The Zen Leaf

Travelogue Part II: North and South

Posted on July 8, 2016 by Thistle

North (aka Lake Superior)
As I mentioned in my last vacation post, we took two mini-vacations while on vacation (ha!). The first was to visit my sister-in-law, Chelsea, who is a paramedic in Duluth, MN. Duluth is only a couple hours north of Barron, so it’s not too bad of a drive.

Lake Superior is gorgeous. This was my second trip to Duluth, but the last time, it was all foggy and muggy. On this trip, it was clear and beautiful out while we walked along the shore, spent some time in an antique shop, indulged in ice cream, and eventually went to dinner at a local brewhouse.

The next day, we drove even further north to Gooseberry Falls National Park. It was a day of hiking, picnicking, and eventually settling on the shore of Lake Superior once again. The boys, Jason, and Chelsea all braved the water (I got a video of them screaming as they ran into freezing cold), and later we buried Chelsea in pebbles. I only put my feet in and that was cold enough!!

It was a great little mini-trip in the first week of our vacation.

South (aka Wisconsin Dells, or the water park capitol of the USA)
So I have to say, our second mini-trip started out a little rough. First, there was the rain plaguing the three-hour trip southwards. Then we discovered that all four windows in our family suite hotel room leaked. Then there was a domestic violence disturbance across the hallway that Jason had to referee. Then the hotel chain tried to put us in two rooms with two beds (we originally had three beds and two sets of bunks) in a worse building much further away. Then eventually they gave us the right number of beds but in two hotel rooms across the hall from each other, and in one of them, the toilet didn’t work. Then they screwed up the credit card refund. Sigh. By the time we all got settled in, the water park was closed for the evening.

Thankfully, day two of our trip went much better. There were ten of us altogether, and we got to the park super early, which meant we got prime real estate (the best table/chairs under the shade all day). The four kids all took off into the water despite it still being in the 60s out. The adults decided to wait. In fact, while we all got in at least once, most of the adults took turns hanging out at our claimed table and just talking and relaxing for the eight hours we were there. (Somehow, I got mildly sunburned, despite tons of sunscreen and being in the shade 95% of the time, grr.)

We went to Pizza Ranch afterwards (mmm) and then had the super long drive back to Barron in the dark. Only really, only the last part of the drive was dark, because in Wisconsin, it gets dark at 10 in the summer! (I’m used to the 8pm time in south Texas.)

Sadly, I didn’t get a single picture from our trip to the Dells. Boo. So all those pictures from Duluth will just have to make do for this post.

Posted in Personal | Tagged travel | 4 Comments

Travelogue Part I: Barron, WI

Posted on July 6, 2016 by Thistle

If you’ve been following along on Facebook or Instagram, you’ll know already that I’ve been on vacation. Two weeks ago, my family flew northward to visit Jason’s family in Wisconsin. We were there for two weeks, arriving home late this past Monday evening. So much happened while we were there that I’m splitting up my vacation-related stuff into three posts. Considering all my scheduled posts/reviews/etc went live while on vacation and I have nothing else planned, this is a win-win situation for me!

First off, let me just say that I adore Wisconsin. I always have, since the first time I visited there in 1999, when I met Jason in person after several months of emails, letters, and phone calls. I love the landscape, the culture, the weather, the architecture, everything. I thought, in the year we lived in Boston, that perhaps I simply didn’t like living up north any longer. After all, I only lived in Wisconsin for five years, coming back to Texas in late 2005. But no, it was just Boston and the northeast that I didn’t like. These last two weeks have been like coming home.

(Dressed up for my morning walk!)

We packed minimally. Between flying (instead of driving), the short time there, and all the things we were scheduled to do, it was easier to travel light. No laptop, no books. After several months of reading/blogging like a madwoman, it was lovely to step back and away from things. Every morning, I walked half a mile to McDonald’s for coffee, drank it while editing my manuscripts-in-progress (by way of a physical notebook/pen), and then walked home. By mid-morning, I’d gotten in some exercise, some refreshing air (55-65 degrees!), and some writing, all before breakfast. I also did a lot of crocheting. I napped. I played Miitomo with my extended family. I listened to Jason play piano. That was all in the lazy parts of the days.

