Where’d You Go, Bernadette?

“Where’d You Go, Bernadette?” is my favorite offbeat novel so far this year.
I like offbeat. It’s always been my favorite style of reading and writing, and Maria Semple definitely hit all the right notes on this one. The story is cleverly written in a series of letters and emails, interspersed with narrative and dialog.The plot of the story revolves around Bee, a fifteen-year-old girl and only child, who was once promised a trip to Antarctic by her parents as a reward for perfect grades in school. It was a forgotten deal made a long time before, but Bee has made her grades and is holding her parents to their promise. The story revolves around Bee’s mother (Bernadette) and her preparations for the trip. As the story unfolds the reader learns more about the interworkings of Bernadette’s mind and some of the reasons behind her odd behavior. You need the right recipe to write a good story—and this one has just the right balance of ingredients. Yes, it’s a humorous story, but it’s also a balance of the bitter and the sweet. People are wacky but real. And I felt as if I had come to know them by the end of the book—and I will remember them always—like friends I knew, once upon a time.

 

Before writing fiction, Maria Semple wrote for the television shows ”Mad about You” and “Arrested Development.”

 

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“SELF MATTERS: Creating Your Life From the Inside Out.” I’ve had this book in my library for years but somehow could never bring myself to reading it.

Yes, it’s a self-help book, and I’ve been resistant. Not that I haven’t gleaned some helpful knowledge from these type of books in the past, but this is a celebrity-written book by Dr. Phil McGraw, mainstream television personality. (I tend to shy away from mainstream TV.) So I was about to send “SELF MATTERS” off to the second-hand bookstore until I took a final peek inside.

I’m about half-way through the book now, and I will definitely read it to the end. And kudos to good old Dr. Phil. His writing is accessible and easy to read. The premise of his book is to uncover or discover your authentic self. I know, I know, navel gazing. I, too, was resistant. Maybe it’s a throwback to our old puritanical heritage of self-sacrifice, hard work, and keeping a stiff upper lip. No, happiness and joy did not play into the puritan lifestyle—they were party poopers all around.

It’s not that I don’t believe in the generous spirit of sacrifice and giving, but the idea is if a person allows themselves to be buried under acquired negative or fruitless habits of existence, it might not leave enough room for “self” to spread happiness and good will to anyone. So “SELF MATTERS” or finding your authentic self is in that sense is not a selfish endeavor.

“SELF MATTERS” explains why our acquired or learned habits of operating in this world needs to be examined in order to make positive and fulfilling changes in our lives. The book is also a step-by-step workbook that explains how one goes about this examination and positive recreation of oneself.

Even if I don’t go off and climb Mt. Kilimanjaro after reading this book, it has given me further insights into my human nature and has offered me another avenue to grow.

Passion burned in Kevin’s eyes as he watched Marsha undress. She was more beautiful this night than in all the years he had known her. Marsha turned to Kevin, the moonlight showing the longing in her eyes. She cried a plaintive moan. In the heat of the moment he—

This is the opening paragraph from my first novel, an excerpt from my heroine’s notebook. Eve Richardson, small town news journalist by day and “accidental” romance novelist by night, is working on her second novel, but it is not going well. One of the problems with Eve is that she has had a real heart-thumping romance of her own. That is until she travels to a remote tropical island resort and finds her inspiration—handsome underwater photographer, David Adams.

In a way, I’m a lot like Eve (an accidental romance novelist). No, I didn’t plan it this way. I like to think of myself as a more serious-minded socially conscious person, but writing humorous romantic/cozy mysteries keeps me entertained. I am currently working on a sequel to this first novel.

You can read part of the first of this novel on Amazon (“look inside” feature).  You can easily connect to this book on the front of my website www.zeehuxley.com (click on the cover) or through my Goodreads page.

Enjoy!

If you read my blog from last week, you’ll know that I have been doing some serious spring cleaning in an attempt to “Fung Shui” my cluttered life. The process is taking me longer than I thought, but I’m giving it time, especially in the book department.

Many of my books are like old friends, so I’ve been sorting them with care. My best friends were the first to go back on my bookshelves, which included my favorite novels, art, and reference books. The others went into boxes where they are being held for further contemplation.

I’ve had to be cruel. I’ve saved many books in my life, not because I’ve loved them, but because I thought they would benefit me somehow. I’ve kept boring instruction books on writing essays, outdated health advisories, some classic poetry that I tried to like, but didn’t, a collection of novels that I thought I should read but when I tried could never make it past the first chapter, etcetera. These latter ones will be taking a little trip to the second-hand book store.

“Rocket City” is one of my best friend books that I found a couple of years ago at a library fund-raising sale. It’s road trip tale about a young woman named Marilee who is journeying from Los Angeles to New Mexico to surprise (and hopefully marry) her fiancé who has taken an unusual job at the Alamogordo Air Force Base. Everything was going according to plan until Marilee picks up a hitchhiking dwarf named Enoch who opens her mind to other possibilities. Marilee and Enoch’s story runs parallel with the story of a man named Figman, a paranoid insurance adjuster on the run, who relocates to New Mexico after surviving a car crash resulting in an unfair lawsuit against him.

“Rocket City” is an original and strangely moving novel. I found it to be a sensitive and awkward comedy of overcoming loneliness, which takes place against the vast and desolate backdrop of the American Southwest. I loved the writer’s voice in this offbeat book and was sucked into the storyline after the first page.

I did some further research on Rocket City’s author, Cathryn Alpert, hoping to find more of her stories. I was sad to read that “Rocket City” was her only published novel and that she had died unexpectedly a few years after it was published.

This is a book that will remain on my best friend bookshelf. Not only is it a good story and one that touched my heart, but it’s proof that a writer’s voice and spirit can live on.

