Summer Reading Extravaganza!

As you all know, Laura, Garrett, and I took a wild ride up and down highway 5 this summer.  We spent a lot of time driving, a lot of time with friends, and a lot of time with family.  But we also spent a lot of time with books. 

One of the highlights of the books experience this summer was our trip to Powell's Bookstore in Portland.  That place is amazing.  It is my wish for everyone to take a trip there someday.  I have mentioned before how I receive daily book reviews in my email via Powell's Review-a-Day newsletter, so I've had an invested desire to visit the actual store at some point.  It was more than I could have hoped and it made me desire a good, local bookstore all the more.  This place is no Borders or Barnes & Noble.  Though organized, there is no simple floor plan, no chairs dispersed throughout the store.  It has a gritty, hard edge to it that screams in your face that this is a used bookstore, a proud used bookstore that won't apologize.  And it doesn't need to.  There is a tremendous selection of books.  And one of the best aspects is that new editions are placed right on the shelves next to their used counterparts.  So, while browsing, you can decide to purchase a new copy or a cheaper, more loved, used copy.  Brilliant!  It was so fun, going up and down the stairs and aisles, searching for who-knows-what and finding books on everything (even entire books devoted solely to fountain pens!).  We spent about 4 hours in there and it was not nearly enough time.  We also spent a pretty good amount of money which was not really enough (but I had to cut myself off at some point.)  We walked out having bought something for everyone, but it was the experience I will treasure.  Okay, it is really the books I'll treasure, but the visit to the world's largest independent bookstore was special. 

As for actual reading, I've done an impressive job of covering some written ground this summer.  So I'll just jump right it with my reviews and when I'm done you can tell me how impressive it really is.

Book one: I started Under the Dome by Stephen King the beginning of June.  It took me just over a month to complete it.  I thought the 1072 pages would take me all summer.  But this book really is a quick read.  And it is fun.  In the author's notes King says "I tried to write a book that would keep the pedal consistently to the metal."  He delivers.  He most certainly delivers.  This books was a thrill ride that starts on the first page and keeps going; which is why it was such a quick read.  There were many nights where two more pages turned into 20 more pages.  It was just as hard to put down as it was to pick it up (Ha!  a joke about its size). 

Here's the plot: an impenetrable dome drops out of no where on the small of Chester's Mill in Maine. It locks the people that were in town in, and the rest of the world out.  This even happens in the first two pages.  The rest of the book deals with the ramifications of people being locked up with ever dwindling resources. 

But I would be remiss not to mention at least one of the characters, Big Jim Rennie.  You'll hate Jim Rennie.  He is a big fish in a small pond and instead of looking for a viable option of getting out from under the dome, he uses the dome as an opportunity to assert his power and agenda over the towns folk. 

There are numerous other characters (and a convenient character list at the front of the book).  You'll root for the two main protagonists, Dale "Barbie" Barbara and Rusty Everet and all the people that join their side, once it is clear that sides are forming in this small town.  But the biggest reaction you'll have is to wonder what you would do in such a situation.  You'll wonder how totally out of control life would spin if a dome locked you inside with 2,000 other people. 

King's writing is tremendous and I feel terrible for brushing him off as a cheap horror writer.  He is an expert story teller.  Though intense, this is no horror story.  It is a thrill ride.  The riot that breaks out at Food City is told with such speed, urgency, and pacing that it was delightful to read; it was really more like watching it in slow motion where you can catch every tiny detail yet it kept the pace and excitement of intense moments of action. 

He also makes sudden shifts of narration on occasion which help break up the story.  He does it expertly, not in an annoying way at all. 

Bottom line, 5 out of 5 stars.  The resolution, I think left a little unexplained.  I feel he might as well just gone on for another 200 pages to round it all out, but the resolution still worked and did not leave me disappointed.  Oh, and the bad guys use bad language and do bad things.  The good guys also occasionally let a soft swear fly.  And King doesn't shy away from gritty descriptions, but that made it all so real. 

