January-March 2020 Books Read

Top of the List

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson: Stevenson's story of starting out as a young lawyer defending impoverished, innocent people who were unjustly convicted of crimes and sentenced to death row or to serve life sentences, including women and children. Stevenson is the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, and every single story he tells is heartbreaking—but lots of redemptive stories, too. Everyone should read this!

Becoming by Michelle Obama. Michelle Obama for President. Please, oh please! My admiration for her quadrupled after reading this memoir.

Matchmaking for Beginners by Maddie Dawson. Total surprise! This is a book I "found" on my Kindle that I must have downloaded as part of Amazon Prime's free monthly book program. I loved this sweet, charming, and fast read! This is absolutely perfect as a lighthearted, happy ending but totally engaging book. In brief, Blix has the gift of matchmaking—of seeing people who would be perfect matches. When she meets Marnie, her nephew's fiancee, she realizes  two things: Marnie and Noah are not meant for each other, and Marnie has the same matchmaking gift. Super sweet book.

Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen. Bruce for Michelle Obama's running mate! I've loved Bruce nearly my entire life. I love him even more now. Utterly open, honest, engaging....and I watched a whole lot of Springsteen videos while reading this book. I love him. The only thing that would have made this book better is if I had listened to Bruce Springsteen  actually read it in his gloriously gravelly voice on Audible; but alas, I didn’t know this was a thing until too late. Sorta side note: Bruce Springsteen was THE BEST CONCERT ever.

This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel. Parenting is hard. Being a boy named Claude is hard. Being a girl named Poppy is mostly wonderful. Claude or Poppy? This is a novel that tackles a tough subject with love and candor and puts us right in the midst of a wonderfully complicated family.

Dear Mrs. Bird by AJ Pearce. I adored this debut novel, set in London amidst the bombings during WWII. Emmaline Lake accidentally finds herself working for the intimidating and terribly proper Mrs. Bird as an advice columnist for a sinking women's magazine. Emmy is gutsy and sweet and this novel just made me warm and happy, in spite of its moments of tragedy.

 

Thoughts on the Others

Such a Fun Age and If Only I Could Tell You: Both were engaging and definitely had good moments, but something about each one fell apart for me. Too much tragedy in the latter, and the ending was off in the former.

Snow: I really wanted to love this book but it was too dense. I don't know enough about Turkish history to truly appreciate it. Beautifully written though—and I felt triumphant and enlightened upon finishing it.

Mrs. Everything:  I didn't hate this book, but it super annoyed me. It felt extremely forced. Practically every Big Issue between 1950-2016 is covered in the lives of Jo and Bethie, from sexual abuse to Civil Rights to interracial marriages, the Vietnam War, women's rights, sexual identity, drugs, sex, rock and roll, rape, cancer, abortion, on and on and on. I don't mean to be flippant about ANY of these issues, and she isn't flippant about any of them, either. But tackling them all in one book? To one family? Too much happens. Way too much. I stuck with the book because the characters interested me enough to keep going.

Book Review: All the Pretty Things

All the Pretty Things: The Story of a Southern Girl Who Went through Fire to Find Her Way Home by Edie Wadsworth

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I used to follow author Edie Wadworth’s blog years ago. I was drawn to her quick wit and beautifully decorated home. To this reader, fellow homeschooling mama Edie Wadsworth was intimidatingly perfect: gorgeous, smart, wealthy, and so talented.

After reading her memoir, I’m blown away by the “real” Edie, or rather, what it took for Edie to travel the path from always-hungry little girl to the redeemed but still struggling adult. Her story (as well as her sister's and cousin's) is a tribute to how kids can rise above their circumstances. And rise she did.

Edie Wadsworth is a class act. She is positively loaded with grit and determination, with a healthy helping of honesty, grace, and kindness. She’s the real thing. A lot of reviewers criticize her adoration of her father. I get that—it is hard to imagine idolizing such a deadbeat dad. But the bonds between daughters and fathers are strong. We readers just don’t see her father as she did. We don’t quite get how charismatic he must have been. He just seems sad. The real hero in this story, of course, is Edie’s mom. She worked unbelievably hard to raise and support three kids on her own. Her memoir would be truly compelling, no doubt.

This isn’t exactly a beautifully written memoir, thus my rating of actually 3.5 (3 for writing, 4 for storytelling). It’s a little choppy and stumbles around a bit, but the story is powerful and you can’t help but want to high five Edie for rising out of the ashes.



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Book Review: Educated

Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Phew. What a memoir!

First, let me say that I read this book with a bit of trepidation because I am a homeschooling parent, and this book is widely described as being about a girl who was homeschooled by survivalist parents. As most reviews emphasize, however, Tara was certainly not offered a "normal" homeschooling experience. In an interview with NPR, she says "there was not a lot of school taking place. We had books, and occasionally we would be kind of sent to read them. But for example, I was the youngest child, and I never took an exam, or I never wrote an essay for my mother that she read or nothing like kind of getting everyone together and having anything like a lecture. So it was a lot more kind of if you wanted to read a book, you could, but you certainly weren't going to be made to do that."

