Best Books of 2009

OK, so I'm way late on this post. Most of the "Best Of "lists come out on December 31st. A few late ones come out on January 1st. The really lazy writers may dare to post theirs on the 2nd.

Here it is, January 9th and I'm posting my book list. Oh well. I've been busy.

In 2009 I read 84 books, up from 2008 when I had read 59, so that's pretty good considering I became a mother in '09 and my reading time went WAY down. One thing I did was get a bunch of free audio books, so that helps with the numbers, but also with the enjoyment of my hobby. I listen on my way to work and back everyday.

I rate the books I read after finishing, with a star if they fit all or most of the following categories: "can't put it down", "weird lifestyle" "made me actually laugh out loud" "made me cry" "Extremely well written", "I'll remember for a long time" or " tells an amazing story". If they are poorly written, they don't get a star. If I put the book down over and over and it takes more than a week to read due to lack of interest, it won't get a star. I really enjoy reading about lives that are out of the ordinary, or different from mine... about things I will never experience.


So, without further ado, here is my list of the Best Books of 2009. Mind you, these books were not necessarily RELEASED in 2009. I just happened to pick them up in 2009.

BEST READS OF 2009:

Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant - Ferrari Adler
A mishmash of foodie writers dispute, humorously or more self-seriously, the pros and cons of cooking and dining alone. Includes recipes from well known authors for dishes they enjoy eating alone.

Stiff - Mary Roach
"Uproariously funny" doesn't seem a likely description for a book on cadavers. However, Roach, a Salon and Reader's Digest columnist, has done the nearly impossible and written a book as informative and respectful as it is irreverent and witty. From her opening lines ("The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship. Most of your time is spent lying on your back"), it is clear that she's taking a unique approach to issues surrounding death.

The Girls - Lori Lansens
Conjoined twins Rose and Ruby Darlen are linked at the side of the head, with separate brains and bodies. Born in a small town outside Toronto in the midst of a tornado and abandoned by their unwed teenage mother two weeks later, the girls are cared for by Aunt Lovey, a nurse who refuses to see them as deformed or even disabled. She raises them in Leaford, Ontario, where, at age 29, Rose, the more verbal and bookish twin, begins writing their story—i.e., this novel, which begins, "I have never looked into my sister's eyes."

There is No Me Without You - Melissa Faye Greene
All the Ethiopian adoptive families know about this one. If you don't, you should.


The Glass Castle - Jeanette Walls
I could NOT put this book down. It helped me through the pain of a surgery in February. Thank you, Ms. Wells. Form Amazon: "She opens her memoir by describing looking out the window of her taxi, wondering if she's "overdressed for the evening" and spotting her mother on the sidewalk, "rooting through a Dumpster." Walls's parents—just two of the unforgettable characters in this excellent, unusual book—were a matched pair of eccentrics, and raising four children didn't conventionalize either of them. Her father was a self-taught man, a would-be inventor who could stay longer at a poker table than at most jobs and had "a little bit of a drinking situation," as her mother put it. With a fantastic storytelling knack, Walls describes her artist mom's great gift for rationalizing. Apartment walls so thin they heard all their neighbors? What a bonus—they'd "pick up a little Spanish without even studying." Why feed their pets? They'd be helping them "by not allowing them to become dependent." While Walls's father's version of Christmas presents—walking each child into the Arizona desert at night and letting each one claim a star—was delightful, he wasn't so dear when he stole the kids' hard-earned savings to go on a bender. The Walls children learned to support themselves, eating out of trashcans at school or painting their skin so the holes in their pants didn't show. Buck-toothed Jeannette even tried making her own braces when she heard what orthodontia cost. One by one, each child escaped to New York City. Still, it wasn't long before their parents appeared on their doorsteps. "Why not?" Mom said. "Being homeless is an adventure."

Confessions of a Medical Examiner - Michael Baden
This engrossing book covers: (1) several famous cases, including Baden's personal re-examination of the autopsy findings for Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy; (2) unusual cases Baden had as medical examiner for NYC, such as an autopsy on a dining room table at the Plaza Hotel; (3) how medical examiners decide on means of death, with a section on poisons; (4) the history of coroners and medical examiners since 12th century England; (5) disturbing politics involved in the office of the Chief Medical Examiner of NYC; (6) identification of the dead; (7) time of death; (8) multiple-murder cases; (9) an almost perfect murder; (10) close calls, including near deaths during sex; (11) cases of mistaken diagnosis; and (12) autopsy findings that shed light on what happened in the Attica uprising.

