have all resulted in this at one point or another. Tonight I realized I hadn’t eaten since 2. It is ten-thirty. Huh.
• Cold, so cold. This morning it was zero degrees out when I left for work. I wore: a sweater set, a hoodie, a winter coat, a scarf, gloves, a ear warmer, cap, and two pairs of socks. When I got to work, my fingers and toes still hurt from the cold. When I returned from work this evening it was thirteen degrees. I waited for the bus for 20 minutes. Seriously? Winter: suck it.
• Friendship. I am in the midst of one relatively new but incredible friendship right now, one for which I am absolutely grateful. Another friendship is strained and both of us feel helpless to fix it. Other friendships seem to be disappearing and appearing at various speeds. And still other people in my life leave my head spinning and grasping for a wall to hang onto for a minute.
• Literature. I finally finished “Mockingbird,” a biography of Harper Lee author of my favorite book of all kind: “To Kill a Mockingbird.” A review will be up soon, I promise. In the meantime: go, buy it or check it out, and give me your thoughts on it!
• Train Travel. I took the train back and forth to/from Kansas City last weekend. I loved train travel! I had five hours alone to think, nap, and read. I can’t imagine a better mini vacation for me. I can’t wait for another opportunity to use the train to travel solo. Or with a partner in crime, that too could be pretty awesome.

“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.”

- Thich Nhat Hanh

I just finished an outstanding book called Being Peace by Thich Nhat Hanh.  The book is a phenomenal description of Buddhist principles, but it is much more than that.  The book is filled with practical lessons for living in the present moment, connecting to people more deeply, and finding peace within and without oneself.

Being Peace describes how much better the world can be if we live in the moment, know ourselves, listen with compassion, work to truly understand one another, and simply smile.

Regardless of one’s religious views, this book can be of benefit.  I guarantee this book will be worth your time and may even change your outlook a bit.  My own copy is filled with underlined statements and phrases and I intend to return to the book again and again.

I recently finished reading “The Best American Essays 2007,” edited by David Foster Wallace.  I am fond of short, succinct pieces as I am usually reading on the bus and can finish one in the time it takes to get from here to there.  I had never read anything from the “Best American” series before, but intend to read more of this series for sure.

“The Best American Essays 2007” is filled with essays of many genres, themes, and styles.  The essays come from many sources, including The New Republic, The New York Review of Books, Harper’s Magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Iowa Review.

I did not always feel initially drawn into each essay, but eventually would be enthralled and glad I had made the effort and time to continue reading.  A few of the essays are fiction, but many of the essays are non-fiction:  literary reviews, political editorials, ideological arguments, et cetera.  I learned a great deal about the political system, the Iraq War, and other people’s struggles, losses, and journeys by reading these essays.

My favorite quotes from the essays:

• “Pain is a language, a story, a journey.” (p. 69)
• “To save, one must value.  And to throw out, one must value moving on.” (p. 183)
• “…Life is a motherfucker, living it anyway, and sometimes laughing in the process, is where humanity is won.” (p. 286)

If you need effortless but intelligent reading material and enjoy reading differing perspectives, this is a great book to pick up.

Sometime back I finally finished the eye-opening book entitled Fat Land, by Greg Critser (2003).  The book seeks to explain why the United States is one of the most obese nations on earth (at time of publication, the most obese nation, now second only to Great Britain) and to do so gives a history of eating habits, nutritional devolution, and government interference.

It is absolutely disturbing what impact the lobbyists, corporations, and our government together have had upon the nation’s health and well-being.  The introduction of high fructose corn syrup, developed by Japanese scientists in 1971, was the start of our descent into obesity.

