BRF: "The Debt of Tamar"

via Goodreads

I said in my review on Goodreads that I'm not sure how to describe this book. The writing style felt unique and yet oddly reminiscent of Paulo Coehlo and Salman Rushdie. It raised questions about love, death, grief, and what we pass on to our descendants.

The book passes through three different periods in history. We see the Spanish Inquisition through the eyes of a wealthy Jewish family in Lisbon, Portugal. They were forced to renounce their faith or be burned at the stake. We see Jewish refugees from all over Europe being welcomed into the Ottoman Empire by Suleiman the Magnificent. We see Paris during World War II and it's aftermath. We see a modern day Istanbul and New York City.

Overall, I enjoyed reading it and would love to talk to someone else who's read it about the book. It made me want to know even more than I already do about the history of the Ottoman Empire, the Sultans, Ataturk, and the history of the Jewish people. Simon Schama's "History of the Jews" on PBS merely gave an appetizer to what is out there to learn and Western culture does not spend enough time discussing or teaching the history of the Orient. I want to learn more.

Dreaming of Stability

I've been playing on Pinterest a lot lately to distract myself when I feel completely overwhelmed by everything in my life. Since I'm selling my bed and possibly other furniture--which is breaking my spirit a tiny bit--I've been looking at furniture I like to appease my feelings of loss. 95% of the furniture I own was my grandparents. The dressers I have have been mine since I was born. I had my own bedroom and bedroom set in my grandparents' house from the day I came home from the hospital. My mom gave my bed away because there was some lady I didn't know who needed a brass headboard, my sister has my nightstand, and all I have left are my dressers.

In a way to self-soothe I've been thinking about how it's okay that I sell my grandmother's couch and the dressers because I didn't actually pick them out. This gives me the opportunity to later on buy pieces of furniture that are intrinsically ME. All the furniture I have dates to the 1950's and is very much in the style of that decade which I love. BUT, I have other styles I love as well and other interests. That being said when I do get new furniture I think I want to build and/or design what I put in my house. I have a hard time purchasing things because they aren't quite ME. Does that make sense?

So as a taste of what I have been falling in love with for the future, I discovered the plans to build this bed frame.

Via Bob Vila

This example and the plans are for a twin bed but I think it could easily be adapted to a Queen with a shorter footboard. I love plumbing fixtures and pipe. I designed and built a chair a few years ago using PVC pipe and clothesline that was incredibly comfortable. The PVC created a frame for the seat which looked like a hammock. I would love to create furniture for myself again along similar lines.

BRF: "The Sex Lives of Cannibals"

"The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific"

by

J. Maarten Troost

This book had me laughing out loud most of the way through it. That doesn't happen often for me. Beginning with the first chapter I felt an affinity with the author. He points out that upon completion of graduate school he realized that he had no real skills and no desire to get a job in the field for which he had trained. With no job offers coming in--as he had not applied for any--and with no money in his bank account he celebrates by going to Cuba with no money.

He arrives back in Washington, DC more broke and in debt than when he left, working for a temp agency, living with his girlfriend/fiancée in his mother's basement. Enter his girlfriend's job offer to help the people of Kiribati in the Pacific. They take it and he goes as her "husband" to cook and write a book that he never seems to actually write.

I grew up in the San Joaquin Valley in California and in Houston, Texas. These are places that are quite hot in the summer. In California one might wear a wool sweater in the winter when the Arctic storms sweep down from Canada. In Houston, I don't think I own a coat much less a sweater of any kind. I almost fell off the bed I was laughing so hard when Maarten insists on packing a wool sweater to take to Kiribati. It's smack dab on the equator and he's going to be living on an atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I wouldn't have bothered packing clothes at all just thinking about living in a climate that is similar to Houston's in August ALL YEAR. But he takes the sweater.

“No one who claims this to be a small world has ever flown across the Pacific.” 

via World Atlas

The flight from DC to Tarawa is accomplished via San Francisco, Honolulu, the Marshall Islands, and Nauru. Each stop they change planes and the plane gets smaller and smaller. The overnight stay in the Marshall Islands was quite possibly described in very non-objective terms. Cockroaches. Everywhere. They turned out the lights and one crawled up the author's back. I sympathized and knew exactly what he was talking about.

I loathe cockroaches. They don't frighten me but, rather, put me in a murderous rage. I'm not talking about whatever roaches you have in your town but the mutant, giant tree-roaches that are everywhere in the Southeast Texas region. If you've ever stepped on one in the middle of the night while getting up to go to the bathroom or had one fly in your face while you're flicking on the light at 3AM to get a glass of water you know of what I speak. The worst is waking up throwing something across a room because one was crawling across your closed, sleeping eyes. (That requires taking a shower after the killing.)

via YouTube

This was one of the funniest parts to me and I had to quote it in this review. He's relating one of the stories from the book "Kiribati--Aspects of History" about the first European encounters with the natives of Kiribati (Gilbert Islands.)

