Welcome to the ninth tour of the Barren Bitches Book Brigade–a book club from the comfort of your own living room. Grab a cup of coffee and start clicking away at the links below.

Just to explain, this book club is entirely online and open to anyone (male or female) in the infertility/pregnancy loss/assisted conception/adoption/parenting-after-infertility world (as well as any other related category I inadvertently left off the list). It is called a book tour because everyone reads the same book and then poses a question to the group. Participants choose a few questions to answer and then post their response on their blog. Readers can jump from blog to blog, commenting along the way.

Book: The Jane Austen Book Club
Author: Karen Joy Fowler*
Start Date: December 13
Post Date: January 28
(need an explanation of how a book tour works? Click here to go to a list of posts on the past book tours as well as information about all upcoming tours and book events.)
*with author participation

Barren Bitches Book Brigade List (click on any of the links below to take you to a stop on this book tour. Jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on The Jane Austen Book Club).

Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters (Mel)
Slaying, Blogging, Whatever… (Delenn)
Beaten But Not Bowed (Drowned Girl)
The Road Less Travelled (Loribeth)
The Conceivable Future (Andie)
Coming2Terms (Pamela Jeanne)
The Dunn Family (Erica)
No Swimmers in the Tubes (Noswimmers)
Sell Crazy Someplace Else (Jendeis)
The Infertile Long and Winding Road (Ms. Infertile)
All Things Deb (Deb)

Even if you haven’t read The Jane Austen Book Club, you can still add your own thoughts on the blog tour or react to someone else’s critique.

Like the idea of being in a book club without leaving your living room? The next book for book tour #10 is by a writer who rocks the stirrups and manages to find humour even in the most mundane of day 3 blood work visits: Embryo Culture by Beth Kohl. The next 6 book tours or so all have author participation so you’ll also be able ask Beth your questions about her book.

The Details: Tour #10 will start January 29. Participants will read Embryo Culture by Beth Kohl. On Wednesday, February 27th everyone will send one question based on the book (to get a sense of questions, click here to see the questions sent for book tour #2) to me. I will compile the questions into lists that will be emailed out to you on February 28th. Everyone will choose 3 questions from the list and answer them on their own blog on March 3-5 (we will break up into two or three smaller groups and you can choose which day works best for you when the date gets closer). Each day of the tour, I’ll also post a master list and people can jump from blog to blog, reading and commenting on the book tour.

If you would like to sign up to participate in book tour #10, leave a comment below or send me an email. I need the title and a link to your blog as well as an email address where you’d like the two or three book club emails sent. If a spouse wants to participate too and he/she doesn’t have their own blog, have them set up a blog solely for book tours (as we did with the Annex) and send me a link to that blog. And if you’re a reader without a blog, now is a great time to set up a space for yourself on Blogger. People will be able to find brand-spanking-new blogs because they will be on the book tour’s participant list. The next few tours are always listed on the new upcoming and past tours list. Happy reading.

In addition, Karen was lovely enough to answer a few questions we had while we were reading her book. The Jane Austen Book Club has been a major success–first in book form as a New York Times Bestseller and then on the big screen this past fall. As a book club, this book has major appeal since it covers the lives of several members of a book club that focuses solely on the works of Jane Austen. At the same time, the meat of the story is their criss-crossing lives that are as emotion-laden and magical as a story by the great Austen herself.

Melissa: Tell us how the book started—who was the first character to come to life inside your head?

Karen: I write my books in roughly the same sequence you read them. So Jocelyn is the character I worked out first, just as she’s the first character you get an inside look at as a reader.

Melissa: Which character do you relate to the most?

Karen: I think Sylvia. She’s the character most embedded in family. She’s had a long marriage and is the only character in the book whose children play a real role. I even gave her my house — the rooms described in the bookclub meeting she hosts are the rooms I’m sitting in right now, typing this out.

Melissa: How did the book club question list at the back of the book come about? Did you get to contribute questions to the list?

