First Quarter Reading List

Some people have been asking me what I've read so far this year 

Especially as we approach holiday book season!

Unfortunately, given that much of my reading has been through the library app and $1-$2 book deals on the Amazon Kindle app, I can't say that I have a lot of "new" books to recommend, but I will share some of the older books that I've gotten around to with a brief rating/recommendation--in reverse order, starting with the latest books I've read.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
The story of Achilles and the Trojan War from Patroclus' point of view. I was definitely intrigued by the love story between the two--which created its own set of problems--and the way that "men" were shown with all their flaws, even as the gods who participated in the story were just as flawed. This book does not shy away from sex (nor is it particularly graphic), but I could see this being an issue for people who wanted to include this with a study of The Odyssey. However, for those who like Greek gods and heroes, this story is an interesting take on how the world might have looked to the Greeks (if, in fact, they did meet with Gods and Goddesses).

Uprooted by Naomi Novik
This was one of those books I got because both the e-book and audiobook were available at the same time (and the author of Wicked wrote a favorable blurb), so I could listen in the car (or while washing  the dishes) and then switch back to the e-book version to continue quietly.
Note: the audiobook was TERRIBLE! The reader sounded like she was a robot with an Eastern European accent, except when she read the parts of possessed people--and when I heard the animation in her voice, I kind of wanted everyone to be possessed from that point onward.
Anyway, I didn't realize this was a fantasy book at first, but much as I tend not to like fantasy fiction, I liked this story. It was kind of a coming of age tale/adventure, complete with all the heroic archetypes (mentor, elixir, slaying the beast, etc.). The best part of this was the nature of "the Wood," the everywhere and nowhere villain of the story.

We Should all be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
This was more of an essay than a book, but it was powerful. It is also a TED talk! (This is the same MacArthur genius grant winner who has the famous "The Danger of a Single Story" TED talk...I shall be looking for more of her writing!)

The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett by Chelsea Sedoti
I read this as part of the Big Library Read program (and because of this, the ebook and audiobook were available at the same time). It is a part mystery, young adult book, but it still worked for me (maybe because I teach young adults). The audiobook was AMAZING! The reader really embodied Hawthorn, the female protagonist, and I appreciated the voice she gave to the supporting characters. I also appreciated the author's use of symbolism and voice, and the way she didn't shy away from real issues faced by teenagers. I also liked that I didn't always like the main character, who was realistically selfish and somewhat understandably critical of everyone--who were, after all, contributing to her miserable state as an outcast.

Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account by Dr. Miklos Nyiszli

This book has been around for a long time (and it's pretty short), but I learned some new information about Dr. Mengele from this, as well as how the Sonderkommando worked. What was most interesting to me was the foreword of the book, which kind of criticizes the men in these units for NOT rebelling against the Nazis sooner. While it kind of offended me, as I read the story itself, I could see how hard the Nazis worked to keep people from rebelling, and how insidious the persecution of the Jews was, slowly stripping them of their humanity and life force until, as the doctor said, many welcomed death. A fascinating survivor account.

The Radium Girls by Kate Moore

The true story of the women who painted radium dials on watches during and after WWI. I was horrified to learn of the "lip point" technique they were encouraged to use, which basically had them eating radioactive paint--and then the systematic denial by the companies that they could be at fault for the health problems (to put it mildly) encountered by the women after the fact. I loved how the author committed to telling the story from the girls' points of view.

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

This was the first of my ebook/audiobook experiments, as I found that I would want to keep reading as I shuttled the kids and myself to and from school. After reading (and loving) David and Goliath on audiobook and Outliers in paperback, I wanted something else by this author. This is an interesting look at how "trends" explode, and what makes something "tip" into--or out of--popularity.

David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell

This audiobook explored what makes "the underdog" such an obvious winner. If you want to think about how weakness can become strength and vice versa, its an interesting read. I especially enjoyed the chapter on class size, though I would argue that in some classes with special needs, 20+ students is too many!

How many books can you read with a new baby?

A lot.