But really, our days were jam-packed with fun stuff. Just to mention a few:

introducing my niece Xarissa (age 9) to the movie Clue
lazing about with various pets
watching the “plays” that Xarissa and the boys put together
roasting s’mores by campfire
teaching Xarissa how to crochet
checking out the local thrift stores/garage sales (and buying far more than was good for me!)
swimming at the local pool
kayaking and fishing on the lake
watching Xarissa’s theatre group perform a children’s version of Treasure Island
hitting up bookstores!
visiting a store that was the inspiration behind a fictional shop in one of my manuscripts
hearing Xarissa play trumpet for the first time (she picked it up fast!)
spa night!
watermelon-eating contests (in which I did NOT participate, bleagh)
a mini-Olympics organized by Xarissa, including a dance competition, egg-tossing, and three-legged racing

That, of course, all took place in Barron, WI, and the surrounding towns. It doesn’t include the travel we did while on vacation (subject of another post!). Of course, that list makes it all sound hectic and exhausting, but it really wasn’t. Like I said, there was a lot of down time, which made things absolutely perfect.

Pictures, because no vacation post is complete without a few pictures to illustrate:

the boys and Xarissa at the end of their “play”

fishing on Rice Lake

It’s been years since I’ve seen giant blowflowers…

three-legged race

various shopping-finds around Rice Lake

s’mores…mmm…

Spa night!

Be back soon with Part II of this travelogue! 🙂

Posted in Personal | Tagged travel | 3 Comments

Top Ten Underrated Gems

Posted on July 5, 2016 by Thistle

We’ve talked about underrated books for Top Ten Tuesday before, but today’s prompt was slightly different, going by GoodReads ratings to helps judge book popularity. I admit, I was kind of shocked to discover that some of the books I’ve loved so much have such small numbers of ratings, and this makes me want to urge everyone I know to read every single one of them! The prompt tells us to look for books with under 2000 ratings, but this makes up about a quarter of my 1000 reads, so I narrowed even further to under 1000 ratings, and chose my favorite ten of them.

Note that the following list doesn’t include childhood favorites, classics (which I think aren’t at all underrated despite not getting as many ratings on GR), or most nonfiction (since my nonfic tends to push closer toward semi-academic). In order of ratings (numbers as of this morning), least to greatest, here are my top ten:

1. Crossed Wires by Rosy Thornton (101) – I cried when I saw this book only had 101 ratings. Really? Oh people this one is so good! Ignore the cheesy cover! Read it! Or The Tapestry of Love, or Ninepins, both of which have under 250 ratings.

2. Firstborn by Lorie Ann Grover (255) – I’ve been raving about this one for a year. Gender-bending fantasy with some of the best person-animal bonds I’ve ever read, and I don’t like person-animal bonds normally!

3. Nekropolis by Maureen McHugh (392) – Science fiction dystopia in a Middle Eastern setting, so very good!

4. Gothic Charm School by Jillian Venters (565) – I left out most nonfiction but I adored this one too much to ignore. I wish it had wider reach. So funny and an informative counter-culture study.

5. The Kid Table by Andrea Seigel (576) – For anyone with big, wacky families involving lots of cousins who are more like siblings than cousins.

6. The Barnum Museum by Steven Millhauser (649) – I first got this in order to read the story behind the movie The Illusionist, but fell in love with multiple titles, and still find myself thinking of some of them a decade later.

7. Around the World in 80 Diets by Peter Menzel (654) – Amazing photographic look at caloric intake in cultures around the world. This was the only other nonfiction to make my list, because the cross-cultural perspective was eye-opening and mind-boggling.

8. If You Follow Me by Malena Watrous (845) – LGBT fiction set in Japan, also dealing with being a foreigner and death in the family and culture shock and so many other things. Great book!

9. The Untelling by Tayari Jones (879) – Tayari Jones is an amazing author who never fails to dazzle me. This is a careful look at life in inner city, poverty-stricken Atlanta, with historical portraits of race relations in the mid-1900s.

10. The Trouble With Destiny by Lauren Morrill (884) – I actually had a difficult time believing this one had so few ratings given that Morrill is a popular current YA author. This is a fun, light read set on a cruise ship!!

So? You know what to do! Go get on it and read these books! Give them the attention they deserve! Go go go! 😀

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

Posted in Book Talk | Tagged lists | 3 Comments

Sunday Coffee – One Year

Posted on July 3, 2016 by Thistle

It’s been a year. A year since we moved back to Texas. A year since we moved into this house. A year since a tiny stray kitten landed on our doorstep and became the newest member of our family. (Sidenote: Look how big he is now!! He weighed barely over a pound when we got him, the scrawny little street-rat! Gavroche is now a very well-behaved and loving beast of a cat.)

The two years before this last year were awful, nearly every part of them, but I’m happy to say that things have steadily improved over the last year. Things are not perfectly well, of course – as I mentioned last week, life can be very hard – but they’re better and that’s what counts.