Karen: All of the back material was my editor’s idea (and a very good idea, too). She suggested adding the plot summaries, the responses to Austen, and the bookclub questions. But then I did them. So all the questions at the end are ones I came up with, just as I picked the responses I liked best, and struggled with plot summaries.

Melissa: Why the
Jane Austen book club? Do you think that Jane Austen has a universal appeal?

Karen: I know Austen’s appeal is not universal, because I have a number of friends who don’t like her at all. Sometimes they try to explain to me why, but I just put my fingers in my ears and sing loudly. Her appeal may not be universal, but it is very widespread. But mainly I chose Austen, because I love Austen. I started reading her in high school and it was love at first sight.

Melissa: Do you think Jane Austen discusses themes that are common to the human experience, and that is where her appeal lies?

Karen: The first line of my book is that we all have a private Austen. I stand by that line. Different people read Austen in very different ways and like her for very different reasons. If I had to choose a single explanation, I would probably not pick her themes or her plots or even her characters. I would pick her voice. When you read her, you just wish you knew her. And you worry she might not like you. She’s so discerning! She’s delightful, but scary.

Melissa: How do you think Jane Austen’s work compares to contemporaries that wrote with a more philosophical voice? For example, George Eliot or Elizabeth Gaskell?

Karen: Austen is wittier, but Middlemarch is my very favorite novel. I love Gaskell, too, though I’ve read less of her and read her less often. Don’t make me choose! I love them all.

Intrigued by the idea of a book tour and want to read more about The Jane Austen Book Club? Hop along to more stops on the Barren Bitches Book Brigade by visiting the master list in the post above. Want to come along for the next tour? Sign up begins today for tour #10 (Embryo Culture by Beth Kohl with author participation!) and all are welcome to join along (see the post above to sign up). All you need is a book and blog.

This was our first time doing a non-IF/pg loss/adoption book so it was interesting to see whether we divorced ourselves entirely from our life experience or whether we viewed the book through this common collective lens. I’m not even sure which end of the spectrum I fall on to answer that question, but I’m interested in reading everyone else’s thoughts today.

Jocelyn and Sylvia are closer than most sisters. Their relationship has withstood many tests. Do you have a particular friend who has stood by you through thick and thin in ways that stand out from most friendships, and if so what brought you together and what keeps the relationship so special?

The friendship of Jocelyn and Sylvia, the ease within their interactions, was one of my favourite parts of the book. They reminded me somewhat of the Bennett sisters, though–to quote Lindsay–sisters from a different mister. I think if you have a friendship of that intensity and length in your life, you’re drawn to those storylines.

My friend Julie, usually referred to as my Lady When Waiting, is that friend for me. We have known each other since we were in middle school and she had to whip me into shape when she was president of our Jewish youth group and I was running for treasurer under the name Tasty. I had made these gorgeous orange and purple buttons that said, “Tasty for Treasurer.” Though she has no memory of this, I remember her cornering me by my locker at school and saying, “take this seriously. This means a lot to me.” And gentle reminders to be a better person is just one of the reasons I love her.

She is the one who talked me into seeing an infertility therapist, she raided every Starbucks in the D.C. area when we realized their grande cups made a perfect vomit receptacle for morning sickness in the car (fits perfectly in my cup holder and by the third month of pregnancy, I could vomit and drive at the same time), and told me the babies were beautiful when they were little 2 pound peanuts in the NICU. She has been there through every crisis and every celebration. Her name is on the ketubah above my bed. She’s the godmother to my children. She buys me cook books all the time. She taught me how to roast a chicken. She is the person I can call in the middle of the night. Her happiness means as much to me as my own happiness.

You don’t take a friendship like that for granted.

Allegra is described as “liking being an aunt. That it offered all the kid time she needed. Probably. All she wanted mostly.” If you don’t have your own children, but are an aunt how important is that role to you and, what special rewards does it offer?

