Three Little Birds

Sister Tattoo!

I get the most questions about this tattoo and it has the best story of all of my tattoos so I figured why not lead off my inaugural, grand re-opening post with a little FAQ about our tattoo.

Who: Lindsay, Leslie and Hilary, duh.

What: Three little birds. One going an opposite way and two going the same way.

When: 5-2-2009 (I actually had to look that up in the embedded pic info because I had no idea). I usually say "Right after Hilary's graduation party for her graduation from St. Joe."

Where: Well, it's on our inner left wrist. But we also got them done at Artistic Skin Designs shop on the Westside of Indianapolis.

Why: The why varies depending on who I'm telling and why they want to know.

Simple answer is that we wanted to get tattoos because we love each other and feel a strong bond of sisterhood and this is a constant reminder of this.

Longer/extended answer is that we had been talking about getting matching tattoos for a while. I was the only one with tattoos but both my sisters had been interested in getting them. I would consider Leslie the most "picky" of us when it comes to plans, endeavors, etc. in life, so we told Leslie to figure out where and what she wanted and Hilary and I would weigh in because we didn't care as much what the final design was, as long as it wasn't hideous. We emailed ideas and pictures back and forth for a while before we finally found this bird design. Funny enough it came from a funeral home website logo! When we had the tattoo artist draw it up he suggested flipping one of the birds to go a different direction -- that sounded fun and random and would differentiate us from a funeral home so we said yes. Leslie chose the inside of the left wrist which frankly shocked me. I figured she would want it some place a little more hidden since she is an elementary school teacher. But she said nope and that she usually wears a watch that sort of covers it. You'd also be surprised by the amount of people who don't look at the inside of your wrist. Weird, but true.

Fancy version of the answer is stuff I've made up over the years which is mostly based in truth but we never really talked about it explicitly when we were deciding what to get but mostly rings true for me at least. One of our collective favorite songs is Three Little Birds by Bob Marley. It's a nice tune and has some powerful lyrics and overall messages. The key one being "Don't worry about a thing, cause every little thing is gonna be alright." All three of us endeavor to NOT worry about things (it works and doesn't work to a great degree based on us individually, situationally and contextually). Basically a "Hakuna Matata" theory of life. I also say we chose doves because they are symbols of peace and we're all basically pacifists; maybe more so me than Leslie or Hilary, but generally speaking none of us really care for violence as a means. Lastly, I sometimes say that we got it right after Hilary graduated from college and that three birds flying away is symbolism for the fact that we are all now adults who have "flown the coop" of our dad's house.

The other funny question I get is "Why is one flying the wrong way?" or "Who is the one flying the wrong way?" Sometimes I say it's Leslie because she's the airhead of the group. Sometimes I say it's Hilary because she's the clueless one who has more book smarts than street smarts. Or sometimes I say it's me because I'm the weirdest and I march/fly to the beat of my own drum. Sometimes I say for no particular reason. Just depends on how funny I'm feeling :)

So there you go! Transcribed history of our (first) sister tattoo!

Grand Re-Publishing!

Lindsay and I started this blog as a book talk blog a couple years ago and I was pretty much a big lame sister because I couldn't keep up with posting...or reading. I LOVE reading but since having little P-Man I haven't had as much time to read. So I decided to re-vamp our blog and make it a blog for my two sisters and I to talk! We love in three different cities so this is just a fun way for us to talk...as if we don't already talk enough as it is!

So stay tuned for some fun conversations!

Book Review: Mostly Monsterly

Around Halloween time I ordered this book from Scholastic because I had free points. It is about a young girl monster named Bernadette who goes to school at Monster Academy. She loves to be scary but she also likes to pet kittens and pick flowers. Her monster friends laugh and Bernadette's feelings are hurt. One day while the other monsters are at recess, Bernadette gets a truly scary idea! She makes everyone a card! But these cards are scary! They are oozing and slimy and everyone loves them! Just because Bernadette is a monster doesn't mean she can't be herself.

Book Review: We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

I recently read We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. I checked it out on my mother's recommendation.She liked it a lot. I thought it was so-so. I'd give it about 3 stars.