When you have a Kindle app that allows you to use a black screen and white text in low light, you can turn awful nights up with the baby into secret read-a-thons.

Thank goodness for my local library's participation in Overdrive, which allows me to download (free, borrowed) e-books. Here is a short list of books I e-read since Fiona's birth, up through the late part of summer (hey, I often skipped around). I'm happy to discuss ANY of them beyond my crude rating:

The Martian by Andy Weir
Super-funny and suspenseful sci-fi adventure. I bet the movie is awesome.

Dead Wake by Erik Larson
I never knew it could take so long for a damn boat to sink. Some facts were cool, but otherwise my nonfavorite nonfiction.

American Jezebel by Eve LaPlante
Nonfiction: The trial transcripts were the best part. Anne Hutchinson kicked butt. The author less so.

Irena's Children by Tilar J. Mazzeo
Totally true story. Called the female Oskar Schindler, but she was much more of a boss. She didn't have money, and she withstood torture to protect her children and families from the Nazis. Then the Nazis tried to blow up Warsaw. Very cool, well-researched story.

One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus
Such a guilty pleasure novel. This is based on a real offer to make peace, during which a Native Chief offered to trade horses for 1000 white women (as wives) to help bring a new generation peacefully into the white man's world. What if some crazy women really did it? I bet it would go down like this. (Oh, and there's a sequel coming soon!!)

The Girl Who Came Home: A Novel of the Titanic by Hazel Ganor
Loved how the narratives came together. I could see a movie version of this someday. And who doesn't like Titanic stories?

The Lunching: The Epic Courtroom Battle that Brought Down the Klan by Laurence Leamer
I learned a lot about the Klan, and how hard it is to overcome racism in America.

The Bees by Laline Paull
This was sold to me as a dystopia...and it is, but it is LITERALLY about bees. I'd love a science teacher to weigh in on the science in the book (fictionalized, as the bees are sentient), but other than that, I was a little bugged out.

Last Train to Istanbul by Ayse Kulin
A holocaust novel with a unique twist, as a Turkish family deals with prejudice inside their family and country while trying to save Jews from Hitler's reach. (Rumors there is a movie...?)

Broken Angels by Gemma Liviero
A novel that weaves together the story of a Jewish woman, reluctant Nazi, and Polish child. Very cool.

Elsewhere by Richard Russo
The author's memoir focused on his mother, who you get the sense was both wonderful and not quite right....who'da thought a Pulitzer winner comes from such interesting people ;)

Kindred by Octavia Butler
Sci-fi time traveler meets Roots. How would a woman of the 1970s handle going back to slave-state Maryland to save her white slave-owning ancestor? This book offers no easy answers. Oh, and that mystery of how her arm gets stuck in the wall? SOOO cool, and it came with a critical essay at the end that made me want to reread the whole novel to appreciate it even more.

Freakonomics by Steven B. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
LOVED this book. You will never look at data the same way!

SuperFreakonomics by Steven B. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
LOVED this book. Where else will you find out how a street prostitute is like a mall Santa?

Think Like a Freak  by Steven B. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
 Can you tell I loved the series so much that I gobbled all three of these?


Happy reading!

EDIT: I completely forgot to include the hard copy books I managed to read!

A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father by Augusten Burroughs
Not as good as Running with Scissors, but this is an interesting story of growing up with a (likely sociopathic) distant father. As a teacher, I squirmed when I read about how his mother took him out of school to hide from his father on several occasions, and I worry about how many stories that might require similar intervention are likewise hidden behind seemingly free-spirited parents.
I also wondered at the relationship between Burroughs' father and mother. Granted, much of their origin story is second-hand and skewed through the eyes of Augusten, but it made me wonder how someone could be so deceived as to the nature of another. If you like watching Criminal Minds, you might find this story psychologically intriguing.
 
