A fabulous friend, who happens to also be a new mom, sent me Momma Zen: Walking the Crooked Path of Motherhood by mother and Zen priest Karen Maezen Miller. (I just Googled her and found her delightfully named blog, Cheerio Road.)
I got Momma Zen in the mail yesterday and have already started reading it. (FYI: I never start reading a book as soon as I get it. This is momentous.) I knew I’d keep reading-- and probably love-- this thoughtful memoir on Zen and motherhood when I read this part:
And then, in a magic moment of old-fashioned fertility, I conceived. I was forty-two. Looking back, I saw that doing nothing to prevent pregnancy was not quite the same as doing something to get there. What I did was simply take my basal body temperature and have sex on cue, but even that required that I discard the ambivalence that I’d long carried about the issue. If it happens, it happens, I had been telling myself with a comfortable dose of confidence that it wouldn’t.
I can totally identify with this. Not only the age at which I conceived (twice, actually) and became a mother, but also the realization that “doing nothing to prevent pregnancy was not quite the same as doing something to get there.” Oh, and the ambivalence. I’m a forty-two year old new mom in large part because of ambivalence, not infertility.
I never really knew whether I wanted to have a child or not-- pretty much up until oh, a few weeks ago. I had more or less talked myself out of having children-- thinking it wouldn’t/couldn’t happen. (And had a couple of people suggest it shouldn’t happen.) The fact that I could so easily envision a life without children made it easy to be ambivalent. (Just for the record: I’m happy with the choice I made to be proactive in trying to get pregnant and the very adorable, if currently exhausting, end result.)
I am far from feeling “Zen-like” about motherhood, but I like Maezen Miller’s voice of experience. It gives me a sense of calm-- something I could really use right about now.
P.S. to Nikki: You’re awesome. Thank you!
I’m delighted that Best of the Best Women’s Erotica 2 will be out next week! The fabulous and talented Violet Blue selected my story “Call Me” from a previous edition of Best Women’s Erotica for inclusion in this best of the best collection.
In the introduction, Violet has this to say about my story:
In Kristina Wright’s wonderful and hot “Call Me” an accident leads to a furtive fantasy come true when an obscene phone call goes delightfully awry.
“Call Me” was a fun story to write because it’s mostly dialogue and there is no physical contact between the characters. But it’s still sexy, with a dash of humor. Here’s the opening:
Claire dialed the number before she lost her nerve. The phone rang and she switched hands to wipe her damp palm across the sheet.
“Hello?” It sounded like he’d just woken up.
“Hi,” she said, trying for a sultry voice. “It’s me.”
“Bad connection,” he mumbled. Static crackled across the line.
She frowned. That wasn’t what he was supposed to say. She tried again. “I’ve missed you.”
“You have?”
“Yes. And this is an obscene phone call.”
“Really?” he sounded more awake now, but not quite himself. “Sounds intriguing.”
“Mmm… I promise you won’t be disappointed.”
“Well, sweetheart, where do we start?”
Something wasn’t right. The static on the line made it impossible to hear him clearly. “Sam, let me call you back. This is a lousy connection.”
“Who’s Sam?”
“Oh my God—” It wasn’t Sam. She had just propositioned a stranger.
“Hey, no, it’s okay,” he said quickly. “Don’t hang up.”
She hung up.
Claire stared at the phone, waiting for it to ring. She shook her head and picked up the receiver, carefully dialing the number Sam had given her. The phone rang twice.
“Change your mind?” There was humor in his voice. Humor and a warm familiarity that reminded her of late-night radio dee-jays.
“I’m sorry,” she managed to say. “I’m trying to call someone else.”
“So I gathered.”
“My boyfriend, actually.”
“Lucky guy.”“I’m sorry,” she said again, feeling like an idiot. A horny idiot.
“I’m not.” He chuckled. “So tell me, do you make a lot of obscene phone calls?”
She laughed. “Not hardly. This is my first.”
“You mean we’re still on?”
Jay got me a Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader for Christmas. (It’s actually nook, but it irks my English major sensibilities not to capitalize a name.) So far, all I’ve done is turn it on, register it and adjust the settings. I haven’t exactly had a lot of free time to read lately-- and when I have had time to read, I’ve been catching up on the huge stack of magazines that had been accumulating since October-- but hopefully I’ll be more inclined to read if I have a few books at hand. (Books bought in 2009 and before don’t count, everyone knows that.) I was at Barnes & Noble the other day and didn’t have my Nook with me, but they apparently offer free content if you connect while in the store. I’m not sure what that means, but I’ll have to try it out. The reviews suggest the Nook is superior to Amazon’s Kindle. I’ve only seen one Kindle up close so I don’t really have a basis for comparison, but I do seem to be adding to my arsenal of cool techie gadgets.
