Nice Recovery by Susan Juby

There was a time when I spent a lot of time reading addiction memoirs. Reading these memoirs was a little like waiting to watch the train wreck one knew was coming. Many were desperately depressing, no hope or good news in sight. Others contained way too many details, often sickening ones. While others seemed completely unbelievable, so much so I even moved one of these books from the biography section of the library to the fiction section. For this reason I decided to read Nice Recovery by Susan Juby with a measure of skepticism. In the book's forward Juby writes,  "Addiction memoirs have an odd reputation, and I find myself a little embarrassed to be writing one." Well, that was refreshing. At least Juby wasn't going to make it sound like she was bragging about her drinking/drugging experiences.

First I should say the reason I considered reading Nice Recovery at all was because I had just finished reading her novel, The Truth Commission, and I enjoyed the writing very much. The theme of the book, family dysfunction and how we communicate with one another, seemed a bit different than the typical YA book published these days. When I did a little investigating about Juby, I learned she was the author of the Alice series. This series has been a prime target for many book banning efforts over the years. That alone made me want to read more of her stuff. On her blog she mentioned she was a recovering alcoholic and she had written a book about her experiences with drinking and with recovery.

Years ago I read a memoir written by Bill W., the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. In an early chapter he wrote that his first drinking experience should have informed him of the trouble ahead. He was so attracted to drinking because he felt a barrier between himself and humankind lift as soon as he drank. He felt attractive and like the life of the party. Even though it was the middle of prohibition, he continued to drink as often as he could and within a very short time he was blacking out and having very dangerous symptoms. It was as if Bill W. was an alcoholic just waiting for alcohol. That was the exact sense I got from Juby about her drinking. The very first line of the book sets up the reader to believe she too was an alcoholic just waiting for alcohol. "I sometimes imagine my pre-drinking personality as a rich field just waiting for some mind-altering substance to come along so that my alcoholic self could sprout and flourish."

Juby began drinking at a very young age, in middle school. Within a very short time she was drinking to the point of blacking out, which is an indication of very serious complications. By the time she was in high school she drank every day and always drank to extremes. Surprisingly, she only remembers one adult telling her she should not drink so much during this period of extreme drinking. By the time she moved to Toronto to attend college she could no longer keep her life together. She had a scary experience with a dangerous man. Rape was implied but not detailed. She was sick and tired of being sick and tired. She attended an AA meeting near her home. The first step in her recovery. The second half of her book was all about her recovery and included others' stories with their recovery, as well. Juby defines winners as "people who stay clean and sober, or alt least try really hard to." She believes this sobriety is best achieved with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous.

Juby's memoir Nice Recovery is very well done. I never felt like I was a voyeur in her life yet I got quite a few insights into the addiction process and the tremendous work of recovery. For this reason I will easily recommend this memoir to teen readers looking for a book about addiction. Chris Crutcher, author of many YA books, says this about Nice Recovery, "This is not a young adult book; it is not an adult book. It is a human book with the power to literally save lives." That is a powerful recommendation.

Nice Recovery by Susan Juby, Viking Press, 2010.

TTT: Ten Songs I Wish Were Books

TTT is hosted at Broke and Bookish

Top Ten Tuesday:  Ten songs I wish were books (and if they were I'd read them)

I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever)

Somebody I Used to Know

 

All of Me

Beneath Your Beautiful

Riding With Private Malone


Hello


I Knew You Were Trouble


At This Moment


Losing My Religion


It's Time


Not Ready to Make Nice


Fight Song
 
 What songs do you think would make good books?

 

Sunday Salon, Valentine's Day!

Rain in Vancouver

♥Vancouver, B.C.

♥Weather: Rainy

♥Vancouver: Yesterday Don and I drove up to Canada to spend two nights in Vancouver for a Valentine's Day get-away! We got a later start than we hoped and by the time we got through the border crossing and were entering Vancouver it was starting to get dark and it was raining. It was the icky kind of rain which makes driving treacherous even if you know where you are going, and we didn't. But we made it fine. Our hotel is near the downtown area of the city and we have already walked to a grocery store for grape, salami and cheese to go with the wine we bought at the border in the duty free shop and the crackers we brought from home. we had our own little picnic for dinner last night.