The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens

I'm not a big "mystery" reader--in the sense of a genre-specific book--but I really liked this story of a college kid who procrastinates until he goes to a nursing home out of desperation to find an interview subject--and finds more than he bargained for. The characters and conflicts felt real, and even the protagonist's quest to find out the truth felt authentic (until about 3/4 of the way through the book, by which point I didn't care). Joe Talbert is a protagonist you can't help but root for, especially with his troubled family life, and Carl Iverson is a fascinating character of focus, accused of a horrible murder and claiming he wants to tell "the truth"--which isn't a simple case of innocent or guilty-- before the end of his life.
And, unlike many mysteries/thrillers, this story wasn't super predictable (until the very end, but again, I didn't care by then). This was a great beach read, but also an inspiring read in general.

Reading during the school year... (Part 1)

To kick off the summer, I thought I would post about some books I read over the course of the school year that stuck with me.

Over Thanksgiving break, I read Emma Donahue's Frog Music. Having read Room (now a major motion picture) several years ago and crying through it (yes, I have tear ducts), I was excited to read Donahue's follow-up.

While I was ready for realistic fiction, I had forgotten that this novel was historical fiction--and, in fact, very well-researched historical fiction based on a true story!

The Washington Post review by Ron Charles does a great justice to the book, but it dances around some of the graphic material....and this is not for those who feel they can't handle mature content (it is about a prostitute...a real one, not a Hollywood glamorization). Looking at this novel from a feminist perspective is interesting, as it seems in the beginning that Blanche is an empowered woman, only to see how impossible empowerment was for women at that time, given the constraints on what they could wear and even what they could own (for, if a woman was married, all that she had automatically became her husband's!).

Women are at the core of this story, and this novel takes an interesting look not only at women, but at a moment in time. Mature content aside, I found the portrayal of San Fransisco fascinating, especially as I had read about early California in Isabel Allende's Daughter of Fortune last summer. This seemed to me almost a sequel, with issues of sexual exploitation, racism, and violence recurring...as well as the pursuit of love. I won't spoil too much of this (in part because the content is so mature), but the following trailer provides an interesting preview of the story.

Over Winter Break, I read Trevor Noah's Born a Crime, a memoir of growing up in South Africa. I have to confess that before reading this book, I really wasn't all that interested in Trevor Noah. As far as I was concerned, he was that poor replacement for Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. However, after reading this book, I had a newfound respect for the man and his sense of humor.

Then, my father picked up the book, and said that it was providing him with a really interesting perspective on apartheid. I have to admit, that I didn't know that much about apartheid before reading the book, but I was eager to learn more. The book interestingly begins with the actual law surrounding black and white breeding and intermarriage, showing not only how severe the penalties were for a romance of mixed races, but also showing that those penalties were less severe for white people than for black people.

 What I found very interesting was the fact that Trevor Noah was in fact born a crime. If his mother had shown that she had a half race son, the state would have taken him away and send him to live in an orphanage, because people of different races couldn't live together. And just one example of his mother's ingenuity, she used to have a mixed race friend go walking with them in the park, so she could pretend she was the nanny, and not Trevor's mother. If someone had suspected that the friend wasn't Trevor's mother, they wouldn't be arrested.

Aside from providing an interesting look at apartheid, this book is relatable to anyone who has felt like an outsider, and shows how creative people can be when they are looking to make their way in an unjust world. This book also really highlighted the strength of Noah's mother, who we know from the outset is shot in the face  by her husband, and yet survives, waking up to tell a joke as her first words. 

 Additionally, there are funny anecdotes that show how we in the Western World can think singularly about certain issues. For example, one that really stuck with me, was a friend of his called Hitler. Noah points out that people often named their children for famous figures, and given that black people in South Africa weren't often educated, they didn't really understand why Hitler might be an offensive name, so when Trevor and his friend Hitler went to a Jewish school, well, you can imagine....

And as you can imagine, I read several other books during the school year, but those will wait for another day!

Aww Nuts

So, remember how I started picking some books based on their covers?

If you look at the cover of Penny Marshall's memoir My Mother Was Nuts, you'd think it was going to be a very funny book. It was not.

For those who don't know Laverne and Shirley or Big or A League of their Own, Penny Marshall is an actress/director who is incredibly funny and talented...on screen. Amazon had good reviews, but the top review on Goodreads seems to tell the story (albeit less generously).