It was pretty hard to get into at first. I feel like the beginning of the book really dragged. Shriver talked A LOT about the "past" and I think it could have benefited from some editing. Some of it was important to build up the context, but some of it just went on forever and ever seemingly without end. I figured if my mom really liked it I should continue plowing through it but it was difficult at first. I'd look at it every night on the nightstand and sigh. About halfway through the book when more of the "action" started to happen I stopped dreading it so much.

The good: the topic was of course interesting. With this rise in school shootings it gives you a lot to think about. I read Jodi Picoult's 19 Minutes which was also about school shootings and I liked it a bit more. It told the story from all different sides (rather than from just the mother of the perpetrator like this one). Of course, like all Picoult books, the ending kind of sucked so it wouldn't get 5 stars either. I did like that it gave the perspective of the mother of a shooter which I think is something we often don't get to see or think that much about. I just wish the writing would have been a little better so that I could have enjoyed that perspective more. 

The "bad"/things I have questions about:

1. The family seemed inauthentic. Why didn't the family have an intervention earlier? Clearly Kevin was NOT normal and was very disturbed. I find it hard to believe that the father would excuse EVERYTHING away and that the mother wouldn't have tried harder to get some professional help. If his personality "disorder" or whatever wasn't SO exaggerated I would have bought this plot/story line more. But he seemed so extreme that I find it hard to believe that it would go on like this until the shooting happened. With the real school shootings that happened many of them did have interventions of some sort or the personality flaws weren't as exaggerated. They still missed a lot of signs but for most of them they weren't life-long issues like Kevin was cast to have in this story. 

2. The whole writing letters to Franklin thing got old and was pretty predictable. At the beginning I thought maybe they were divorced but by the middle of the book I knew he was dead and it was more of a journaling exercise. I think that it was maybe a good idea but not executed well. Especially when there were dialogue portions, etc. No one would actually write like that in a letter. Maybe an infusion of letters in-between standard chapters of "story-telling" would have been more effective. 

3. Going along with point #1, I felt like the mother self-sabotaging came off very inauthentic. Even if the unimaginable happened I would have found many of her behaviors questionable. I can't of course say for sure, never having been in that situation, but I just find it hard to believe that she would try and ruin her life even further by acting like such a bozo (especially in the civil court case-related parts). 

4. I hated the ending. Why did she make a sudden change of heart happen for Kevin? Shriver built him up for the whole book to be a cold, calculating person. And at the end, through no medical or psychological intervention, he suddenly has regrets? He was horrible the whole novel, blinded his sister and all of a sudden he has a change of heart in the juvenile lock-up? I just groaned at that part. It would have been better if he would have stayed cold through the end. It would have left a bigger impact to have to think about him being so cold and sociopathic and to think about him getting out and going to live with his mom after that. Instead she tried to leave us with some hope that he was actually a nice kid who made a mistake...we don't always need a happy ending.

Too bad my lame sister has gone AWOL. I would have liked to hear her perspective about the book. Usually my mom and I agree on books fairly well but this time I think our opinions were very divergent. I would have liked to hear Leslie's perspective. I guess I'll have to read other online reviews!

Book Review: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Well my sister has pretty much dropped out of the book club. I should rename this Lindsay's Book Club. I wasn't going to write any more but I thought maybe I'd entice my lame sister back. We shall see.

I started trying to read Half Broke Horses by Jeanette Walls but I just couldn't get into it. It started out with epic tragedy and coming off her last book I just didn't think I could get into it. Maybe I'll try again in a few years. I requested several books from the library and was on hold for a while and then I got flooded by a ton of them at once. I prioritized my reading list by due date & by which ones couldn't be renewed. I landed on Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I had heard RAVE reviews from several people but I wasn't too sure how I'd like it. I'm not too big into fantasy or sci-fi and most places I've seen this book have categorized it as such. In addition, it's a young adult book and while I think some YA books are ok I keep thinking at some point I might grow out of this genre. However, SO many people had recommend it I thought it had a good possibility of decent and when I read some brief summaries of the book it reminded me a lot of my favorite short story "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson that I thought I should give it a whirl.

I am SO glad I did. This book was AWESOME. If I had to summarize it in one sentence it would be "Imagine 'The Lottery' meets Survivor and they have a baby and then you have The Hunger Games." 