♥Weird history: We live in Washington State so traveling to Vancouver isn't a much further away for us than going to Eugene or Spokane, yet we have only stayed in Vancouver twice before this time. Both of those times were under sad circumstances and both of those times it rained the whole time we were here. We've driven through Vancouver plenty of times on our way to Whistler, so we know can be sunny here. We were hoping to break the pattern of sad and rain in Vancouver, but alas we haven't, at least the rain part. Thankfully no sad circumstances this time.

♥Moisturizer: Recently Don had a conversation with a young gal on his staff. The subject of age came up. When he identified his age, she exclaimed, "You are almost 60?! What moisturizer do you use?" We've been laughing about this comment all week. BTW-Don does have nice skin with few wrinkles.

♥Lent: This past week marked the beginning of Lent with the Ash Wednesday service. Lent is the period of time on the church calendar for repentance and reflection prior to Easter. Most people decide to give up something during this time period so they can focus on heavenly things while purging themselves of worldly things. I have decided to give up gossip about people. I know this sounds like a "mean girl" thing to say but it is so easy to slip into the mind set of talking about people when one works at a large high school.

♥Poetry Lesson: Years ago I read a book called Poem Crazy. I got all excited about the idea of writing poetry from that book, or more specifically, about teaching the writing of poetry. After finishing the book I wrote a whole lesson plan which I have been sharing with English teachers whenever they ask me for ideas related to poetry. Well, this week I had to put my money where my mouth was. A teacher asked for poetry ideas and I shared the lesson plan with her. Then she said she'd be willing to try one of the ideas if I would co-teach it with her. (Put up, or shut up, Anne!) I gulped and said yes. The particular lesson was to name a flower (from a wildflower photo) and the process was to write a poem which revealed the name. Years ago I had cut up a wildflower book and had laminated the pictures for use with this lesson. As I thought about the lesson I realized the details were too sketchy for good implementation, so I modified the lesson which encouraged each student to fill in a sort of mad lib formula which would help the student identify the name of the flower. The lesson WORKED and it was so much fun. The teacher raved about the process and the kids chattered away about their flowers as they wrote their funny and clever little poems. Yippee! Poetry won out again! (If you are an English teacher or a librarian and would like a copy of my little lesson plan, email me. I am happy to share.)

♥♥Grad School interviews: Carly has heard back from four of her ten grad schools and has three interviews, hoping for a slot in their genetic counseling programs. We anticipate there will be a few more interview offers this week, too. So far she will be flying out to Boston, New York, and Salt Lake City. Yippee.

♥♥♥History of Valentine's Day: Here is a cute and informative video link from the History Channel about this romantic holiday. Take a peek. 

♥For your listening enjoyment: Peter Hollens sings Loch Lomond. A Scottish Love song for the day.

♥Books read this week:

• The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George---an audiobook. I liked the first and last fourths of the book and thought the middle bits were a bit cheesy but overall would give it a positive rating of 3.5.

♥Currently reading:

• Sanditon and The Watsons by Jane Austen---her two unfinished novels. I have read them before but finished by someone else. I'm really struggling with them now in their unfinished state.
• Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng---a book club selection about a family tragedy and what it reveals about the family members who don't really talk to each other.
• Flight by Sherman Alexie---five of Alexie's books are highlighted for the Pierce County Reads book event this year. This book, which Don and I are listening to together on audiobooks, is about a homeless Indian teen who ends up time-traveling to reveal parts of his history and our history and how it relates to his feelings of anger today.

♥Quote for the day:

 “And we are put on this earth a little space that we might learn to bear the beams of love”. Wm Blake

♥Happy Valentine's Day!

♥♥♥♥

Friday Quotes: EVERYTHING I NEVER TOLD YOU

Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Rose City Reader. Share the opening quote from the book.
The Friday 56 is hosted at Freda's Voice.  Find a quote from page 56.

Check out the links for the rules and for the posts of the participants each week. Participants don't select their favorite, coolest, or most intellectual books, they just use the one they are currently reading. This is the book I'm reading right now:

Title: Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

Book Beginnings: 

Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet.

Friday 56: 

Most missing girl cases, the older policeman tells them, resolve themselves within twenty-four hours. The girls come home by themselves.