High fructose corn syrup, it seems, costs tremendously less to utilize than pure cane sugar, six times sweeter than cane sugar, and could be used for everything  sweetener to preservative to coloration.  The problem, it was discovered, is that high fructose corn syrup is not digestible by the human liver:

“Fructose, unlike sucrose or dextrose, took a decidedly different route into the human metabolism.  Where the latter would go through a complex breakdown process before arriving at the human liver, the former, for some reason, bypassed that breakdown and arrived almost completely intact in the liver… This unique feature of fructose, which was intensified by the high concentration of it in high fructose corn syrup, would come to be called ‘metabolic shunting’”

The 1970s brought more families with not one but two working parents.  Convenience food and TV dinners became in high demand as a result. Consumers began to demand lower prices for these convenience foods, with no concern for how the government and food producers would lower the prices, but simply insistent that they did it.

One solution was palm oil, whose prices were consistently very good.  Unfortunately for the country’s nutritional health, while palm oil was cheaper to produce and use, it was also very high in saturated fat – its “proponents secretly touted it as ‘cow fat disguised as vegetable oil.”  So the U.S. had another nail in the obesity coffin, as it were.

Soon we had cheaply produced food, with very little nutritional value, and the public didn’t care:  the public had cheaper, delicious, more convenient food, what else mattered?  Then the public began to insist upon more for their dollar and the supersizing concept was born.

With marketing magic, soon people didn’t feel bad about eating in supersized portions and with the help of marketing mavericks the public were made to believe that their supersized portions were “value meals.” The country was at an economic plateau and was desperate to save a buck, however they could do it.  The people were well on their way to the obesity epidemic of the 21st century.

Fat Land goes on from there to explain the overload of calorie content in the average person, and the slow and subtle withdrawal of exercise standardization by the government officials.  For those with inquiring minds, a full appendix is available at the back of the book.  I highly suggest you read this book.  You will never look at the food you eat the same again.

I just finished reading ‚ÄúGhosty Men: The Strange but True Story of the Collyer Brothers and My Uncle Arthur, New York’s Greatest Hoarders,‚Äù by Franz Lidz. This is a short but comprehensive history of men whose lives were consumed by obsession, compulsion, phobia, and public scrutiny.

The Collyer Brothers lived from the 1800’s to late into the 1940’s in Harlem, eventually hoarding well over 100 tons of “stuff.” Newspapers, photographs, instruments, medical implements, gramophones, and hope chests filled with family history were among those items found when the brothers’ deceased bodies were eventually recovered from the Collyer Mansion.

Much of history was lost in the recovery as the community lacked respect for the brothers’ things in death as they did for the brothers in life. The community’s disrespect for the men’s eccentricity and privacy is a glimpse of what many of unconventional lifestyles continue to experience today.

The author’s personal experience with hoarding is interspersed throughout the book as he describes his Uncle Arthur’s compulsion to collect. His uncles all seemed to struggle with a form of mental illness, his father being ostensibly the only one to escape from the familial curse. The author’s patience for and understanding of his Uncle Arthur’s eccentricity was refreshing to read about throughout.

I encourage anyone interested in a historical account of Harlem; a study of compulsion, obsession, and phobia; or a story of eccentricity should read this book. I found it absolutely fascinating from the beginning to the end.

Bonus Links:

The Paper Chase

The Shy Men

I recently read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, a thinly veiled autobiographical tale of Plath’s descent into madness. Reading the novel feels as if one has been granted a peek into the past, into her life and into her weary psyche. For those who have never experienced mental illness personally, this novel can be an eye-opener. The book is an eye-opener for those with and without experience in its portrayal of the industry as a whole.

The Bell Jar is an outstanding history of the mental health industry during the 1950s and 1960s – showing the brutal methods used, ignorant handling of the mentally ill and immense helplessness of loved ones and the patient. The description of shock treatment from the patient’s perspective is heartrending. The mental health professionals’ lack of understanding (primarily because of less knowledge of mental illness, presumably) and disregard for basic human welfare is conveyed well. The hopelessness of both patient and parent are strikingly depicted as well.

As a depressive, with experience within the mental health industry today, I would like to say that we’ve come a long way in dealing with mental illness… I am not sure we have come that far, though. Shock treatment continues to be a treatment method, though we now throw pills at patients too – some who very much need medication and some who crave a quick fix (I fall in the former group, admittedly) – and we continue with the long tradition of locking people up against their will. Therapy is much more prevalent, granted, so that is a move in a more positive direction within the mental health industry at least.

