The Secret Life of Bees

I read The Secret Life of Bees this weekend.  After carrying it around for a
month I finally got to it, and finished it.

The story taking place in 1964 in South Carolina during the passing of the civil
rights act may have been a little more poignant just because I read it over
Martin Luther King Jr. weekend and right before the first black president was sworn into office.

The story is a fun read, you feel for this 14 year old girl Lily.  It is her coming of age
story and coincides with the coming of age of the rights of blacks in our country.
Lily spends the entire book searching for anyone to love her and a lot of time
(as most 14 year olds do) day dreaming.

There is a lot that is far fetched in the story, but hey its fiction, and entertaining.

Tales of a Female Nomad: by Rita Gelman

Living at Large in the World

Easy read. Very entertaining. She didn’t start her Nomad years until she was 48 and this compacts about 18 years of travel into 300 pages. It was actually published 7 years ago.

I think she is was a courageous woman to travel on so little with so little and reaps a bounty of gifts from her experience. She shares them in a way that invites you to travel with her and experience them through her writing. It was fun to read about places I have been, Mexico, Seattle, Vancouver and New Zealand. Other places she travels in the book include Nicaragua, Thailand, Bali, Guatemala, Israel and Galapagos Island.

At the end of the book as a her email address and her web site. After checking out the website, she is still traveling and as of two weeks ago was in Mexico.

 

eat pray love by: Elizbeth Gilbert

The books tag line is:
One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia

This was a good read.  I would recommend it.  It took about 3 days to read during my bus rides to and from work.
It is a self memoir about the author’s year of travel to find herself and as the tag line suggests Everything.

After an ugly divorce and end of a co-dependent relationship she spends a year traveling, four months each in three countries.  The first is a four months in Italy where she “devours” the food, the language and spends time trying to get over her relationship.  This was a fun section to read and is probably in direct relation to the huge pot of spaghetti I made last week.

The second four months is spent in an Ashram in India communing with God and finding the spirituality within her, oh and finally getting over her relationship.  This was a beautiful section to read and her description of her friend Richard, who could vary well be my favorite character in the book was fantastic.  This section of chapters had me weeping several times, not out of sadness but more from the beauty.  I don’t think one needs to spend four months in a meditating cave in India to find that God lives within them; and most of us don’t have that kind of time or resources to follow that path.  However if you want to live vicariously though someone who did this is a beautiful way to read it.

The third section of four months was spent in Bali.  This section wasn’t as interesting a read (to me).  The descriptions and people are still interesting but the journey is about done and all of the work from the last eight months are over and this seems more like her way to figure out how to live with her knew knowledge.  Oh that and her happy every after of course.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

by Barbara Kingsolver.

Laura suggested this book to me and I picked it up last fall.
A very inspiring and well written book on a family of four and their year long mission to grow and raise most of their fresh food.

Read most of it around Christmas and then got side tracked but now taking the bus I finished it right off.

I can’t believe I got right up to the hilarious chapter on Turkey mating and had stopped.

The book is fantastic, and the writing was too. I remember reading and thinking, I’ve got to remember that line, but since I am opposed to dog earing my pages, well most have escaped me. I could relate to the mountains of zucchini and the book inspired me to grow and put away more this year. I love canning and didn’t do any last year, I plan to this year and just may plug in the freezer in the shed and store veggies that way as well.

Besides buying all organic veggies and growing what I can I am trying to not buy anything flown in. That means no tropical fruit. I admit I have picked up limes a couple times this winter and purchased them without even thinking about it but have stayed away from banana’s. I have not gone as far as Laura who is now making her own cheese and yogurt…..but that’s not to say I wont at some point. The book did increase my already present desire to raise chickens.

Great book! Great read! Fantastic sounding recipes as well.