Whatcha Get?

christmas_chick

A bit material, I know, but I would be lying if I said it wasn’t all about the goodies!

I was nursing a cold which I took as license to sit around sipping tea and eating butter cookies all day in my PJs. Hubby surprised me with a couple of adorable gifts. First of all, this chickie was waiting among my gifts. Umm…we like chickens. It’s a family thing.

Second, he also gained a bunch of brownie points with a ruby-slippered cookie cutter. Now I’m on the hook for baking cookies for RWA National conference next year.

My big score would have to be a copy of Lisa See’s Peony In Love from my Little Sis. I’ve been eyeing this for a while. At first I found it to be less accessible than Snow Flower since it takes a journey into the spirit world and touches on very deeply cultural beliefs about life, death and family as well as the ties between the living and our ancestors. On top of that, the story centers around the fall of the Ming dynasty, the role of women during the upheaval, and the literary culture of that time. Let me qualify the “less accessible” comment by saying I read it in one sitting.

But I keep on thinking of the story and the power of it. Lisa See takes a 17th century text and the lives of three women who wrote it and turns it into a haunting and compelling retelling that brings the women and their work back to the light. It was overwhelming for me to discover these works — you can’t help but feel this connection between the past and the present, within the story and then beyond it in your own mind even once you’ve stopped reading.

It’s a story that’s bigger on the inside than on the outside. (I’ve been watching Dr. Who. Can you tell?) In any case, I’ll be thinking of it for a long time.

2 Comments

  1. Dara
    Dec 27, 2009 @ 20:28:24

    I love that book. One of the few I’ll read multiple times–and I find something new every time.

    LOL, I actually started reading it again for the third time just a few days ago.

  2. Jeannie Lin
    Dec 28, 2009 @ 19:48:22

    It’s just absolutely amazing what she did with it. I just can’t get my head around how someone even comes up with such a far reaching concept, let alone a beautiful story. I cried so hard during the ghost marriage.