Time Warp Tuesday: Books

Let’s do the Time Warp again!

Welcome to the twenty-fifth installment of my blog hop/writing exercise called Time Warp Tuesday! It has also been a little over a year since Time Warp Tuesdays began here on my blog and I am grateful to all those who have done the Time Warp with me!

For those not familiar with Time Warp Tuesdays, which I host on the 2nd Tuesday of every month, here is the background of how and why I came up with the idea. If you are here to participate and link up, you can do so with the Linky Tools at the end of this post (or if you have any difficulty, you can share the link to your post in the comment section).

The gist of Time Warp Tuesday is to revisit and share some of our favorite blog entries from our archives and reflect on our journeys since we wrote them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The theme for this month’s Time Warp Tuesday is: Books

Choose a post from your archives in which you wrote about one or more books that you have read. The post could be a book review, a blog entry that was part of a book tour/book club discussion or just references a book(s) that you love, moved you or that changed the way you think about something. Then write a new post on your blog about why you chose the post that you did and what has happened in your life since.

Participants can write about whatever you want in your new blog entries. However, for those who might have needed some help and inspiration to get started, here are some questions to consider:

Why did you pick this post? Has your perspective changed since the day you wrote your original post? Do you think you would still feel the same way if you were writing your post today? What have you learned about yourself, your family and your life since you wrote your original post?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Time Warp Tuesday: Books

When I chose this topic for this month there were so many different directions I could have gone with it. I could have revisited a blog entry from one of the book tours I have participated in or a post in which I talked about one or more of the books that I have read throughout our journey dealing with secondary infertility and loss. However, in the end I chose to reflect on a post that I wrote less than a year ago, towards the end of December 2011. It was my fourth BlogHer Book Club (BHBC) read and by far my favorite that I have reviewed so far as a BHBC reviewer. Here is the post:

BlogHer Book Club: The Magic Room

Part of why I chose this post is because a little over a month after I wrote it, The Magic Room‘s author Jeffrey Zaslow died in a car accident. He was 53. I always meant to add an update to my original blog post or write a new blog entry here about Mr. Zaslow’s death. This was the comment that I left on Karen Ballum’s post sharing the sad news on BlogHer on the day he died, February 10, 2012:

Typing through my tears… What a loss on so many levels. What a gift to his daughters to have written that book knowing now he won’t be here when they may marry some day. I really loved his book and am grateful for the opportunity to have read it so soon after it was released and participated in the book club discussion about it here. I had looked forward to his future projects and am just so sad for his family and other loved ones. Rest in Peace Mr. Zaslow. My thoughts and prayers are with his wife, daughters and other loved ones. I hope he finds a new Magic Room in the afterlife and will be reunited there someday with his loved ones and all those whose lives he touched through his writing.

In addition to being my favorite BHBC book so far, reading The Magic Room and participating in the BHBC discussion about it led me to a realization. I have already shared here how my love for writing has grown and evolved since I began blogging in April 2007. In recent years I have dreamed of writing, and have been actually working on, a memoir about my journey through secondary infertility and loss. I often wonder if and when I were to get my book published and wanted to write something else, what would it be. Though I like reading fiction, at this point in my life writing fiction doesn’t appeal to me. But when I read The Magic Room and this piece about Narrative Nonfiction by Mr. Zaslow I discovered a genre that I might try to write someday. This was the comment that I left on Mr. Zaslow’s piece for BlogHer On Setting & Structure in Narrative Nonfiction.

Thank you for sharing your experience and wisdom here. I appreciate the creative ways you came up with to tell the stories in each of the books you have written and/or contributed to. I dream of (and intend to work at) getting my own writing published someday and can never get enough inspiration from other writers, like you, who know and practice their craft so well. As an aside, I would love to read a book like The Magic Room set in a maternity ward. I heard someone say recently, that they used to think airports were the happiest and saddest places on Earth until they thought about maternity wards. As someone who has experienced some of the best (all three of my children’s births) and worst (the death of my second child/first daughter less than 15 minutes after she was born) moments of my life in a maternity ward, I know that to be true.

Thank you for writing The Magic Room. I thought it was a truly extraordinary book.

