Saturday, May 23, 2009

Pictures for my Aunt Margie

Aunt Margie is my mother's youngest sister and she lives in Michigan. As a result, it has been years since they have seen each other although they talk on the phone every Sunday. My Aunt Margie has been dying to see pictures of my mother with her great grandchild Brady so today is your day Aunt Margie......here they are!!!! Notice "your" picture on the stand in one of the pics.







Friday, May 15, 2009

A Real "Angel"


Well, I cried for two straight hours tonight watching Farrah's Story. Like many people my age, I grew up watching her on TV both in her commercials and on Charlies's Angels. She was only on that show for one season yet it seems like it was more than that. This picture is of the poster that was so popular in the 70's.

In watching the story documenting her fight with cancer, I'm still amazed by her beauty. With no makeup on in an ugly hospital gown, she's still Farrah. Just to see her in all that pain with the rosary beads in her hands and her positive attitude throughout is truly a testament to the kind of person she truly is.

I remember when she left Charlie's Angels because she felt it was too much fluff and she wanted to be taken seriously as an actress. Everyone laughed until she established herself with roles in The Burning Bed and Extremities, playing a battered wife and a rape victim respectively.

Her personal life has not been an easy one. Her relationship with the love of her life, Ryan O'Neal, has been a bit volatile at times although it is obvious throughout this documentary that the love they share is real and he has been with her on this journey every step of the way. Her son Redmond is hooked on drugs and is in prison while she's dying of cancer. She doesn't even know this. Her ninety year old father has already lost one daughter to cancer and now faces losing another. They showed clips of her visiting him and he is so sweet that it just broke my heart.

And thoughout all of this, her friend Alana Stewart has been with her on every trip to Germany filming this entire ordeal. Everyone should have a friend like this in their life and it makes me feel good that Farrah has this. I feel like I'm talking about her like she is my friend but, after watching this documentary, I actually feel like she is. I want her to live although I think it is a foregone conclusion now that she won't survive this.

It's funny how life imitates art sometimes. In the 1980's Farrah Fawcett did many PSA's about cancer and now, almost thirty years later, she has become a victim. Ryan O'Neal is best known for his role in Love Story as he sat at the bedside of Ali MacGraw, as she was dying of cancer. Now he's doing the same thing all over again.

It's a comfort to know that Farrah is a very religious person and believes she is in God's hands. I can't imagine anything more comforting for her. But she just wants to live another day, see another rain and have some hope to have some more time here on earth.

So Farrah, you were once an angel and you still are....may you be here tomorrow and the tomorrow after that and the tomorrow after that. I so admire you.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Continuing with The Boleyn Series


"The Axeman Cometh"

The timing for my reading of this book was perfect as The Tudors, Season 3, is presently being aired on TV and it covers the same period in history as The Boleyn Inheritance does. Henry's beloved wife Jane Seymour has just died as a result of childbirth and he is encouraged to take another wife.

So begins this 6th Philippa Gregory book dealing with the life and many wives of King Henry VIII. This last book in the series takes on his marriages to Ann of Cleves and Katherine Howard. If your memory of what happened with these two wives is scarce, it's probably better because the book then becomes that much more of a page turner. I stayed up until 2:30AM finishing it because I simply could not put it down. I had to know what was going to happen before I went to sleep. With a book like this, it probably wasn't the best idea because it only leads to dreams of The Tower and the "axe". I say this is the last book in the series but I do not know this definitely because there is still one more wife, Katherine Parr, so perhaps Gregory is going to take us into that marriage as well.

This book has three different narrators and each mini chapter is told from their individual voices. We first meet Ann of Cleves as she is hoping to get chosen as Henry's 4th wife. Then there's Katherine Howard, who is hoping to go to court serving the new Queen. Lastly there's Lady Rochford, better known as Jane Boleyn. It was she who was married to Ann Boleyn's brother George and it was her testimony alone that sent him to the scaffold.

I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this book. Gregory intersperses her own dose of fiction into the already written history about these years in Henry's life. When you think of the time in history you yourself are born into, you can't help but think "thank God I wasn't born in England during this period". It was such a time of turbulence with an unstable tyrant of a King. I can't even fathom it and, more to the point, I can't even fathom wanting to be his Queen.

I guess there's two ways to read this series....either chronologically or the order in which Gregory wrote them. I chose the latter starting with The Other Boleyn Girl and ending with The Boleyn Inheritance. As it turns out, the first and last books written ended up being my two favorites. I guess an argument could be made for reading them either way but I'm happy I did it the way I did. There's nothing better than beginning and ending a series with two "great" books.

So I encourage any lover of historical fiction to read this book. You won't be disappointed.

Saturday, May 2, 2009

I'm On A Reading Frenzy


"My Heart Is So Tired"

I just finished this book last night staying up later than normal because I just could not put it down. I'm the type of reader who finishes everything they start and, I have to admit when I began this book, I wasn't sure I was going to be able to continue no less finish it. Thank goodness I plowed on because after thirty pages or so, I was hooked. Like many other reviewers have commented, I don't understand why there is a "young" adult sticker right on the front of the book. I think that's poor marketing and, if it wasn't for word of mouth, the average "old" adult reader would not be purchasing this book. Be that as it may, I'm just thankful that so many reviewers here raved about it enough to pique my interest.

There's so much that can be said about this book but the common denominator will always be "words". The main character is a little girl named Liesel (Zusak giving her a pretty name which conflicts with the atmosphere of the book) and right away he adds something to the experience by this word. In a world of war and bombing and fear, we have the word "Liesel" to even things out and give the reader some pleasure every time they say her name. Like the bombs falling on Germany, Liesel is dropped off at the home of the Hubermann's who will become her foster parents. The foster mother Rosa is a big mouth and someone to be feared if it weren't for the fact that she has a huge heart. The foster father Hans is the kind of father every girl should have and it is he who teaches Liesel how to read. Her love of reading and her love of "words" will get her through one of the hardest times in German history.

Showing another side of Nazi Germany, Zusak relates how it wasn't only the Jews who died at the hands of Hitler. There were also so many Germans who died because of this monster. They either had to join the Nazi party or get taken away with the Jews. Those who weren't taken away had to face the bombing of their towns by the Allied forces. At a time when Hitler was destroying people with his words, Liesel found a way of saving them with hers. She learned from Max, a Jew they were hiding in their basement, how to steal these words back from the "Fuhrer" and just how powerful this could be.

To say she was a thief is really stretching it but her obsession with the written word forced her to covet any book she could get her hands on. The goodness of an unexpected woman brings something into Liesel's life that no one else could......a world full of words right at her fingertips.

The most unusual part of the book is the narrator "Death" which might turn the reader off at the onset. But deep into the book, you almost come to love this character and how gently he lifts the souls out of the dying bodies with such care and love. As the saying goes, "Death waits for no man" but this narrator did wait until they were ready to come to him. As you can imagine, this was a very busy time for death himself as war and death are best friends. The narrator (death) explains that war is like the boss at your shoulder wanting more and more until death (the character) becomes very weary. It's almost funny to think of death as a character in this book but you come to forget that he's not real.....or perhaps he's more real than life itself.

I could go on and on about The Book Thief. It's one I won't soon forget and I encourage you to read it no matter what your age. And a note to the publisher....take that stupid "young adult" sticker off the cover!!!