Keeps Me On My Toes!

Yesterday was one of those days.

I've got a lot going on in the next couple of weeks and I think my brain overload is starting to catch up with me. Here's my funny story from yesterday (at least it seems funnier in hindsight).

I get to school nice and early feeling very prepared for the day, sip my coffee and take my time doing some writing in my car. I get ready to walk to class when I discover I've left the bag with all of my teaching materials at home in the living room. And I've only got 12 minutes before class starts. I start to panic but realize I don't have time, only 11 minutes left now. This is very out of character for me as I am usually super meticulous about checking that I've got everything I need. So I ran to my office, scrounged up another copy of my text book and quickly printed and copied some materials and luckily was able to wing it with my students none the wiser. If it had been any other class on any other day, things wouldn't have turned out nearly so well.

This must have jostled my brain out of its normal routine because I actually had a very productive and creative day after that.

Author Q & A with Dalia Sofer

Back in July I participated in the online book club discussion for The Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer over at Everday I Write the Book Blog. I loved the book and was very excited when Gayle posted that she was doing a Q & A with Dalia and asked for reader questions.

Well, she selected a couple of my questions and here is and excerpt of what Dalia had to say. There is a spoiler in the last line of the first question if you haven't read the book.

Q. Shirin's narration was especially compelling and I couldn't help wondering how much of what we saw through her eyes was very closely based on your experiences. I'm dying to know if you actually stole and hid files.

A: Alas, Shirin’s sections are largely imagined—I did not steal any files! But that state of bewilderment and confusion is one that I remember very well. And the passage about absence being very close to death came from a sensation I developed at that time.

Q. Sofer means writer in Hebrew - is this a pen name or a family name you grew into?

A: Sofer is my actual surname. My father is originally from Iraq (and the story goes that my ancestors were biblical scribes!)

I also asked a few more (the one about her writing rituals and adjustment to life in Israel and the US after she and her family fled Iran), but you'll have to read Gayle's post here for the full interview.

Inside the Readers' Studio Meme

I wasn't tagged for this meme, but I liked the questions so I'm jumping in anyway.

What is your favorite word? My favorite word that I've stumbled upon recently is quiddity. It means the essence or "whatness" of something. I also like preternatural and verisimilitude.

What is your least favorite word? Satisfied. The origin of my dislike for this word is rooted in someone I know regularly eating 2 bites of popcorn and a sip of diet coke in place of a meal and saying, "I'm so satisfied!" Blech. Years later I still cringe.

What turns you on (creatively, spiritually or emotionally)? Gratitude, reflection, a thoughtful gesture from my husband, traveling, being outside in 85 - 90 degree weather with a nice breeze, experiencing a new place for the first time, being near mountains and nature, especially rivers, and coffee and a comfy chair at Borders

What turns you off (creatively, spiritually or emotionally)? a dirty or cluttered house or workspace, bad breath or other noxious smells, people chattering away loudly on their cell phones about personal problems in otherwise quiet public spaces

What sound or noise do you love? The sound of a river, wind in the trees

What sound or noise do you hate? honking horns, shrill whistling, chewing noises and the gait of every narrator's voice on PBS programs

What is your favorite curse word? I'm good for a well placed s$#t or f&$k from time to time.

What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? writer, paid traveler/explorer, lady of leisure, flying trapeze artist?

What profession would you not like to do? I think one of the circles of hell may require making telemarketing or sales cold calls for all of eternity.

If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? Welcome home.

You'll Get More Than 1,000 Words From These Pictures

I think I'll try my hand at Weekly Geeks (a weekly challenge hosted by Dewey at The Hidden Side of Leaf) #13, although I am a week late. This week's theme was author photos so here are the men and women responsible for creating my favorite casts of characters:

Any guesses?

1. Photos of your favorite author(s).

2. Photo(s) of the author(s) of the book(s) you’re currently reading.

3. I'm combining a few here : Photo(s) of any author(s) you’ve met in person (even very briefly). Any photo(s) you may have of yourself with an author.

6. A photo of the author of the book you’ve most recently finished.

Book Review: The Septembers of Shiraz

Personally, I have always preferred getting my history lessons in story form.

I don’t know about you, but when I would sit in history class and the teachers would pontificate about timelines and wars and facts and figures, the Middle Ages, 1776, Napoleon, serfs, Galileo, 1893, Presidential assassins,1602, it would all blur together for me and sound like it was coming from the teacher in the Peanuts’ cartoons. Even though I was interested in learning about history, I could only get the vaguest ideas of the events to stick with me, dangling precariously from my cognitive map like a used post it note.

But put The Diary of Anne Frank or My Brother Sam is Dead (about the Revolutionary War) in my hands and bam - mental Super glue. All of the sudden, instead of seeing a blurry blip on the time line and a passage that made my eyes glaze over, I could see history through the eyes of a young girl, who like me, kept a diary, missed her friends and both loved and got annoyed with her family members. I could see through her eyes that the Holocaust meant that innocent Jewish families like hers had to go into hiding and hold their breath, hearts racing every time they heard a knock at the door wondering if this was the time they'd be caught and taken to the gas chambers of the concentration camps.