I quickly realized, however, that this book has little to do with academic education, with whether Tara should have been sent to public school or not. This book is about Tara's education as a human being, as a part of the world outside of her family.

Tara's parents were paranoid survivalists who completely manipulated and controlled her world (and that of her siblings). She had no access to reading material other than Mormon texts and the Bible. No newspapers, no history books, no television. Whatever her parents told her, was her reality. She believed entirely that the government was coming for them, that the world was close to ending, that everyone besides her family was hellbound. She believed that she was dirty, dumb, and a whore. She believed that the medical community was a pit of vipers. She believed it was her duty to cater to her father's every whim and, later, to her brother's. She believed she was worthless.

And yet she had something inside of her, a spark of brilliance and determination that even her father's cruelty, her mother's denial, and her brother's brutality could not keep down. Tara is not just a survivor but a victor. She overcame a horrific childhood full of danger, of physical, and emotional abuse (though she does contend that she had happy moments) to earn a PhD from Harvard. Her real education, though, comes as she begins to see the world through a different lens than her father's. Her real education comes when she sheds her former self, piece by painful piece, to discover not just who Tara is, but who this world is, and who Tara is in the world.

In some ways this memoir reminded me of The Glass Castle, but it is not as beautifully written as Walls' memoir. Walls was more than a decade older than Westover when she wrote her amazing memoir, and I suspect Westover's memoir has more of a raw, open wound feeling because of her proximity to her childhood.

I left this novel feeling sad and disheartened because I know there are so many children in our country who are raised on hate and fear, and so many of them don't have the willpower that Tara had to separate herself from them. And the cycle continues.

Happy for Tara that she climbed out of the pit, and hopeful that she may inspire others to do the same.



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Book Review: This Boy's Life

I've had this memoir by Tobias Wolff on my TBR list forever. I saw the movie years ago and always meant to read the book, but I just never got around to it. I'm so glad I finally did. I love memoirs, especially ones that read like this— poetic but not sentimental, filled with insights but not didactic. It's really exactly what the title promises: one boy's life.

As the book opens Toby Wolff, soon to become Jack, and his mother are running away from an abusive man. She's divorced from Toby's father, who lives on the East Coast with his older brother. Toby and his mother clearly adore each other, but he can't seem to be "good," in spite of his desire to please his mother. Toby gravitates toward the wrong crowd and finds himself doing all the things he knows he should do: fighting, vandalizing, lying, cheating. Eventually his mom remarries, and they move to a desolate town in Washington. Dwight, the stepfather, is a controlling dictator who is often proud of Toby for his transgressions, yet punishes him severely. Much of the tension in the book is between Toby and himself and Toby and Dwight, his stepfather.

Toby isn't a run-of-the-mill bad boy. He's smart about things. He carefully erases his report cards to show excellent grades, makes excuses that somehow seem legitimate, and even forges recommendations so that he can get into a prep school. In his heart he truly believes that he's a good kid, a smart kid, one destined for a better life as soon as he gets out of his podunk town. But he just can't stop making bad decisions.

I read in an interview with Wolff in The Paris Review that "Though a private man, Wolff is open about his nagging suspicion that his good fortune in life—his arrival at the age of fifty-eight with his family intact, a home in a warm climate, a place to write and teach, even a dog—is a fabrication that could burn to the ground at any moment." That makes perfect sense after reading this memoir. A good, stable life seems always just out of reach to the boy Toby, and yet he knows that he is somehow made for that life.

I thoroughly enjoyed Wolff's boyhood story and plan to add the memoir of his tour of Vietnam to my TBR list.

Book Review: Riding the Bus with My Sister

This was our book club pick for June, selected by me because I absolutely adored Rachel Simon's Story of Beautiful Girl. Riding the Bus with My Sister is Simon's story of a year she spent reconnecting with her sister, a mentally challenged woman who spends her days, well,  riding the bus.

As the story opens, Simon is moved by guilt and obligation to visit her sister Beth, who lives alone in mid-sized town in Pennsylvania, a couple hours away from Simon. They are both in their late 30s and have left behind a difficult and at times dangerous childhood. Their parents, though divorced, clung to one family mantra: Beth will never be institutionalized.

Simon and her siblings see Beth's life as wasteful and depressing. All day, every day, Beth hops on one bus after another, riding around the city and, as they see it, annoying people. They want her to get a job or volunteer—to do something. But riding the buses is Beth's world, and when Rachel visits her sister, she is issued a challenge: ride the bus with Beth for one year.

At first Rachel, a dedicated workaholic, balks: she doesn't have time for this nonsense. But something nudges her to say yes, and so she heads over to Beth's one day each month to spend 12 hours riding the buses. And in the course of the year, Rachel discovers who her sister really is—and finds out a lot about herself, as well.

The story alternates between vignettes of the bus drivers—men and women whom Beth has carefully selected as the most caring, sensitive people; flashbacks from Beth and Rachel's tumultuous childhood; Rachel's own adult life; and Rachel's discovery of who Beth really is.

