hollywood housewife

five favorite books on faith

You can visit my book page or follow me on GoodReads. 

Earlier this year I told my faith story, one that continues to evolve and reshape.  After a decade long pause, two years ago I picked up a faith memoir (and then another, and another).  I know that in the long years since I read anything in this genre, there have been some amazing things published.  So forgive that this list is a tad dated.  But books like this don't really come and go.  They either impact you or they don't. 

Here's my list of five that did:

i did not throw up or faint on the pioneer woman. but almost.

I live in Los Angeles.  I've seen Renee Zellweger at the dry cleaners and Meryl Streep at a cocktail party.

But I have never fanned out on someone quite so much as I did tonight. 

Part of it is that I feel a kinship with Ree Drummond, The Pioneer Woman.  We're both from a similar upbringing in Oklahoma.  We both moved to Los Angeles when we were young.  Only one of us went back home and found some sanity, and the other one stayed on the west coast sinking deeper and deeper into insanity.  (That would be me, in case you're unclear.) 

The other part of it is that she's an amazing blogger.  And I wanted to tell her that.  She's been a major, major influence on me.  Not just for blogging.  For life.

I was (literally) first in line.  This involved an early morning trip to Barnes & Noble to secure a wristband.  Still, when I realized I was (literally) first in line, I got the giggles.  I mean I really guffawed.  I sat on the floor and marveled at my line placement for many minutes.

You can ask Elizabeth, my new friend who was next in line.  (Elizabeth, I wish I had taken of picture of you.  Why didn't I?!)  Elizabeth will tell you how I was really quite hysterical over the whole "first" thing.

Then my friend Anna showed up, and she helped me ditch the Nervous Maniacal Laughter.  (You might remember Anna from my F+C party.)  She also gave dirty looks to the VIPs who actually got to go first.  But she didn't mean it.  Anna's bark is worse than her bite.  (Anna, am I blowing your street cred if I say that?) 

Newly pregnant Anna was glad that we were at the front.  This meant that we didn't have to wait in the line that wound through the third floor, then stretched down to the second floor.

Instead it meant that we could eat a long dinner, with loads of cheese and french fries. 

And I could forget about my cheeks shaking, and hands fumbling.

The night I met Ree Drummond, The Pioneer Woman.

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most photos courtesy of Anna, ABDPBT

dave cullen's columbine

Judging by my book list in the lefthand sidebar, my taste has been fairly eclectic recently.  But there is a rhyme to my reason, or rather a rhythm.  I like to bounce back and forth between fiction and non-fiction, biographies being my favorite form of the latter.  Since novels seem to take me longer to read (I have no idea why this is), I usually get a little itchy staring at my "to-read" list even if I'm in the middle of something wonderful. 

So, for the first time, I decided to take a bit of a literary risk - I purchased the audio version of a book that I was really interested in.  It wasn't my first audio experience, but in the few times that I've tried them, it's always been with something I didn't care much about.  This time, Dave Cullen's Columbine was a book I had been meaning to read for over a year.  Given the subject matter (and my love for talk radio, a primer for auditory learning), I decided that listening to Columbine might work. 

The two weeks I had Columbine playing in my car, I found myself running all kinds of errands, and even just sitting in parking lots or my driveway to extend my listening time.  At night I would bore my husband to death by explaining and then mulling over some of the finer points.  I took to asking people around me, "What do you remember about the Columbine tragedy?" and then knocking off one by one the impressions that outsiders were left with that aren't true.  Since, from what I can tell, most of America summed up this awful day as a pair of bullied boys who "snapped" and went on a shooting rampage, not realizing that instead this was actually a failed bombing that the killers planned for YEARS.  Had April 20 unfolded the way Eric and Dylan hoped, it would have been an act of terror on par with Oklahoma City. 

Almost everything I believed about the Columbine murders were not true: the killers were not your typical "outcasts," they were not goths, the blame did not rest entirely on the parents shoulders, even the story about the girl who was killed because she believed in God.  NOT TRUE. 