I know English teachers are supposed to like books (and I did finish it, because I spent $2 on it and because it did get a little more interesting in the middle, when I learned about how some TV shows and movies are made), but I thought this was terrible. Penny Marshall led this AMAZING life, knows all these famous people, and yet the story read like: "I did this. And then I did this. This guy was there. He was really funny."

I know she worked with a ghost writer, and I don't know their qualifications, but I'd have to conclude that either the ghost writer wasn't very good, Penny Marshall insisted on creative control, or she did so many drugs that she couldn't remember any details that would have made this memoir feel like a life. 

In fact, reading an interview with her reads a lot like the book. It's the exact same stuff. It's a shame, because she was the first woman to make a $100 million dollar film, and with that kind of achievement, I wanted to know more about the BARRIERS she faced. Really, the struggles she has are glossed over, including her pregnancy in college which caused her to drop out and get married. Her whole life is turned upside down, and the way the book reads, it's like she had some stale Raisin Bran for breakfast.

I did find it interesting to read how A League of Their Own was cast, as I love that film. I love that Tom Hanks wanted the part so badly, and that the character of Kit was cast before Gena Davis (they dyed the hair so they would even look remotely like sisters). I loved hearing about how Jon Lovitz ad-libbed so many of his great lines in that movie (like telling the cow to shut up). All of that trivia was interesting.

This was a very fast read (I knocked it out in a few hours) and not very difficult. If kids want to know why smoking and doing drugs and having unprotected sex is bad, they might be interested in this, but I'm guessing most teens will pass. And unless you really, really love Penny Marshall (I do), I'm guessing many adults would pass too.
But if you want to know about how Penny Marshall got where she did, if you don't want to read the online summaries of the fun facts about her movies shared in her book (like how Marky Mark became Mark Wahlberg on her watch, or how she rode around France with Art Garfunkel), then this book is for you!

Happy reading!

Have Mercy!

What sold me was a review that said it would be a great companion to To Kill a Mockingbird...

I didn't realize that the majority of Just Mercy took place in Monroeville, Alabama, where Harper Lee was raised, or that this too involved the story of a black man wrongfully accused and convicted of a crime.

Unlike Atticus Finch, however, the protagonist of this story is the author, a black lawyer who is keenly aware of how unjust the system as. Race is thus always an element of this story, even when the people Stevenson defends aren't black, as he encounters his own challenges as a black attorney in Alabama (and other places across America).

With that said, this was not as "heavy" a book as it could have been. I really enjoyed reading it (couldn't put it down), and couldn't wait to find out what happened in the "main" story of his defense of Walter McMillian, a black man who had two strikes against him: success and a white girlfriend. When the local sheriff couldn't find a suspect for the murder of a beloved young white girl, he jumped on the chance to arrest McMillian once someone pointed the finger in his direction. At least that is how the book tells it...and in this memoir, Stevenson shows how much evidence had to be ignored to try and convict McMillian. (I don't think I'm spoiling anything by sharing one shocking example: his entire family was with him at the time of the murder! But their alibis didn't count when stacked against the testimony of a white criminal looking to make a deal!)

And this was all happening in Harper Lee's hometown, a place that celebrated the "justice" seen in the movie by using its courthouse to lure English majors and lawyers to spend tourism money. The irony is not lost upon Stevenson, who sees that the racism, classism, and even sexism portrayed in the novel is still alive and well in the modern day despite Harper Lee's indictment of the system.

As much as I wanted to know what happened, I liked how the author interrupted this story to share some of the other cases he worked on. At first I thought it was a poor conceit, but as he reviewed these other cases, it became clear he was showing, through example, just how unfair the system is to the poor, the too-young-to-know-better, the mentally ill, young mothers, and people of color. I read this book on my Kindle app, and found myself highlighting paragraphs that either shocked me (the statistics about how much we spend on prison vs. education weren't new to me, but were still shocking) or touched me.