I'm realizing now that this could end up being one really long blog post that no one will bother to read.  So, I think I will cut it off for now and just like Pastor Ken, will take my one part book review and turn it into a 3 or 4 parter.

to Portland and back again

We spent only a couple of days in the Bay Area with family before re-loading the car and kid (no dog this time) into the car and heading North again.  We drove over two days to Portland, Oregon.  We made this massive drive to visit our dear friends the Welbourns.

While there we took in the sights of downtown Portland, namely Powell's Bookstore (more on that to come from Adam, I assure you).  We spent 4+ hours perusing the many floors of books.  We each walked away with at least one book.  Ok, Adam walked away with at least 4, maybe more.

We also enjoyed lunch at Deschutes Brewery, browsing the shops, and just chatting.  Garrett was a champ in the stroller and was usually pleasant enough.

We spent one day visiting my cousin in Camas, Washington, just over the river.  She and her family live on 6 acre farm.  They have beautiful property and gave us the grand tour of their land, complete with chickens, bee hives, 2 greenhouses, and rows and rows of growing veggies.  We left laden with delicious gifts- fresh garlic and honey.  And a  handful of fresh raspberries straight from the bush.

After a week of friends, we made the drive south back to the Bay Area.  We spent two weeks just enjoying our families.  We went to the pool, went out, stayed in, let the grandparents get in all the Garrett holding they could manage.  It was lovely. 

Adam had the opportunity to spend 4 days in Yosemite with his dad and brother.  Garrett and I were thankful to be at Grandma's house while Adam was gone.  Grandmas and uncles are so wonderful!  Because then you get pictures like this...

keys and other excitement

The Adam DeClercq family of four (because we count the dog) made our first big road trip.  We left at o-dark-thirty to avoid LA traffic (the true bane of our So Cal existence) and to get a couple of good hours of driving under our tires before we stopped to feed Garrett.  It worked like a charm.  We had decided that we would stop when we needed for as long as we needed and just not think about how fast we used to be able to make this drive. 
Our first big drive was virtually painless... minus one major incident at a gas station somewhere in central California.  I took Garrett inside for a quick diaper change while Adam gassed up the car.  He also thought it would be a good time to give Bobby a little drink.  So, he walked around the car and in those 2 seconds, Bobby jumped on the electric door locks, thereby sealing him in and us out.  Yep, the dog locked us out of the car.  Away from both cell phones and both sets of keys.  Because who has the foresight to grab their keys as they walk around the car... since you never know, that dog might lock the doors?
When I walked out of the bathroom, Adam was in a near panic, standing over the passenger window that was providentially cracked an inch (another point in the fresh air vs air conditioning argument).  When he told me what happened, I just laughed out loud.  What else can you do? 
We agreed to try and get his keys ourselves before calling a locksmith.  His keys were nonchalantly lying on the center console.  Adam scavenged a stick and very carefully maneuvered it through his key ring.  Just as he was about to oh-so-carefully lift the keys, he lost his grip on the stick.  Now, the dog, cell phones, keys and stick were all locked in the car.
He went to find a new stick.  He came back with a short stumpy twig, took one look at the window and threw the stick down in dismay, screaming "STUPID STICK" like it was the stick's fault.  The next stick was of appropriate girth and length.  He was able to lift the old stick still threaded through the keys back up to the window with the new stick.  To say we cheered and jumped up and down when Adam snatched his keys through the window would be an understatement. 
Luckily the remainder of the driving was much less eventful.

Videos of a cutie

We know, we know.  We've got a lot to blog about, but we really wanted to give you some of the good stuff.

Here is the first:

Here is the second:

Quintessential Postmodern Lit

The other night I slapped my book closed, flung the bedroom door open and confronted my wife as to why she let me finish my book.  She had previously read it and therefore had the responsibility to warn me, to stop me from finishing.  Should she have stopped me because it was bad?  No.  She should have stopped me because it was so darn conflicting that I can't give any kind of recommendation either way!  And that is terribly frustrating. 

The book in question is Yann Martel's new novel Beatrice and Virgil.  Laura and I were both quite excited about this because we were absolutely enraptured by Martel's Life of Pi.  If you ask either of us for a book recommendation we will almost certainly include Life of Pi in our list.  That book was a masterful tale of survival told with visionary creativity.  It was unique and captivating; it thrilled the imagination.  And so we both greatly looked forward to the release of Beatrice and Virgil. 