I struggled to find words to describe the book, because it seems wrong to call it "amazing," when the subject matter is so terrible.  But given the painful topic, I thought the author did an incredible job of describing the killers, their intent, and how the story got spun, not from a malicious media but from initial impressions of the attack that were left uncorrected. 

I remember when the shooting happened, the national news thought that there was a group of killers shooting inside the school.  This mistake is partially attributed to the fact that the boys arrived wearing trench coats to hide their weapons, but then shed the coats once the attack started.  So when the students and teachers were describing what the shooters were wearing, it was all different, leading to the speculation that there were more shooters.  The misunderstanding was no one's fault, but added to the mass confusion.

From what I understand reading the reviews (which I only do after I've finished something), Cullens' conclusions are somewhat controversial.  But he hardly ties it up with a bow.  The school's dynamic, the police mistakes, the killers themselves are all very complicated.  Which is what makes the book so interesting to an outsider.  He writes so well that the sad subject feels appropriately heavy, but the story he tells is as clear as possible.  I was fascinated from the first word to the last.

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Last week, Dave Cullen himself stopped by the blog and offered a comment on my post about the EMA's.  I had been meaning to write the review of his book before this, and admit fully and proudly that I was giddy to know he spent a minute or two at HH.  Also, I was extremely impressed that he took time to connect with a reader in that way.  The power of the internet never ceases to amaze me.

Amazon Affiliate links included in this post.  This means that if you click through to Amazon from HH, any purchase supports this site. 

three of my favorite parenting books

It's Mommy Monday again.  The day my momma-bear just comes roaring out.

Kids DO come with a manual.  There are parenting books/blogs/DVDs on every subject under the sun.  

How to, how to, how to.  You should, You shouldn't, You must, Don't you dare.  

I am, in all aspects of my life, a happy mix of planning every detail and completely winging it.  I parent in the same way.  So I read a handful of books and took all of them with a grain of salt.

These are three that I believe are worth your time:  

The Blessing of a Skinned Knee by Wendy Mogel.  The subtitle of this book is Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children.  I am not Jewish.  I love this book.

 Dr. Mogel was a Beverly Hills child psychologist who noticed that more and more parents were bringing in their over-scheduled and exhausted children into her practice for general unhappiness or because the children were "failing" in some way.  After a series of tests would reveal that there was nothing wrong, the parents almost seemed disappointed.  It seemed as if parents wanted an explanation for why their precious angel wasn't tops in his class or the best athlete or the most social.  It couldn't be that their kid was just average.

Dr. Mogel turned to her faith to find meaning and purpose in parenting.  I turned down the corners on many of the pages of this book, but the ones that stuck with me were about family ritual and character.  

"A key concept in Hasidic thought expresses the idea of balance: 'Keep two piece of paper in your pockets at all times.  On one write, 'I am a speck of dust.' On the other, 'The world was created for me.'  The divine and the ordinary merge in Judaism, where the holiest day of the year isn't Yom Kippur, the majestic and awesome Day of Atonement, but every Saturday.  This potentially average day of the week is such a distinctive time that, according to tradition, a band of ministering angels follows each person home from synagogue to help usher in the special spirit of the day."

Isn't that something?  

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Free-Range Kids by Lenore Skenazy.  I annoy everyone around me by quoting incessantly from this book.  I wrote about it more in depth here.  I know a lot of the principles in this book make parents nervous.  

I was given a lot of freedom when I was kid.  My parent's trust wasn't something earned, it was something expected.  I consciously or subconsciously rose to their expectations.  I probably could have destroyed that trust in a hot minute, but I didn't.  I wanted to keep the freedoms awarded me, and I was no dummy.  

This doesn't mean I didn't mess up from time to time.  I was, to put it mildly, a headstrong child.  But I never gave my parents reason to believe I was anything but a decent person with common sense.  They let me find my own way and I am a better person for it.