 R.I.P. Catheryn Alpert.

Excerpt from Rocket City:

Marilee gazed up into the desert night—so many stars it would take a lifetime to count. She felt Enoch’s gnarled body bobbing close to hers in the water. So close, yet separate. Different and alone. A strange silence took hold of her. Night silence. She threw her head back and let the water wash over her face, fill her eyes, stream out of the corners of her mouth. Liquid smooth as desert sand. Liquid cool as starlight. She felt intoxicated by the water, the darkness, the explosion of stars. This is crazy, she thought. “Crazy and real.”

I have spent the past few weeks trying to clear my space, starting with my office, which is the worst mess of all. It’s where I keep my library (a jumbled pile of books), my overflowing file cabinets, my writing desk, sewing area, stuffed curio cabinet, craft and art supplies, etc. (And this is not a large room). My reasons for clearing are many. Lack of space, for one thing, it is too hard to keep the room clean and dusted (this can cause health issues with dust mites and mildew), safety (tripping over stuff), frustration (not finding stuff that I truly need), and the feelings of overwhelm just looking at the mess.

The room looks better than it did a few weeks ago, but it still needs work. Ironically, underneath the mess of it all, I found two books that I need to study more carefully “Clearing the Clutter for Good Feng Shui” and “Feng Shui Demystified.” 

“Clearing the Clutter’s” table of contents offers chapter titles such as You Are Your Clutter!, Clutter Hotspots, The Bedroom: where the spirit rests, The Car: clutter on the move, etc. You are your clutter! Yikes, that’s a scary thought! I’m taking special notes on the chapter titled: The Office: Creativity and Prosperity. Could my cluttered office be the reason that I’m not as prosperous or creative as I would like to be?

The book “Feng Shui Demystified,” offers a more spiritual or energetic approach, and talks a lot about chi, and the placement of items in the room for better “chi” or energy flow. This will come later for me. I need to do more clearing before I can think about rearranging the furniture.

I have also been following Stephanie Bennet Vogt and her website: spaceclear.com. She addresses the problem of clutter as being an emotional issue and offers her kind advice and support on working through the clearing process. Her book: “A Year to Clear: Spacious Home, Spacious self: A Daily Guide to Creating Spaciousness in Your Home and Heart,” is on the top of my want to read list. And thank you, Stephanie, for giving us a year to do it. I’m going to need it!

P.S. (something that popped up on Facebook this morning)

NOTE TO SELF:

Less stuff REALLY means

Less to clean

Less to maintain

Less attachment

Less to store

MORE FREEDOM

Less is MORE!

P.S.S.

I guess spring-cleaning is in the air. A friend just told me about a book she is reading on decluttering called “Spark Joy.” (Love the title.) In a nutshell, the method involves getting rid of anything in your life that doesn’t spark joy. Starting with clothes, you go through each item and decide what stays or goes based on whether or not it sparks joy when you hold it. Joy is the only criterion: ‘If it makes you happy, then the right choice is to keep it. This is another book that I’m placing on my want to read list. (Now, I can only hope that  I don’t start cluttering my life with books about decluttering!)

Liverwurst Sandwiches on Mars?

One of my favorite science fiction novels is by author Ray Bradbury. “The Martian Chronicles” was published in 1950—his collection of stories about the first human expeditions to Mars.

In Bradbury’s book, he writes about the colonization of Mars beginning in 1999. Part of the low-tech charm of this book for me is his 1950s view into the future.

The Martian Chronicles is a story about people and their passions, and the incredible beauty and terror they face while discovering a new world. Many of the tales are timeless and familiar to the human experience, which Bradbury develops in a sometimes eerie, sometimes humorous, and in an often poetic prose.

FEBRUARY 2002: The LOCUSTS

The rockets set the bony meadows afire, turned rock to lava, turned wood to charcoal, transmitted water to steam, made sand and silica into green glass which lay like shattered mirrors reflecting the invasion, all about. The rockets came like drums, beating in the night. The rockets came like locusts, swarming and settling in blooms of rosy smoke. And from the rockets ran men with hammers in their hands to beat the strange world into a shape that was familiar to the eye, to bludgeon away all the strangeness., their mouths fringed with nails so they resembled steel-toothed carnivores, spitting them into their swift hands as they hammered up frame cottages and scuttled over roofs with shingles to blot out the eerie stars, and fit green shades to pull against the night. And when the carpenters had hurried on the women came in with flower-pots and chintz and pans and set up a kitchen clamor to cover the silence that Mars made waiting outside the door and the shaded window. . .

And Liverwurst sandwiches?

APRIL 2003: THE MUSICIANS

The boys would hike far out into the Martian country. They carried odorous bags into which from time to time upon the long walk they would insert their noses to inhale the rich smell of ham and mayonnaised pickles, and to listen to the liquid gurgle of the orange soda in the warming bottles. Swinging their grocery bags full of clean watery green onions and odorous liverwurst and red catsup and white bread, they would dare each other on past the limits set by their stern mothers . . .

At the end of my 1960s edition of “The Martian Chronicles”, Bantam Books wrote a blurb about science fiction, which I found comical and, again, dated. It reads: SCIENCE FICTION: It can be so great that it can almost drive you right out of your mind. It can be so horrifying that the memory of it will linger long into the night. It can be so nightmarishly, ghoulishly humorous that your laughter seems like a cry from hell!

On his death in 2012, The New York Times called Bradbury “the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream. So in honor of Ray Bradbury, and for the fun of it, I am throwing in a twist of sci-fi into my next cozy mystery novel (the sequel to Bon Voyage, my Love: Ticket to a Mixed Plate Paradise). Stay tuned. . .

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