american gods

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

It's a fascinating book. You get stories within stories. And Shadow is such an interesting character – a not-quite-crook fresh out of jail, getting out to find his beloved wife dead, getting involved with mysterious beings. Then his dead wife starts going around rescuing him from trouble, and she wants to be alive again.

Somewhere in the middle of the story, Shadow’s employer, the powerful Mr. Wednesday, takes him to this very obscure small town, Lakeside, where he was supposed to keep his head down and stay out of trouble. And Lakeside is a very pretty town, with a library and a general store, a raffle based on the time an old wreck of a car will sink when the lake thaws, and a police chief who does not issue tickets but scares the daylights out of speeding drivers. It’s a town that protects its own, welcomes a stranger and helps him get settled, and continues being its pretty self as it has done for a hundred years. You’d love to stay in Lakeside, whether your ancestors were there when the town was built, or you just arrived last weekend.

I think some of us have our own Lakeside. It’s the place where you dream of returning to when you’re done being the high-profile career woman. It’s the place you wish you could have raised your children, so that they could experience playing in the rain the way you did when you were a child. It’s the place where the stores don’t have signboards, but all the old women know where you could get the best pancit, the most intricate carving for your sideboard, the man who could do silkscreen printing. It's the place where children walk to school, and you're not afraid of child molesters. It’s the place where the marketplace comes alive only every Wednesday.

Lakeside would be the little town you left fifteen, twenty years ago because life was so slow there, and nothing really happened except the dances on Halloween and New Year’s Eve, and the town mayor came from a long line of men with the same surnames. You left it because the city held so much promise, and so much light and glitter, and when you came home for a visit you were treated like a minor celebrity because you dressed so fine, you spoke with a different accent, and you ‘had it made out there.’ In the small town everyone went around on foot, chatting, and you could walk all the streets of the whole town in about two hours. In the city you took your car to pick up some bread.

If you visited your Lakeside, you’d believe as you did when you were a child. You were careful about the unseen beings, the dwarfs and the tikbalang and the kapre that were so real when dusk came. You’d see some of the folks offering some rice and boiled egg in the morning. The sick children would be brought to the local doctor, but the local healer would be consulted too, to know which being got offended when the father cut down the mango tree. And when you left Lakeside, you’d leave the beings behind. The city has no place for them.

What if they came with you? What if they wanted to carve an existence in the city?

strong women

Kaye is upset today. She has been in an argument with her husband, and he has accused her of having had an affair with another man.

What's worse is that the affair was supposed to have happened two years ago. That particular argument has been going on for quite some time, and Kaye never knows when her husband would bring it up.

What hurts is that Kaye had never been unfaithful and had no idea that her husband was doubting her. Her supposed lover is still in their circle of friends, in the same place where her husband works.

Now, after two years of defending herself, Kaye is getting angry. (Side comment: She must be some kind of a saint.) She is thinking of walking out on him. And she made the unfortunate decision of asking me what I think.

You can only insult a person for so long. Anyone who gets hurt often enough gets mad enough to either walk out or lash back. Even a dog knows that. No matter how much it loves you, if you kick it around for years, it's going to bite you one day.

No, wait. I have a better example: the cat. It can get mad if you step on its tail every day, but do it one day too many and it will come biting and scratching. A dog can say sorry with the way it rolls its eyes, but a cat never, ever shows remorse on its face when it decides to fight back. Ooh, I can feel my claws coming out now.

Being angry with your husband doesn't mean you have to break some plates or run to his mother to tell her what a bastard he's been. You can scheme. (Side comment: You knew I was mean.) It gives you time to calm down and consider all sides of the story. If you sit back awhile, you can ask yourself if he's worth it. But more importantly, you can ask yourself if YOU are worth it.

You have the option to stay and keep trying (for another twenty years?), but not at the cost of your self-respect. I stand by what I say: you alone are responsible for your own happiness. If you allow your husband to damage your self-esteem every day, who would you blame for your misery? If he has succeeded in making you feel worthless, it's because you chose to believe it. And if he calls you a whore? You don't have to prove anything if you think your honor is immaculate.

