Book Club Archives - Small Things Are Big Things

April 8, 2016 by: Kara Noel Lawson

Station Eleven – If Reading Till 3am is Your Thing

It’s been awhile since a book has kept me away till the wee hours of the morning. Last night Station Eleven did just that!

It’s good!

Compelling story.
Page turner.
Well written.
And the way the stories intertwine… so much goodness.

You won’t be disappointed…
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I want to open up my own Little Free Library so I can meet the other readers in my neighborhood. Have you heard of LFL? It’s adorable! You build a little house for books and people can leave books and take books! We can share good books with fellow readers, without breaking the bank at a book store or dealing with public library late fees! (Not that I ever mind paying the fees… I have a few right now. Eeeek!)
I found the plans I want to use (below) and now Brad just has build it for me! And I have to get it approved by my HOA. I’m hoping that won’t be difficult.

Meanwhile while I’m finishing up this novel my kids will be sleeping on the floor out of boredom, and they are also probably starving because I haven’t made a proper breakfast or lunch.
One day of animal crackers and apples never did anyone harm.
Right?

July 10, 2014 by: Kara Noel Lawson

The Kitchen House {my own personal book club}

I love stories from The South.
This southern tale starts in 1791 pulls you in on the first two pages.

Book:
The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom

About:
Orphaned during her passage from Ireland, young, white Lavinia arrives on the steps of the kitchen house and is placed, as an indentured servant, under the care of Belle, the master’s illegitimate slave daughter. Lavinia learns to cook, clean, and serve food, while guided by the quiet strength and love of her new family.
In time, Lavinia is accepted into the world of the big house, caring for the master’s opium-addicted wife and befriending his dangerous yet protective son. She attempts to straddle the worlds of the kitchen and big house, but her skin color will forever set her apart from Belle and the other slaves.

To Read or Not to Read:
Yes.

I love stories from The South.
This southern tale starts in 1791 pulls you in on the first two pages.

After reading The Kitchen House I felt relief for some of the characters I loved. There are lots of tragedies and miscommunications. Oh hey, literature! I also felt hopeful. But there was also a deep sadness for what happened to African Americans during the pre-Civil War time period. As well as how far we still have to go for equality.

My Thoughts:

The main character’s name is Lavinia. And because I rarely read unique names correctly, I was saying “Latvia” (as in the country) in my head. Good luck with that!
Grissom describes some of the most yummy food ever for a Christmas feast. p36 And now that I’m cooking and all, I’m co curious about how people cooked during that era.
Sometimes you just want to shake the characters, because if they just tell that “one thing” then things will end up so much happier. I often wonder how that plays out in real life. Are there things that would be so much better if we just communicated more? I think the answer is yes.
Page 30: “This world is not the only home. This world is for practice to get things right.” Love that.
There is major contrast between the lifestyles of the slaves who work in the “big house” and the slaves who work in the fields. This theme in the book fascinated me.
The slaves in the big house a very protective of Marshall, even to point of a well deserved murder, and Marshall is so cruel to them. I wondered why throughout the book.

There is so much more… but I can’t ruin everything!

May 30, 2014 by: Kara Noel Lawson

A Tale for the Time Being {My Own Personal Book Club}

I picked this book for it’s cover.
Seriously, how great are the color combos???

Book: A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki.

About:
”A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be.”
In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine. Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future.

To Read or Not to Read:
Yes.
I loved the feeling I had after finishing A Tale for the Time Being. There were some pretty gritty parts, but I loved the way Ozeki tied in all the storylines. And there were many: 16-year-old outcast, suicidal computer genius with a secret humanitarian’s heart, 104-year-old feminist Zen Buddhist nun, WWII scholar Kamikaze pilot, Japanese American novelist, and Canadian environmentalist. Some of the first dream sequences were a little blah to me, but overall it’s an interesting read. I loved the peek into the Zen Buddist world! A lot!

