The Monday Book – The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki

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Guest review by Janelle Bailey, retired Literature teacher.

FIVE stars!

I could literally write a book about–maybe I should write a book or at the very least an essay about—how many amazing and truly crazy ridiculously complexly ways in which this book–about books–touched my life and my own stories. And I do not so much mean that my own “life” or “old” stories match Benny’s or Annabelle’s story or stories here, but that this book addresses, and in such crazy, sensible, deep and thoughtful ways, things going on in my own life and work and days right now.

And yet: none of that is why I read this book. I had no idea what it was even about before I opened it. I received a text from a friend a couple of weeks ago that asked if I had read it because, as she said, “I’m reading a book that keeps making me think about you–your belief that books are living things. Have you read this?” And even then, when I immediately sent her a photo of it being right there, un-read-as-of-yet, and in one of two tall dining room table decor “stack” as response…I could no longer remember exactly who had recommended it or what had prompted me to even order it in the first place, and weeks before. So while that friend’s text did nudge me to open it next, it truly seems to me to have absolutely come into my life much as one of the book’s books, Tidy Magic does for Annabelle…in this book.

But who, other than those who really, REALLY know me, would even believe that?! And I won’t be putting it all–the crazy and remarkable, tentacled, connections, all of them and beyond that–into this review because, quite honestly, 1) I don’t make a practice of spoiling anyone else’s read of a book, and 2) as the very book itself indicates, “Ze truth about stories is that is all we are” (Ozeki 538). And quite possibly reading this book will do for someone else something completely different from what it has just done to/for/with me. It’s going to take me quite a while to process it all, and like I said: I may just need to write a book about it all.

However, if you are one who, for some reason, needs to know what a book is about in order to decide whether or not to read it: this is a book about a beautiful boy named Benny, his mother Annabelle who loves him dearly, and all of the good and challenging that they do together to unpack and unbury themselves out of a lot of stuff that has also happened to them. Like most of us, they also only get by with a little help from their friends, and when this book starts, they honestly don’t even “have friends.”

So while I am going to be completely fine–truly–with any of you who say about this very book that for you it was “meh” or “just didn’t do it for you,” I am very likely to right now call this both THE best book I read in 2021 (I definitely started and read about half of it before the year ended) as well as THE BEST BOOK I have read (finished) so far in 2022. No more than we as people can honestly be all things for all people, try as we might, many of us; neither can any book be ALL things for ALL readers, and I do not believe one is ever quite exactly the same for two readers. But this book…this little (it’s not little!) book right here…went wee, wee, wee all the way home for ME! And I am truly the only one for whom that matters.

But I would–as always–love to hear from any of you about your own experiences with it, too! And my copy is available for lending…gentle borrowing. If you ask to borrow it, you know I’ll let you.

Gardening for People who Kill Plants

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Jack and I have about an acre of back garden, stretching out behind our house. People are always surprised by the amount of space we have. Last year, we decided to go all in on a vegetable garden.

Probably we should have remembered a few things:

  1. I have killed spider plants.
  2. Jack considers gardening a form of punishment for all the crimes he ever thought of committing, even if he didn’t. He dislikes dirt, green leafy vegetables, and time spent in the sun.
  3. I am frightened of most bugs. I once screamed when a ladybug flew toward me.
  4. We were going to be in Scotland for a month in the height of summer.

Other than that, we were golden: plenty of land, easy access to seeds, and an inherited plethora of gardening tools—none of which we knew how to use. Jack held up a hoe and said, “How am I supposed to shovel dirt with this?”

I actually gave it a try before realizing, you know, it wasn’t the shovel…..

Growing up, we had gardens, but my dad did all the stuff like prepping the rows with stakes, string taut between them to help you keep your rows straight. He did the plowing. My sister and I just came along and did the finger-sticking and seed-planting. It was fun to drill down into the dirt and then plop a corn kernel in. Or follow along behind his row of hilled dirt and sprinkle carrot seed.

Doing it as an adult, you realize how hard the work is. First thing we had to figure out which plants were okay with walnut trees. A former student visited and told us about this weird thing called the wood wide web, where trees talk to each other under the earth. Mostly walnut trees plan the death of other plants through excretion of a chemical called juglone. Literally, walnut trees are like bad politicians: they want it all, they want it for themselves, and they want to take it from you. Trying to grow anything in the nightshade family would be a no go unless we got raised beds, my student told us.

And I thought, “why would we grow a deadly plant? Who puts anything to sleep in a garden?”

Yep, it was that bad. We threw some boxes in, put gardening cloth in the bottom, and called them raised beds. When we planted tomatoes in them (proud of our new knowledge that these were in fact a nightshade family member, I might add) they held water and drowned the little guys. Tomatoes hate having their feet wet, we learned that first year.

Then we planted peas. They came up, interspersed with the carrots and broccoli we also planted. Those nice straight with stakes? Ha.  Basically, the whole place looked like someone tripped while carrying a seed tray. (Which is not far off. I sneezed and they fell.)

The broccoli grew – and grew, and grew, and grew, like Jack’s infamous beanstalk. It never put out a single head, but once we learned that broccoli leaves were edible, well, game-changer.

The cauliflower did put out a single head. Literally.

We gave up on hoeing these ungrateful wretches and left for Scotland. When we returned, the asparagus had little weird red balls on its fronds (we found later that these were seeds) the broccoli reaching for the sky, and the black raspberries in the back part of our yard had come for the tomatoes. We never did get them separated.

This year, things will be different. This year….. we will buy our produce from the farmer’s market.