Before I was a mother, I was an aunt and being an aunt without children was simultaneously my largest joy and largest source of sadness. It was very hard for me to hug my niece and care for my niece and keep in mind that she wasn’t mine. My niece is pure love and she is the most beautiful, smart, and funny princess in the world. Now that she’s older, it’s fun to have an actual relationship with her, play games, talk about things. But when she was a baby and she would sleep on my chest and I could sniff her keppie, how can you not miss those times and how can you get in the car and drive away when the playdate is over? Every time we had to leave her, I would sob for the first ten minutes of the car ride. Being her aunt before I had children created a game of pretend–I could pretend she was mine and practice mothering. Did it make it more painful when it was time to give her back or was it the charge I needed to get through the loss inherent in infertility? Who know.

When Corinne stole Allegra’s stories, she both lied by omission as well as stole pieces of Allegra. Do you believe Allegra was more upset about the lie or the fact that someone stole her stories?

I was struck by this storyline–perhaps as a writer myself–and how much stories mean to individuals. I think it’s one of the cruelest things you can do–steal from someone’s life–and I actually think, for me, it would cut deeper than a lie. A lie can have a positive spin at times–it can spare feelings or keep someone from emotional pain. The white lie. A fib. But stealing, for me, can never be written off as coming from a good place. It’s malicious and hurtful and I was gleeful that no one wanted to published Corinne’s retelling. It’s almost as if the world knew that she deserved to be punished for her transgressions. Go literary magazines!

So again, if you like the idea of a book tour and want to read more about The Jane Austen Book Club hop along to more stops on the Barren Bitches Book Brigade by visiting the master list in the post above. If you want to come along for the next tour, sign up begins today for tour #10 (Embryo Culture by Beth Kohl with author participation!) and all are welcome to join along (see the post above to sign up). All you need is a book and blog.

Updated at the bottom:

You know that feeling right after you’ve done a massive house cleaning, where you walk from room to room, breathing in the leftover scent from the cleaning solution? That’s how I felt about our blogroll after it got the Brazilian. Go click on over and enjoy it for a moment and come back to hear about the new stuff and to weigh in on a few options.

The long list of stirrup queens from last week did the initial plucking. Then, the incredible Jen from Here We Go Again went back in shaped and tweezed the list to its current state. Some categories will keep its residents indefinitely. For instance, uterine anomalies lends itself to wanting to read both the stories of those who are fellow bicornuate IVFers AND the stories of those who had a septate removed and became pregnant (at least, that was my understanding based on requests that others made about the blogroll in the past). Other categories are simply an entrance point and those people will move on to other categories down the line. Such as “in the beginning.”

Here is the first place where I’d like you to weigh in: in categories where occupants will not necessarily move out (unless they desire the move), I’ve marked those pregnant or parenting with the appropriate parentheses after their name. The idea behind this was to give readers a heads up before they click on a blog so they know they may encounter baby-related posts and avoid those blogs on certain days when they’re not up to it (of course, the list isn’t perfect and people who announced pregnancies today are obviously not marked yet so…always take the parentheses or lack there of with that idea in mind). BUT looking at the list, it made me wonder if occupants who did not have a parentheses next to their name felt like shit now looking at their category. And that wasn’t my intention at all. So…weigh in and let me know what you think about this development–do you like it or not and why or why not. Pregnant/parenting or something specific to the category (as seen under uterine anomalies) is all I’m doing insofar as parentheses. It would take uber-long to add in parentheses for additional items next to everyone’s name and make the list unreadable.

Next, the divine Meg from Rememberella came up with a fantastic idea this week that I built on and I’d like to run by you. I’m calling it the Virtual Playdate. It would be a sort-able online spreadsheet, linked to within the blogroll, that has the online name of the child (only first name and only code name if that is what is used on the blog), the birth month/year (not day), blog name, blog url, and category for every child of every blogger listed under all of the parenting categories. Here’s the idea behind it: (1) you could find and hook-up with other bloggers who have children around the same age and are therefore going through the same developmental stages or special situations and (2) you could have the equivalent of an “online” playgroup–at least the adults socializing part.