His Favorite Wife: Trapped in Polygamy - Susan Ray Schmidt
I read a bunch of polygamists' memoirs. I found them fascinating, maybe because it's so foreign of a culture and something I will never experience.

Against Medical Advice - James Patterson and Hal Friedman
I picked this up in the grocery store, read the first sentence, and couldn't put it down. Cory Friedman woke up one morning when he was five years old with the uncontrollable urge to twitch his neck and his life was never the same again. From that day forward his life became a hell of uncontrollable tics, urges, and involuntary utterances.

Into The Wild- Jon Krakauer
My top favorite book of 2009. It still haunts me. The movie was great too. I now have a crush on Emile Hirsch who played the lead role in the movie. From Amazon: "God, he was a smart kid..." So why did Christopher McCandless trade a bright future--a college education, material comfort, uncommon ability and charm--for death by starvation in an abandoned bus in the woods of Alaska? This is the question that Jon Krakauer's book tries to answer.

There are actually many more titles I can recommend for 2009, but this post is getting long enough. Many of the descriptions come from Amazon, giving credit where it is due.

I hope fellow readers might put some of these on their wish lists. Enjoy :-)

My Absence, Charlie's Sick, I think.

Sorry for my slight absence. I've been trying to get annual inspections for work done, end of the month billing done, along with finding childcare for a sick Charlie and rushing home early everyday to care for her.

Actually, she has a fever, but no real other symptoms so I'm not sure this isn't a teething fever (although why that would happen I'm not sure...) but it was quite high for a teething fever (103). Thanks to Motrin, it was controllable for the most part.

I truly know the work/childcare dilemma so many parents lament about. I know it first hand. I was completely torn in two: this is the one day a year I NEED to be at work (people traveled from out of state to be there for the inspections) VS. my sick child. Of course, Charlie won out but it was soooo hard for me to look at my colleagues and tell them I would have to leave int he middle of these annual inspections. They were all gracious (which somehow makes it even worse!) and said we could continue the next day. Which delays everything for them by a day. Because of my sick child. But thank goodness they were as understanding.


I'll be back with some new posts this weekend.

Have you ever had super important work days be preempted by childcare issues? What did you do?

Fattie Fattie Two By Four

I’ve been considering starting up the whole online dating thing again. Exploring some sites, reading some headlines, etc. I heard about one site that connects scientists with other scientists or “fans” of scientists. That sounds interesting, to connect based on occupation. (Tell me, where are the doctor dating sites?) Today on CNN.com a headline caught my attention:


Dating site expels “fatties.”



Ok, how rude is that??



Or… is it rude?



We are, after all, a capitalist society in which businesses that attract people and keep folks coming back are the ones that succeed.



The dating site BeautifulPeople.com uses a voting system to allow new members. Once your profile is up, you get 72 hours for other members to vote whether you are attractive enough to remain on the site. Since the recent holidays, BeautifulPeople.com has booted 5000 members after those members gained weight and no longer qualified as “beautiful” in the eyes of other members. The managing director, Greg Hodge, said they have a “strict ban on ugly people.” OK, that language is clearly rude. He goes on to say: “Is it elitist? Yes, it is, because our members want it to be. Is it lookist? Yes, it is, because our members want it to be. Is it PC? No, it's not, but it's honest."



Hmmm. Capitalism…I guess. If the site generates profit, I guess that speaks for itself as to whether the voting system works



The company said it "expelled" 1,520 users from the U.S., 832 from the U.K., 533 from Canada, 510 from Poland, 425 from Germany, 402 from Italy, 323 from France, 220 from Denmark, 176 from Turkey and 88 people from Russia. In the e-mail, it gave users suggestions for boot camps and workout facilities to get themselves back in shape. It must have enough members to comfortably take a profit hit of that size. There’s some weird psychological aspect to this dating site… like the polar opposite of “I wouldn’t want to be a member of a club that would have me as a member.” I suppose it boosts many peoples’ egos to be ‘voted in”.



Go here to read the whole article and tell me: Fair or not fair? Nice or not nice? Would you belong to this club?