It's all done beautifully and with great honesty. I loved every part of this book, although I had to devour it quickly in order to have it read in time for our book club discussion. This was a fantastic choice for our book club, although our discussion was rather limited as we conducted it in a noisy restaurant! I'm going to spend this evening watching the Hallmark Hall of Fame movie based on the book—and then I'm hoping I can find more books written by Rachel Simon!

Book Review: In the Sanctuary of Outcasts

Most of us, upon hearing the terms "leprosy," have some kind of biblical scene play out in our minds: Jesus and the 10 lepers, Miriam's hand white with leprosy, lepers on the outskirts of town. But leprosy still exists. In fact, only in the past 30 years has leprosy been cured successfully. 

For over 100 years, a facility in Carville, Louisiana housed individuals in the U.S. who had contracted leprosy, now called Hansen's disease. I was aware of the leprosarium, but I didn't realize that it was still in existence up until the late 1990s; I thought it had closed back in the early part of the 20th century.

This memoir by Neil White opens in 1993, when White, an educated white-collar businessman, is sent to prison for fraud and check kiting. It's a minimum-security prison in what appears to be a plantation. What White doesn't realize and is astonished to discover is that he and his 250 fellow prisoners will be sharing their prison sentences with130 social outcasts: the last lepers in the U.S. The Federal Prison System apparently decided that Carville hospital is the perfect place to house low-security inmates. Evidently, the patients had no voice in the decision to share their home with convicts.

White is terrified at first that he'll catch leprosy. He views the patients with disgust and distrust. If he shakes a hand with one of them, will he catch it? Eventually, he learns more about the disease and begins to form relationships with the patients. He is astonished by their stories. Many of them were taken from their families when they were small children and quarantined in Carville. Even when they were allowed to return home after decades in the hospital, many chose to stay on in the only home they'd really ever known.

In his 18 months there, White discovers all kinds of truths about himself: mostly, that he is a selfish, phony young man who thrives on attention and kudos.  He has betrayed everyone he knows, leaving a trail of disaster for his wife and parents to clean up. He seems, in some ways, relieved to be in prison, away from the mess he's created of his life. It is here in this quiet place that he is stripped of pretense and forced to learn who he really is.

Much of the memoir is about the people White meets, both prisoners and patients.  White encounters  a wide cast of fascinating characters, and he describes them well. Whether they are patients or prisoners, the inmates have one thing in common: they are on the outskirts of society. For the prisoners, there is always a sense of desire: they are anxious for the day they'll be released. They take classes, set up business schemes, write resumes. But the patients just go about their days, used to life in this quiet sanctuary and never expecting anything else. White's favorite person is Ella, a patient who has spent almost her entire life in the hospital. It is from her that he learns to slow down and appreciate life, no matter what the circumstances.

I really loved this book. White provides a fascinating look at a little known part of American history, combined with a fantastic search-for-identity story. Highly recommended.

Book Review: Bloom

Kelle Hampton of Enjoying the Small Things had everything ready for her new baby girl, down to party favors for delivery room visitors and a chalkboard sign ready at home welcoming the baby to their perfect American family: two half-brothers and a sister already at home.

What never entered Kelle's mind is that Nella Cordelia might not be who Kelle thought she would be—something she knew intuitively the minute Nella was placed in her arms. In this memoir, Kelle takes us through her journey from the moment she realized Nella had Down syndrome through their first year together: a year filled with heartache, acceptance, incredible joy, and a more accurate definition of perfection.

Kelle is an upbeat, young, hip mom. She wears cute clothes and makes party favors for delivery room visitors. (People do that?) The last thing she would have imagined is that her daughter isn't…"perfect." This is not what she signed up for; this does not fit her dreams. Kelle is honest about her initial disappointment. She never glosses over the shock of being told her baby has Down syndrome. She admits the terrible burden of guilt of wishing Nella were someone else. I think that must be really hard to do, knowing you are going to have critical readers who call you a selfish person.

This memoir isn't so much about Nella; it is almost entirely about Kelle's personal journey. I admit that I skipped large portions of the second half of the book because it seemed redundant, and I didn't need to know all the organizations she'd spoken to, parties she had attended, etc. Kelle is less of a lyrical memoir writer and more Pioneer-Womanish, so if you like a hip, sometimes flippant and less poetic style, this is a great memoir to read.

Book Review: Expecting Adam—A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic

"Now I think that the vast majority of us 'normal' people spend our lives trashing our treasures and treasuring our trash. We bustle around trying to create the impression that we are hip, imperturbable, omniscient, in perfect control, when in fact we are awkward and scared and bewildered. … Living with Adam, loving Adam, has taught me a lot about the truth. He has taught me to look at things in themselves, not at the value a brutal and often senseless world assigns to them."

In the memoir Expecting Adam, Martha Beck and her husband John are a young couple caught up in the crazy haze of graduate school at Harvard and new parenthood. Harvard looms like an overbearing, impossible-to-please parent in every corner of their world; the pressure to succeed at Harvard eclipses everything else in their lives. Their world consists of tag-team parenting, little sleep, constant rushing, and determination to stay on top.