As new children are born, they will be added to the list. And hopefully, one day, your children could even go online and perhaps “meet” the children of people you knew in the online sense. Which is sort of neat. The ChickieNob and Wolvog could find your kids and they could bitch about us and how their parents only talk about their hoohaahooteruses and aren’t. they. sick.

This idea also keeps us as one community rather than having people jump over the trenches and disappear with all the good advice they could have passed behind.

So, again, weigh in and let me know what you think of the idea. Each child gets their own entry on the spreadsheet so some blogs may be listed multiple times. If you would like to help us out and make our job a little easier (especially poor Jen who has been picking through all of these projects and will be begged to help out with this one), send this information about your child(ren) so we can cut-and-paste it into the Virtual Playdate list and get it started. Also, if you do not want your child listed, let me know so we keep them off the list. Again, privacy is important so only first names or code names (whichever you use on your blog) will be used.

So those are the two new ideas–let me know what you think. One is done. The other is starting. And if you want to help out with the Virtual Playdate, let me know because there are many people in those parenting categories on the list and we could use extra people compiling this list.

Loss was definitely a theme for me this week, I don’t know why. I read a lot of loss blogs, but I also found posts about loss on non-loss blogs. The first was by Ahuva Batya at The Anguished Corn and it was simply titled “Loss.” She writes about reading the loss blogs: “In addition to infertility, many of these women are dealing with loss. Horrible, crushing, heart-wrenching loss of a child before that child’s time. I have found myself engrossed in reading their stories, and find myself unable to stop thinking about them and what they are going through. Their grief reaches out of the computer screen and touches me, and I find myself crying on their behalf. I wish I could take all of their pain away; how could anyone be subjected to such unfairness, to have a life given to them, and then taken away?” And the new fears that she has considering all the possibilities that have always existed but she was blissfully tucking under the rug. The post contains a gorgeous story about her great-great-great-grandmother, but you must click over to read the whole post to get to experience its ache.

Niobe at Dead Baby Jokes had a post about love. She begins: “What would you do if you were lying in someone’s guest room, alone and sad, but not crying, because you knew that people who claim that a good cry always makes them feel better are just as big liars as those who claim that a good talk helps clear the air.” I warn you before you click over to read the whole thing, you will want to sit with this one for a while. It is brief, but powerful. I am also in love with Niobe this week because the title of one of her posts comes from my favourite Sylvia Plath poem, a villanelle, a mad girl’s love song.

Julia from I Won’t Fear Love has a post titled “Not Yet” which discusses a Jewish ritual that marks the end of the year of mourning. A yahrtzeit is a remembrance on the anniversary of the death. She writes: “It wasn’t the yahrtzeit itself that I was dreading, but what it stands for– a transition. Transition from a mourne
r, from someone community recognizes as still dealing with a big loss to just a regular person. It’s the withdrawal of my official sanction to grieve that I wasn’t prepared for. What is the difference, I thought, between me today and me on Monday? I am still the same, and my child is still dead.” There must be flexibility in the ritual when the person still needs to mourn. And, as Julia points out, there is a difference in burying a parent vs. burying a child. The ritual was never built for this unnatural act of losing someone so young. The anniversary is coming next week and she is struggling with the date. It would be wonderful if you could go and support her.

Lastly, Dianne at Flutter of Hope has a post about the decision she made to stop treatments and live child free–a loss in and of itself too. She writes about the general happiness and the relief of getting off the roller coaster, but also the moments that make her doubt the decision as she still navigates this transition. She writes: “Moments when your heart breaks because what you want most isn’t happening and wont happen unless more treatments become the plan. Moments that you should be happy and for the most part are, but you always have to fight tears on your way home. Because you are happy for their blessings, you love their blessings, but you still want your own.” I don’t know how one moves themselves on from loss. I think loss and mourning have their own timetable that is outside our control. And I wonder if there is any way to control those moments regardless of the level of peace she reaches with life overall.

Not to make the whole roundup sad. It wasn’t sad, in my opinion. These posts were realistic and beautiful and I feel honoured to be included in another person’s loss.