Comments: The Friday 56 quote is from some random page, I can't even tell which one. I am listening to the audiobook so I had to pull the quotes from a sample on the Internet. Obviously from the two quotes you now know that Lydia is dead, possibly murdered. What the reader doesn't know is very much about the girl and then family figures out they don't much about her, either.


Anne

TTT: Valentine's Day theme: favorite love quotes in literature

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted at The Broke and Bookish

Top Ten Tuesday: In honor of upcoming Valentine's Day here are some of my favorite love quotes found in literature:

1.   “As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.” 
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
2.  “Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.” 
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
3. “Love is always patient and kind. It is never jealous. Love is never boastful or conceited. It is never rude or selfish. It does not take offense and is not resentful. Love takes no pleasure in other people’s sins, but delights in the truth. It is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes.” 
― Holy Bible: New International Version, 1 Corin. 13
4.  “Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I can not live without my life! I can not live without my soul!” 
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
5.  “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach” 
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning

6. “Holding Eleanor's hand was like holding a butterfly. Or a heartbeat. Like holding something complete, and completely alive.” 
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park
7.  “Sometimes,' said Pooh, 'the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.” 
― A.A. Milne
8. “Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.” 
― Louis de Bernières, Corelli's Mandolin
9. “I'm in love with you," he said quietly.

"Augustus," I said.

"I am," he said. He was staring at me, and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. "I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you.” 
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
10. “You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope...I have loved none but you.” 
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

Pierce County Reads Book(s) announced today!

Each year Pierce County selects one book for the Pierce County Reads book of the year. This year Pierce County Reads is breaking through a stereotype. Instead of selecting one fairly newly published book, usually nonfiction with a local connection, the committee decided to highlight five books by a Washington author, Sherman Alexie. they also made the announcement a few weeks early to allow readers to read as many of the books as they can before the finale event with Alexie on April 29th. In early March additional activities will be announced by the library system which will augment reading the books.

Each year my SOTH Book Club suspends our previously scheduled book selection in favor of reading the Pierce County Reads book. In 2008 we read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian as one of our club books. Since many new members weren't in the club at the time, but many others were, my suggestion will be that club members select one or two of the books they'd like to read so when we get to our club meeting all five books should be represented.

I'm excited for a few reasons. First, I have an excuse to read more Sherman Alexie books. Secondly, I get to go to another event where he is speaking. I've attended two of these events and enjoyed both of them so much.

“THE WORLD’S FIRST FAST-TALKING, WISECRACKING, MEDIAGENIC AMERICAN-INDIAN SUPERSTAR.”                                                                                 Mens’ Journal, on Sherman Alexie

Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/entertainment/arts-culture/article58653643.html#storylink=cpy

For the official announcement read The News Tribune article.

Let the reading begin!

Sunday Salon, Feb. 7

Admiring BIG art, Pasadena, 2015

Weather: I see a few clouds out the window. But I also see a bit of blue sky. It remains to be seen how the weather will shape up today.

Katie T. and another participant await the final results. Who will advance to state?

Poetry Out Loud Regional contest: The Puget Sound region held its Poetry Out Loud contest yesterday. Twelve students from area high schools competed including our gal, Katie T. The contest, which was held in the Tacoma Public Library started off in an ominous way...with a fire alarm. Apparently some patron of the library pulled a fire alarm. We all had to evacuate the building and wait for the fire department to give us the all-clear, which took almost a half hour. Katie did great with her recitations of two poems but did not advance to the State level.

End of semester one/Beginning of semester two: Wednesday marked the ending and beginning for us, the half way point of the school year. What a week. With many students leaving and many others coming in at semester, it was pretty busy in the library with flurries of activities around textbooks and ipads. Ugh.

Fun or Funky photos: I posted a funky photo taken during a vacation to Santa Fe a few years ago on my Facebook page. My sister replied with question marks. This got me thinking how much fun it would be to look back in my photos and post a few more fun or funky photos for you to enjoy.

Me amidst the outdoor art of Santa Fe, May 2014.

Don and I and LOTS of lavender at King Estate Oregon, 2015

Vitruvian Man in the Chinese garden at The Huntington , near Pasadena 2015

Friend Ken W. and Don near a huge beaver sculpture, Portland, Oregon

The Tri-Delt making the third delta of her sorority's name, Victoria BC

Flu Shot: I finally got my flu shot this past Friday after learning about confirmed cases of the flu at my school. Hopefully better late than never. The shot itself wasn't bad but I did feel kind of sickly for the rest of the night.