In The Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer, Isaac Amin and his memorable cast of family members, though fictional, were able to have the same sticking effect on me. The book transported me to 1980s Iran after the fall of the Shah when wealth was punished and none of rules of the old regime applied. In this tumultuous time, rare-gem dealer Isaac Amin is arrested and jailed by the Revolutionary Guard, falsely accused of being a Zionist spy. After his disappearance, his wife Farnaz searches anxiously for him while he endures months filled with isolation and torture and the rest of the family must deal with the lives they have always known being pulled apart piece by piece.

The book was artfully written. Dalia Sofer's narration has a quiet power that kept the pages turning and she does a great job of capturing the subtle contradictions and gray areas inside of us all. The narration comes from all four members of the Amin family: Issac, Farnaz, their nine year old daughter Shirin and their son Pariviz who has been sent to New York for college to avoid his being drafted into the Revolutionary Guard. I liked the changes in narration - Isaac who escapes the tedium and terror of prison by letting his mind drift to his younger days in Shiraz when he was a poet and idealist; Farnaz, who has numbed herself to the world and tries to carry on and hold the family together in Isaac's absence; Parviz, lost, alone and indifferent in New York with a futile hope of a relationship with his extremely religious landlord's daughter, and Shirin, trying to make sense of her father's disappearance, losing friends on the playground and boldly taking a risk that might save someone's life, but could also land her father in even more trouble. I felt particularly drawn to the parts from Shirin’s point of view and found myself wondering how much of the story that we saw through Shirin’s eyes came directly from the life experience of the author who fled Iran with her family when she was only ten.

One interesting thing that stood out to me is that the book is written in the seldom-used present tense. I love the immediacy this adds to the story, connecting someone like me, who has grown up in the US and been fortunate enough not to experience the horrors of watching my beloved homeland and family fractured and cleaved apart by the tyrants of an unstable government, to the events that took place in Iran after the fall of the Shah.

I also think the Sofer’s use of the present tense reflects the fact that the Amin family’s lives have been severed from the tranquil days of their lives before the revolution. With their pasts like a distant dream and their futures uncertain, they have no choice but to live day to day in the present moment.

I really enjoyed this book and while its not action packed, the force of the story propelled me forward and really kept the pages turning. It also definitely brought this period of Iranian history to life for me. I'm looking forward to reading more from Dalia Sofer in the future. Thanks to Gayle at Everyday I Write the Book Blog and Harper Collins for putting this book in my hands and hosting the great online book club discussion earlier this week. If you are interested in more from the author, check back on Gayle's site for an upcoming author interview.

***
Fun fact: Sofer means writer in Hebrew. I wonder if that is a family name that she grew into or if she took it on as her pen name because of its meaning.

Beginnings

Suggested by: Nithin

Here’s another idea about memorable first lines from books.

What are your favourite first sentences from books? Is there a book that you liked specially because of its first sentence? Or a book, perhaps that you didn’t like but still remember simply because of the first line?

I am going to answer today, but concede to my laziness and be brief. I'm going to go with the excuse that brevity is the soul of wit (well, it is isn't it?).

I have to admit that, "Call me Ishmael." doesn't really do anything for me, but my favorite first line that I can recall from memory comes from a book I haven't even read yet, is not a classic and has nothing to do with a whale.

Here goes:

"Dear Carrie Bradshaw,
You are a f***ing liar."

to which I respond:

Dear Jen Lancaster,

You crack me up. I love your blog and I can't wait to read Bright Lights, Big Ass. Let's drink some mojitos and be best friends. And promise to never ever read Moby Dick.

Irreverently Yours,

Jessica

Book Review: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

It has been an extremely long time since I have felt myself so drawn into the world created by a fiction writer and felt so emotionally involved with the unlikeliest of characters, nine-year-old Oskar Schell, a boy whose Dad was killed on 9/11 and his Grandparents, German immigrants whose lives were forever changed after the bombing in Dresden.

I have read so many novels in the earlier part of this year that I wanted so badly to be touching and thought provoking but they all fell short, except for this one.

This is a short summary from the book jacket: "Oskar Schell is an inventor, Francophile, tambourine player, Shakespearean actor, jeweler, pacifist. He is nine years old. And he is on an urgent, secret search through the five boroughs of New York to find the lock that fits a mysterious key belonging to his father, who died in the attacks on the World Trade Center."

Besides Oskar and his grandparents, I also loved the characters Oskar met along the way, like one hundred and three year-old Mr. Black who has a giant card catalog with a card for every person he ever met, each one labeled with one word that describes their essence.

I think Jonathan Safran Foer is one of the most talented young writers I have ever read. His detail and lifelike mixture of humor and sadness made the characters leap off of the page and right into my heart. I rarely listened to audio books before this one, but I picked it up on a whim and really enjoyed the performances.