"Curiosity finally overcame the Gilbertese. They came out of their hiding places to investigate more closely these new beings and the strange things which they had brought with them. As the story goes, they were especially interested in the slippery, fragrant substance which formed white foam when wet. It is said that several people started biting bits off and soon several became sick. Thus, the first contact with the Europeans had a dramatic ending--the soap victims became the patients of these strange beings.

What this story illustrates, of course, is how really sick and tired people were of eating fish. Nothing else could explain the peculiar urge to eat a bar of soap the had just been used to wash the critter-ridden body funk of a pale and hairy sailor." (p. 114-115) 

That's just one snippet of his writing style. Each chapter tells a different story. The description of his first dip in the lagoon. Why he's no longer afraid of sharks. The diet of fish, fish, and fish. His determination to not let ANY Mormon missionary EVER think that he would be interested in what they have to say. The over-kill of La Macarena and his desire to make it stop and how he finally got his neighbors to turn it down. All of this had me cracking up. It's not the most anthropologically correct travel book nor is it an unbiased ethnography of a culture, but it was fun to read and they only mentioned the sex lives of the natives on one page which sounded mildly horrific and painful to me. He does drop the F-bomb a bit so you were warned.



(I feel seriously behind in my weekly posts. I may be the only one who noticed that I haven't written a book review or a General Conference post in several weeks. If you have noticed and wondered what the heck was wrong with the blog, my apologies. Life got in the way.)

24 Hours Later...

I got home from a job interview today--which went extremely well--and had a voicemail from the law office that was issuing the court summons. After the secretary explained to me what was going on I explained to her what had caused this from my end. She told me this can all be erased as identity theft as long as I fax them a copy of the original Houston police report. So that's something I have to get a hold of. I'm still going to look up some legal advice to see what I can do to prevent this from happening again. This law firm wasn't the one from a month ago calling about the exact same payday loan so what's to prevent this company from filing another complaint with a different law firm ad infinitum?

And I'm breathing.

Just one more thing to add to the list of things to do. Can I get reimbursed for pain, suffering, and gas money?

In Which the Author Contemplates Life in Prison

So....remember back in 2012, the year from Hell, where I was stalked and robbed over a period of time? Well, one of the things that was stolen was my checkbook. Since my car was in the shop being repaired for almost a month I wasn't sure it was actually stolen until after I got my car back. By this time whoever was doing the stalking and robbing had my checkbook with my bank account information for a total of 6 weeks.

When we called the police to have them come investigate so we could file a report the police officer said that from everything that we described it was highly probably that the stalker/thief was someone who worked for the apartment complex. This person had access to the keys to the apartment and most likely my rental application and lease. These things had my social security number, my driver's license number, my workplace, my mom's home address, etc.

I followed the officer's advice and immediately called my bank to have my checking account frozen and all the money transferred to a new account. I also changed my phone number, email address, moved, and placed a fraud alert on my social security number. It looks like I was too late.

In the past month I have received 2 phone calls notifying me that I am being served with a court summons as someone has filed a complaint charging me with alleged fraud. The first phone call I was able to talk to the person who was coming to serve me the papers and explained to him what happened. Since just talking about those events and what transpired caused me to have a mild panic attack on the phone, he was very understanding. He said that he would do some further investigating into the matter because while it looks like I took out a payday cash advance loan from one of those check cashing places I in fact did not. I never heard back from him.

Last night, I had a voicemail informing me that the Harris County Court System was coming with two police officers to serve me with a court summons on a complaint of fraud. I called them back immediately but got their voicemail. This nightmare just doesn't end. How do you prove that you didn't commit fraud when the person who did used your name, your social security number, your workplace, and your checking account information to steal money from a lending institution???

Whoever this person was who did this has ruined my name, reputation, and credit report. I can't even lease an apartment or open a checking account because of this situation. I'm also in danger of losing a potential job offer with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice at their hospital in Galveston because of this. I have to move out of my house in two weeks and the only options I see for a place to sleep are a kind person's couch or a motel you rent by the week. I have a job interview later today for a position at a hospital where I really want to work.

The way this looks at 4AM is bleak. I could go to prison for who knows how long to pay for someone else's crime or work 7 days a week to pay off debts that I didn't incur. Where's the justice? When will this nightmare end? Why in the world would someone want to pretend to be me?

BRF: The Eyre Affair

I don't know how to describe this book. I loved it and need to get my hands on a copy of the second book in the series.

Have you ever wanted to have a conversation in person with a character in a book? Thursday Next gets to do that. Imagine that the CIA or MI-5 had a division that dealt with crimes of a literary nature. Now imagine time travel is policed. This is a fantastic book to escape into. I was taken away to a fantastic place where you can step inside the pages of a book and live in the story. If you are a fan of science fiction/fantasy, classical literature, and spy stories this is the next book you need to read.

I have been in love with Faramir from Lord of the Rings for-ever! I would love to step into that story and talk to him. I would also love to BE Éowyn for similar reasons. Oh the possibilities of imagination! I love when other people invite us into their's with stories like Jasper Fforde created in this book.