SUMMER AT TIFFANY by Marjorie Hart
Yet another recommendation from Trashionista, SUMMER AT TIFFANY was a great end-of-summer read for me. Marjorie Hart’s true-life account of the summer 1945 as a shop girl at Tiffany of New York (yes, that Tiffany) is as sweet as she and her friend Marty seem to be during their season in the city. Turned away from the stores they thought they wanted to work for, Hart and friend land positions as pages, jobs usually held by young men. With the majority of the available young men away at war, the young collegiates become the first women to set foot on the Tiffany sales floor.
Once there in their Tiffany blue shirtwaist dresses and leather shoulder bags, the eager girls are responsible for whisking clients’ diamonds and pearls through the secret elevator to the elusive rooms where the pieces are to be repaired. They work diligently while living in a cramped apartment, mingling with midshipmen on leave in the city and admiring the rich and famous visiting their workplace.
SUMMER AT TIFFANY combines two of my favorite things. I love reading and learning about the WWII era and believe the zest with which people lived during that time has influenced current culture. And quite simply, who doesn’t like Tiffany’s?
Its just as romantic and funny as readers would hope and inspirational as well. Hart grows up quite a bit during her summer away from Iowa- she falls in love, she questions authority, she ventures out on her own. And what a better way to do it, than with a summer working at one of the most famous places on earth?
OVERALL: Not to sound trite, but SUMMER AT TIFFANY was completely delightful. I’ll definitely be gifting this book!
Sunday, November 04, 2007
EAT, PRAY, LOVE by Elizabeth Gilbert
I’m not one to read the Oprah book selections because she said so. However, I did feel justifiably smart and ahead-of-the-times when I had already started reading EAT, PRAY, LOVE because I saw it on my fave-o blog Trashionista and then saw that Oprah had approved it for her book club.
I could not have read it at a better time in my life. Much like the author, I found myself in a transition period in my life and looking for answers. I was actively seeking an answer for any and every question I was asking myself, but never sure where I was to ask them. As usual, books and literature tend to act as my Magic 8 ball and provide the answers just when I needed them most.
Author Elizabeth Gilbert goes looking for answers herself when she divorces at thirty-something and decides to travel to Italy, India and Indonesia. It is there she, and the reader, find the answers in the title verbs of eating, praying and loving in her effort "to explore the art of pleasure in Italy, the art of devotion in India, and, in Indonesia, the art of balancing the two."
Drawn to Italy by its romantic language, Gilbert learns that the culture feeds itself both literally and figuratively with food. She learns conversational Italian and aids in teaching English to her newfound Italian friends and begins her journey towards finding her God. I say her God because after reading this I have grown and strengthened my belief that everyone believes in their own personal God. Upon her divorce, she calls upon God while on her bathroom floor. It is there, her journey truly begins. But I digress.
In battling her demons of Depression, Loneliness, which she says ‘track her down" only a few days after arriving in Italy, she personifies them. Having conversations with them and addressing them as if they were people surely must make it simultaneously easier and harder to escort them from the life to which they have become accustomed and until you see the light of Happiness at the end of the dark tunnel clouded by negativity.
Gilbert writes "when you sense a faint potentiality for happiness after dark times, you must grab onto the ankles of that happiness and not let go until drags you face-first out of the dirt." She continues with its justification by saying, "this is not selfishness. But obligation. You were given life; it is your duty to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight." This is a good summary of her time in Italy.
In India, Gilbert, also a practitioner of yoga, enrolls in an Ashram. In layman’s terms, an Ashram is a place one goes seeking instruction in disciplined personal divinity. Yoga is the effort to experience ones’ supreme excellency personally and hold onto that experience forever. She fights to quiet her mind – a struggle I can definitely empathize with – and learn what her krishna and her focus is during her time there. Again, she confronts the demons that keep her from truly meditating and uses them to build on and create her most enlightened focus. Once its found, she works to hone it, to make it the perfect focus and realizes that it’s a continual process. One that is never truly complete; one that moves and morphs and alters with her life and one that will tell you what it senses that it needs.
Gilbert travels to Indonesia – Bali more specifically, with no particular plan in mind. Living in a hotel for a few weeks, she makes quick friends with a Balinese healer and a an ancient medicine man. The two of the, aid Gilbert in her continuing journey. While she is seemingly quiet in mind following her stint in the Ashram, there is always more to learn. The medicine man continues teaching Gilbert enhanced meditations that build on what she had accomplished in India.
The meditation of the Four Brothers I found to be most interesting and according to the medicine man rarely taught to Americans. Balinese believe that every child born is accompanied by four spiritual brothers –represented physically by the umbilical cord, the placenta, the amniotic fluid and the waxy substance that protects the baby’s skin. Parents save as much of the four elements as they can and bury it in a sacred space near the home in a coconut shell. The child is taught that these brothers who represent intelligence, friendship, strength and poetry always surround him/her and are always with him/her. They are taught to speak with their brothers and ask them for protection whenever is needed. If you call for them when you wake, they will join you; to say their names at mealtimes and you will include them in the meal and to tell them at bedtime that you are sleeping and need their protection and they will keep you safe from demons and nightmares.