And then Martha discovers that she is pregnant again, just as they were starting to figure out how to balance Katie, their toddler, with Harvard and John's new consulting job in Singapore. Martha writes that "motherhood had made me the odd person out among my classmates; they were polite and kind to me but understandably less than fascinated by the details of my life as a nursing mother. I would show up at class after a night in the emergency room, where Katie had been put through a battery of hideously painful tests to determine the cause of some raging illness, and pretend that I really cared abut the contrast between Karl Marx's view of historical necessity and Max Weber's."

Martha is violently ill during pregnancy, barely able to function. A couple of women she barely knew show up at her door, bearing food and emotional support, and she makes actual true friends for the first time in her adult life. Every day is  a struggle for Martha and for John during the weeks that he is at Harvard, but they manage—barely.

Martha was violently ill during her first pregnancy, too, but this one is different. She has all kinds of dreams and intuits that something is not right with this pregnancy, and yet rather than panicking, she feels oddly comforted. She finds out much, much later, even years later, that John had similar experiences.

And then they find out the life-changing news: the unborn baby, a boy, has Down Syndrome. They are shocked beyond words. This is Harvard, the land of geniuses and IQs off the charts. There is no room in Harvard for anything "less" than "perfect." Terminate now, they are told over and over again. John's Harvard mentor, some kind of demi-god, tells John that his career is over if they have this baby.

John and Martha, though both raised in Mormon homes, aren't religious. Both are staunchly pro-choice. But the idea of aborting their baby is abhorrent to Martha and ultimately to John. They have no idea what they will do with a baby with Down Syndrome, but Martha's skills as a researcher kick in, and she finds out everything she can (which, at the time, wasn't much).

From the moment they find out they are expecting Adam, everything changes for Martha and John and Katie. They go from living a life of outrageously high expectations to a life of quiet expectation and joy.

"I really thought there would be a miracle," said John softly… "I really thought God would fix him."
I considered that for a minute. "Maybe he didn't need fixing," I said. "Maybe he's the only one of us who was never broken."
John looked at me. "Are you broken, sweetheart?"
"I was," I said. "Not anymore."
"Same here," said John. He paused, then gave me a smile—not his manic Harvard grin but a real smile, one that contained all the sorrow of the past months, along with the joy. "So," he said, "there's your miracle."

By the time Adam is born, John and Martha are changed people. They are ready to escape the Harvard life and embrace a calmer life focused on nurturing relationships.  As Martha says, "I have had to unlearn virtually everything Harvard taught me about what is precious and what is garbage. I have discovered that many of the things I thought were priceless are as cheap as costume jewelry, and much of what I labeled worthless was, all the time, filled with the kidn of beauty that directly nourishes my soul."

Highly recommended. Martha's writing is fantastic and the story is one you can hardly put down.

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Book Review: The Things They Carried

"Forty-three years old, and the war occurred half a lifetime ago, and yet the remembering makes it now. And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That's what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are now. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, with there is nothing to remember except the story."

When I was in college, I took an intense class on the Vietnam War. It was taught by a history professor and a psychology professor, who served two tours in Vietnam. I loved this class with every fiber of my being. I cannot even begin to list all the books we read and all the ones I read later about Vietnam.

"They carried USO stationery and pencils and pens. The carried Sterno, safety pins, trip flares, signal flares, spools of wire, razor blades, chewing tobacco, liberated joss sticks and statuettes of the smiling Buddha, candles, grease pencils, The Stars and Stripes, fingernail clippers, Psy Ops leaflets, bush hats, bolos and much more."

But that was all before Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. It was published just a few years after I graduated from college, but somehow I just wasn't ready to read any more Vietnam War novels for a long time after being immersed in that class. And now my oldest is in college and had to read something by Tim O'Brien for a class. He loved it and picked up a bunch of O'Brien's books at a used book store, including The Things They Carried, which he then declared about the best book he has ever read. (And, like his parents, he is a prolific reader, and, like his mother, an English major.)

"They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity."

And so I finally read it. I was hooked from the very first line, and I was reluctant to put it down each night to sleep. I carried it with me during the day when I wasn't reading it. I carried the language of Tim O'Brien—the absolutely beautiful poetry, the lyrical longing, the heartbreak.

"They carried the land itself—Vietnam, the place, the soil—a powdery orange-red dust that covered their boots and fatigues and faces."

The Things They Carried is a novel—a work of fiction. It's also a memoir—a work of creative nonfiction. And it is for sure a work of poetry. Blended together, the line between truth and fiction (what really happened to Tim O'Brien, the author, and Tim, the soldier) is blurry. The stories he tells may or may not have happened exactly like he tells them, at least to him. But in the collective face of war, they are true to the core.

What words can I use to describe the book? Haunting. Terrifying. Heartbreaking. Beautiful. Brilliant. It's a war story, a love story, a study of lives stopped and started again but never the same. Please, please read it.

"And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen."

Book Review: The Sex Lives of Cannibals

This travelogue/memoir by Maarten Troost is neither about sex nor cannibals, particularly, although both make an appearance on the island of Tarawa, where Troost and his partner, Sylvia, spend two years. Bored of life in America and anxious to make a difference in the world and have an adventure in the process. Sylvia and Maarten head off to this remote, romantic island paradise in the South Pacific.