I'm raising Pigtail in a large city, so the rules are a little different from my own childhood.  But I want to navigate from a place of trust and not fear. 

*

Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth.  I read a couple of the sleep training-type books that are popular and considered controversial.  Can I confess something?  I flat out didn't understand them.  I didn't understand what I was supposed to do.  Really.  I felt like the message and helpfulness was lost in the defense of sleep training logic.  

This book made so much more sense to me.  It broke it down by age and explained in detail what was happening in my little one's brain and her natural sleep patterns.  It helped me understand Pigtail's rhythms and how to shape that into a schedule that made sense for our day.  The book wasn't too judgmental or too gentle.  It was informational.  And that is what I was looking for in a sleep book.

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I haven't picked up a parenting book in several months.  I've gotten more comfortable with my instincts as I go, but I do think I'll continue to read something on the subject several times a year.  Any parenting books you swear by?    

how to start a book club

I started a book club with three friends in August of 2008. The idea came up at my birthday dinner, my friend Priya to my right and my friend Rachel across the table. They didn't know one another, but engaged in a lively bookish discussion.

There was wine involved.

A few days later we confirmed that we were all still interested, we added Nora, and Book Club was born.  Eventually we grew to a group of seven, and we met for almost six years before cross-country moves and babies and jobs forced us to regroup. But without a doubt, book club was always a highlight of my month. 

Here are a few tips to running a successful book club:

1.  Establish a few loose guidelines.  You want to make sure everyone is on the same page and with the same expectations right from the beginning. Will it be come-one-come-all, or do you prefer to keep members to invite only? Will you meet strictly on the first weekend of the month or just when schedules allow? Where will you meet and at what time of day? Should you impose a page limit on selections? These things can all change over time, but start with a general idea of what you want.

We went with members only (unless we were purposefully adding someone), and our group was small enough that we could quickly choose a date each month that worked for the majority. We were a weekend brunch kind of group, but depending on our circumstance, weekday evenings could work well, too.

2.  Pick a theme or don't.  There are good book club themes out there. You could choose to read only Pulitzer Prize winners or first books in a series. You could focus only on women authors or only authors who wrote under a pen name. The nurses at my OB office are working through the classics in their book club. The possibilities are endless. 

My book club doesn't have a theme, but we do tend to gravitate towards darker stories. 

3.  Establish a "picking" order and write it down. This may feel a little formal at first, but it has helped us to keep track of whose turn it is to pick the book that month. We each take a turn in a specific order, and when a new member has been around for several months, we add her to the rotation. I send out an email each month with the chosen book and the date picked to meet.  We are fairly loose in deciding when we're going to meet, but do try to stick to a monthly timeframe. 

I know some clubs choose their book selection by vote, but I don't recommend that. A huge benefit to a book club is that you're introduced to authors and genres that you might otherwise never have read. Don't get too wrapped up feeling "responsible" for the pick. Sometimes the worst books (or at least the ones we disagreed on) sparked the bed discussion!  

4.  Let the conversation go where it wanders.  We joke that we spend about half an hour discussing the book and the rest of the time discussing everything else. And I do mean everything else. We have spent entire days, hours and hours, lounging in a living room parsing What It All Means. I have found my book club to be an intellectual outlet I didn't even know I craved, and I almost always leave the meetings feeling full and grateful. 

I do not think there are any secrets to this. We keep our group pretty small, which helps. As a whole, we don't see each other all together except for book club, so the gatherings always feel special.

You don't have to be an ardent reader to participate in a book club. Almost anyone can manage one book a month. Sometimes it's even nice to have the discipline. If I don't get anything else of substance read that month, I can count on making it through the book club pick.

Don't wait until you have more time or more friends interested. If it's something you're interested in, don't hesitate. 

If you're lucky, it may just be the best conversation you have all month.