Books read this week:

• Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Pena---the Newbery Medal winner and a picture book.
• Nice Recovery by Susan Juby---a recovery memoir and a helpful book for those wanted to make a fresh start from an addicted lifestyle.

Currently reading:

• The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George---a misnamed title. I am listening to this book in the audiobook format on 1.5 speed so I can hurry up and be done with it. Sigh.
• Vanishing Grace: Whatever Happened to the Good News? by Phillip Yancey---I hope to finish up this book which I started in November for a class I already finished teaching at church. It is slow going since I am only reading one or two chapters per week. No hurry.
• Sanditon by Jane Austen---her unfinished novel. I have read the book before but the version which was completed by "a lady." I want to see which parts were Jane Austen and which were not. 

For your viewing/listening enjoyment: William Joseph. I love this musician but all I could think about while I watched the video was , "He is wrecking a piano in all that water."

What are you up to? I'd love it if you'd leave a comment below!

Thoughts on award selections and two reviews

Readers of my blog know I am quite obsessed with the Youth Media Awards announced each January at the end ALA mid-winter meeting. This year I was shocked by two things when the announcement of the winners were made. 1. There were only two honor books selected by the Printz committee. Usually four honor books are announced. 2. The Newbery Medal winner is a picture book. I decided not to say anything about these two things until I read the books in question. Why complain if I ultimately agree with the committees' decisions? Well, I finished all the books this week and now I can criticize their choices.

The Printz Award committee selected Bone Gap by Laura Ruby as the #1 YA book of the year. It was a solid choice. The book incorporates Greek mythology into a modern story set in the Midwest. There is a bit of a romance, full of adventure, magical realism, and even a medical mystery. The mythology doesn't hit the reader over the head. Bravo Printz committee. Good choice. The two honor books were The Ghosts of Heaven by Marcus Sedgwick and Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez.

Marcus Sedgwick is no stranger to the Printz having won the Printz Award in 2014 with Midwinterblood and an honor in 2011 with Revolver. This year's selection, The Ghosts of Heaven, is a complicated set of four stories which are connected through space and time by the same themes of spirals and making decisions on faulty or incorrect information. The book is brilliant. It deserved the Printz honor.

The other honor recipient, Out of Darkness, is set in Texas in the 1930s. A Mexican teenage girl, Naomi, moves with her half-siblings to live with their father. Their mother is dead. Naomi has great misgivings about moving in with Henry, the children's father, because of the way he treated her mother when she was alive and the way he acted around her. But she moved with her siblings, wanting to protect them. Racism is alive and well in Texas in the 1930s and Naomi doesn't fit in at school with her classmates. She and the twins make friends with a African-American boy who lives in a neighboring community. Naomi and Wash Fuller fall in love. It is, of course, a forbidden love and must be kept hidden from everyone. Just about the time they decide to run away together a tragedy strikes their community. The school explodes killing around 300 students. This school explosion really happened in New London, Texas in 1937. The double tragedy is what happens to Naomi and Wash in the aftermath of the explosion.

As much as I liked or admired Out of Darkness I really thought several other books were more worthy of a Printz honor than this book. In it the racist climate of the 1930s was well defined and the characters were well developed for the most part, though I thought most were a bit flat and singular in their motivations. I was most interested in details pertaining to the explosion and the aftermath. Yet the details were fairly sketchy considering the long length of the book, over 400 pages. I actually found myself speed-reading through sections of the book where I found the details a bit repetitive and tedious.

In comparison I felt three other books were more or at least just as worthy to receive a Printz Honor: Challenger Deep by Neil Shusterman; Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War by Steve Sheinkin; and Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege on Leningrad by MT Anderson.

At least Most Dangerous and Symphony for the City of the Dead both won a Youth Media Award. Most Dangerous won the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award. Symphony for the City of the Dead won a Sibert Honor. Both are awards for nonfiction books. Challenger Deep, which had earlier won the National Book Award, got nothing at the Youth Media Awards ceremony. Nothing! The book takes a serious look at what it is like to sink into mental illness from the inside-out. The book is thoughtful as well as insightful and so well-written. I felt certain with so many great books about mental health this year this book would at least garner a Printz honor. When the committee selected only two instead of four honor books, it was as if they were saying these three books weren't as worthy as the other two, and they were. They totally were. It still makes me angry to think about. Gr.r.r.

