Reading "House Rules"

Jodi Picoult is an amazing author and "House Rules" is a fantastic book!!!

We've seen more on Asperger's Syndrome lately - several movies have been released in the last year featuring the syndrome and NBC's "Parenthood" (love this show) also features an 8-year-old character with Asperger's.

"House Rules" is about 18-year-old Jacob Hunt who has Asperger's, his family and what living with the syndrome is like for all of them. He attends a public high school and functions pretty well, but he does have quirks and there are triggers that set him off that have to be addressed constantly. He is obsessed with and, frankly, a genius when it comes to forensic science, loves crime scenes and watching Crime Busters.

During the murder investigation of a girl that Jacob knows well, it appears that he may be involved and things go from bad to worse quickly in this riveting story. I literally could not put this book down at times.

Here are a few excerpts ...

     I know what love is. When you find the person you are supposed to love, bells ring and fireworks go off in your head and you can't find words to speak and you think about her all the time. When you find the person you are supposed to love, you will know by staring deeply into her eyes.

     Well, that's a deal breaker for me.

     It is hard for me to explain why it is so difficult to look into people's eyes. Imagine what it would be like if someone sliced your chest with a scalpel and rummaged around inside you, squeezing your heart and lungs and kidneys. That level of complete invasion is what it feels like when I make eye contact. The reason I choose not to look at people is that I don't think it's polite to rifle through someone's thoughts, and the eyes might as well be glass windows, they're that transparent.

- - - - - - - - - -

     My mother has shaken her head. "Here's what I miss, Jacob. I miss the fact that I won't get to ever hear his voice again. And that I can't talk to him anymore."

     This wasn't really true. We had Grandpa's voice immortalized on old family videos that I sometimes like to watch when I couldn't sleep at night. And it wasn't that she couldn't talk to him that was hard for her to accept; it was that he could no longer talk back.

     My mother had sighed. "You'll get it, one day, I hope."

     I would like to be able to tell her that, yes, now I get it. When someone dies, it feels like the hole in your gum when a tooth falls out. You can chew, you can eat, you have plenty of other teeth, but your tongue keeps going back to that empty place where all the nerves are still a little raw.

- - - - - - - - - -

     I know why; it is because Theo was only a few months old when my father left. I don't remember that day, but I do remember a lot leading up to it. My mother and father often fought right in front of me. I was there, but I wasn't there - those were the days when I would find myself completely entranced by the static on the television screen or the lever of the toaster. My parents assumed that I was not paying attention, but that isn't the way it works. I could hear and see and smell and feel everything at once back then, which is why I had to focus so hard to pay attention to only one of the stimuli. I've always sort of pictured it like a movie: imagine a camera that can record the entire world at once - every sight, every sound. That's very impressive, but it isn't particularly useful if you want to specifically hear a conversation between two people, or see a ball coming toward you while you're standing at bat. And yet, I couldn't change the brain I'd been born with, so instead I learned how to narrow the world with makeshift blinders, until all I noticed was what I wanted to notice. That's autism, for those who've never been there themselves.

The research and level of detail that goes into Jodi Picoult's stories is so incredibly good! I would highly recommend this book.

http://jodipicoult.com/

Reading "The Help"

Wow! What a fantastic first novel from Kathryn Stockett. It is said that you should write about what you know and it seems she did. Stockett was raised in Mississippi with a black family maid who told her stories about picking cotton as a child. She really nailed the voices of the women in her story, written primarily about two black maids and one young white woman who is appalled at the way the help is treated in their community in 1962.

Miss Eugenia Phelan, nicknamed Skeeter at birth by her brother, graduated from Ole Miss with a diploma and ambition when all of her girlfriends were getting engaged and married. While away at college, her beloved maid, Constantine, disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter what happened or where she's gone. This mystery is a thread that runs through the entire book, entangled with her desire to improve relations between white women and their hired help. Skeeter wanted to be a writer and applied for a position as an editor with Harper & Row Publishers in New York. The response she receives from the senior editor sets in motion the clandestine project she is writing with the help in town, telling the good and the bad about the white families they work for. This was a very dangerous project for all involved during this time of prejudice and racial unrest in Mississippi.

Aibileen is the first maid to come on board with the tell-all project that Skeeter proposes. They originally connected when Skeeter took a job at the local newspaper, writing a column on keeping a clean house. Readers would write in with cleaning questions and Skeeter would answer them. The catch was that she knew next to nothing about cleaning and asked Aibileen for help. Aibileen had worked for many white families over the years and was currently helping to raise her 17th white baby while cooking and cleaning.

An excerpt by Aibileen:

"After while my mind done drifted to where I wish it wouldn't. I reckon I know pretty well what would happen if the white ladies found out we was writing about them, telling the truth a what they really like. Womens, they ain't like men. A woman ain't gone beat you with a stick. Miss Hilly wouldn't pull no pistol on me. Miss Leefolt wouldn't come burn my house down.


No, white womens like to keep they hands clean. They got a shiny little set a tools they use, sharp as witches' fingernails, tidy and laid out neat, like the picks on a dentist tray. They gone take they time with em.


First thing a white lady gone do is fire you."

Minny also agrees to tell her story to Skeeter, although very begrudgingly. She is a sassy woman who has lost several jobs for speaking her mind to her employer. Minny is the bouncing red ball in this book -- you have to keep your eye on her all the time and just try to keep up with the highs and lows of her life. When the project is floundering, Minny is the catalyst that pushes it into high gear while at the same time providing a safety net to the vulnerable maids in the community.

As the story progresses, the tension becomes greater and greater. This was one of those "just one more chapter" books that I couldn't put down because I simply had to find out what happened next. My mind stayed on these women and their stories even when I wasn't reading. So well done!

"The Help" is our book club's pick for January -- was a great choice! Visit Stockett's website at http://kathrynstockett.com/

Teaser Tuesdays - "American Wife"

I'm trying something new today that I've seen while visiting other blogs. Teaser Tuesdays is for readers who want to share a few sentences of what they're currently reading ...

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read


• Open to a random page


• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page


• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)


• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My two “Teaser” sentences for today:

That morning, when he'd come to Itty-Bitty to find me for breakfast, I'd been awake and dressed, waiting for him, and as he'd entered through the screen door, he'd called, "Where's my favorite lush?" and I'd said, "Charlie, I'm so sorry for my behavior last night," and he'd said, "Only part you have to apologize for is getting me all horned up and then passing out, but I'll take a rain check." He'd leaned in to kiss me, and I'd felt the great relief of dating a man who does not hold a grudge, or at least not toward you (Simon had been the other way).

This excerpt is from page 239 of "American Wife," written by Curtis Sittenfeld (who is, by the way, a woman) - 555 total pages, published in 2008.