Thus, when we returned to McMillian's story, the unfairness of it all was less shocking. His story--while an egregious example of injustice--was then framed as just ONE example of all the injustices occurring in our nation today. It also showed how "political" the law is, with district attorneys, judges, and politicians afraid to put what is "right" before what is popular for the sake of votes, money, and ease.

The story is also incredibly inspiring. The author came from humble beginnings, attended Harvard law, started a nonprofit practice to defend the defenseless (at a time when money was being cut to provide people with a defense....kind of like today!), and ended up winning all sorts of awards in addition to successfully arguing in front of the Supreme Court!

Maybe I'm the only person who would pick this as a beach read, but I found this to be well-paced, and interesting on both an academic and "popcorn" level. And, as has been the trend, apparently I picked a book that is being made into a movie! (Check out the handsome actor who will play young Bryan!)

Michael B. Jordan, who will star  in the movie, release date TBD.

 

While there are definitely disturbing facts in the book, nothing is so graphic that I would say this is not appropriate for high school. In fact, I think a young adult audience would connect with Stevenson right out of college and appreciate the look "behind the scenes" of our American system, which teenagers are already skeptical of. Oh, and I think adults would really like it too :)

Happy reading!

Barely Breathing

Definitely crying when I finished this one...

Whereas it took me a week to finish my last "for fun" book, it only took me a few hours to read When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi (and contributors).

The author with his wife and daughter.

As you will no doubt read in the book jacket, this is the true story of Paul Kalanithi, before and after his diagnosis with stage IV lung cancer at 36 years old. In fact, he died while working on the book in March 2015, and so his wife writes his final chapter.

But it isn't so much the story that is remarkable (though I love that he shared his journey to find himself, dual majoring in biology and English, and even earning a masters in English before deciding to become a doctor). What is interesting about this book is the voice and perspective, written as a "convert" in so many ways--from scholar to healer, from doctor to patient--though he never forgets to sprinkle in the wisdom from his favorite authors along the way. He found inspiration in poets and writers, especially those with medical training ("I took meager solace in knowing that William Carlos Williams and Richard Seltzer had confessed to doing worse, and I swore to do better. [...] Technical excellence was not enough.")

The author at work.

I personally loved learning about what doctors, and more specifically what neurosurgeons have to go through to become "doctors," and Kalanithi is very candid about how hard it is to keep perspective that patients are people when overwhelmed by responsibility. Although he seems to gloss over some episodes that could have been elaborated on more (like how these pressures drove his good friend to suicide), given that this is an unfinished book, it's pretty compelling.


I loved how connected to literature the novel was. In fact, the author confesses that "it was literature that brought [him] back to life" after being confronted with the certainty of death (though not the certainty of when that death would come). Paul wanted to know what makes life meaningful, and believed that poetry, literature, and language were essential to life. 

His wife, Lucy, writes in the epilogue, "Paul confronted death--examined it, wrestled with it, accepted it--as a physician and a patient. He wanted to help people understand death and face their mortality." (You can watch a short interview with her below.)

So, if you are looking for an inspirational true story, if you have been pondering what makes life worth living, if you are interested in medicine, if you know someone struggling with cancer, or if you just want a good cry, I would say this is a great book for you.

Happy reading!

It's Between Me and...

If you haven't heard of Between the World and Me,

then you need to enter the conversation.

Ta-Nehisi Coates memoirish book is only about 150 pages, but it took me a good week to read. It is dense, and often it is raw, and it raises questions and truths about America that make all of us uncomfortable. It is heavy reading, but the way the author intertwines the personal with the abstract keeps this book from feeling overly academic or preachy.

The author and his son, as a baby.

The book is written as a letter to his son, though the open nature of the letter means that everything he says is between the world and him. (I know kids, duh!) The title also clearly references prominent African American author Richard Wright ("And the sooty details of the scene rose, thrusting themselves between the world and me"), and in many ways echoes Wright's Black Boy, revealing what it means to grow up black in America...but including the diversity of the experience as well as the unfortunate unity that comes from race.

