CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW of THE PARTICULAR SADNESS OF LEMON CAKE by AIMEE BENDER

BOOK REVIEW by CHRISTINE TRZYNA c 2010

According to the Library of Congress this book is classified first under TASTE, then FAMILY SECRETS, and then PSYCHOLOGY.

But as I read it, it was clear to me that PSYCHOLOGY is the pivotal issue, in a family of members who all have little quirks or serious mental problems; we as readers are struggling through the shades of gray to DEFINE what is wrong with this one or that, which confuses us because we don't know how much we can believe, though we want to believe, through the narrator, Rosie, whose gift or curse is that she can taste other people's emotions through the food they prepare. Maybe the story as Rosie's proves that it is Rosie who is cracked.

Here are the FAMILY SECRETS not secret to us readers: A mother who takes a long time to find and accept her talent after much dabbling, who can't openly admit a cold and distant marriage, an affair that may be preserving her and her family somehow, or that she has a seriously mentally ill son, Joseph, mother's hope being what it is.

Joseph makes it through school as a science nerd with one friend in the world but is never property diagnosed or given help. He "disappears" after many a trial run. Then there's the father who is a successful lawyer but can't step a foot in a hospital, not even for the birth of his children, who hides his thoughts and feelings, without hiding in a bedroom like his son does. And the far-away mother/mother in law, who may be loosing her mind, and who no one visits or invites in, sends boxes full of discards, emptying her home bit by bit. Rosie is a daughter who feels obligated to let the life of a college student pass her by, though that is her heritage, because her brother can't achieve his goals and is railroaded to the community college instead of Cal Tech.

Was it intended or is this book an accidental case of magic realism?

The Particular Sadness of Lemon cake was sad. And it held my interest from beginning quirk to facing the reality that the family can't.


The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
C 2010 Aimee Bender
Doubleday is the publisher

CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW of MACKENZIE PHILLIPS HIGH ON ARRIVAL

BOOK REVIEW by Christine Trzyna C 2010

Maybe in part, because I recall the urgency of her voice, I feel the tone of Mackenzie Phillips' memoir is incessantly passionate till exhaustion. As I passed this book on to others to read, I warned them, "Be prepared to be devastated." Do memoirs ever help others really? (I think sometimes they do.) Was this one intended to imply forgiveness to one's self and others? Isn't forgiveness over-rated?

Reading this one, I remembered years ago I read the memoir of Mackenzie's dad, John Phillips, famous writer of hit songs sung by the early 1960's quartet The Mamas and the Papas. I was stunned by his calm unapologetic amorality. He shrugged his shoulders about what an unmoved Papa he had been. He had not protected his daughter.

John Phillips, who used up most of his song writing money on drug addiction, had other children - a son, and two daughters by Michelle Phillips, Mackenzie's sisters, who may not have had the same experience of good ol dad. But maybe it's biology; whatever was amiss with John Phillips that his moral compass kept spinning was passed on to just one. "The problem," was and is, apparently drug addiction. But maybe drug addiction is too convenient and superficial the excuse. Mackenzie has had a horrible life, despite being supplied with economic and opportunity wealth, and despite all the pain she describes which we imagine she FELT, she did not know better to not participate in (drug fueled) incest as an adult with her father.

None of us who read this book believe Mackenzie will stay off drugs and a few of us felt irate that she did not know better.


High on Arrival was written by Mackenzie Phillips with Hilary Liftin
It's a Simon Spotlight Entertainment book
C 2009 Shanes Mom Inc.

MERCE CUNNINGHAM, Dancer and Choreographer QUOTE

"You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no painting to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive. It is not for unsteady souls." - Merce Cunningham


Quoted in the December 28 2009 - January 4 2010 TIME magazine, page 150.

E.M. FORSTER Quote

"ALL THAT I CARED FOR IN CIVILIZATION HAS GONE FOREVER AND I AM TRYING TO LIVE WITHOUT EITHER HOPES OR FEARS - NOT AN EASY JOB."

E.M. Forster ; Author of A Room With A View (1908) and Howard's end (1910) and Passage to India (1924)

FEDS WANT TO "REINVENT" JOURNALISM

JOURNALISM is in trouble...
WOULD YOU LIKE TO WORK FOR THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO STAY EMPLOYED?

Today I found this article about how the FEDS are looking at the way journalists can barely make a living, newspapers are having trouble making revenue; a long article but take a look because it's PROVOCATIVE.