First and foremost, while I can see why it's labeled fantasy/sci-fi, it is SO not typical sci-fi/fantasy. It's like the X-Men version of sci-fi/fantasy. Sure there are some things that are not realistic and far-fetched, but it's mostly grounded in reality and the things that are "unrealistic" are background mostly and don't really detract from the story. While post-apocalyptic style stories do intrigue me, I think they've been slightly overdone so I was hesitant about this aspect of the book. However, like the sci-fi/fantasy aspect, it's mostly background. It's the whole reason for the story but they do not dwell on it really. The story mostly revolves around the actual "game" itself (leading up to it, going through it and the aftermath) and that stuff was REALLY exciting and compelling. It was such a unique story I couldn't put it down. Literally. I read it in 6 hours with only bathroom and lunch breaks.

From the beginning it was hard to figure out who Katniss was. When I figured out she was a girl a while into the story (around page 14) I was a little surprised. As I read I had assumed that Katniss was a boy. This changed things a bit and made me a little more intrigued.

Besides the setting/environment, I really drew a lot of parallels with "The Lottery" at the beginning. However, after the story gets going it leaves that short story behind and moves on into a more Survivor like story but in a more serious way.

The best part of the book is the middle section once they are into the arena for the game. The preparation is interesting but I really couldn't put the book down once all of the contestants were fighting for their lives. I didn't see the "love story" coming, although it isn't misplaced or come out of nowhere but it wasn't something I predicted. It seemed very realistic and believable. Additionally, all of the struggles that the contestants had to go through in the game were also realistic and believable. Collins did a good job of creating an atmosphere of realism and I could definitely picture the setting from her words and imagery. One thing I thought was that the arena seemed bigger at the start of the game and seemed smaller by the end. Katniss journeyed forever on the first day and quite a lot on the second day but by the end it seemed like they could get anywhere in the arena in a few hours by the end. The complex emotions and personalities of the contestants was very interesting. A little Lord of the Flies but much more interesting and entertaining. The Truman Show parallels were also interesting to see. It's like Collins took some of the most interesting twists of all the above mentioned stories and wove them (very well) into this story. I don't mean to say this to make anyone think it's an old, tired story because they way she weaves it all together makes it fresh and interesting. I can just see some influences she may have had.

Although it seemed clear (to me) from the beginning that Katniss would win the game, you were still worried for her throughout the story and really rooted for her the whole time. The twist with bringing her and Peeta together was unexpected and nice. At the beginning of the game I was wondering how Collins would work that one out...although Katniss had some clear resentment towards Peeta I didn't know that she would be able to kill him unless something really drastic happened. I'm glad that the twist made that not have to happen. And because things got changed up so much throughout the story, even though Katniss winning seemed predictable, I didn't mind because the story kept changing so you were sure HOW she would win, and there was a possibility at several points that she MIGHT not win.

The one and only thing I didn't love was the ending of the book. The love story that emerged wasn't all that interesting to me, but mostly because I'm not a romance fan and particularly not in a YA novel. It would have been nice to end the book with a satisfying end rather than letting it linger, although obviously this left the end open for the subsequent books. I don't have a huge desire to continue the series, but since I got so involved with this book unexpectedly I am going to commit to the second book just in case it surprises me as well. This leads to a second tangent of something that I wasn't a HUGE fan of, although it didn't really detract from the story. Throughout the story I would forget that these "kids" were supposedly ages 12-18. They just didn't have a "teenage" voice. The characters were much more thoughtful and advanced than their supposed ages would seem. Again, their ages weren't really the point so it didn't detract from the story, but occasionally I'd reflect on it and think, no way, a 16 year old wouldn't be thinking about things like this. So it seemed a little unbelievable that they were actual young adults rather than young adult characters created by an adult author. But in terms of the overall book and story it was just a minor detail.

Overall I would suggest this book to ANYONE (over the age of 14 probably). I give it 5 Stars and would probably classify it as one of the best books I've read all year. I really, really loved it. Obviously loved it enough to write a review of it which doesn't always happen. Go get it NOW!