My Thoughts:

Nao talks about her 104 year old grandmother, Jiko, doing things really slowly “in order to spread time out so that’ she’ll have more of it and live longer.” I actually love this concept and I feel like it goes along with my own little mantra to ‘be present’ and to ‘do small things with great love’. Our lives are collections of small moments and our moments should be savored. p24
Nao says she quit blogging because she “caught (herself) pretending that everybody out therein cyberspace cared about what (she) thought.” And that when she thought about “all the millions of people in their lonely little rooms, furiously writing and posting to their lonely little pages that nobody has time to read because they’re all so busy writing and posting, it kind of broke (her) heart.” As a person I couldn’t agree more with this statement, and as a blogger I feel like everyone has a story to tell, and if they are passionate about their story, and have an important message to share then they should. But a blog (or FT or twitter or instagram) shouldn’t be your life. p26
Ozeki quotes Milan Kundera from Book of Laughter and Forgetting. The book was written in 1980 and I feel like is rings so true today! “Once the writer in every individual comes to life (and that time is not far off), we are in for an age of universal deafness and lack of understanding.” Wowza! How true is that today!!?!? It is so easy to share your story, and that’s great! But so many people substitute that for more authentic interactions. And you know how I feel about that! p26
Suicide is a common theme in this book. Nao’s father writes a letter trying to explain the Japanese perspective about suicide and I found it so interesting. I wonder if this really represents the way the Japanese culture views suicide. p87
Nao talks a lot about her experience living with Jiko in the Zen Buddhist temple. Nao shares many of the Japanese prayers the nuns say throughout the day and over mundane tasks like bathing and even pooping. This was a lovely reminder to me to pray without ceasing. p164 p167
Jiko introduces the practice zazen to Nao. Its about meditating and thinking of nothing. She calls it “nonthinking.” I love this. p183
The concept of fighting a wave. LOVE! This comes up later with Jiko’s son who is a kamikaze pilot in WW2. This is such a beautiful metaphor and I’ve thought about that whole story so many times… but I can’t ruin that for you!! p192 p251

Believe it or not, I could talk a lot more about this book! And all the different layers of theology.
Read it and let’s chat!

May 25, 2014 by: Kara Noel Lawson

The House at Tyneford {My Own Personal Book Club}

I passed by a book at Costco and noticed the review, which reads, “Fans of Downton Abbey… will absolutely adore The House at Tyneford.”
So I bought it.
And loved it.

About:
It’s the spring of 1938 and no longer safe to be a Jew in Vienna. Nineteen-year-old Elise Landau is forced to leave her glittering life of parties and champagne to become a parlor maid in England. She arrives at Tyneford, the great house on the bay, where servants polish silver and serve drinks on the lawn. But war is coming, and the world is changing. When the master of Tyneford’s young son, Kit, returns home, he and Elise strike up an unlikely friendship that will transform Tyneford—and Elise—forever.

To read or not to read:
Yes!
I say The House at Tyneford by Natasha Solomons is worth the read.
The feeling at the end was satisfying but also pretty heavy.

My thoughts: (spoiler alert especially on the last bullet point)

Julian and Anna, Elise’s parents, are waiting for their visas to get out of Austria and at one point Elise remarks that she doesn’t understand why it’s taking so long because the country doesn’t want them there anyway. I feel that way the whole book. Ug.
Margot, Elise’s sister, escapes to the United States and in one letter she says she finds herself “hording all (her) memories of Anna and Julian, reciting them again and again, terrified in case (she) forgets something.” This breaks my heart. Having lost someone I love, I feel the same way. At the beginning you can’t wait till you can get through the day hour minute without thinking of them, but at the same time you are so scared to forget. p298
The Tyneford House is so secluded, the town and residents are left out during the first part of the war. But as time passes they are very involved – hosting Land Girls and growing food for the troops. During one day’s chores, a German plane is flying low and chases Elise and actually fires at her till she runs to safety in the woods. I just thought this was so interesting and the pilot was so cruel. War changes people. p280
While Elise and her friend Poppy are out in the field working they watch an English Spitfire plane and a German Messerschmitt plane going head to head. Elise is reflects, “I felt oddly distanced as I watched them weave among the clouds. It was hard to imagine that inside each cockpit lurked a young man, filled with sweat and terror and fighting to the death…” I feel like so much of what my generation knows of war, is detached. It’s hard to believe that right now in so many places young men and women are fighting for their lives. p298
This book was based on a true story about a town on the Dorset coast called Tyneham. The English military took over the town “temporarily” for the war. Then never gave it back. Now it’s a ghost town and residents who had lived there for generations were displaced. Mr. Rivers says there has been a Rivers living in Tyneford since 1610 and when they are told to move, 500 years gets packed up in boxes. p328 This breaks my heart. I have such a great love for old homes. When I look at a home or estate that has gone to ruins it kills me. I think of the family that built the home and how they imagined their future generations living in, and loving the home as much as they do. I look at all the care and attention to detail uncared for. Sigh. If I ever become a millionaire I’ll buy up the old homes, restore them, then rent them to rad families. True Story.
Elise’s father, Julian, was an author and his last novel was smuggled out of Austria in Elise’s viola. Elise doesn’t open the viola to read the novel until she discovers her parents are dead. When she finally takes the pages out they are all blank. p340 I hate that the pages are blank. To me this was one of the most tragic moments in the whole book (and I mean, there are A LOT of tragic moments). But to think that Julian’s last works were lost and that his one wish wasn’t granted felt wrong. Also, his daughters didn’t get that last conversation with him through his words. This would probably be the only thing I would change in this book, and the blank pages left my heart heavy for all that was lost to the family in this story.