Gilbert extends the happiness and joy that she finds in Bali full circle when she asks her American friends for assistance in helping the healer she has befriended. It is here that we see the true karmic mantra of getting back what is put into the universe.
EAT, PRAY, LOVE is not only a journey for the author but also for the reader. I underlined passages and made notes in the margin and discovered new ways to think about conflict, happiness and the quest for both.
I’m not one to read the Oprah book selections because she said so. However, I did feel justifiably smart and ahead-of-the-times when I had already started reading EAT, PRAY, LOVE because I saw it on my fave-o blog Trashionista and then saw that Oprah had approved it for her book club.
I could not have read it at a better time in my life. Much like the author, I found myself in a transition period in my life and looking for answers. I was actively seeking an answer for any and every question I was asking myself, but never sure where I was to ask them. As usual, books and literature tend to act as my Magic 8 ball and provide the answers just when I needed them most.
Author Elizabeth Gilbert goes looking for answers herself when she divorces at thirty-something and decides to travel to Italy, India and Indonesia. It is there she, and the reader, find the answers in the title verbs of eating, praying and loving in her effort "to explore the art of pleasure in Italy, the art of devotion in India, and, in Indonesia, the art of balancing the two."
Drawn to Italy by its romantic language, Gilbert learns that the culture feeds itself both literally and figuratively with food. She learns conversational Italian and aids in teaching English to her newfound Italian friends and begins her journey towards finding her God. I say her God because after reading this I have grown and strengthened my belief that everyone believes in their own personal God. Upon her divorce, she calls upon God while on her bathroom floor. It is there, her journey truly begins. But I digress.
In battling her demons of Depression, Loneliness, which she says ‘track her down" only a few days after arriving in Italy, she personifies them. Having conversations with them and addressing them as if they were people surely must make it simultaneously easier and harder to escort them from the life to which they have become accustomed and until you see the light of Happiness at the end of the dark tunnel clouded by negativity.
Gilbert writes "when you sense a faint potentiality for happiness after dark times, you must grab onto the ankles of that happiness and not let go until drags you face-first out of the dirt." She continues with its justification by saying, "this is not selfishness. But obligation. You were given life; it is your duty to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight." This is a good summary of her time in Italy.
In India, Gilbert, also a practitioner of yoga, enrolls in an Ashram. In layman’s terms, an Ashram is a place one goes seeking instruction in disciplined personal divinity. Yoga is the effort to experience ones’ supreme excellency personally and hold onto that experience forever. She fights to quiet her mind – a struggle I can definitely empathize with – and learn what her krishna and her focus is during her time there. Again, she confronts the demons that keep her from truly meditating and uses them to build on and create her most enlightened focus. Once its found, she works to hone it, to make it the perfect focus and realizes that it’s a continual process. One that is never truly complete; one that moves and morphs and alters with her life and one that will tell you what it senses that it needs.
Gilbert travels to Indonesia – Bali more specifically, with no particular plan in mind. Living in a hotel for a few weeks, she makes quick friends with a Balinese healer and a an ancient medicine man. The two of the, aid Gilbert in her continuing journey. While she is seemingly quiet in mind following her stint in the Ashram, there is always more to learn. The medicine man continues teaching Gilbert enhanced meditations that build on what she had accomplished in India.
The meditation of the Four Brothers I found to be most interesting and according to the medicine man rarely taught to Americans. Balinese believe that every child born is accompanied by four spiritual brothers –represented physically by the umbilical cord, the placenta, the amniotic fluid and the waxy substance that protects the baby’s skin. Parents save as much of the four elements as they can and bury it in a sacred space near the home in a coconut shell. The child is taught that these brothers who represent intelligence, friendship, strength and poetry always surround him/her and are always with him/her. They are taught to speak with their brothers and ask them for protection whenever is needed. If you call for them when you wake, they will join you; to say their names at mealtimes and you will include them in the meal and to tell them at bedtime that you are sleeping and need their protection and they will keep you safe from demons and nightmares.
Gilbert extends the happiness and joy that she finds in Bali full circle when she asks her American friends for assistance in helping the healer she has befriended. It is here that we see the true karmic mantra of getting back what is put into the universe.
EAT, PRAY, LOVE is not only a journey for the author but also for the reader. I underlined passages and made notes in the margin and discovered new ways to think about conflict, happiness and the quest for both.
Banned Books Week September 29 - October 6
Yesterday, September 29, began Banned Books Week which runs until October 6. The American Library Association's slogan for Banned Books Week is "Free people read freely." And that meant a lot to me.
On this year's list includes "And Tango Makes Three" by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell. An award-winning book featuring two male penguins who raise a baby penguin so that it may have a two parent home, has been noted as the most challenged book of 2007. Also on this years list is "Beloved" and "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison, the Gossip Girl series by Cecily Von Ziegesar and "The Chocolate War" by Robert Cormier which I remember reading in eighth grade. Our friends JD Salinger (Catcher in the Rye), JK Rowling (the Harry Potter series) and Mark Twain (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) did not join the list this year, but are notable list-makers from years past. They join the likes Ernest Hemingway, Judy Blume and Stephen King. But are these writers and authors known for being on the banned book list or for being unbelievably talented story-tellers? I think the latter.
