Tag Archives: Book

Realm Central – Braced for Impact

May 8, 2023 By in Realm Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments

If you’re a writer, perhaps your initial reaction is to cringe at the thought of someone, possibly a total stranger, writing a review of your book. This individual probably has no idea who you are as a person or a writer, isn’t familiar with your artistic or personal struggles, and may not possess the qualifications to review what you’ve created.

Or maybe you’ll chill out about the thought of someone writing a review of your work because, after all, your mom gave you a five-star review, and who’s stupid enough to argue with your mom, right?

Or maybe reviews roll off your back because you’re truly confident that your work not only satisfies you and your goals but is really darn good, and you’re rightfully proud of it. You don’t live in fear of reviews and reading them doesn’t faze you.

What if the review is good? What if it’s bad? What if it’s mediocre, and you’d have appreciated a stronger loved it or loathed it reaction?

It wasn’t until I realized that readers could leave a review on BookBaby or Goodreads for my novel, Realm, that I began to think about reviews. Reviews are coming, and that’s great because it means people are reading Realm. Do I want readers to love my novel? Of course, I do. That’s why I wrote it. I’m hoping people will get the same experience when reading Realm that I had while writing it.

But do I want to use this post to influence reader reviews? Absolutely not. The critiques have already occurred, so I’m using the easy ones to soften the blow of the harder ones that may come. And I’m not living in fear of reviews.

In my experience of reading reviews for books, I have found that they fell heavily in the five-star or one-star ratings with a sprinkling of two-, three-, and four-star reviews in between. People who left five stars quite often made the mistake of writing a lengthy synopsis and one line stating they loved the book. One-star reviewers simply said they hated it.

Despite reviews, I always make up my own mind whether or not I’ll read a book, but I’m still curious what other people thought about it. Truer reviews seem to be found in the two-, three-, and four-star comments. These people explain the why behind their statements, and that’s where I find a connection with other readers because, quite frankly, I’d like to connect with someone else over a book even if we disagree!

This is also where people will explain things such as why they awarded the number of stars they did as well as admit that what they didn’t care for did not ruin the entire book for them. That’s honest reviewing.

Some reviewers apply their own stars in their comments, which I find extremely helpful. They rate characters and their arcs separately from dialog, prose, description, and overall storytelling. It takes a bit of time, but one can tell these readers really care about what they’ve read and what they provided in return. I find these reviews to be most sincere.

Often, I must scroll through a lot of bad reviews to find the ones written by people who understand the value of a well-written critique. Most importantly, I try very hard to be the type of person who writes the kind of reviews I enjoy reading.

So again, am I trying to influence your comments? No, I promise I’m not. Rather, let’s see if we can generate something akin to a real conversation within reviews for Realm.

Navigate the Realm

February 6, 2023 By in Realm, Writing Advice, Writing Toolbox Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

As with any new venture, there are often a whole host of things one must learn quickly. Such has been my experience with publishing my upcoming novel, Realm.

Ever since the beginning of the year, my life has been an exciting and scary mixture of “hurry up and do this” and/or “twiddle my thumbs and wait.” Every e-mail from BookBaby that lands in my inbox has evoked both elation and fear. I don’t know why I’m a ninny about such things because I have great assistance from BookBaby as well as a host of amazing, supportive friends and family members.

Anyhow, one of the neatest things I have learned during the whole process has been about metadata. I don’t know about you, but beyond hearing the term metadata, I honestly had no idea what its purpose was or how to use it. That is until it became an integral part of not only publishing my novel but making sure it was easily searchable.

I am proud to announce that the metadata for Realm has been optimized!

Seriously, folks—this is one of the first and easiest things I had to do toward the production of Realm. And now that I’m an expert on it, I feel compelled to share with you just in case, like me, you are unaware of how important metadata really is.

Metadata is data that provides information about other data but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. Descriptive metadata is descriptive information about a resource. It is used for discovery and identification. It includes elements such as title, author, and keywords.

The etymology of the term metadata consists of two words, one Greek and one Latin. First, the Greek word meta, which means after or beyond, and second, the Latin word datum, which means datum, the singular for data. Therefore, the expression metadata means beyond the data. Metadata is a fairly new word, it appeared in the second half of the 20th century, while data dates back to the middle of the 17th century. Are you impressed yet?

By this point, you’re either zoning out because this is irrelevant to your life right now, panicky because you’re about to publish, too, and metadata is probably in your near future, or scratching your head because there is something about metadata that is familiar.