Richard Wright

And what I found interesting is that the author calls into question this whole idea of race. Throughout the book, he both explicitly and implicitly argues that race is a construct, an invention of those who would be part of the "white" race to grant and deny power. The combination of narrative, history, and current events makes this argument persuasive.

Being what many people would consider a white woman, I felt profoundly conflicted about the novel. I can never truly empathize with the author or his experience, but I feel guilt and shame on behalf of the system that privileges me. I felt guilt about how I benefit from the perverse race situation in America, and then I felt almost angry that the author wasn't providing answers, but seemingly only blame. But then, as I finished the book, it became clear that HE didn't have the answers. The point of writing this as a letter was to share his frustration, his struggle, and his wisdom as he searched for the best answers he could.

So, as I'm at a loss for words trying to better describe this book, let me share with you some of the passages that stuck out/stuck with me.

 "The point of this langauge of "intention" and "personal responsibility" is broad exoneration. Mistakes were made. Bodies were broken. People were enslaved. We meant well. We tried our best. "Good intention" is a hall pass through history, a sleeping pill that ensures the Dream."

"At the onset of the Civil War, our stolen bodies were worth four billion dollars, more than all of American industry, all of American railroads, workshops, and factories combined, and the prime product rendered by our stolen bodies--cotton--was America's primary export. [...]Here is the motive for the great war. It's not a secret."

"The killing fields of Chicago, of Baltimore, of Detroit were created by the policy of Dreamers, but their weight, their shame, rests solely upon those who are dying in them. There is great deception in this. To yell "black-on-black crime" is to shoot a man and then shame him for bleeding."

"She alluded to 12 Years a Slave. 'There he was,' she said, speaking of Solomon Northup. 'He had means. He had a family. He was living like a human being. And one racist act took him back. And the same is true of me. I spent years developing a career, acquiring assets, engaging responsibilities. And one racist act. It's all it takes.'" 

If you search the internet, you will find it abounds with quotations from this book; it is that poignant. (You can also find a lot of videos of interviews with and talks by the author.)

This is a book I would recommend to many people (whether they want to read it or not). I think to conversations I've had with students about race in our little part of Connecticut, and this book really helped me think differently about the words I use when talking about "race" with students. It made me think about how I might inadvertently be reinforcing corruption in the name of keeping things civil...it just made me think.

So, if you are interested in "race" in America, if you have ever felt powerless, if you are a person who likes to be challenged, and if you want to read quality writing, then this nonfiction book is for you.

Happy reading!

In the Dark

Goodreads recommended this, and the title sounded very interesting...

But I was expecting something else. I had heard an interview with the author on the radio, and it sounded interesting. Honestly, with a title like Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget, I was expecting some really interesting drunk stories. What I learned was that drunk stories really aren't all that interesting, and that was exactly what the author's message was.

That isn't to say that this was a boring book--rather, it was a memoir about recovery, not about the glory of drinking. And, in fact, the author explicitly addresses what a problem it is that our culture glorifies drinking, especially as a way to "free" or empower women. Rather than simply detailing the many times she reached the bottom of a wine bottle, the author gets to the bottom of this complicated relationship between American culture and alcohol.

And this worked, as I was hoping to find a book that clearly connected to the school's Health, Wellness, Fitness, and Sports theme for summer reading, and this definitely fit the bill for health and wellness...in that this memoir detailed how not well the author was and what it took to make her both physically and mentally healthy again.

In fact, I found the scientific explanations she gave for things to be some of the most interesting parts of the book. She spoke to Aaron White, an expert on blackouts, and learned that "it's not the type of drink you put to your lips, it's the amount of alcohol in the blood and how quickly you get to that level. Fragmentary blackouts start at a blood-alcohol content around .20, while en bloc blackouts start around .30." And because women are smaller and metabolize alcohol more slowly, it takes less to put them in the dangerously drunk zone. Oh, and when people black out, it's because their brain is essentially being poisoned to the point that it can't work to form memories, which apparently is why drunk people sound like a broken record, since they can't remember what they told you 5 minutes ago. So, I liked how this book dispelled the myths about how "awesome" it is to be drunk--without it sounding preachy. After all, this woman lived that scene for decades.

