Football and Forgiveness

I may not be from West Texas, but I am from Western Pennsylvania and we know all about high school ball and the Friday Night Lights. This book was definitely like a journey home in some respects. I could have been written about the people that I know, or have watched play while I was growing up.

This is the story of one man, Neely Crenshaw, facing his past and finding forgiveness. It is also the story of a town, a football tradition and the man who inspired them all. Coach Rake is dying and his boys come home to pay their final respects.

I was hesitant about the book in the beginning, it was a little slow to develop at first and not your typical Grisham book. I was glad that I stuck it out. I loved the choices that Coach Rake made for his eulogy. From them we get an amazing perspective of one man's life and how he influenced so many. Mainly though, it's about forgiveness - forgiving others and most importantly, forgiving ourselves.

Little Bee

I was about to say that these were the most laborious two hundred pages that I have ever read, but then, I was unfortunately reminded that I read the Life of Pi. The two can not be compared, Little Bee had some characters that were very human and empathetic and a life lesson buried somewhere in the wondering story line.

So before I get to what I did like, let me get what I didn't like out of the way. For only two hundred pages, the book feels so much longer. It seemed to go on FOREVER and the story just sort of meanders from one character to the next until the very end. As I was reading, I felt like huge gaps of the story were left out, and I was right. It comes together at the end, but for those readers who feel like they need to be "into" a book to continue, you simply may never get there. The story takes too long to develop.

Little Bee was difficult for me to relate to for most of the book. Her life is something that is difficult for me to empathize with, and her constant search for a way to commit suicide simply unfathomable. Still, perhaps if I had endured all that she had, I would feel that same way. I just don't know.

Sarah was also very difficult in some cases to relate to. She loves her husband, she doesn't, and then she loves him again. She asks herself the hard questions but never really answers until the end, where it seems like she rises to the occasion.

There are some moments of humor between Sarah and Batman that I found extremely endearing.

Ok so that said, I loved the character of Batman. Like any child, his view of life is very simple, "Are you a goody or a baddy?" Sometimes I wish it were that easy. I loved the authors point of how, when we are children we want to do the right things, we want to make the world a better place. He asks a question of do we lose that along the way or is it a compromise that we make? I don't know, but it's a question that I am trying to answer in my own life.

I think it will make a good discussion for book club. I'm glad to be moving on. Up next, " Columbine", "Codetalkers", "Each Little Bird that Sings" and the "Postmistress." Not necessarily in that order.

Food Rules by Michael Pollan

My sister recommended this book to me and I loved it! I enjoyed it so much that I have since added The Omnivore's Dilemma to my To Be Read list.

This book is very short and easy to read. The rules inside it are simple enough to follow, but at the same time, brilliant in their simplicity. These are in most cases rules that we intrinsically all know, but in our rush for speed and convenience in our daily lives, we conveniently forget.

Some of these are rules that I have heard before. One of my favorites is to shop the peripheries at the grocery store. If you are doing that, you are buying fresh fruits, vegetables and meat instead of processed food that is unhealthy for you.

Other rules were new to me, but seem like simple common sense in retrospect - for example, eat only those foods that your great-grandmother would recognize as food. I used to buy my children gogurt to eat. They loved it and it was what I thought of as a healthy snack for the beach. After all, how can you go wrong with frozen yogurt? The answer is easily when you consider the packaging, the possibility for leaching dangerous chemicals into the yogurt after it has been frozen. Never again will we buy that particular kind of frozen yogurt.

Finally, I guess my favorite rule was "Real food doesn't come through the window of your car." We all know that fast food isn't healthy for us, but for the sake of convenience, we still eat it. Now, after further investigation, I know that not only is fast food not a healthy choice for my family, it is also an inhumane choice for the animals who share our planet. I'm McHating It, and I hope you are too. Do your family a favor - read this book. It isn't any time commitment at all, and like me, you will be glad you did.

I cook more, the foods I choose are healthier, and I have stopped engaging in practices that are bad for me, bad for the animals and bad for my planet. I thank my sister for recommending this book!