Since I am a high school librarian I don't often pay much attention to the Newbery Medal because the award usually goes to middle grade books. This year, however, the Medal was awarded to a picture book, The Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Pena. The story is about a little boy whose grandmother takes him on a bus ride. During the ride she helps him to see and appreciate things in his world which he didn't appreciate before: music, vision, and people living in different circumstances. The story closes with the boy and his grandmother helping out at a soup kitchen. The book is darling. DARLING. And the artwork is fun and colorful. But a Newbery Medal? This book did win a Caldecott honor, too. It is pretty confusing these award categories which overlap.

If I had any say in the matter I would make a much clearer distinction between the award categories. Printz Awards would go to books written for high school students (gr. 9-12+); Newbery Medals would be awarded to books written for middle grade readers (Gr. 5-8); Caldecott would still go to the best illustrated book but a new category would have to created for emerging readers (Gr. 2-4). Well, obviously I don't have any say in who gets what award. I just wish I did.

I appreciate all the work the members of the selection committees do but this year I disagree with a few of their choices.

Edgar Award Nominees

                The Edgar Book Awards go to the best mystery writers.

The Edgar^® Awards to be presented 4/28/16

Each spring, Mystery Writers of America present the Edgar® Awards, widely acknowledged to be the most prestigious awards in the genre.

The nominees for 2016, in the Young Adult division are:

Young Adult

 Endangered by Lamar Giles (HarperCollins Children's Books - HarperTeen)
A Madness So Discreet by Mindy McGinnis (HarperCollins Publishers – Katherine Tegen Books)
The Sin Eater's Daughter by Melinda Salisbury (Scholastic – Scholastic Press)
The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma (Algonquin Young Readers - Workman)
Ask the Dark by Henry Turner (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt – Clarion Books)

Check out the link for the full list of nominees in all categories. The Edgar^® Awards

High tech- Low tech

My school became an iPad school this year. What does that mean? It means that every student is checked out an iPad like a textbook and most teachers are conducting lessons using the tools available to them on the iPads like Canvas, Notability, Pages, and many other subject-specific APPs. One English teacher told me she was thrilled because now she could have her students submit all their papers through Turn-It-In, an APP which helps prevent plagiarism. It really has changed education at our school overnight. But...I've noticed some really sad side effects of the iPads and their widespread usage.

• Fewer kids are checking out books, even ibooks. More kids than ever are coming to the library as just another place to hang-out with their friends and to even play video games together. Fewer students are reading or looking at the books. We are part of a statistic which is happening everywhere high tech is integrated. As kids embrace the technology, the less they read. The less they read, the less they can read. Sad.
• Every year since our library opened eleven years ago we have dedicated one table to jigsaw puzzles. The puzzle table has become a place for kids to spend a few minutes at lunch being quiet or working in concert with someone else to finish a task. It has been a very popular spot, up until this year. Now no one, or very few students, bother with the jigsaw puzzles I dutifully put out for them. The puzzle table is a victim of the ipads, I fear. Low tech (jigsaw puzzles) cannot compete with high-tech iPads.
• Remember when your kids were little, say two years old and you would plop them on the floor next to another two year old? What would happen? The kids would play next to each other, not with each other. I think it is called simultaneous play. Anyway it is part of their development. Kids have to learn how to play together and they don't do it at first.  With the introduction of iPads, it is as if we have kicked kids backwards in development.  They sit next to each other and play on their iPads, not interacting with each other. It is as if they are back to the simultaneous play stage of their lives. 
• One day while walking through the cafeteria where kids gather before school, I noted a whole lot of kids playing video games on their iPads and no one reading, Not one person. I remarked about this to an administrator who was supervising the room. Without missing a beat she said, "That is why kids bring guns to school." What? I was pretty shook up by her comment and very surprised. I was thinking reading, and she was thinking guns. Ugh. She went on to explain that kids don't talk to each other these day and don't know how to work out their problems. So if there is a conflict what do they do? They bring guns to school. Hey, what do you do in video games? You shoot everything, right? Scary!

I really worry about us as a society if we never have time for low-tech (or no-tech) activities. What are your thoughts on this subject?