On the other hand.... I wonder, would THESE models make it onto the site then???? JEEZ!

Wish me luck... it's a dog eat dog world out there in online dating....

(ok, pun intended. I know, corny, corny ;-)

6 Months Later.....

In the excitement of being snowbound for 4 days, followed immediately by the holidays, I neglected to blog about my 6 month anniversary of having met Charlie and becoming a family of two with her.

Things have changed GREATLY since that first day when she cried for 5 hours straight.

If you read some of the archives, I was an uncertain mother (still am in many regards, but different regards) learning to nurture a child who had been separated from everything she knew. Some of the posts talked of attachment parenting in the face of tantrums. Some posts asked for help with her fear of letting me out of her sight. Some days seemed like they would never end, as far as the crying and then Post Adoption Depression combined with maternity leave hit. Then some days felt like they would never end...

I've written about all of it, although it took me awhile to write about the depression, as one of the biggest taboos in today's society is being a "bad mother".

So, 6 months later, I can honestly write that I think I'm a "good enough" mother. I'm not perfect. There are still days when, like being stuck in the house for 4 days with no electricity, having to entertain a toddler for 16 hours a day, I thought I would lose it. But things have gotten MUCH better. For those of you suffering from PAD, get on some meds if your Dr. thinks that will help, and hang in there.

Today, Charlie is a precocious, happy child. She still has tantrums, but I walk out of the room (ala Supernanny) and that works almost instantly to quell them. Most of the time she is happy, affectionate, bright, curious, active, loving. She is confidant and will go with her babysitters when I need to leave without fear. She has a nighttime routine which is easy (for both of us) and consistent, whether she's at home or somewhere else. Makes traveling much less stressful. There have been a lot of changes, for the better.

The only "problem" we are still dealing with is biting at her daycare. I truly believe this is due to her having teeth coming out on all four sides of her mouth at once. She is getting better. I brought Ora gel to the school and her teachers give her a cold washcloth several times a day. Since then she has had a few "attempts" but no successful completions of a bite. I'm grateful the school is working with us on this, and there has been no talk of expelling her. Well, they'd lose $700 a month so I suppose they are loath to expel anyone. Not good business practice. But still, I appreciate it.

She is well bonded with me and her grandparents, who visit often. I probably am not the role model for attachment parenting, I do let her cry it out for 10 minutes at a time, but it works for us.

There are moments when she is absolutely the cutest thing on earth. Like when her little lips form to babble her high pitched baby talk, or when she points her chubby forefinger right into my eye and says "AIIIIIIIIII??????" When she points her finger and frowns sternly at the dogs and says "no no nooooooo" when they try and take her cookie. When she tries to rub lotion into her round tummy with her uncoordinated hands and looks up, pleased as punch, to make sure I noticed. When she says "mamamamamamamamaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" until I look up, and then she asks "moh?" and makes the sign for "more" when eating tangerines.

I get enough sleep, but I am still tired a lot of the time. I'm lucky Charlie is a good sleeper. She has me beat by a few hours per day actually :-) I suppose the fatigue just goes along with single parenthood and all the responsibilities that need to be taken care of. It's endless. I'm on the 3rd load of laundry this weekend. One load a day really. But I knew most of this when signing on so I'm not complaining. In fact, I'm very lucky. Charlie is very easy for the most part. Many times, if she wakes up before me, she plays quietly in her crib until I get up. She has started saying "sank yooo" whenever you hand her something. My family was quite impressed with that ;-) considering she is only 16 months old. (I took all the credit for teaching her that, when really it was her daycare who taught her. Shhh! Don't tell anyone.)

When I think of parenting a special needs child... I just don't know how people handle that. Hats off to them. I couldn't do it without a very involved partner.

So that's where we are 6 months later. I'm not totally over my depression, but then, I don't know if I ever will be. I've had some low grade depression since my teens, so I don't know if that will ever totally lift. Charlie does help me find joy just in watching her.

Unveiling.

This is it! No more pics of 2009 after this, I promise! But I have never really put pictures of myself on this blog and I finally had a few good ones taken of me. So I decided to unmask and great the new year in a more open way! Ta-da, here is your blog author, A1S.





So here's me, nice to meetcha, wishing you all a fabulous oh-ten. May all your kiddos find their way home this year.