That’s because you’ve been using metadata longer than you realized. This invaluable resource didn’t always bear such a fancy name and wasn’t always digitalized. Remember using something like what is pictured below to locate books in the library whether for pleasure reading or for the purpose of writing a report on a subject assigned by your teacher?

Yep, that’s right. A card catalog is a repository for metadata. All those brilliantly conceived little cards bearing information such as author’s name, book title, subject matter, and key words in case you can’t remember the first three are a basic form of metadata. Personally, I miss the soft, wooden click of the drawers closing as I moved between them in search of a book.

Although you’ll probably never search for my novel in an old-fashioned card catalog, I’ll still provide you with all the optimized metadata to ensure you’ll find my book.

Title: Realm

Author: HL Gibson

Main Subject: FICTION

Subgenre: Christian/Futuristic

Keywords: Adventure, Christian, Faith, Fantasy, Futuristic, Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction

Publisher: BookBaby

Imprint: Bezalel Media

 

Legacy of Love

January 9, 2023 By in Books, Movies & Music Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

I’ve always enjoyed Joanna Trollope’s writing because she captures and portrays the nature of human relationships with accuracy. Writing as Caroline Harvey, the name she used for her historical romances, Trollope provides the reader with a triple dose of her writing style in her novel Legacy of Love.

The story begins with Charlotte, a beautiful, passionate young woman who is dissatisfied with the social conventions of what she perceives to be her uninspiring life. Marriage removes her from Victorian London to exotic Afghanistan where her adventures unfold. Scandal dogs her every step, but Charlotte is impervious and indifferent to the gossip.

Charlotte’s story is told from the POV of her beloved sister, Emily. Although Emily sees Charlotte’s faults, she is devoted to her older sister and can barely contemplate her displeasure let alone express it. Charlotte often takes advantage of Emily’s sweet nature, and in my opinion, her actions come across as bullying . . . in the sweetest of ways.

When Charlotte meets the love of her life, a man as dashing and wild as she, they present an unstoppable pair who surmount every crisis and are the ones to whom everyone else looks for strength and encouragement. Unfortunately, when nothing extraordinary is occurring, Charlotte and her man are rather useless people who are unable to make a home or farm their land.

While Charlotte could have been an example of a strong woman who met every challenge with dignity, she ended up reading like a selfish, self-made legend whose only purpose was to entertain herself and her husband. This is never more clear than when she tossed over her first husband, who naturally expected Charlotte to conduct herself like a Victorian lady, and did nothing to earn her lack of interest or commitment. He was conveniently killed in battle.

The legend of Charlotte continues to cause damage when her own daughter, Iskandara, is born with a twisted leg and average looks. Iskandara cannot live up to the myth of Charlotte, and she allows this to distort her spirit as badly as her leg. Her lifelong disappointment is taken out on her own daughter, Alexandra.

Alexandra holds center court for the middle portion of the novel. She, too, lives in awe of her grandmother, Charlotte, but instead of trying to imitate her, Alexandra flees her grandmother’s larger-than-life persona that continues to haunt the family estate long after her death.

Emily, now a great aunt without children of her own, provides refuge and guidance for Alexandra in what read like classic Jane Austen. A bit of reverse psychology executed by Emily crowbars the backward Alexandra out of her complacency and into the life she’s always dreamed of where she is the rudder of her own ship. Throw in an extremely talented, brooding, and slightly volatile artist whose career is revived when he falls in love with and paints Alexandra, and we have happily ever after à la Austen.

Cara, named after her great grandmother Charlotte, rounds out the last third of the novel. The youngest child of Alexandra, she is as enthusiastic, beautiful, and daring as her legendary great grandmother. Cara commands attention wherever she goes and is a natural born leader, but eventually, all this amounts to is that she is popular.

When World War II disrupts Cara’s plans, her self-centeredness rears its head much like Charlotte’s, however, Cara is also outrageously spoiled, so her obnoxious qualities rise to the surface to simmer most unbecomingly. It didn’t take me long to dislike Cara and realize that most of her problems are self-made.

There’s more predictability in the last third of the novel since the reader has Charlotte’s and Alexandra’s stories as a foundation for Cara, but Trollope infuses freshness and hope into the story by having Cara mature in a way that Charlotte never did. I suspected how things would turn out for Cara, which was extremely satisfying despite the obviousness of it, but counterbalancing this detail is the believability with which Trollope transitions Cara from brat to womanhood.