Paradise, it is not. Romantic, rarely. But remote, absolutely. The beaches (AKA toilets) are polluted with an accumulation of historical trash and fresh trash. Diseases are rampant. Food is scarce. Electricity is sporadic. The natives find Sylvia and Maarten endlessly interesting. Mangy dogs—the cannibals—congregate in their back yard. Maarten has a love/hate relationship with Tarawa, but in the end he can see himself settling there forever--if he doesn't hurry up and leave.

This was our February book club pick and got very mixed reviews at our meeting. Four of us actually finished and thoroughly enjoyed the book. Two gave it up around Chapter 11, as the topic just did not appeal to them at all. The other four members just didn't have time to finish reading it, and two out of the four said they would for sure finish reading it, even though our meeting was over. So in all, over half our members really liked the book.

I think Maarten is an excellent writer and very, very funny. Astute, too, but without a biting sarcasm that so often weighs down travelogues in one way or another. I liked Maarten enough that I'd read his next book, Getting Stoned with Savages.

Book Review: Mennonite in a Little Black Dress

I should have known that any book recommended to me by two people that I consider my soul-mates should be amazing. Mennonite in a Little Black Dress was recommended to me by Kristina and Kris, who don't know each other but should. I'd love to link to Kristina's review of the book, but the bookseller that she used to work for took down all of her amazing book reviews. Both Ks are Canadian, which has pretty much nothing to do with the book, but Kris grew up Mennonite, which has a lot to do with Rhoda Janzen's memoir.

Oh my goodness. I laughed sooo hard while reading this book. I was actually guffawing. I really can't say it better than Elizabeth Gilbert does on the back cover of the book: "It is rare that I literally laugh out loud while I'm reading, but Rhoda Janzen's voice—singular, deadpan, sharp-witted, and honest—slayed me, with audible results."

Rhoda Janzen was raised in a Mennonite community but strayed far, far from her roots when she went to college. The book begins the year she turns 43, when a series of unfortunate events pushes Janzen back to the arms of her parents: she has a hysterectomy, her husband leaves her for a man he meets on gay.com, and she is badly injured in a car accident. She goes home to recover and in doing so, uncovers a whole barrel of truths about love, family, faith, and community.

The book isn't really so much about the Mennonite faith. Jantzen's tidbits on growing up Mennonite are hilarious, such as her list of the "top five Shame-Based Foods for Mennonite youth lunches." The memoir is really about coming to terms with your family with all its quirks, finding safety, and reconciling who you once were with who you are now.

Janzen is hilarious, but she is also a poet. Her writing is beautiful and terribly witty. In some ways she reminds me of Celia Rivenbark, author of Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank (clidk for my review) and other gems. But Janzen has more serious moments than Rivenbark. She is truly reflective and lyrical in her writing, which makes her dry humor even better.

I love this book and highly recommend it. I predict it will make my Top 10 list this year.

Other Reviews
Caroline Bookbinder
Mrs. O'Dell Reads
100 Memoirs
Vulpes Libris
At Home with Books

Linked up on Semicolon's Saturday Review of Books

Book Review: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

"It sucks to be poor, and it sucks to feel that you somehow deserve to be poor. You start believing that you're poor because you're stupid and ugly. And then you start believing that you're stupid and ugly because you're Indian. And because you're Indian you start believing you're destined to be poor. It's an ugly circle and there's nothing you can do about it."

I was introduced to Sherman Alexie's poetry years ago in graduate school and thought he was amazing. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is his semi-autobiographical novel, written for young adults but totally loved by this older adult. (As far as that goes, I wouldn't recommend this to a very young adult. Lots of language, etc.)

This is the story of Junior, a genius with multiple medical problems born to heavy-drinking, impoverished parents on an Indian reservation. He is rejected everywhere he goes: by the rez community because of his weird looks and brains, and by the white community outside the reservation because he's, well, an Indian. Recognizing Junior's genius, his math teacher persuades him to go to Rearden, the all-white school outside of the reservation. Junior figures that he doesn't have anything to lose, so he agrees.

The next several years become a struggle of Junior trying to get to school every day (it's 22 miles away, and his father is rarely sober and his truck rarely works) and then surviving in school. Initially he is bullied and ostracized at Rearden and even more rejected at the Rez, where he is branded as a traitor. But with a tremendous sense of humor and the ability to find superhuman emotional strength and determination, Junior knocks down one obstacle after another.

Alexie is a the kind of author that had me laughing one minute and then tearing up at the next. Junior's life is something the vast majority of us can't possibly imagine, but he doesn't ask for pity—he's just telling it like it is. We know Junior immediately. Alexie is that good at immersing us in his world and allowing us to be in his head. Junior is a cartoonist, and the cartoons sprinkled throughout the book add to that knowing of him.

I can't recommend this book enough. It will absolutely go on my Top 10 list of favorites for this year.


