MMBC 8: Waiting for Daisy

Book Giveway Closed

Waiting for Daisy is our eighth selection for the MMBC. We will begin discussing the book on Wednesday, Sept 23rd. The author and publisher have generously donated 24 books. If you are interested in participating please send me an email with your address and ‘Waiting for Daisy’ in the subject line.

BN.com has 25 5 star reviews! I have read the book and to avoid delaying the announcement, I will post my review separately. I can share my experience reading this book – I have a close friend who has been trying to have a baby for years. As I turned the pages I kept saying, I remember ‘friend’ telling me this, telling me that, she felt the same way, etc! I told her about this book and she bought copies for her mother and sister to read. She often feels isolated and this book was welcoming.

An easy read, a must read for anyone who has not dealt with infertility and a sound companion to anyone having dealt with infertility.


A conversation with Peggy:

Do you write daily? I work very regular hours—usually starting between 8-9 and ending either at 3 if I’m picking up my daughter from school or at 5 or so if I’m not. I Three days a week I try to get up at six and take a yoga class before going to work. And about 75% of the time, I actually succeed.

What was it like getting your first novel published? I don’t write novels, but my first non-fiction book was kind of a fluke. I was a magazine editor at Mother Jones and had written some for the New York Times Magazine and Vogue. A study came out on girls and self-image issues and an agent I had worked with (buying pieces of her client’s) knew I was interested in teenage girls (I’d written some about my own girlhood) and asked if I had any ideas how to make the study into a book. So I wrote a 3-page proposal to her out of my head, having done almost no research. Then I left town for a week on vacation. This was before email and cell phones, so I had no contact with home. When I came back, there were a zillion messages on my machine saying to call the agent. I needed to write a thirty page proposal in three days, she said, because sixteen publishers were interested in my “book.” As it turned out, I turned thirty, quit my job to go freelance, got engaged, and got a book contract in the space of three weeks. I spent about a year after that freaking out.

What do you think of the electronic book (kindles and such)? If they keep people reading all kinds of books, great. However, that said I think readers should know that the royalties writers get for e-books are not proportional to the increased profit publishers make. In other words, while we get a greater percentage of the sale for ebooks, since ebooks are cheaper, that doesn’t add up to greater income for us. Meanwhile, the publisher makes SIGNIFICANTLY more since they save on printing costs. So until writers share more of the profits, I’m against ebooks. Writers already get screwed so many ways, and technology keeps making it WORSE (not getting paid when our work is reprinted on magazine web sites, for instance) even as the potential for publishing profits grows greater.

What is one tip that you can share with aspiring writers? Marry a man who cooks. If a guy cooks, he knows how to shop for food and odds are good that he knows how to do all manner of domestic tasks. Which means you won’t have to do everything. Which means you might be able to carve out time to write after you have children.

What are you reading now? Laura Rider’s Masterpiece by Jane Hamilton

Lastly, share one or two of your all time favorite novels read, excluding classics: Well, since my book is a memoir, I’ll share my two favorite memoirs instead: “Drinking: A Love Story,” by Caroline Knapp and “Autobiography of a Face” by Lucy Grealy (though after you read Grealy’s book you MUST read “Truth & Beauty,” by Ann Patchett, which is about her friendship with Grealy. Grealy died of a heroin overdose in 2002).

Just for fun:
Favorite Season: spring in Northern California
Morning or night: morning, though before age 35s would have said night.
Favorite ice cream flavor: mint chocolate chip
If you could visit anywhere in the world, where would you go: My favorite cities are Tokyo, Honolulu, London and Paris in that order, and I’m pretty happy alternating among them, which is what I’ve done for about ten years. But I would like to see Thailand, China and Madagascar.

Type: Memoir, 256 pages, trade paperback

Synopsis:
Waiting for Daisy is about loss, love, anger and redemption. It’s about doing all the things you swore you’d never do to get something you hadn’t even been sure you wanted. It’s about being a woman in a confusing, contradictory time. It’s about testing the limits of a loving marriage. And it’s about trying (and trying and trying) to have a baby. Orenstein’s story begins when she tells her new husband that she’s not sure she ever wants to be a mother; it ends six years later after she’s done almost everything humanly possible to achieve that goal, from “fertility sex” to escalating infertility treatments to New Age remedies to forays into international adoption. Her saga unfolds just as professional women are warned by the media to heed the ticking of their biological clocks, and just as fertility clinics have become a boom industry, with over two million women a year seeking them out. Buffeted by one jaw-dropping obstacle after another, Orenstein seeks answers both medical and spiritual in America and Asia, along the way visiting an old flame who’s now the father of fifteen, and discovering in Japan a ritual of surprising solace. All the while she tries to hold onto a marriage threatened by cycles, appointments, procedures and disappointments. Waiting for Daisy is an honest, wryly funny report from the front, an intimate page-turner that illuminates the ambivalence, obsession, and sacrifice that characterize so many modern women’s lives

Reviews:
“Moving and bittersweet, Waiting for Daisy is as funny, thoughtful, biting, reflective as filled with fruitful self-doubt and cautious exuberance, as its author.” – Michael Chabon, The Adventures of Kavelier and Clay

"A gripping memoir of one woman's quest for a baby ... honest, fascinating, and wholly enlightening."-- Cathi Hanauer, author of Sweet Ruin and editor of The Bitch in the House