Cara undoes the harm Charlotte’s influence has over the lives of the women in her family by taking responsibility for herself and everyone around her not just when crises arises but during the drudge of daily life. She leads the life Charlotte wanted with far more grace, and in doing so, she grows in wisdom.

Legacy of Love is historical romance, but I found it to be so much more than simple love stories.  Trollope does a wonderful job of grounding the reader in every era without bogging the narrative down by adding too much detail. Her peripheral characters are expertly woven into the lives of her protagonists thus making them essential to the tale, and her conclusions are pleasurable without being overly sentimental.

Let me know in the comments if you’ve read Legacy of Love or any Joanna Trollope novel. I’d love to compare reviews.

Percival’s Planet

September 5, 2022 By in Books, Movies & Music Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

One of the reasons why I never watched the movie Titanic was because no amount of SPOILER ALERT was going to keep me from knowing the end of the story going in. The ship sank. The same was true for a book I recently read called Percival’s Planet, an historical fiction accounting of the discovery of Pluto. I had a good idea how the novel was going to end. Still, I was on an astronomical high from The Comet Seekers, so I thought I’d give Percival’s Planet a whirl.

Most reports I have read indicate that the Titanic sank in about two hours, which is a good length for a movie except that probably not that much occurred onboard that would make a good story. For this reason, pre-iceberg and post-iceberg filler was created to take up some time until the ship sank.

The same was true for Percival’s Planet. The process by which Pluto was discovered was so painfully boring that the author, Michael Byers, would not have much of a story if that was all he wrote about. And even after it was discovered, there was some skepticism as to whether or not what was found was indeed the elusive Planet X.

So, the reader was treated to more on Kansas farm boy, Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of Pluto. However, in Byers’s hands, Clyde’s story was about as exciting as watching grain being threshed. I did feel for him when a sudden hailstorm took out the crop that was supposed to pay for college, and he showed incredible perseverance producing handmade lenses until they were perfect. But again, Pluto and Clyde alone were not enough to carry this tale.

Vesto Slipher, the Lowells, and a few other real people were sprinkled in to help ground the story. There was a technical edge that was interesting without being too tedious even if one has not studied the math and science required for space exploration. The era during which the novel took place, 1928 to 1930, lent some curious appeal as far as social allowances, customs, clothing, and the looming Great Depression.

But it still was not enough to make this the type of story one can hardly wait to return to. It took me three weeks to plow through it, and there were days when I left it untouched. Still, the writing was not horrible, and I’m no quitter. There were some well-turned phrases, but nothing that leapt off the page begging to be read.

Not even the washed-up boxer, Teddy, going through a painful divorce, who was in love with his beautiful secretary, Mary, who was slowly going mad, helped. Nor did the secretary’s older, gay brother, Hollis, who struggled to maintain his relationship with his younger, extremely rich partner. Not even Dick and Florrie, more megarich and brilliant people involved with work at Lowell Observatory, made for interesting reading. And then there was the poor sap, Alan, an astronomer, who named a comet after Florrie before he realized she had run away to marry Dick.

Let’s not forget Felix, the failure-to-please-daddy heir, who decided he wanted to be an amateur paleontologist, and his mother, whose name I’ve honestly forgotten in the three days since I finished the book. Their relationship was awkward, and how they connected with those already mentioned was clunky at best, superfluous at worst.

Alan married Mary; Clyde had a crush on her; Mary was hospitalized after attacking Alan; Hollis disappeared; I truly wished Dick, Florrie, Felix, and his Mama would, too; Teddy became Mary’s champion; Pluto was found but not in a satisfying, triumphant, end-of-the-book way; peripheral characters charmed and annoyed on cue; and Byers wrapped up stories of fictional characters with whom I forged no connection or caring. The narrative moved at the pace of a comet viewed with the naked eye.

What we had here, folks, was a Great Plains soap opera that read like grit blown in from the Dust Bowl to lodge in the corners of one’s mind, waiting to be swept out by the next interesting book.

I suspect Michael Byers attempted to recreate the thrill of discovering a new planet, which was no small thing. Unfortunately, when the novel was published in 2010, moon landings were and still are studied as history, the Space Shuttle program ended in 2011, and it had been twenty years since the Hubble Space Telescope was launched, and twelve years for the first piece of the International Space Station.