Now grab a cup of tea and enjoy The House at Tyneford!

April 28, 2014 by: Kara Noel Lawson

My Own Personal Book Club – Coram Boy

Have you ever seen the book section at the dollar store?
I’m not talking about the board books area, but that random two foot section of even more random books… next to all the New Testaments.
Yeah, you’ve passed it.
Have you ever actually looked at it?
Check it out next time you are picking up bleach.
I love reading and I don’t care if it’s a current best seller or a best seller from 15 years ago! And that’s what you’ll find in this random mix. Older books. And I mean, who cares if you don’t like it. It’s a dollar… use it for kindling at your next beach bonfire if you get bored after the first 30 pages.

The last book I picked up was Coram Boy by Jamila Gavin. It was a Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year in 2000. I love historical fiction so I picked it up and it was a good read.

The book takes place in eighteenth century England and centers around ‘the Coram man’. Peddlers in different areas would collect abandoned children and deliver them to the Coram Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Children. A charity that still exists today! In this area the ‘Coram Man’ was Otis and his assistant was a boy named Meshak. Instead of delivering the collected children, Otis would kill them and collect the money every year from the families to “take care of the child” or to blackmail rich women who wanted their out-of-wedlock-pregnancies hidden.
I know, huge bummer right!?!?
This story centers around the complicated relationship between Otis and Meshak, then how Meshak ends up escaping and saving a child, Aaron, from Otis. Then the story continues with the Aaron’s story!
It’s good, and because it teen novel, the story doesn’t end depressing.

If you read if for your book club, click here for some great discussion questions!

July 24, 2013 by: Kara Noel Lawson

Mail from Heaven and To Heaven and Back

Cora Jane and I were in the backyard spray painting one of her room projects (I can’t wait to share her room after the RV Trip series) and she said,
“I would like some mail from Nannie.”
My throat clenched up and my heart ached (again).
My mom would often send the children stickers, pictures and sweet notes. Nothing big or expensive. Just small things with great love.
Just because.
Small things are big things, my friends.
(I’m going to go cry now… whew… I’m back.)
Then she looked at me and said, “I know she’s in heaven but she might want to send us something.” I was starting to explain that heaven didn’t work like that, but she looked at me and said, “I know God is very busy, but he loves us so much and he can do anything. REALLY. Like lift a skyscraper. And if God is too busy, then He can send His angels to deliver the mail from heaven. REALLY. They do errands for Him, ya know. And I really think Nannie wants to send us something.”

Well, golly-gee. What the ef’ am I supposed to say to that????

So I sadly tell her, “You never know.”

And, well, we don’t know.

My head says, dead people can’t communicate from heaven. I believe there is no pain in heaven and if my mom knew how much pain we were in she would be in pain and that’s impossible. (There’s other reasons too, but that’s better for a conversation.)

But my heart says, God loves us so much and he can do anything… like lift a skyscraper. And He can send his angels to deliver messages… they do errands for Him, “ya know.”

The last time I hung out with my mom (before she fell) was some of the sweetest time we have ever had. What a gift!! She had just decided to come over to my house every Friday to help me and be with the kids. This was huge for me, and the kind of help I’d never had before. I was beyond excited. She fell a few days later and we never got to have our Fridays together.

After she was gone, Fridays were are the worst for me. I felt like I was mourning something that “should have been” every single week. The first two Fridays after she died were stormy and it even hailed. The weather made it even more heart wrenching because my Mom LOVED the rain and hail was always an exciting event. It hails so rarely here it is always a big deal. And having it hail so often was quite an event. I’d watch the hail on Fridays and daydream about what my mom and I would be doing if she had never fallen. But it wasn’t till after I read To Heaven and Back by Mary C Neal, MD that I thought that could have been a little mail from heaven.