Some Other Reviews
The Book Smugglers: "A triumph in storytelling, filled with heartbreak but also so much warmth and I can’t recommend it enough."
Ramblings of a Writer: "The issues were treated with finesse, and issues of family, the individual and belonging added layers of wow-awesome-amazingness to this book."
The Book Lady's Blog: "What sets this book apart from the YA lit masses is that the author manages to tell a great story and explore themes about identity and culture that many authors shy away from."
Maw Books Blog: "teaches us not to be limited by our circumstances."
Brown Girl BookSpeaks: " Junior's quirky persona while coping with life and pursuing a permanent way off the rez through education provides a hopeful and uplifting tale for young people."

Book Review: Arctic Homestead

I've had Arctic Homestead on my TBR list for years and finally got it through Paperback Swap several months ago. This is Norma Cobb's true story of homesteading in Alaska with her husband and five kids in the 1970s.

I'll admit to a fascination—not quite an obsession—with books about homesteading in Alaska. I'm not sure why; I truly don't think I have a hidden desire to survive in the wilderness, although taking a six-month sabbatical would be awesome. I loved Mrs. Mike and Into the Wild. I wasn't crazy about Jean Aspen's Arctic Son, and Cobb's Arctic Homestead was more reminiscent of Aspen's narrative. But Norma Cobb is (for the most part) a more cheerful narrator, whereas Aspen was annoying and whiny.

That said, I also found Cobb to be a completely unreliable narrator, mostly because of the stories of the family's relationships with other homesteaders or casual visitors. She is utterly paranoid and quick to point out other's faults. Norma and Lester were always right in whatever actions they took, and the "others" were always wrong, crazy, and/or sissies. Somehow that just didn't ring true to me.

Still, if you are reading this for the spirit of adventure and a longing for wilderness, it's an entertaining read. This would be a great book to curl up with on a long winter's night.

Book Review: Blue Like Jazz

I've had Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz on my TBR list for a couple of years now, since my friend's daughter had to read it in high school and absolutely loved it. Subtitled "Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality," this is Miller's journey toward reconciling the distant, institutional God with the relevant, working, loving God.

Miller is a fantastic writer. The chapters are anecdotes in his journey that touch on significant components of Christianity, such as: Worship—The Mystical Wonder; Church—How I Go Without Getting Angry; Confession—Coming Out of the Closet; Community—Living with Freaks; Love—How to Really Love Other People; Jesus—The Lines on His Face.

I turned down the corners on a lot of pages. (I wanted to underline things, but I find it distracting when people do this and then I read the book after them, so I didn't because I know that Dr. H. will read this book soon.) Miller rambles a lot sometimes, but in his rambling, he has all kinds of simple but profound statements, like this one: "Too much of our time is spent trying to chart God on a grid, and too little is spent allowing our hearts to feel awe. By reducing Christian spirituality to formula, we deprive our hears of wonder."

And others that are just funny, like this: "Some of my friends have left their churches and gone Greek Orthodox. I think that sounds cool. Unless you are Greek. then it sounds like that is where you are supposed to go, as though you are a conformist.… If I were Greek, I would go to a Baptist church. Everybody there would think I was exotic and cool."

This isn't a deeply theological text. Miller is just trying to figure things out, to try to understand problems with the brand of Christianity that he'd been raised in:

"I had been raised to believe there were monsters under the bed, but I had peeked, in a moment of bravery, and found a wonderful world, a good world. … We were raised to believe this. If people were bad, we treated them as though they were either evil or charity: If they were bad and rich, they were evil. If they were bad and poor, they were charity. Christianity was always right; we were always looking down on everybody else."

He works though this in much of the book, and ultimately comes to realize the need to differentiate what is human tradition and failings and what is God's word.

This is a great read for anyone who struggles with the tension between what Christians claim vs. how we act. Again, this is not a theological text with passages of scripture referenced and footnotes; it's really one man's journey toward God.

Other, Much Longer Reviews of Blue Like Jazz
Mommy on Fire
Michael Krahn
Faith Based Blog
Convergence Review
Broken Masterpieces
Internet Monk

Book Review: Elizabeth and Her German Garden

September 15th: This is the month of quiet days, crimson creepers, and blackberries; of mellow afternoons in the ripening garden; of tea under the acacias instead of the too shady beeches; of wood-fires in the library in the chilly evenings. The babies go out in the afternoon and blackberry in the hedges; the three kittens, grown big and fat, sit cleaning themselves on the sunny verandah steps; the Man of Wrath shoots partridges across the distant stubble; and the summer seems as though it would dream on for ever.

Published in 1899, this is the journal of Elizabeth von Arnim, cousin of Katherine Mansfield, through a year at her husband's estate north of Berlin. Elizabeth's life takes on a totally new dimension when she discovers this estate, her husband's second home. The grounds are in a state of disarray, and Elizabeth sets out to surround the castle with gardens. She goes from being a good German hausfrau and socialite to a master gardener.

The book opens with Elizabeth alone at the estate; with her husband and children ("the babies") back at their first home, she find absolute bliss in her solitude. She immediately sets out to tame the wild gardens and to simply revel in the outdoors. Eventually her babies join her there, and her husband, known as the Man of Wrath, comes occasionally. Very little is said about the inside of the estate, except that she dreads sleeping each night.