Perhaps it’s a shame that we no longer look to the stars with as much interest as we once did. God knows we are barely able to take care of things on Earth let alone what we would do if we ever achieved colonization somewhere in space. Still, what could have been a great story, even to someone like me who doesn’t follow astronomy closely, ended up fizzling out faster than a shooting star.

In the end, I’m glad Clyde Tombaugh never knew Pluto was demoted from being a planet.

Anya by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer

June 3, 2020 By in Books, Movies & Music Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Don’t read Anya by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer if all you want is a quick read about the Holocaust. Today’s writers are cranking out enough of those complete with prescribed character arcs and inciting incidents occurring within the first three pages guaranteed to keep you hooked. If, however, you’re willing to be stitched into the fabric of life of the protagonist, if you are willing to invest yourself in details and description, if you are interested in conversation that reads like it takes place at a large family gathering, then Anya just might be your novel.

The book reads like one long memory, and I believe it is this quality that makes the events of Anya’s life so seamless. The transition from well-off daughter, wife, and mother to a woman scrambling to keep her family together in the ghetto and then hold herself together mentally and physically in the concentration camps is so smooth. Perhaps it’s because very little detail about the war is provided as if the reader should already know the particulars of how, why, who, when, what, and where. Rather, we are given Anya’s perspective and reaction to everything that occurs. In fact, it’s very late in the war years that Hitler is even mentioned and only then as somebody far away who somehow has power over Anya’s life.

The reader will always be right in the moment with Anya. Schaeffer creates tension that keeps the reader from holding on to Anya’s past because the danger of the situation prevents one from mourning what was lost. There is simply no time to do so. That will come later. Maybe. As for the future, don’t bother contemplating it because it is inconceivable that a future—at least a positive one—could even exist with all Anya is forced to endure and to do just to survive. The only saving grace is that this is not your story, dear reader. Unless maybe it was.

What I found to be the most chilling as I lived Anya’s story with her was the fact that I mentally collected her actions and words to fall back on in case I found myself in a similar situation. Perhaps it is the political, social, and cultural climate of today that subconsciously prompted me. I honestly cannot say. Still, for a work of fiction, Anya is one novel whose influence and impact will stay with me for a long time. I have said before that finishing a well-written book was like leaving behind great friends. The same is true for Anya. The ghosts will live on.

The Scarlet Pimpernel

September 4, 2019 By in Books, Movies & Music Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Zounds! Zooks! And maybe even a few Egads! Although I may be flashing back to Clarence Day in Life with Father. These exclamations are just one of the many things that make The Scarlet Pimpernel so adorably charming. Who knew that cozy mysteries came in a vintage version? And thank you, Baroness Orczy, for taking only five weeks to transform your well-received play into a novel that reads like it was written in only five weeks.

“This can’t be a vintage cozy mystery,” you protest. “It’s about the Reign of Terror in France.” Yes, well, gentle reader, this version is about the more swashbuckling side of those dark days in the history of France. It features a thinly veiled hero, a beauty in need of rescue, and a villain who rubs his hands in malicious glee all the while laughing, “Bwa-ha-ha-ha!” At least that’s what I heard in my head every time Chauvelin rubbed his hands together. Which he did with annoying frequency. For a more realistic, yet still fictional, rendering of the Reign of Terror, I suggest A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.

Let’s also not forget to thank the Baroness for failing to consult her thesaurus for alternative adjectives when describing her three main characters. By the end of the novel, if you don’t know that Sir Percy Blakeney is inane, Lady Marguerite Blakeney is the most fêted woman in London, and Chauvelin is sarcastic, then you haven’t been paying attention. Then there is the gorgeous gorgeousness of life for the Blakeneys even though (SPOILER ALERT) they’re going through a bit of marital discord at the moment. In her defense, the Baroness did come from writing plays to novels, and perhaps she forgot that the repetitive adjectives worked better as onstage direction rather than actual words one has to read over and over and over.

Let’s take a closer look at Baroness Orczy’s hero, Marguerite Blakeney. “Wait—Marguerite is the lady in need of rescue. She couldn’t possibly be the hero of this story,” you again protest. Yes, well, since we’re all pretending we don’t know Sir Percy is the Scarlet Pimpernel, you must admit the majority of the story is told from Marguerite’s point of view. This small detail is a pleasant surprise as the reader is treated to a transformation in Marguerite’s character. And then Lady Blakeney ruins the ride by falling back in love with her husband and needing rescue herself thus shining the last few moments of glory on Sir Percy AKA the Scarlet Pimpernel. Way to dissapoint the feminists, Baroness.