Now I’m looking for book recommendations. Preferably something not related to babies, parenting, motherhood, children, etc. (I’m pretty sure I already own all the how-to books, anyway, and I need some escapism in my fiction right now.) I was checking out David Wellington’s Frostbite and almost bought the paperback, but then I remembered my Nook and figured I would wait. I haven’t read anything by him before, but I love a good werewolf tale (or vampire tale). I also love that it doesn’t have a woman on the cover with a come-hither look, which seems to be the cliche of all werewolf/vampire/shapeshifter/slayer books lately. Does the wolf on the cover mean they’re trying to appeal to a male audience or female audience? Oddly enough, my first thought was male. I guess I’m conditioned to pick up books with women on the cover even though I’m a woman. (Kristina Lloyd would have a field day with that one.)
So, what are you reading? What have you read? What was the best book you read in 2009? What’s on your to-be-read list (or in your to-be-read pile)? I need to know!
If I didn’t love Neil Gaiman before, I certainly do after seeing this picture of his personal library:
Swoon...
If you don’t know who Neil Gaiman is (for shame!) or haven’t heard him speak, here is a clip of him reading his poem “Instructions” from the book Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders. The man is brilliant!
So, I haven’t been writing much lately. Cue the ominous music. I’m slowly (very slowly) getting back to it. In the meantime, while I haven’t been doing a lot of writing I’ve been doing a lot more reading. I’m funny like that-- the more I’m writing, the less I’m reading. So, I do like to take advantage of the lull in creativity and catch up on some books.
I plowed through two of the last three Laurel K. Hamilton Anita Blake books (I think I’ll wait for Skin Trade to come out in paperback) and the last two Stephanie Plum books by Janet Evanovich. It’s fun to revisit familiar characters (and after 15 Stephanie Plum books and, what?, 18 Anita Blake books, I feel like I really know the characters) even when the stories start to run together.
My waiting room book right now is Jennifer Weiner’s Little Earthquakes (about three pregnant/new moms, appropriately enough) before I delve into her new hardcover Best Friends Forever (which I just read is the NYT #1 best seller!). I scored her newest book from Simon & Schuster on Twitter during a BEA promotion in May. So I’ll be reviewing Best Friends Forever here and on Amazon.
(See, Twitter is not entirely the time waster some people think it is! Okay, it is, but you can also get free stuff. That’s something, right?)
Oh, and by “waiting room book” I mean the book that I only take with me to doctor’s appointments or wherever else I might be happen to be waiting. It gives me something to look forward to when I’m dreading the two-hour wait for a fifteen minute office visit. Am I the only one that has a special book just for waiting rooms? Please let me I’m not.
I picked up Afterbirth: Stories You Won’t Read in a Parenting Magazine (edited by Dani Klein Modisett) after my cousin sent me a link to Caroline Bicks’s hilarious essay My Date With Dr. Ferber. I’m looking forward to the wit and wisdom in this book, though I’m afraid I’m horrified by some of it (see Bicks’s essay about what a rebellious toddler can do). If nothing else, it promises to be more fun than reading What to Expect When You’re Expecting.
I am looking for pregnancy/motherhood/parenting book recommendations (both practical and entertaining) while I still have time to read such things. So, if there is a book I must read before this baby arrives, let me know! I’m currently reading On Becoming Baby Wise: Giving Your Infant the Gift of Nighttime Sleep because I’m determined to have a child who sleeps better than I do! For fun, I had to buy Hatched! The Big Push from Pregnancy to Motherhood when I was at Borders yesterday. Had to. Seriously.
In anticipation of the movie, I am finally going to read The Time Traveler’s Wife. I have wanted to read this book since it came out six years ago-- which is why I no longer let myself buy books in hardcover. At least this particular hardcover was a gift and not one of my many, many bookstore purchases.
That’s just a little taste of my summer reading list. There are so many books I hope to read before the busy, busy fall season-- which will be even busier than usual for me. But I’m such a book nerd, I’m really looking forward to the many, many children’s books I’m going to be purchasing over the next few years!
What’s it all about?
Life. Love. Writing. Editing. Sex. Books. Romance. Movies. Friendship. Photography. Teaching. Coffee. (Lots of coffee.) Travel. Feminism. Academia. Insomnia. Memories. Experiences. Rants. Raves. Reviews. Chocolate. Mmm… chocolate. Musings of an insomniac writer. Want to know more?