In a day and age where anything goes on cable television, I simply cannot believe and am enraged that books are still continually banned for content and wording deemed inappropriate. Wasn't Gossip Girl just made into a television show? In the first episode, if I can recall correctly, there were two attempted date rapes. "The Chocolate War," considered unsuitable for sexual content, was required reading in my middle school honors English class as was "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Catcher in the Rye" in my high school honors and AP English class. The Harper Lee classic was under fire for use of the always-enraging N-word that was at one time, a common place word. Not to say that it was right, but it was typical in the lexicon, and society learned from its mistakes and has made effort to correct that. We know now it's not suitable for conversation but would surely still benefit from other lessons in "Mockingbird."
Religious groups and civic organizations have burned books in the name of morality and ethics since 200 B.C. The premise is always the same: to offer up that which they believe goes against their god in an effort to save and/or protect themselves and others. While banning books, and in some instances burning books, is a practice of free speech rather than censorship, who is to tell me what I can and cannot read? Simply put, if you find it offensive, turn it off. Close the book. Don't buy clothes from that manufacturer. Censor and/or edit yourself, but don't censor others.
As an avid reader, I'm often chastised for spending time with my nose in between the pages, but I truly could spend an entire day reading. Ask my friends how long it took me to read the last Harry Potter book. I'd much rather have my nose in a book than my eyes glued to the latest episode of "Deal or No Deal".
In an effort to offer up what I believe is a opportunity to enrich, engage and educate and I'm asking everyone to read a Banned Book this week. If not this week, this month; if not this month, this year. If you need one, ask me, I have a great deal of them in my personal collection or check it out from the library. Or better yet, spend some time in your local bookstore and BUY it for your home library. You'll feel empowered having something you know is controversial in your collection and you'll be offering up to the powers that what you truly believe in as well.
For more on Banned Books Week and for a list of banned books over the years, visit the American Library Associations website at www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/bannedbooksweek.htm
Yesterday, September 29, began Banned Books Week which runs until October 6. The American Library Association's slogan for Banned Books Week is "Free people read freely." And that meant a lot to me.
On this year's list includes "And Tango Makes Three" by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell. An award-winning book featuring two male penguins who raise a baby penguin so that it may have a two parent home, has been noted as the most challenged book of 2007. Also on this years list is "Beloved" and "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison, the Gossip Girl series by Cecily Von Ziegesar and "The Chocolate War" by Robert Cormier which I remember reading in eighth grade. Our friends JD Salinger (Catcher in the Rye), JK Rowling (the Harry Potter series) and Mark Twain (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) did not join the list this year, but are notable list-makers from years past. They join the likes Ernest Hemingway, Judy Blume and Stephen King. But are these writers and authors known for being on the banned book list or for being unbelievably talented story-tellers? I think the latter.
In a day and age where anything goes on cable television, I simply cannot believe and am enraged that books are still continually banned for content and wording deemed inappropriate. Wasn't Gossip Girl just made into a television show? In the first episode, if I can recall correctly, there were two attempted date rapes. "The Chocolate War," considered unsuitable for sexual content, was required reading in my middle school honors English class as was "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Catcher in the Rye" in my high school honors and AP English class. The Harper Lee classic was under fire for use of the always-enraging N-word that was at one time, a common place word. Not to say that it was right, but it was typical in the lexicon, and society learned from its mistakes and has made effort to correct that. We know now it's not suitable for conversation but would surely still benefit from other lessons in "Mockingbird."
Religious groups and civic organizations have burned books in the name of morality and ethics since 200 B.C. The premise is always the same: to offer up that which they believe goes against their god in an effort to save and/or protect themselves and others. While banning books, and in some instances burning books, is a practice of free speech rather than censorship, who is to tell me what I can and cannot read? Simply put, if you find it offensive, turn it off. Close the book. Don't buy clothes from that manufacturer. Censor and/or edit yourself, but don't censor others.
As an avid reader, I'm often chastised for spending time with my nose in between the pages, but I truly could spend an entire day reading. Ask my friends how long it took me to read the last Harry Potter book. I'd much rather have my nose in a book than my eyes glued to the latest episode of "Deal or No Deal".
In an effort to offer up what I believe is a opportunity to enrich, engage and educate and I'm asking everyone to read a Banned Book this week. If not this week, this month; if not this month, this year. If you need one, ask me, I have a great deal of them in my personal collection or check it out from the library. Or better yet, spend some time in your local bookstore and BUY it for your home library. You'll feel empowered having something you know is controversial in your collection and you'll be offering up to the powers that what you truly believe in as well.
For more on Banned Books Week and for a list of banned books over the years, visit the American Library Associations website at www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/bannedbooksweek.htm
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)