Final Review: Love in the Present Tense by Catherine Ryan Hyde

Well apparently my sister has dropped off the face of the Earth! I was waiting for her to do her final review of The Glass Castle, but she's too slow. She had her chance; she blew it up.

In between starting and finishing The Glass Castle we started Love in the Present Tense by Catherine Ryan Hyde. As we were moving across the country (me moving, Leslie helping) we decided we could take our book club with us on the journey! We decided to get a book on cd that we could listen to on the 3 day drive. Leslie picked this one...I'm not sure why, but maybe if she ever comes back to the book club she can say why.

We didn't start the book until late on Day 2, but once we started we were pretty hooked. We forced ourselves to take breaks and do other things in the car (sing our heads off, take naps, giggle, etc.) but we did a good job of plowing through it. However, the trip wasn't quite long enough because we only got through 4 and 1/2 of the 7 discs. It equated to about 2/3 of the book. Once I got a library card here I was able to go pick up the book and finish it in paper format.

The book on cd version was good except for the readers they chose. The voices of all the characters were SO annoying. Leslie and I couldn't stop talking about how annoying they were. Eventually we got over it enough to become absorbed in the story, but they were still annoying. After I started reading the book I could still hear their dumb voices in my head as I was reading.

I thought it was a great story overall. Very original, not something I'd ever read before. Listening to the story it was kind of hard to figure out who was telling the story and at what point in time they were doing so. It was much easier to do that with the paper version of the book. I think the back and forth of the story was the only part I didn't totally enjoy. It added to the story because if it would have just went in chronological order the story would have been very different. But it was kind of confusing.

I really liked the ending to this book. It wasn't the happiest ending, but it felt good in the end to have most of the loose ends tied up. It wasn't unrealistic, but you just felt like everyone was going to be ok. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who likes fiction.

Review: The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

So we've been on hiatus for a hot minute. I was finishing my dissertation, we moved, Leslie was finishing her summer classes, we were both starting a new school year...and our books went by the wayside. BUT! We are back in the saddle. 

This weekend I finished The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. 

Wow.

That story was out of control. At fist I was just so floored by the never-ending tragedies that seemed to befall her family. And then I got mad. I tried to give her parents a LOT of leeway in the beginning. I didn't want to label them "bad parents" but instead tried to really think of them as eccentric and free-spirited. But after a certain point, I really just couldn't do it anymore. They were absolutely horrid parents. My parents are fairly eccentric. Her parents were downright neglectful and abusive. And maybe my upbringing had something to do with the way I felt about her parents. My parents have always been a little on the weird side, and our family did a lot of things differently than other people. But my parents were still parents. My mom was also an artist, like Jeannette's, but unlike Jeannette's she realized that being a starving artist wasn't good for her family, and whether it was her life's dream to be an art teacher she did it because her family needed to eat (and have clothes, books, etc.). She committed to being a parent. Jeannette's mom just wanted to cry and moan about life's injustices and in the process, made her children suffer. It was just appalling. Her father was also appalling, but I think for a number of reasons I am less "shocked" by this. First of all, he's an alcoholic. Not that being an alcoholic is an excuse to be a crappy dad, but at least I can recognize that he has a disease. Secondly, he's a dad. Again, that's not an excuse to be a terrible parent, but it's less surprising when dads fall down on the job. When a mom falls down on the job it's pretty big. When my parents divorced and we lived with our dad it was pretty abnormal, and our mom was still involved with us, we just didn't live with her. So to have a mom who so clearly sucked at all things mom was pretty alarming. I was thinking about this after I finished the book and I was wondering if Jeannette's mom has an undiagnosed mental health condition. This is the only reason I can even begin to understand as to why she would behave the way she did. But maybe that's just me trying to come up with an excuse for her (like her father's disease). When Maureen loses it at the end it made me wonder if there was a history of mental illness in the family and maybe her mother was mentally ill as well. 

Overall I liked the story, but I'm not sure if I want to read another book by Jeannette Walls. At least if it has to do with her family, and especially any more stories from her childhood. This book seriously disturbed me. I woke up with bad dreams three different times last night. I hate the thought of children being abused and neglected. It makes me so sad. If you can get past the horrible neglect and abuse I would very much recommend this book.