I would have thought an inane man who kept an extra set of sumptuous clothing on his yacht into which he could change after performing astounding feats of derring-do to thwart a sarcastic villain would gladly have shared the heroic limelight with his fêted wife. As for Sir Percy’s alternate identity, it’s easy to see why he chose the Scarlet Pimpernel over the Red Ninny or the Crimson Fop. Those last two certainly wouldn’t make a damsel in distress tremble with desire.

The brilliant naming schemes don’t end there, dear reader. The worst is given to Mr. Jellyband whose name is so painfully, so obviously not a real name but rather a representation of his jovial character that I’m a titch surprised we weren’t further inflicted with Sir Manly Gorgeousbod, Lady Beauty Misunderstood, and Baddy Badguy. But really, the novel is so stinking precious than one simply cannot help but laugh aloud. To hate it would be like hating kittens, puppies, and babies.

Mockingbird Calling

June 12, 2018 By in Books, Movies & Music Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

As a teenager, there are so many things that one doesn’t appreciate. My ninth grade Honors English teacher assigned the book, To Kill a Mockingbird, as part of our reading for the year, and we didn’t question it. I wondered who this man, Harper Lee, was and what sort of book this dead man had written. While my teacher, Mrs. Kraft, quickly corrected our wrong assumption about Harper Lee’s gender, she didn’t mention that the authoress was still alive. It was a small oversight, and being teenagers, we were either too disinterested or too lazy to care. I ended up loving the book so much that I read it a couple more times throughout my life.

Fast forward to the release of Go Set a Watchman. By then I was writing and seeking publication, and if there is one thing I’ve learned as a writer it’s that I would never want my first draft of anything published for the entire world to read. The idea was horrifying, and since I had heard that Go Set a Watchman was Harper Lee’s first draft, I refused to read it in honor of her. Still, the point I made at the beginning of this post didn’t hit home with me.

It wasn’t until I read Charles J. Shields’s Mockingbird: a Portrait of Harper Lee that one particular fact become apparent. Harper Lee had still been alive in 1984 when I read her iconic novel for the first time. At least this time I had a better understanding of who she was and how much of herself and her life she had written into her novel.

I’ll provide you with my impressions of Nelle Harper Lee rather than bore you with facts. At first I wasn’t sure I liked this brash person who didn’t seem to recognize or understand boundaries in other people’s lives. In situations where most people would be embarrassed by such behavior, it appeared that Nelle didn’t have the good sense to be ashamed. What I thought of as her complete lack of social skills made me wonder if she was autistic, and I absolutely do not say that as a thoughtless insult. On the contrary, Nelle’s haphazard navigation of life touched my mother’s heart, and I wondered if she had anyone who truly understood her.

Adding to my concern was Nelle’s mother’s mental illness, and I wondered if the lack of maternal guidance toward her late-in-life daughter also affected the formation of Nelle’s personality. Alice Lee, the oldest sibling, and A. C. Lee, Nelle’s father, certainly filled any void in her life. According to Shields’s account, they presented a resilient style of parenting that I don’t believe the sensitive artist within Nelle was strong enough to withstand. Support for her chosen career came reluctantly, and only after her success with To Kill a Mockingbird did they come on board.

Then the pendulum would swing in the other direction, and a soft, caring Nelle appeared. She was still outspoken but also attentive to other people often to her own detriment. Her close friend, Truman Capote, benefited the most from this side of Nelle. He took advantage of her gentle nature when he employed her as his “assistant researchist” during the writing of In Cold Blood. A bare mention that had to be shared with Capote’s lover was all Nelle received for the extensive work she did. Along with Capote badmouthing Nelle on several occasions and his obvious envy of her success, it’s no wonder their relationship became strained.

I believe the pressure to live up to the success of To Kill a Mockingbird overwhelmed Nelle. I also believe that as much as she wanted to be a writer, she only had one novel in her, and this is absolutely fine. She could have been quite happy for years writing articles for newspapers or short stories for magazines, and if the idea for a novel came along, she could have penned it free from the burden of living up to her prior achievement. But the public and her family wanted more. The public wanted another book they could sink their teeth into, and for some reason I never truly understood, her family wanted her back home in Alabama at least six months out of the year. The tug of war on Nelle, both internally and externally, did little to encourage her writing. A second novel never came to light, and after ten years the bloom of her success from To Kill a Mockingbird had faded.