BOOK EXCERPT : CATCHING THE BIG FISH by DAVID LYNCH

From DAVID LYNCH
CATCHING THE BIG FISH
Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity
Jeremy P. Tarcher/Pengiun Publisher

Chapter called SUFFERING page 93

"It's good for the artist to understand conflict and stress. Those things can give you ideas. But I guarantee you, if you have enough stress, you won't be able to create. And if you have enough conflict, it will just get in the way of your creativity. You can understand conflict, but you don't have to live in it...

In stories, in the worlds that we can go into, there's suffering, confusion, darkness, tension, and anger. There are murders; there's all kinds of stuff. But the filmmaker doesn't have to be suffering to show suffering. You can show it, show the human condition, show conflicts and contrasts, but you don't have to go through that yourself. You are the orchestrator of it, but you're not in it. Let your characters do the suffering...

It's common sense: The more the artist is suffering, the less creative he is going to be. It's less likely that he is going to enjoy his work and less likely that he will be able to do really good work..." DAVID LYNCH

ANNE LAMOTT Quote

"I do not understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are, but does not leave us where it found us." -Anne Lamott

ANNE SEXTON FOR JOHN, WHO BEGS ME NOT TO ENQUIRE FURTHER

For John, Who Begs Me Not To Enquire Further

by Anne Sexton

Not that it was beautiful,
but that,
in the end,
there was
a certain sense of order there;
something worth learning
in that narrow diary of my mind,
in the common
places of the asylum
where the cracked mirror
or my own selfish death
outstared me.

And if I tried
to give you something else,
something outside of myself,
you would not know
that the worst of anyone
can be,
finally,
an accident of hope.

I tapped my own head;
it was a glass,
an inverted bowl.

It is a small thingto rage in your own bowl.
At first it was private.
Then it was more than myself;
it was you,
or your house
or your kitchen.

And if you turn awaybecause there is no lesson here
I will hold my awkward bowl,
with all its cracked stars shining
like a complicated lie,
and fasten a new skin around it
as if I were dressing an orange
or a strange sun.

Not that it was beautiful,
but that I found some order there.
There ought to be something special
for someone
in this kind of hope.

This is something I would never find
in a lovelier place,
my dear,
although your fear is anyone's fear,
like an invisible veil between us all...
and sometimes in private,
my kitchen,
your kitchen,
my face,
your face.

C Anne Sexton

QUOTE from KEN BRECHER, PRESIDENT OF LIBRARY FOUNDATION OF LOS ANGELES

From ALOUD Summer 2010 brochure.

Q: What is the future of libraries in such a technology driven world.

A: The internet and e-book are both additional resources for libraries, offering us another way to spread reading and knowledge. Reading is reading, whether it's done on a computer screen, a Kindle, on the pages of a coffee-stained paperback, or in the rare books room of the library. Books aren't going anywhere; the American appetite and curiosity for learning will ensure that we are adding new ways to access knowledge, not subtracting old ones."

PERSONAL DIARY : CHRISTINE TRZYNA : THE VERY WORST THING ANYONE EVER SAID TO ME TO DISCOURAGE ME FROM WRITING

THE VERY WORST THING ANYONE EVER SAID TO ME

TO DISCOURAGE ME FROM WRITING

by Christine Trzyna

For some time, I spent a large chunk of my day, sometimes every day, in a privately owned coffee house on a major boulevard in a ritzy shopping district. That it was a ritzy area is mentioned here, only to say that a lot of people who came into this place had a lot of money and time to burn. But not everyone. Not most of the writers who decorated the place. I was one of those writers who was tolerated for hours with my laptop taking a small table, though not without purchasing. I bought a lunch and nursed a few refills and once in a while one of those people with money to burn filled my cup for another 50 cents.
My purpose was to write in an environment that was somewhat stimulating so that when I needed to take a break and have a good, intelligent, conversation, I could. I wanted to write in a place where food and beverages were easily affordable and available and that wasn't too far from my place. (I did meet some interesting conversationalists there.)

I think a lot of writers do the same, escaping their environments not supportive of their writing by taking their laptops and heading out. There is even a kind of club for some that suddenly ups and goes to X, abandoning Y, making the owners who counted on them, for their bread if not their butter, wonder what they did wrong. Usually it's just the in-crowd as they think of themselves excluding someone they are tired of.