One of our close friends gave me the book. (Or maybe she just let me borrow it. I better find that out.) The author, Mary, had a near death experience and then wrote about it. It’s a great book. But the part that hit my heart was about messages she received from her son and stepfather after they died – both were in the form of flowering plants that hadn’t bloomed before. May says, “I know that Willie send us a message that day through the roses; one of appreciation, love, gratitude, and a sense of apology for leaving.”

I wonder if that’s what happened to me as well. But it had to happen a few Fridays for me to understand. I’d like to think that my mom is saying that she’s sorry she had to leave but she’s OK… beyond OK, in heaven. What a comfort!

Maybe Cora Jane is right and Nannie does want to send her something. I can’t wait to see what it is!

Do you believe we can get messages mail from heaven?

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Since I’m going to use this as one of my personal bookclub posts. Here are some other thoughts on the book:

Another theme in the book is Mary’s role as a working mom. She says that it’s “healthy and essential to re-evaluate this balancing act occasionally and make changes when needed.” I couldn’t agree more! If you’re feeling pulled in too many directions, re-evaluate and change. p37
During her heaven experience, Mary describes reviewing her life. But instead of watching a movie of her experiences she was shown the impact of her actions, decisions and human interactions. Even up to dozens of times removed from the actual event. (Small Things are Big Things, folks!!) I think this is so interesting and a great perspective to have during our short lives here on earth. p57
Mary talks about the period of time while she was going back and forth from heaven to her body and the people trying to revive her from drowning. I love how she uses the comparison to a child asking for more things before bed (you’ll have to read it to know exactly what I’m talking about). It also gave me comfort hoping that while my mom was so close to death for so long she was being held closely to Jesus and not scared or sad to leave us. p73
Pray. Do it. Always. We are a living prayer to God. p94
After her son, Willie’s, death Mary was surrounded by a wonderful community (just like we are) but she taped this “Daily Creed” to her fridge and I think it’s a great thing to remind yourself everyday. Below is hers, but you can make one specific to what hits your core. i.e. I believe God is real. I believe the number on my scale doesn’t measure my worth. I believe my children are gifts from God. I believe what I do matters to God.
Mary’s Daily Creed:
I believe God’s promises are true.
I believe heaven is real.
I believe nothing can separate me from God’s love
I believe God has work for me to do.
I believe God will see me though and carry me when I cannot walk.

Thanks for reading friends. Now I get to tell you, what you do matters. You are valuable to me and more to God. And I like you.

June 28, 2013 by: Kara Noel Lawson

My Own Personal Book Club–Stories for the Family’s Heart

I love reading.
I love being transported into another time or place or world.
I love the crackling binding as I open up a new book for the first time.
I always bury my face in the pages and breath deep the words I’m about to devour.
True story.
I want my kids to love reading.
So we read.
A lot.
We are going to read our first chapter book out loud this summer – Charlotte’s Web. The first book my mom read to me out loud. I vividly remember us finishing the book together and her crying like a baby when (spoiler alert) Charlotte dies. What a treasured memory of my mom.
Small Things are Big Things.
I miss her.
After she died, (ug, I hate saying that!!!) my aunt found all of our Christmas presents, and the organized list of what-went-to-who. Oh the care my mom put in the details! Gifts she had probably bought on sale throughout the year, all perfectly tailored for each grandchild and Brad and I. One of my gifts was Stories for the Family’s Heart: Over 100 stories to Encourage your Soul.

So I’m starting My Personal Book Club with this book. My book club of one, isn’t formal. I’ll just be writing a short post after I read a book.

Stories for the Family’s Heart is divided into sections – Compassion, Encouragement, Virtue, Growing up, Love, Memories, Grandparents and Faith – and all are inspirational. There is a huge variety of writing styles, and the stories range in length, from a few short paragraphs to about 10 pages.
Just perfect for reading aloud next to the fireplace as your four children listen attentively whilst sipping hot cocoa in matching pajamas.
Oh wait… is that just my fantasy?
Some of my favorite…

“A Good Lesson” written by W. & R. Chambers, first published in 1916
“The Bobby Pins” by Linda Goodman
“Breakfast with the Polar Bears” by Allison Harms
“Stiches in Time” by Philip Gulley

And my favorite line from the book comes from “Amazing Grace” by Philip Yancey – “ When grace descends, the world falls silent before it.”

This is a great book to read out loud with your family and will probably inspire some great conversations with your kids. But I just read a couple of stories at a time before bed.
That was good too.

Stay tuned for the rest of our RV trip coming soon!