I found the introduction "Women Who Drink," to speak to the conflict that many modern young women face when presented with the choice to drink--or the choice to do much of anything.

I drank to drown those voices [...] I wanted the same freedom from internal conflict that my male friends seemed to enjoy. So I drank myself to a place where I didn't care, but I woke up a person who cared enormously.

I think this speaks to many women and girls, who want to "Let it go" and shed their inhibitions, but think that they cannot do it without a chemical fix. However, there is a notion that alcohol excuses actions or consequences, and Hepola does a great job showing that those consequences are rarely really ignored, and that they do add up, especially in regards to sex. (Yes, there is sex in the book...and curse words. I'd argue the minimal details about sex help further the author's point about the problems with judgment when drinking--and the reasons many women drink. I can't defend the cursing except to say its the author's chosen voice.)

This was also an interesting "writer" story, as Hepola explored the difficulties of writing and the literary "tradition" of alcohol abuse: "I became, as Irish author Brendan Behan once said, 'a drinker with a writing problem.'" The fear of judgment that is inherent in writing is shown through the lens of someone who wrote a great deal for online content, where the comments section empowers "any random dude with a Tumblr account" to take people down.

What I liked about the book, aside from the author's straightforward style, the messages about female empowerment, and the unsentimental way she wrote, was the theme: health comes from being unafraid to be yourself. So many of her bad choices tied back to fear, and so, perhaps, in telling her story, more women and men can learn to be brave--and healthy.

Happy reading!

Memoirs covered in coffee...

Have you ever rescued a book from locker clean out?

Specifically, have you ever seen a coffee-stained book headed for a trash can and shouted, "Don't throw out a perfectly good book!" Well, I did.

Actually, I rescued this book a little while ago, but I was cleaning off my bookshelves at the end of the year and found The Glass Castle, which was a summer reading book option for students in Grade 12. As I haven't had seniors in a few years, I did not get to their entire summer reading list at the time. However, I was looking for a few good books, and after a wonderful essay a certain sophomore wrote this year about coffee and life, I thought the coffee-stained book was just what summer ordered.

Now, let me just say, you will not need coffee to read this book. I was hooked from the very first sentence:

"I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster."

What followed is an intriguing introduction that leads to a "flashback" of sorts, reflecting upon the author's childhood. It begins with her first memory of being in the hospital after an accident that left her severely burned...a memory which ended with her parents snatching her from the hospital and journeying to a new home.

The Glass Castle was a heart-wrenching true story told by Jeannette, the second oldest child in the family, about growing up in severe poverty with parents who had problems with alcohol and "normal life." However, this isn't one of those stories that requires a box of Kleenex to read. The way Walls tells the story makes it sound like a crazy adventure...at least until she is old enough to know better. The early stories of her childhood, like falling out of their car on a desert highway, are told in a way that are funny instead of sad, so you sort of laugh when her first grade self and her siblings get into a shoot-out with the neighbor's kid.

Of course, by the time the family reaches West Virginia and moves into a house that has no electricity or running water, Jeanette begins to realize that she wants a different life. From this point, the story becomes both sadder and more inspiring, as she and her sister work to do what it takes to escape the extreme poverty that plagues the family.

I would recommend this book to most students in high school and adults too. While there are some mature themes (i.e. threats of molestation and a particularly disturbing scene where Jeanette's father takes her teenage self to a bar to help him scam some money), if that does not bother families, I think the overall messages are positive. This shows how perspective can make anything better, and this shows how perseverance (and sacrifice) make a difference. Although this story illustrates how some people are dealt a terrible hand in life that is almost impossible to recover from, it is done in such a caring way that a reader tends to feel genuine sympathy, as if this family were the family next door instead of a family "in some book."

So in the end, I guess it was fitting that I rescued this book from the garbage, but even better that I was able to read this page-turner. Oh, and apparently this is being made into a movie, and so read the book now so you can look down on the movie! (JK, but seriously, read the book!)

Happy reading!