For the remainder of her life, Nelle viciously guarded her novel and characters, not so much as allowing a cookbook named after Calpurnia to be published. She basked in the waning glow of her novel, occasionally enjoying a resurgence of celebrity with anniversaries of the novel or when someone wrote an article about her or her famous book. Otherwise, she led a reclusive life to the degree that no one could ever convince me she wanted or approved the publication of Go Set a Watchman.

So do I have a clearer picture of Harper Lee? Actually, without her memoirs or at least a book of her personal correspondence, I’m left with more questions. I would have loved to speak with her, to wrestle her out of her insecurities, or at least understand where she was coming from. I believe we could have been friends.

– – – – –

The copy of Mockingbird: a Portrait of Harper Lee that I read was published prior to Nelle Harper Lee’s death. I do not know how the revised and updated copy reads, or whether it supplies further insight into the authoress or the publication of Go Set a Watchman. Quite frankly, I enjoy the mystique surrounding this simple woman, and I don’t feel as if I need to know more.

Family – The Ties That Bind…and Gag!

February 12, 2018 By in Books, Movies & Music Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

I had never read Erma Bombeck until a literary agency’s query letter specifications required me to find comparable books. I Googled books about families with a strong humor element, wrote down the titles, and placed holds on them at my local library. I also visited Books-A-Million to find the titles my library didn’t own, and I read the book jacket flaps, the opening paragraphs, and random selections throughout the books. One novel in particular seemed like it was going to be close, but I just didn’t feel a connection with it. The comparison to my novel ended up being slim at best. I never finished reading it.

I went back to the drawing board (Google) and refined my search for comparable books. I wanted truly funny family situations, the kind to which a reader could relate and which would make him or her laugh out loud. What I didn’t want were books that pushed someone’s social, political, or religious agenda or books that praised deep-seated dysfunctions in need of therapy and medication. Whatever I did returned a better selection of titles that weren’t just new books and authors, but many classic humor writers, too.

And I discovered Erma Bombeck. I had heard about Mrs. Bombeck as a kid, and I’ve read snippets of her writing usually on refrigerator magnets or bookmarks. At first I worried that her writing would be considered too old or irrelevant to today’s family, or worse, today’s woman. After reading Family – The Ties That Bind…and Gag! I realized that Mrs. Bombeck’s humorous writing is every bit as relevant today as when it was first published.

What appealed to me about Mrs. Bombeck’s writing was that she blended her role as a wife and mother into that of her writing career. She used the years she wasn’t writing for a paycheck to gather material for the times when she could. She made sacrifices without sacrificing her family, and it paid off in fifteen books, a humor column that appeared in nine hundred newspapers throughout the world, and an eleven-year guest appearance on ABC’s Good Morning, America. Mrs. Bombeck held twelve honorary doctorates, was appointed to the President’s Advisory Committee for Women, and was repeatedly named to The World Almanac’s annual list of the twenty five Most Influential Women in America. Pretty impressive for a housewife.

Per Mrs. Bombeck:

Raising a family wasn’t something I put on my resume, but I have to ask myself, would I apply for the same job again?

It was hard work. It was a lot of crud detail. It was steady. Lord, it was steady. But in retrospect, no matter what deeds my life yielded…no matter how many books I had written marched in a row on a library shelf, no matter how many printed words of mine dangled under magnets on refrigerator doors, I had done something rather extraordinary with my life as a mother. For three decades, I had been a matriarch of my own family…bonding them together, waiting for stragglers to grow up, catch up, or make up, mending verbal fences, adding a little glue for cohesion here, patching a few harsh exchanges there, and daily dispensing a potion of love and loyalty to something bigger than all of us.

I cannot tell you how reassured I was to know that Mrs. Bombeck understood the importance of investing in her family. She understood that women aren’t defined by how much they earn or their status in life. She knew that the stay-at-home mother who didn’t make money doing what she did was every bit as important as the woman in the corporate boardroom pulling down millions.

Family – The Ties That Bind…and Gag! was a truly satisfying read, and I hope women today will realize that the greatest thing they can do for themselves is to selflessly serve others. The rewards are endless. Don’t believe me? Reread Erma Bombeck’s list of accomplishments above.

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