A Summer Recipe: Add Ocean to Warm Air--Mix with Good Books

The Mexico vacation is over and I have spent two days slowly getting back to the reality of home, laundry, and gearing up for book fairs that begin next week. The white sand beach was all I expected and more. The Caribbean breeze from the east made the humid temperatures a soothing balm to the body each day. We started our days in swim suits, and ended nights in a Jacuzzi tub outdoors on our room’s balcony. The sound of the ocean surf lapping on the shore was all I needed to lull me to a restful sleep. It was the kind of vacation we hoped for—a get-away to lie around, enjoy siestas under a grassy palapa, and read books (see below) in between swimming in the ocean or the pool. A one-day bus tour inland to visit the Mayan Ruins at Chichén Itzá was fascinating and worth the time. The number of roadside vendors at the site were plentiful, but that didn't spoil the day. Kayaking and paddle boating were refreshing diversions when we wanted activity. I was fearless, as long as I had my life vest on!

The flow of daily conversations on the beach was relaxed, as we heard Spanish, French, and other dialects from various parts of the world. It was a comfort to hear human noise as people near us talked, yet not intruding because we couldn’t understand what they were saying. We were alone among many--a nice thing, being in our own private world, while sharing it with others.

Our first night there, we ate at the resort’s Japanese restaurant (one of five types at the hotel). We shared the hibachi-side table with a family from Barcelona, Spain. Only the husband could speak a bit of English, though the two sons were learning, he explained. A beautiful family—father Francesco, mother Angela, sons Pol, Nil, and young daughter, Maria—popped up at meals in the same places where my husband and I were eating, almost every day. Our communication was smiles, gestures, and a few words to each of them translated by the dad. The boys followed and loved American NBA basketball, and we recognized the athletes’ names as they excitedly told us who their favorite players were. We were surprised to learn that these young residents of Spain were avid enthusiasts, at ages 15 and 11. Eight-year-old Maria turned her nose up at the subject, her interests falling to dance and tennis. They all had lively brown eyes and wavy, dark hair, enhanced by deep tans.

I read three books during the eight-day vacation, something I’d not done, consecutively, in a long time. With my full in-season book fair schedule and all the administrative work involved after "store" hours (sales reports, unpacking of boxes, pricing inventory, and more), spare time to read has been sparse of late.

Three books I recommend:

I read Toni Morrison’s Jazz, the story of a middle-aged door-to-door salesman who shoots his teenage lover to death after she ends their affair. His wife, Violet, attacks the girl’s corpse in the casket with a knife at the funeral, thus earning her the nickname “Violent” amongst her neighbors. The story is set in the winter of 1926, and artfully portrays the times and culture of black urban New York with a feeling of authenticity. Morrison, winner of the Nobel Prize, writes in a lyrical style, expressing the character’s deep feelings in a calm pace that is opposite to what the story line is wont to convey. Jazz is not a story so much about the murder, but about the reasons why the lovers meet and connect as they did, and how the wife, with no children of her own, becomes obsessed with knowing who this young girl was, and thereby grieves her death in her own way.

Next, I read This Heavy Silence by Nicole Mazzarella. It is a debut novel for this creative writing teacher from Wheaton College in Illinois. The book was earlier this month selected to receive the prestigious "First Novel" Christy Award at the annual International Christian Retailers Show (formerly known as the Christian Booksellers Association convention) held in Denver. I had purchased the book online from the publisher, Paraclete Press, before the award had been given. So I was pleased to hear that my selection was indeed recognized, and therefore an excellent choice to read on my trip.

This Heavy Silence is the story of an independent woman, never married, whose passion and life’s breath is the toil and soil of her family’s three-hundred-acre farm land, which has been in the family for three generations. When she is named legal guardian to the young daughter of a close friend, killed in a house fire, her life is changed beyond expectation. Set in the rural Midwest, it is a story about choices, vows, broken promises, and the disappointments and pleasures of life. Mazzarella writes with an easy-to-read style that flows smoothly, properly punctuated by colorful descriptive passages that are “ah-hah” sighs tucked within the paragraphs. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and suffered with the heroine in her emotional struggles of a middle-aged life that had to look back in order to move forward.

The third book I chose to read is a true story, The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky, written by Ken Dornstein, about his brother, David, who was one of the 259 passengers killed on December 21, 1988, when Pan Am flight 103 exploded in the skies over Locherbie, Scotland. The book is not so much about David Dornstein as it is Ken’s quest to learn who his older brother really was, through passionate and painful research about his brother’s life. It is Ken’s journey through grief, growth, and gut-wrenching analysis of his brother’s diverse and odd scribblings in dozens of notebooks written almost daily in teen and young adult years. David was 25 years old, had earned a creative writing degree from Brown University, and was in search of his future as a writer at the time of the plane’s explosion.

It is the connecting with David’s friends, including two of his brother’s former girlfriends (one who later becomes and remains Ken’s wife) that adds dimension to the myriad of David’s words on lined pages that takes Ken to Israel and back again, searching to understand the mind and life of David before his death. The book conveys angst through the disturbing world David writes about, and in parallel, paints a portrait of who Ken was growing up, hidden in the shadow of his older brother in life, and for a time, afterwards, in his death. Ken triumphs through this life study, and does an excellent job of bringing his brother to life for the reader. Oddly, I completed reading this book on the plane flight back to the United States, soaring at 30,000 feet in the air. In Dornstein’s book, he is for a time obsessed with imagining what book his brother might have been reading on the airplane at the time it exploded. I thought it was fitting that, if our plane exploded on the way home from Mexico, I would be reading a book such as this. (Was I trying to tempt fate?)

I’m happy to say, we made it home safely. Buenos noches. Hasta mañana.

Vacation Time

This blog has been silent because I'm swamped with end-of-the season book fairs! We survived inventory count--now it's off to our regional book conference before heading to Mexico for a week! In between, I turn another year older, so that's a reason to take a vacation too. The sand and ocean water beckon. My staff and I have done five different book fairs in the past seven days (some of them 2-day events) and it's time to relax.

My Fabio life-size cardboard cutout turned heads yesterday. For the first time, he stood behind our cash register--an employee and I dressed him in our work apron and stuck a name tag on him. One customer (who wasn't paying close attention) thought he was a person standing there--as she wrote out her check, she struck up a conversation with "him" -- and laughed in amused embarrassment when she looked up and saw what and "who" it was! Much fun!

This week I set up a "Christmas in July" table and was pleasantly surprised to see many customers were ready to buy snowman ornaments, wrapping paper, and other themed items. I've never been one to focus on Christmas in the summer, but I saw this week that many people do. Once August arrives, I'm afraid it won't be long before we think "snow." In this part of the country, it can happen in September. For now, I'm thinking "beach."

Some of the best selling items recently have been:

1) Rachael Ray's "30 Minute Meals," No. 1 & 2
2) Chronicles of Narnia, 19-CD collection
3) Book Tote Bags
4) Handmade greeting card sets
5) Leather portfolio
6) "Amazing Grace" book with CD
7) "Baby's First Bible" with white plush stuffed lamb
8) Betty Crocker's "Bridal Edition" cookbook
9) "Through Indian Eyes"
10) "New Complete Guide to Landscaping"

The list tells me that my buyers want a bit of everything. They have business needs, personal wants, a need for gift items, and they like to work in the garden and cook. That covers just about most of us, I'd say.

This blog will take a short break, unless I can find a computer to connect with while I'm laying under a cabana in the Mexican sun. On second thought, maybe I'll just catch up on some reading and some sleep.