Around this time every year, I think about my first tattoo, inked shortly after my life fell apart in 2013. Strength. A reminder to stay strong, a reminder that I am strong, that I can and will survive. And I have. I may not be thriving yet, but I’ve survived. I’m still here, and one day, hopefully soon, I’ll thrive.

Posted in Personal | Tagged Sunday Coffee | 2 Comments

Laughing Without an Accent, by Firoozeh Dumas

Posted on June 30, 2016 by Thistle

Subtitled: Adventures of a Global Citizen

Not long ago, I was asking around about books set on cruise ships. Jason did some research and discovered this collection of nonfiction stories, one of which is indeed set on a cruise. Considering that the stories are written by an Iranian-American immigrant, and my other personal kryptonite is Middle Eastern culture, he figured this was a safe bet to get for me. He was very right, because this book was excellent!

Laughing Without an Accent consists of 28 tales, some funny, some serious. They range from incidents from Dumas’ childhood in Iran to her experiences as a parent in California. I was hooked from the beginning, during the discussion of how an Iranian translation of James Joyce’s Ulysses has been stuck in the censor’s office for seventeen years, and the censor is probably snoring at his desk, because this is the sort of book that “could use some nudity.” That cracked me up, and set just the right tone for the stories to come.

There is so much in here. Food, travel, bizarre conferences, parent-guilt and daughter-guilt, culture shock and mishaps…the sorts of family stories that circulate frequently through the years, getting bigger with each retelling. The serious was mixed in with the humorous, discussions on what it was like to be an Iranian-American teenager when the Iranian Revolution happened, and the people who profit by hate (like selling millions of nasty bumper stickers or writing nasty parody songs), and the important things in life that sweep across culture, country, and religion.

I could have written a review for every single one of the 28 stories in this book. They were written conversationally, and after each one I had an “Oh that reminds me of…” moment, except with no one to converse back with, heh. And all the time I wanted to say that this is what we’re missing in our country when we discuss the Middle East. We see the bad things and hear the horror stories, but that’s the thing. We have bad things and horror stories right here at home, but not all of us are bad, horrible people. Most of us are just normal people with good days and bad days and faults and strengths and families and dreams and memories – and so are the people of the Middle East. The more we can see and understand that this is a trait common throughout the world – again, across culture, country, and religion – the more peaceful we will become. It’s like Dumas said in the last of these stories (one of the many quotes I marked in my copy): “I assume the number one rule in war is ‘Don’t get to know the enemy.’ Glimpses of shared humanity make it so hard to kill others.”

Posted in 2016, Adult, Prose | Tagged collection, humor, Middle East, nonfiction, POC | Leave a comment

Top Books of 2016 (so far)

Posted on June 28, 2016 by Thistle

Last week, the Top Ten Tuesday topic discussed best 2016 releases so far. I haven’t read a whole lot of 2016 releases – release date often isn’t my priority – so I skipped posting. This week is a freebie, though, and I thought I’d highlight those chosen few books (less than ten!) that have definitely so far risen to the top of my 2016 reads. In order of when I read them:

1. Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson – I doubt this comes as a surprise to anyone, considering how much I raved about this book. What may come as a shock is that after listening to the near 50-hour audiobook, I listened to it a further five times. That’s right. I spent 300 hours on this audiobook in January and February. And there’s a good chance I may listen to it a few more times before the year is out. Third book of the year will most likely take my number one spot this year. I can’t believe I waited so many years to dive into this one!

2. The Forgetting Time by Sharon Guskin – I spent most of the first quarter of the year reading and listening to rereads, and I’m not counting any rereads among today’s best-of-2016. I started coming out of reread and multi-read mode right around when I dived into this book, which was so carefully crafted that I fell instantly in love. My only regret is that I swept through it so quickly. I wish I’d taken more time to let it linger, because I’m worried I’ll forget it in time.

3. The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater – I have been dying to get my hands on this book for a very, very long time now. It was my most anticipated release of 2016 and it didn’t disappoint. I sped through the book the day after Readathon, despite my stinging eyes and lack of sleep, and as soon as the audio version was released, listened to it two or three times before moving on to something new. I know that like the rest of the series, I will go back and revisit this one many times to come.

4 & 5. The Sin Eater’s Daughter and The Sleeping Prince by Melinda Salisbury – It’s hard for me to separate these books, as I listened to them almost one after another, each twice. This is definitely my new favorite series discovery of the year, and I’m so happy that Sync YA gave a copy of the first book during one of the early summer weeks. It’s exactly what I needed and I can’t wait for the third book to release!