Remember running away? I think Kaye has gotten to the point of paying all the bills and her kid's tuition for the year. And every time you come close to doing it, it gets easier and easier to actually do it.

When strong women walk away, I'd like to believe that it's not because they admitted weakness or defeat. It's because they liked having that option, and they had all the bases covered before they walked out the door.

I wish I could tell all men never to make the mistake of marrying-- and offending-- a strong woman. But then, most men underestimate what a woman is capable of doing until their asses get whipped.

One last word, Kaye. Walking away will not stop the hurting. If you walk away, you'll find the most difficult thing is saying goodbye to your child. My running away list does not include goodbyes, but your heart will definitely break, even while you're sneaking underwear out of your own house, one piece at a time.

My heart goes out to you, Kaye, but if you do decide to go, I also applaud.

(Thanks to Win for the picture. My MBA9 pals would understand.)

one day

One Day by David Nicholls

This is one of those love stories that I hate to read, yet I cannot put down till it's finished.

After spending their graduation night together, Emma and Dexter seems to be destined for each other, but life interfered, and they spend the next twenty years in the periphery of each other's existence, secretly longing for each other.

Dexter becomes a minor celebrity, and he lives the glamorous TV life. Emma, with a double-first degree, becomes a waitress, then a teacher, and oh, I so hate Dexter when he says "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach." But I love Dexter when he writes to Emma, saying that she likes being mediocre, she likes to be an under-achiever, because then she can make a joke out of it, and not have to try so hard at being good in what she can do.

They get into relationships, they are hurt, they are successful, they laugh and cry and hate, and their thoughts always turn to each other, but they never seem to find each other.

Finally, when it seems it wouldn't become a love story after all, they do find each other. And it's beautiful, and like most love stories, it's sad.

Don't you just love it when you've got great friends (read: Jerry Colasito) who just route a book to you, trusting in their sound judgement that you'd read it and find it worth your time, and they turn out to be right?

Let me quote Jerry: It's sad, but life does not always have a happy ending. The good thing is, we can always find something good in a sad story.

battle hymn of the tiger mother

I think Amy Chua is what Wonder Woman would be like if she became a mom. Harvard-educated, with a high-profile husband, a lifestyle that includes frequent travels around the world, and children who are straight-A students and music prodigies. One child, a pianist, performed at Carnegie Hall. The other is a violinist who would later give it up to play tennis.

She has a family of super-achievers. Her story is both inspiring and daunting. It makes you think about the way one mother's force can make her children achieve glory, and it makes you want to say, Why not me? What mother would not want her child in the spotlight, the one being applauded instead of the one who applauds?

You have to give it to her for sheer persistence, but what I truly admire is the way she did it with her children. Learning piano and violin lessons with them, so that she could better teach them at home. So that they could practice to perfection. I cannot imagine holding a full-time job, then rushing off to one practice or another, and supervising the school work as well.

And then for all the effort, there's the question: who do you do it for? For all the trophy children out there, for the most part it's the parent who gets showered with praise. You did a good job! What fine children you raised! You must be very proud! There's an uncomfortable thought that you drive your children to achieve because it's proof of your greatness as a mother.

I once wrote a story in Reader's Digest, about growing up in my grandmother's house. I called her a tyrant; she was a 'Chinese mother.' I hated her for making me take piano lessons and ballroom-dancing sessions in the summer while the other children played. I hated her when I always had to get first prize in quiz bees. I hated her when she sent me to Manila when I was thirteen-- by myself-- to study high school there, while my classmates stayed in the little town and got boyfriends.

No, I did not become a famous pianist, or a great dancer, or the most expensive psychiatrist. I have not traveled around the world. I am only a working blogging mom with two daughters. But what the Tiger Mother says and what my tyrant grandmother taught me is that it can be done. A mother like that succeeds in teaching her child that one can always do more; one can always be more than what she is.