Reading The Magic Room became a game changer for me as a writer when it opened my eyes to the Narrative Nonfiction genre, something I would love to explore and try to write in the future, whether the stories I share take place in a maternity ward or focus on something else. I am fascinated by the process a writer goes through to be able to tell a Narrative Nonfiction story. I think it is so interesting how Mr. Zaslow immersed himself in the lives of the people who his stories tell us about. I hope to have the opportunity to do that someday.

I also realize that as a blogger I can experiment with Narrative Nonfiction without having to get a book published. A great example of someone already do this is one of my friends and favorite bloggers, Jjraffe from Too Many Fish Too Fry with her Faces of Adoption/Loss/Infertility series. I love her approach to profiling real people, as opposed to sensational stories, whose family building journeys have not gone as they hoped, dreamed or planned.

Ten months have come and gone since the last time I read and reviewed a book for the BHBC. There were many reasons this year that I passed on opportunities to participate and in a few cases I didn’t respond quickly enough to get the chance. But I am looking forward to sharing a review of my latest BHBC read later this week, My Life Map: A Journal to Help You Shape Your Future by Kate and David Marshall. It definitely seemed serendipitous for me to be reading such a book at this time in my life.

Thank you for reading and for doing the Time Warp with me this month! I look forward to your feedback about this post, as well as reading and commenting on all of yours.

Please feel free to comment even if you didn’t write your own Time Warp Tuesday post. It is not too late to participate if you are interested, click here for the details.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The topic for the next Time Warp Tuesday (on December 11th) is: Gifts

Note: Special thanks to Keiko from The Infertility Voice who suggested this topic! If you have an idea for a future Time Warp topic, theme and/or writing prompt, please feel free to share it in the comment section or send me an email. If I choose to use your idea, I will give you credit and link to your blog that week.

December is a month filled with holidays celebrations for most people, regardless of our faith traditions. Often these holiday gatherings include giving and/or receiving gifts. Choose a post from your archives in which you wrote about one or more gifts that you gave and/or received and what that experience meant to you. The gift(s) don’t have to be connected to a holiday. Then write a new post on your blog about why you chose the post that you did and what has happened in your life since.

Participants can write about whatever you want in your new blog entries. However, for those who might need some help and inspiration to get started, here are some questions to consider:

Why did you pick this post? Has your perspective changed since the day you wrote your original post? Do you think you would still feel the same way if you were writing your post today? What have you learned about yourself, your family and your life since you wrote your original post?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For those new to Time Warp Tuesday, here is a quick recap of how it works:

1) Browse through your old blog entries to find one that fits the topic for the given month. The topic is shared at the end of the previous month’s “Time Warp Tuesday” post here on my blog (see above for next week’s topic).

2) Write a new blog post in which you introduce, link to and then reflect on your journey since you wrote the older blog post and put it up on your blog on Tuesday. Please include this link https://bereavedandblessed.com/projects-regular-series/time-warp-tuesdays/ in your blog entry, so your readers can find their way to my post with the list of other participants, in case they would like to read more or participate themselves.

3) Share the link to your new post here on Tuesday and then visit, read and comment on the other blogs.

4) After you have done all of these things, you are welcome to grab the code for the Time Warp Tuesday button by clicking here and put it on your blog. The link will take you to a Google Doc where you can copy the code. If your browser does not allow access to your computer’s clipboard, you can use Ctrl-C for Copy and Ctrl-V for Paste, or use your browser’s Edit menu.

5) Check back here on the 2nd Tuesday of the month to find out the new topic, theme or question for the next Time Warp Tuesday (I welcome your ideas and suggestions) and then return to Step 1 of this recap to participate. Please let me know if you have any questions and I hope to see you back here next month: Tuesday, December 11th (the 2nd Tuesday of the month), when we’ll “do the time warp again!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you again for reading, commenting and participating in my Time Warp Tuesday blog hop. Link up below and click through to visit others who are doing the Time Warp! (If you have any trouble with Linky Tools, please share the link to your blog entry in the comment section. Also, please don’t forget to comment on my post here, as I do not have a link to this (my own) post below, but I would still really appreciate your feedback. xoxo

1. Stumbling Grace

2. WMOH

3. missohkay