The following event is occurring in the St. Louis area to celebrate the fourth book in the Stephenie Meyer Twilight Series:

Borders will celebrate the highly anticipated release of ‚ÄúBreaking Dawn,‚Äù the fourth and final book in Stephenie Meyer‚Äôs bestselling vampire-inspired ‚ÄúTwilight Series,” with an exciting in-store book release party beginning at 9:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 1 and culminating at midnight when the book officially goes on sale. The Borders party, themed ‚ÄúFrom Twilight til Dawn: A Night with a Bite,‚Äù will include costume contests, trivia contests and lively debates on themes from the book series.

Borders Books
1519 South Brentwood Blvd.
Brentwood, MO 63144

Please let me know if you would like to attend it with me. As anyone who knows me at all is aware I love vampires.

Tuesday evening I walked down from my apartment to Left Bank Books to see David Sedaris read from his new book Engulfed in Flames. As I got closer to Left Bank Books, I saw that the street was blocked off and people were sitting on the curbs or in those canvas chairs people often bring camping on the street. I thought, “It sure would have been nice to know that this was an outside event. I would have at least brought a blanket!” It got worse then.

I got in line to purchase his newest book at the table outside of Left Bank Books. When I got to the front to purchase his newest book I was informed that in order to see Sedaris read, Left Bank would require patrons to pay $35, the fee for a Friend of Left Bank membership, in addition to the book’s purchase. I was irritated that I didn’t know about the extra fee prior to walking down, annoyed that I didn’t have the funds available to pay this ridiculous extra fee, and bothered that Left Bank Books would not allow this reading to be first-come, first-serve as all other readings there have been.

(more…)

(Guest posted by my cousin, Tanya Roth)

Once upon a time there was a young woman who loved to read. She read books incessantly, voraciously. She could devour them, mostly because she read really really fast. Then, one day not long ago, she took her love of reading and learning and joined a cult PhD program.

And the reading took on a new level of insanity.

…..

At this time three years ago, I was just an average twenty-something with an average job, average house, and average life. I was (and am) pretty boring: In addition to reading for fun, my hobbies pretty much extend from book pages to television, movies, and taking my dog for walks.

Enter graduate school. When I visited the spring before my program started, one of the current graduate students told me that weekly reading loads? Oh, 1,500 pages per week. No, that’s not a typo. Across three classes each semester, you could expect a book per class per week…which could easily meet (or surpass) 1,500 pages.

Of course, there are strategies for this, even if you’re a fast reader. You learn, in time, how to “gut a book” and pull out the information you need, such as the argument, main themes, and the key points.

For the past three years, then, reading has been my life. On top of reading for classes, I had additional reading in each of my subject specialties. I kept track of the reading in 2007: more than 300 books that year (since I knew I had all that reading to do, my new year’s resolution was 365 books. I’m not really upset that I didn’t make the goal, although it would’ve been cool. In that extremely nerdy way, of course).

My reading-for-fun, sadly, has been relegated to occasional summertime flings with non-academic authors, furtive peeks at fun books in a precious few minutes before bedtime, and (only rarely) a few instances in which I ditched the assigned reading for more light-hearted fare. Reading-for-fun, these past few years, has been like an illicit love affair.

But now – now all that can change. Although I still have a dissertation to write over the next few years, I’ve completed coursework requirements. I passed qualifying exams – so now the required-reading element of my PhD program consists only of books and articles I locate to help me with the dissertation. Translation? Free time! Fun reading time! .

There’s only one small problem. How do I rewire my brain to remember that reading does not have to be a job?

There’s the rub. So many books that look so fun, and so little desire to crack any of them. (I think the only thing worse would be if I suddenly discovered I no longer wanted chocolate.) Crap. I knew this grad school thing might be a problem one day…