I can so relate to Elizabeth on so many levels. Her writing is poetic but witty, and she speaks about her garden with such joy and reverence. She is just a happy, grateful person—at least when she is free to be outdoors and do her own thing. She writes: "We were meant to be happy, and to accept all the happiness offered with thankfulness—indeed, we are none of us ever thankful enough, and yet we each get so much, so very much, more that we deserve." For Elizabeth to have to be a perfect hostess and attend operas, however, would be like me having to awaken at 6 a.m. and be at business meetings all day.

Elizabeth is constrained by the times, however, in a way that I am joyfully not. She is continuously frustrated by being a woman and having to abide by certain rules. She despises having nurses for her children, preferring instead to let them run wild in the gardens. She writes: "It is so nice without a governess that I would put off engaging another for a year or two, if it were not that I should in so doing come within the reach of the arm of the law, which is what every German spends his life in trying to avoid. … We are liable at any moment of receive a visit from a school inspector, who will inquire curiously into the state of her education, and, if it is not up to the required standard, all sorts of fearful things might happen to the guilty parents."

She yearns to do all the yard work herself but to do so was simply out of the question. "I wish with all my heart I were a man, for of course the first thing I should do would be to buy a spade and go and garden, and then I should have the delight of doing everything for my flowers with my own hands and need not waste time explaining what I want done to somebody else. It is dull work giving orders and trying to describe the bright visions of one's brain to a person who has no visions and no brain."

The book is so much more than Elizabeth's gardening journal. It is the story of a woman who seized a world for herself and her children, rather than allowing society to dictate her life. It's a book that embraces personal freedom and the joy that comes with going against traditional expectations.

Other Reviews
Girl eBooks ("One of the beauties of reading well-seasoned literature is that we modern women forget what life was like for women a hundred or more years ago.")
So Many Books ("A pleasant book, perfect for spring.")

Book Review: The Center of the Universe

I am a big fan of memoirs. I'm also a big fan of lyrical writing, and not so much a big fan of dark humor, attitude, and heavy sarcasm. Those are important things to understand about me in the context of this book review.

I didn't love Nancy Bachrach's memoir of her bipolar mother, AKA The Center of the Universe. I didn't connect at all. It was emotionally disjointed for me, although very well written. For me, it lacked the element of poetry that creates—in me—empathy. This book felt wrapped in a hard outer shell, and I couldn't crack it. The pace was so fast and snappy that I couldn't always follow, and I tired of the Bachrach's cleverness within the first few chapters.

Do you see where I'm coming from? If you liked The Liar's Club (which I did not), you'll like The Center of the Universe. If you prefer lyrical memoirs like James McBride's The Color of Water, I wouldn't recommend this. It's all about what draws you, as the reader, in personally. It is difficult for me to connect with people in real life who are cynical and constantly clever, and this naturally carries over into my reading life. Again, Bachrach is a good writer, and the story is intriguing and unique in many ways.

For me, it's all in the presentation, and I missed the poet's heart of my favorite memoirs.

Other Reviews of The Center of the Universe
She Is Too Fond of Books
Confetti Dreams

Book Review: Beautiful Boy

I've been putting off reading this book for quite some time now. I'd read reviews of it—knew the subject matter—and somehow was reluctant to read it. This is David Sheff's memoir of his son Nic's battle with meth addiction. It's a hard book to read, especially if you have a 17-year-old son, like I do. Unless a parent lives in utter denial, you can't help but thinking, "This could be my kid."

Because it could be, really, anyone's kid, and that's one of the points that Sheff makes. It doesn't necessarily matter how lenient or how restrictive you were as a parent. It doesn't matter if your kid is an outcast or the most popular kid at school, an honor student or barely passing classes. Meth, he contends, is not content to hang out in trailer parks or the projects. It can seduce anyone at anytime.

Meth got his brilliant, witty, happy son Nic and turned him into a trembling, sneaking liar, who was so desperate that he even stole from his eight-year-old brother. This is David's story about Nic's addiction and about how David dealt with the fear, helplessness, denial, and tremendous guilt associated with being the parent of an addict. David finds himself struggling to live a normal life for his two young children while being essentially constantly thinking about Nic.

Sheff is an excellent writer. The story is sometimes terribly repetitive, but that in itself reflects the nature of addiction: the same cycle over and over and over: recovery, relapse, recovery, relapse. One can't help but google Nic Sheff immediately upon finishing the book, hoping to find him still in recovery but fearing the worst.

Turns out Nic Sheff has his own 2008 memoir, Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines and a mySpace page that looks to be fairly current. I hope he is doing well, and that his younger brother and sister, as they are entering the age where his addiction started, are staying strong—and far, far away from meth.

I can't say I enjoyed reading this book—who could? But I'm glad I did.

Book Review: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

I am a big fan of well-written, lyrical memoirs: creative non-fiction, not straight autobiographies. Dave Eggers does not disappoint in his memoir of becoming his brother's parent at age 21. But this book is so much more than Eggers' struggle to be a parent vs. a big brother. It's a coming-of-age story of a person that is overloaded with creative genius, surrounded by emotionally needy friends, and being emotionally needy himself, and who is trying to figure out what he is supposed to do with all of that.