And what mother wouldn't love to do just that?

messenger

In the middle of the forest, far enough away from everything else, lay Village. It was a peaceful place, and a healing place. People from other places came there, but not just ordinary people. They were the ones who were hurt, or disabled, or ostracized. And Village welcomed them, made them well, and gave them a new life.

Village has Leader, a wise young man who could see beyond things. He had pale blue eyes, and maybe you'd recognize him from The Giver. Then they had Seer, a man who had been brutally blinded in his previous village. And they had Matty, who had not received his proper name yet, but who wished it could be Messenger. His job is to go places, bring messages, and navigate Forest, which no other person could do.

Forest is alive. It kills. It gives a Warning to people who enter it, and once you get a Warning, you should never enter it again. Seer has had that Warning. But Matty had never been harmed in Forest, and he considers it his friend.

Something ugly has come to Village. Kind people became cruel. There was sickness, and sadness, and hatred. And the people voted that Village be closed to visitors. Leader sent Matty to bring messages to the path and to the other places that Village will be closed. Seer sent him with a different mission: to bring his daughter Kira home.

Matty goes out on a dangerous journey, and it is where he discovers his true gift. It is where he is given his real name.

A lovely story to close the trilogy. But to me, The Giver is still the most amazing of it all. You keep wanting it to be more, to take you farther. You wish it were a thousand pages long, more like Stephen King's Dark Tower series. :-)

gathering blue

Lois Lowry's Gathering Blue gives you the life of Kira, a deformed girl living in a village that appears to be inhabited by the strong and the savage. When her mother suddenly died, she was rescued from certain death by the council of the Elders, who rule the village. She was taken care of, clothed and fed, and given her mother's old task of repairing the Singer's Robe.

The Robe is crucial, because it tells the story of the times before. It tells, in the intricate designs embroidered on it, of the start of time, when birds and trees flourished, and man was happy. Then man started building, and the bigger things he built, the greater was the destruction that followed. There was war, and ruin, and afterwards, man would build again.

Every year this story is sung by the Singer. He wears the Robe that Kira is repairing. But Kira, for all her incredible skills as a threader, did not have the color blue. There is an old woman who knows where the blue is, but it lies far beyond their village.

In the confines of the building where Kira is housed, she discovers Thomas the carver, whose work is the repair of the Singer's staff. The Singer carries the intricately carved staff to help him remember the Song every year. Kira also discovers Jo, a little girl whose songs are said to be magical.

Kira discovers a safe, comfortable life, where her every need is given to her, in exchange for her work on the Robe. She has her new friends, Thomas the carver and Jo the singer, and an old friend from her old life in the village, Matt.

Then Matt, a mostly wild, mostly neglected child, decides that he wanted to bring Kira the blue she needs. What he succeeds in bringing Kira shatters her comfortable world, and makes her question the things she had always believed in.

I read this book because I read The Giver, and I guess I was searching for answers on what could possibly have happened to Jonas. I still don't have the answers, but I was hooked on another great story. I read it all online, on OnRead.com. Check out their great selection. Next on my list, Messenger, still by Lois Lowry.

the giver

There's a place where there are no cars, only bicycles. A place where you have to request for a spouse, and a Committee decides if you're qualified to have one. You request for a child, and you are permitted only two: one boy and one girl. A child is not born to a family; it is issued.

In that place no one cooks; meals are delivered at mealtimes and trays are collected afterwards at the door. All little girls are required to wear hair ribbons. There are no birthdays. When you become a Twelve, your job for life is given to you: Nurturer, Laborer, Engineer, Birthmother, Storyteller.

The genetic engineers have made Sameness possible. There is no threat, no risk, no fights, no choice, no change in routine. There are not even hills in the community, no animals, no rain, no snow, no sunshine.

There's a person called the Receiver, who keeps the memories from back and back and back. He holds a very special position in the community. He advises the Elders based on the memories he keeps. He alone knows about colors, about music, about feelings. He alone knows about war, and pain, and hunger, and death. He alone knows love. No one else.

And there's a boy, selected as the new Receiver, who will be trained to be the new keeper of memories. And the boy decides to make a difference.