The basic plot is this: Henry is a successful novelist who fails at writing a second book.  His first novel had animals as the main players.  His second novel was about the holocaust.  After rejection from his publisher, he walks away from writing, and he and his wife move away and live off his royalties.  But Henry is a polite fellow, and so responds to all his fan mail.  One day Henry receives a very puzzling letter, a short story and a request for writing help.  Normally Henry would decline, but he was very intrigued by the story and it so happened that the fan lived in the same city Henry had just moved to.  And this fan calls himself Henry. 

Henry, the fan, is a taxidermist.  He has a shop not far from Henry's home- Henry, the author.  So the author goes to visit the taxidermist and is bewitched by the skillful creations of this taxidermist.  The taxidermist has written a play whose characters are animals, a donkey named Beatrice and a howler monkey named Virgil.  And the taxidermist needs help.

If you haven't picked up on the postmodernist threads yet, then allow me to elaborate.  From the very beginning of B & V, it felt like Martel was laughing at his reader, if only through his Henry.  At first, Yann Martel, an author of a wildly successful book starring animals is indistinguishable from his main character, Henry.  Henry is an author.  He wrote an impressively successful novel.  The novel had animals as major players.  Henry was called upon to help Henry.  Henry is a taxidermist who is also an author.  He wrote a play.  His play uses animals as the major players.  And there you have it, postmodern lit; the blurring, no, swirling of fiction and real life until they seem interchangeable.  Though, this book takes the swirling to levels I've never read before.  In some ways, this was unique, fun, and enjoyable.  In many ways it was tedious, confusing, and seemingly stupid. 

To make it worse, the first 20 or so pages seemed like they were written as a mocking apology from Martel to his reader (even if under the guise of Henry): Yes, (in a snooty tone) I'm ridiculously successful, handsomely rich, will never have to work another day because my book is so popular, and oh, I am so tired of being recognized on the streets, everyone wants to tell me how great my book is.  I know how great it is.

The rest of the plot bounces between Henry's new life and working with the taxidermist on the play.  Working isn't the right word.  They never actually work on it.  The taxidermist simply reads disjointed parts to Henry.  These parts of the play are included for us, the real world reader, but as I said , are disjointed.  The taxidermist does not seem to read his passages in any kind of order.  Beatrice and Virgil talk about a pear.  Then they talk about whether they should leave or not.  (For a while, it felt very much like the play Waiting for Godot, but in a bad way.)  It is all very strange, and though it is a very quick read, it was hard work to motivate myself to actually finish it.  When I did sit down to read I flew through the pages.  It was  the between readings where it was easy to think about giving up.  I think I'm glad I didn't. 

I don't want to give away too much about the end because really it is a bit of a surprise ending.  What is surprising is how Martel is able to pull together all the plot pieces in a way that made sense.  I found this surprise to be satisfying enough.  And there were a few parts in the end that almost brought me to tears.  And it is because of the ending that I am stumped on forming an opinion.  For a majority of this book, I was left confused, unsure what the point was, if there even was a point, and why I cared about the point.  But I found the ending to be understandable, even impressive, if not satisfying.  But books are journeys and I'm not entirely sure that this journey is worth it. 

One last comment about this book's postmodern workings.  In the end, Martel, the author writes two books.  One is fiction, one is non-fiction, just like Henry's failed second book.  And I enjoyed the complexity that Martel's final "fiction story"/game (if you read it you'll understand) and how it lent itself to the postmodern framework. 

Beatrice and Virgil is 197 pages.

Up next is Stephen King's brick of a book Under the Dome, weighing in at 1070 pages.

baby friends

Bryce (6 wks) and Garrett (3 mos)

if only we had thought to put them in matching onesies...

Happy America Day!

We celebrated the 4th of July with a road trip to Fresno to see Andrew, Danica, and baby Bryce. 
We also celebrated with red, white, and blue cupcakes.  (I may be in a cupcake phase right now)
And 5 different patriotic outfits on the baby.  It was one of those of days.

Outfit #3

Hat courtesy of Shelly.  To protect Garrett's balding head!

Outfit #4