The story opens in the elite suburb of Chicago as Eggers' mother is dying from the last stages of cancer. Just a month of so before, his dad also died of cancer, unexpectedly. At this time Dave is 21 and his older brother and sister are also in their early twenties. And then there is Christopher (Toph), who is just eight-years-old. For various reasons, Dave becomes the primary caretaker of Toph, with sister Beth helping out when she can. They move to California, where Dave and Toph live in semi-squalor by night, while Toph attends a private school by day. Dave is still really a kid himself, forced to become essentially a single mom without any real knowledge of how to go about it. But he has great parenting instincts for the most part and is completely committed to raising Toph.

The title of this memoir, which I sense is meant to be self-deprecating and ironic, is perfect. It is a heartbreaking story. Losing both parents in a matter of months. Going from being a mostly functional family of six to a brother/brother-parent/son duo. Going from being a carefree college student to a dad. And then there is the whole struggle of just being in one's early 20s, wondering where to go and what to do. And the staggering genius part: Eggers really is. His writing is amazing. The dialog is perfect. It's all just so...real. It's sad story, but I laughed out loud a lot and found myself nodding in understanding. I totally get him at a generational level. He is clever and funny and amazingly perceptive.

The downside: There were parts I skimmed, I must admit. Sometimes he went off on tangents that lost my interest. And the last few pages were bizarre; the book ended with a slow fizzling out. Also, Eggers' swears a whole lot, especially toward the end of the book. I'm just not really around that in my life, so I found it silly and annoying, but it didn't stop me from loving the book and recognizing it is an honest, reflective, and ultimately hopeful book.

Book Review: A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

I've had this book on my actual real TBR shelf for close to two years. My husband, who is on the local university's faculty, takes part in the "Life of the Mind" discussion groups for incoming freshman each August. Ishmael Beah's memoir of his years as a child soldier in Sierra Leone was the university's choice a couple of years ago. I don't know why I took so long to read this, but I'm really glad I finally did.

This is not a pleasant book, although Beah is an extremely likable narrator. Even when he is brutally killing innocent villagers, the reader knows that Beah is a gentle boy forced into a life of brutality over which he literally has no control. The story starts when Ishmael is about 12 years old, and his peaceful life in a rural village in Sierra Leone is suddenly altered forever when the rebels attack anyone and everyone in the countryside. Ishmael and a band of boys manage to evade the rebels for a couple of years by wandering from ransacked village to jungle to ransacked village, but eventually Ishmael is forced to become a boy soldier like so many others. His only goal is to kill those who killed his family, and to survive.

This is an absolutely heart-breaking book, not only because Ishmael tells his story with such honesty, but because there are still thousands and thousands of children throughout the world who are forced into being soldiers today. It's hard to imagine the devastation of the lives of these children, when we in the U.S. are concerned about if it is OK for our 14-year-olds to read Twilight or if a teacher was really justified in making a kid stay after school. We have no idea.

This book actually has a very happy ending—as happy as I think it can get. I wish the best for Ishmael Beah, and pray that he will stop being plagued by nightmares. And that his voice may save the lives of other children.

Other reviews of A Long Way Gone:
Book Lady's Blog
Books By Their Cover
Laughing Stars
Lost in Books
Bibliofreakblog
The Book Book
Discerning Reader

Book Review: Dancing Under the Red Star

Subtitled "The Extraordinary Story of Margaret Werner, the Only American Woman to Survive Stalin's Gulag," this book really is an amazing story. Author Karl Tobien was an adult before his mother ever revealed her past to him, and when he heard her story, he knew it needed to be told.

Margaret Werner was eleven when she and her parents left Detroit to take a job in Russia in the early 1930s. Her father was part of a group with the Ford Motor Company that was assisting the Soviet Union in starting an auto factory in Gorky, Russia. They thought they would be there for a year.

It was 30 years before Margaret made it back to the United States. The Werner's life in Russia was terrible from the first day, when they discovered their deplorable housing conditions. Soon after they arrived, Stalin began his reign of terror, and the Ford Motor Company essentially abandoned its group of 400 workers. Margaret's father was arrested in 1938 on fake charges of treason and sentenced to prison camp. They never heard from him again.

Margaret and her mother struggled to survive in Stalinist Russia, always fearful for their lives yet determined and amazingly resilient. In 1943 the police came for Margaret, who was about 25 years old. She was charged with anti-Soviet propaganda and espionage, again a totally false charge, and sentenced to 10 years of hard labor.

For a decade then Margaret struggled to survive in the Russian "gulag archipelago," the forced labor and prison camp system mostly in northern Siberia. Margaret's sheer grit, wit, and determination is amazing, and she develops an amazing faith in God throughout her experiences. She also forges close friendships with her fellow women prisoners and is able to keep in brief contact with her mother.

After her release, Margaret quickly marries and has a baby (she is in her late 30s by then) and sets about to find a way to finally get back home, to the United States. Her whole life story is absolutely amazing. While this narrative is certainly not on the level of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, it is extremely readable and provides an incredible view of Stalinist Russia.