Interesting to note: Every single one of these books were audiobooks, at least at some point. The Raven King is a mild exception as I had no choice but to read it in print first (print came out a few days before the audio). However, I then listened to the audio several times, and I sort of think of this series as an audio series for me anyway. The audiobooks are really killing it in my books this year!

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

Posted in Book Talk | Tagged lists | 16 Comments

Sunday Coffee – Quiet

Posted on June 26, 2016 by Thistle

Things are hard right now. The world feels like a very ugly place, despite reminders that there is good out there beyond the headlines that have been all too frequent lately. I’m struggling with my health, with the heat, with depression, with fatigue. I’ve buried myself in busywork to survive, and I’ve not been the most social. Instead, I’m spending time with family and trying to find my way back to the living. If it seems I’m not here so much, that’s why. I’m not really on hiatus or anything, I’m just turned inward at the moment. Quiet.

Posted in Personal | Tagged Sunday Coffee | 4 Comments

North of Beautiful, by Justina Chen Headley

Posted on June 23, 2016 by Thistle

Terra was born with a large port-wine stain across half her face, and despite the doctor’s best efforts, nothing has helped to improve the appearance. She goes through life behind a thick layer of makeup, clinging to a boyfriend she doesn’t particularly like because he’s the only one who ever dated her, planning her escape from an emotionally abusive father. When she and her downtrodden mother accidentally skid on black ice and hit another vehicle, life begins to change for everyone involved. Terra begins to break out of the boxed-in definition of beauty that she’s been held to for most of her life.

That’s a terrible description of what ended up a very poignant book. A few years back, I started to read this one, but I was burned out on contemporary YA and didn’t get far. I’m glad I revisited now. At first, I worried that the book would seem like “just another YA,” the way it had during my first try. Then I met Terra’s father, and his first comment (about “jolie laide”) confused me so much (was it a direct insult? an attempt to compliment?) that I started looking deeper. More characters were introduced, the father was unmasked quickly as the jerk he was, and the book grew rounder.

This did not end up being a very typical YA novel, despite some fairly common themes (like finding the definition of true beauty). The family in the car that Terra hits involves a rich businesswoman, her toddler son from an ex-husband who is about to get remarried, and an adopted son, Jacob, who is Terra’s age. Jacob was abandoned at a Chinese orphanage as a baby, with a cleft lip, and was adopted when he was three. He’s able to provide Terra with an entirely different viewpoint on starers, beauty, art, disguise, and family. Yes, there’s a love-story angle, as there often is in YA, but it’s different from many – a friendship that grows up through shared experience and common interests over a long time.

I admit, while I liked reading about Terra’s journey, it was the journeys of other characters that really fascinated me. I loved seeing how her mother changed the most. Just as this is a pivotal time in Terra’s life, it’s the same in Lois’s, with most of her kids gone or about to go to college, and her life devalued entirely by her husband. Her transformation over the book is brilliant – gradual and realistic and tentative. There aren’t any miracles, and I love that.

It was a very good book. Again, I’m glad I went back to it now.

Posted in 2016, Prose, Young Adult | Tagged Asia, body image, POC | 3 Comments

The Widow, by Fiona Barton

Posted on June 21, 2016 by Thistle

Glen Taylor is a very bad man, or at least a man accused (but without enough evidence to convict him) of doing very bad things. Jean, his wife, has stood by him over the years of accusations, police investigations, press on her door, and court trials. Now Glen is dead, and the widow is free to speak out. If she chooses.

I was drawn into this book immediately. I liked the formatting – sections told by different people (“the widow,” “the reporter,” “the detective,” etc), and alternating in time over many years to piece together the story and timeline. There is a lot of psychological intensity, and a lot of guesswork. These were the things I liked.

On the other hand, by the end of the book, I was simply worn out and tired. I need to point out that this is entirely on my head, rather than that of the book/author. First, I developed a bad sinus infection about halfway through the book, and whenever I read a book while sick, I tend to feel tired, and associate sick-feelings with book-feelings. It’s never positive for the book. Second, I honestly have no idea why I keep reading these sorts of psychological thrillers. They are totally not my kind of book, and I pretty much always feel worn out and unhappy by the end, no matter how well they’re written. This one, at least, didn’t consist entirely of awful characters, like some I’ve read, but I still got to the end feeling dissatisfied. Maybe it’s only because these books consist of awful things, and it was an awful week in the world that I read it, or maybe it’s the go-go-go must-read pull of these kinds of books, because that always tires me out. Either way, it isn’t the sort of book I’d want to own or read very often, despite it being well-written, planned, plotted, and displayed. I recommend it to others who like this sort of genre.