The roundup of the roundup: be still with these gorgeous posts, weigh in how you feel about the new parentheses popping up in the blogroll (and they can be limited to certain categories and not to others if certain categories would like them removed), and weigh in on how you feel about the Virtual Playdate (whether you have children now or in the future), information to help us kick off the list, and whether you’d like to help create the list yourself.

Update:
Started the Virtual Playdate list–it will grow a lot quite soon, but I wanted to at least give people a sense of what it will look like. I’m having trouble with the chronological thing–it keeps sorting it strangely, so this is the easiest format for quick scanning (it’s listed by year and then alphabetical instead of chronological by month). Also, some people have begun adding in EDD for pregnancies. I’m all for it. If you’d like your EDD listed, send it to me with your in-utero name or blog name for your child. It’s actually helpful for the Lost and Found too to know when people are due!

This is how the story goes. A farmer is fed up with his house. His wife whines, his kids yell, the dog barks and the cat meows. He goes to the rabbi and he asks him how he can get some peace and space to think and the rabbi says, “bring your cow inside.”

So he brings the cow inside the house and now the cow lows, the wife whines, his kids yell, the dog barks and the cat meows. He goes back to the rabbi and he explains that he can’t even breathe because he’s so stressed in his house. The rabbi thinks and finally answers, “bring your horse inside.”

So he brings in the horse and now the horse neighs, the cow lows, the wife whines, his kids yell, the dog barks and the cat meows. He makes many visits back to the rabbi, each time begging for a solution and each time being told to bring another animal in the house.

On his final visit to the rabbi, as he is on the brink of emotionally drowning, the rabbi tells him to go home and take all the animals back outside. He does and suddenly, the house is ten times more peaceful. He can still hear the voices of his wife and children as well as the dog and cat, but he sits down in his chair and finally gets back to his work, feeling a tremendous sense of stillness.

Nothing has been removed from our house. Everything is exactly the same way it was the day before–the same work needs to get done, the same children need to be raised, the same house needs to be cleaned, the same husband needs to be…entertained. And yet, once 8:30 a.m. passed and we entered a space where what was done was done, I felt an enormous stillness. I was in the car, driving the ChickieNob and Wolvog to an appointment I was scheduled to miss if I had gone ahead with my day 3 blood work and I noticed the clock said 8:50 a.m. My feet were supposed to be in the stirrups. Instead, they were on the gas pedal of my car.

I think the most telling moment was that I baked today. I had been wanting to bake for weeks, make cookies for Josh’s workplace to celebrate his new position. I didn’t have any more time today than I do on any other day. The difference was that my thoughts weren’t racing and without my thoughts racing, there was a stillness within the house. I could easily see how to balance the day. It is the difference between trying to think within a house of noisy animals and trying to think in the stillness that comes after you’ve let them out of the house.

Thank you for responding to that last post. It was so incredibly helpful for me to write it down and see the situation in print and analyze it to pieces. Hitting publish felt like I was giving it away; letting go of those feelings. It was therapeutic to write it. It was therapeutic to receive support in turn. It was incredibly helpful for me to read how others approached a break or what they took away from it. I wrote it for myself and then considered setting it aside and publishing a simple entry: “We’re stepping away from treatments for a few months. The reasons are too numerous to list. Thanks for all the fish.” (There, Leah, is your reference to Hitchhikers). But that feel like a dick move. I don’t owe you an explanation, per se, but you share your raw honesty with me therefore…I don’t know…it all goes back to the quote that lines the top of the Lost and Found. In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

If anyone else got anything out of it, it was worth hitting publish. If you didn’t get anything out of it, then I apologize for having you sit through such a navel-gazingly long post.

There are more thoughts brewing in my head about this so I’m apologizing in advance (and feel free to skip) the enormously self-exploratory posts of my own psyche. I’m acting as if I’m the first person on earth to ever take a break. It’s novel for me; the only breaks I took the first time were canceled cycles. Perhaps that’s why I’m so high-strung.