HERE IS THE VERY WORST THING ANYONE THERE EVER SAID TO ME ABOUT WRITING and PUBLISHING A BOOK:

"You go to the book sales at the libary or to garage sales, and you buy books for a dollar or a quarter, and after all the time and effort, that's where your book ends up."

The guy who said this to me was a rich bum, the equivalent of someone satisfied to live off a trust fund and not do much of anything, not even volunteer work.

Of course I think it's WONDERFUL that books get recycled and go from one reader to the next, that those books got cleared out of attics and bookshelves, so that SOMEONE ELSE could READ THEM! I know that the moment for the author themselves to profit from the sale of such a book is over, yet, this is how some people become familiar with a writer, through an old book. You can't put a dollar on that. And writers write for publication because they want to share with the world. When I get a book from the library that I love and want, I too look for it at library and garage sales. I THINK "GREAT! AT SOME POINT A WRITER GOT PAID FOR THIS WRITING!" That's better than being ripped off from the get go!

SO NO I AM NOT OK with someone stealing my intellectual property, which has happened. That's one of the reasons I don't send work out as I used to, having trust and faith because someone claims they have a great opportunity for me; it seems that promises made by certain chap book publishers (I should sue) and even people with Doctorates in Literature who put out anthologies (I should sue) turn into BS.

A steaming simmering pile of BS...

Hey, thanks for reading!

C Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

Are YOU a CAT PERSON or a DOG PERSON ?

Used to be a lot of my friends had a thing for cats and a lot of my friends had a thing for horses. But when it comes right down to it, I'm a dog person and I was never "horse crazy."

Maybe it's time for me to make new friends who have dogs?

HORACE MANN UPSTANDER AWARDS

THE HORACE MANN UPSTANDERS BOOK AWARD will be presented at Antioch University during the THIRD ANNUAL CHILDRENS LITERATURE CONFERENCE June 28th 2010. The event is FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC but space is limited and you must register at the upstanders award link provided here.

"GIVEN ANNUAL TO AN AUTHOR OF CHILDRENS FICTION for grades K through 6th, THE HORACE MAN UPSTANDERS BOOK AWARD honors a piece of literature that exemplifies the ideals of social action, and therefore encourages young readers to become agents of change or "upstanders" themselves. An "upstander" is a person who recognizes injustice and acts in a way to right the wrong.

IS YOUR LIBRARY UNABLE TO BUY BOOKS DUE TO BUDGET CUTS?

Recently I checked to see if any of the books I suggested for purchase at my local library system had been. None were. (I am particularly dying to read THE TALENTED MISS HIGHSMITH (about a favorite writer of mine Patricia Highsmith) by Joan Schenkar. Ah well, there is near no money to buy any new books. If the library buys ONE copy of a book it will suffice and we can be put on an electronic waiting list for our turn to read it.

I WONDER IF THIS WILL FORCE READERS LIKE ME TO COME UP WITH FUNDS TO BUY MORE OF OUR OWN BOOKS or if DONATIONS to the LIBRARY of BOOKS will be taken more seriously and provide the library with books to be put on shelves and loaned out rather than books to be SOLD at library book sales?

Been Reading OPRAH by KITTY KELLEY

I've been reading " Ophrah" by Kitty Kelly... and I'll leave you to read it and learn what impact Oprah has had on book buying and getting books she and her staff have selected onto best seller lists... OK HERE IS A CLUE... the higher Oprah held the book - the closer to her BREASTS - the more copies sold.

BOOK EXCERPT: GRACE KELLY by DONALD SPOTO

page 139 C by Donald Spoto

"Terms like "lady," "genteel," "elegant," "patrician" and "reserved" were most often used to describe Grace - along with puns and plays on her first name. It's almost impossible to keep count of the number of articles, over thirty years, that were titled "Amazing Grace."

"At exactly the same time, Paramount's publicists helped journalists with their descriptions of Audrey Hepburn, who was routinely termed "elfin" (although elves are spiteful, malignant dwarfs), "gazelle-like" (despite the fact that gazelles are spotted antelopes), "coltish" (although colts are male horses) ; and, most often, "gamine" (which means a street urchin or a homeless waif.) With Audry and Grace, new vocabularies were needed for new styles, and the publicists pored over their dictionaries. In "real life," if Grace or Audry were seen in a restaurant or at a public event, there was quite literally a collective, audible intake of breath, it was the appearance of a goddess to mere mortals."