Review of The Truths We Hold, by Kamala Harris

Audiobooks, Current Issues, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

The Truths We Hold

My American Journey

by Kamala Harris
read by the Author

Penguin Audio, January 2019. 9 hours, 26 minutes.
Review written October 1, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I have a history of becoming a fan of female politicians after I read their books. It worked for Elizabeth Warren and Katie Porter, and now for Kamala Harris. In all three cases, their writing reveals a heart for public service that can’t be faked. Instead of contempt and disdain for those who get left behind in America, for whatever reason, these leaders ooze empathy and understanding – and a determination to call to account the powerful forces that messed up the lives of ordinary Americans.

In Kamala Harris’s case, her fight against the big banks was especially impressive. Yes, I’d heard about that as a political line. But getting the full story – how all fifty state attorneys general were meeting just after she’d been elected to that office in California, and they were prepared to settle for $2 billion and immunity for the banks against further prosecution – was truly impressive. She initiated a full investigation, met with actual people who’d been defrauded and lost their homes, and eventually got a settlement ten times bigger that went much further toward helping the people who’d been harmed.

Her life story helps the reader understand all that empathy. She was brought up by a single mother who was a cancer researcher but eventually died of cancer. Her mother purchased a home when Kamala was in high school, and was tremendously proud of that achievement, which gave Kamala all the more compassion for the folks who lost their homes during the recession.

This book was written in 2018 in the middle of Donald Trump’s presidency, so it was a politically different world than what’s out there now, but I did especially like the ending of the book, all about policy changes we need to have happen — and all of that grounded in compassion and empathy for ordinary Americans.

I haven’t heard her lately saying anything about Universal Basic Income and Medicare for All, but I love that those things are on her radar. (She mentions a pilot program happening with UBI, and there’s much discussion about how the healthcare system is broken, but we mustn’t go back to a time when people could be denied healthcare for having preexisting conditions.) Actually I appreciate that she’s politically savvy enough to go for changes that are politically possible, but will still help ordinary Americans.

I put this audiobook on hold as soon as Harris got the nomination, and my hold finally came in. Even though it was written six years ago, it showed me the heart of this smart and dynamic politician and made me trust that she truly is working to make lives better for ordinary Americans and to bring those who would harm them to account.

kamalaharris.com

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Review of The Backyard Bird Chronicles, by Amy Tan

Audiobooks, Musings, Nonfiction Review, True Stories 0

The Backyard Bird Chronicles

by Amy Tan
read by the Author

Books on Tape, 2024. 6 hours, 29 minutes.
Review written August 20, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

This book is what the title suggests – the story of the birds who came to Amy Tan’s backyard, since 2016, when she took a class on nature journaling and started paying attention.

The nature journaling class was also about sketching birds – saying you notice better when you draw the birds. The audiobook is supposed to have an accompanying pdf, but I wasn’t sure how to access it, so I’ve put a hold on the book to glance through the pictures she drew.

And this book is excerpts from her nature journal, telling about her visitors, as she got to know them. Mind you, Amy Tan has a bird-friendly garden and a green roof on a home overlooking the San Francisco Bay. And she has multiple feeders out for different kinds of birds – in fact, some of the fun in these chronicles is her quest for feeders that are squirrel proof and scrub jay proof.

The book was a little repetitive in spots, I think because it was a journal. Occasionally she’d refer back to something that had happened before as if we hadn’t just heard about that in the earlier part of the journal. But that didn’t really detract from the meditative writing, all about noticing her visitors.

I listened to almost all of this book while obsessively doing a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle, and it was soothing and comforting, making me feel like I was observing nature while I was actually doing a puzzle and thinking about nature.

I am lucky – I live in a second-floor condo. My downstairs neighbor puts out and fills a bird feeder, so I can sit out on my balcony and be on the level of the birds lining up for the feeder. Although the book didn’t convince me to try sketching the birds, it did make me want to notice a little better, pay attention, and enjoy the visitors here.

So – this is a book about bird-watching. In the author’s backyard. In the hands of a skilled author, that turns out to be a delightful and interesting topic.

amytan.net

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Review of Somehow, by Anne Lamott

Musings, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Somehow

Thoughts on Love

by Anne Lamott

Riverhead Books, 2024. 194 pages.
Review written August 27, 2024, from a library book.
Starred Review

Yes, when Anne Lamott brings out a new book, I need to read it. They are a little bit about faith, a lot about life, and always inspiring and encouraging.

Anne Lamott has a quirky perspective, and she knows how to bring the reader along with her, so we look at things a different way. She’s also self-deprecating and never makes you feel bad for being spiteful, angry, or whiny, because she tells hilarious stories of when she was all those things, too, and really, who wouldn’t be?

Anne Lamott writes about the human condition and helps us realize how much we have in common and that we’re all in this together.

I didn’t mark quotations in this one. There are lots of great paragraphs, but they’re generally all from a longer story and the power of her words is in the path she leads you down to get you there.

So I think for this review, I’m going to give you the first and last paragraph, to give you the flavor. Here’s how the book begins:

My husband said something a few years ago that I often quote: Eighty percent of everything that is true and beautiful can be experienced on any ten-minute walk. Even in the darkest and most devastating times, love is nearby if you know what to look for. It does not always appear at first to be lovely but instead may take the form of a hot mess or a snoring old dog or someone you have sworn to never, ever forgive (for a possibly very good reason, if you ask me). But mixed in will also be familiar signs of love: wings, good-hearted people, cats (when they are in the right mood), a spray of wildflowers, a cup of tea.

And here’s the last paragraph:

I’ll tell you what Blake actually wrote more than two hundred years ago: “And we are put on earth a little space, that we may learn to bear the beams of love.” If the younger ones in our lives can remember only this one idea, that they are here, briefly, a little space to love and to have been loved, then they will have all they need, because love is all they need, rain or shine – love, cough drops, and one another. Good old love, elusive and steadfast, fragile and unbreakable, and always there for the asking; always, somehow.

In between you’ve got the wonderful musings of Anne Lamott. I read a chapter each day and they always leave me feeling uplifted and more hopeful. If you haven’t read an Anne Lamott book yet, it’s time to dive in!

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Review of Making It So, by Patrick Stewart, read by the Author

Audiobooks, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Making It So

by Patrick Stewart
read by the Author

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2023. 18 hours, 50 minutes.
Review written August 16, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I have no idea what took me so long to get this audiobook listened to, except maybe that since it came out in October 2023 when I was busy reading for the Morris Award, I may not have put it on hold, and then forgot when that reading was done. Anyway, I finally made up for lost time – and what a treat!

Understand that I’m a big Star Trek: Next Generation fan. My then-husband and I watched the show avidly, beginning some time in the third season, I believe. And on one of our car trips from Illinois to Phoenix, Arizona, for Christmas in the early 1990s, we listened to an audiobook on cassettes of Patrick Stewart reading Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. That was in the days before I even listened to audiobooks, but that one had my rapt attention.

So when I learned that he’d written an audiobook and reads it himself, you better believe I wanted to listen to it! 19 hours of listening to Patrick Stewart’s voice? Yes, please!

So it was fun to learn that the accent I know and love is not the one he was born with. He grew up very poor in Yorkshire, and learned the “BBC” accent in theater school. Everything about his childhood was fascinating. He had an abusive father, yet both his parents supported him going to theater school, and he got a scholarship from the local community to attend. He blames Margaret Thatcher for the fact that such scholarships aren’t available to young aspiring actors today.

Of course, my favorite parts were him talking about acting on Star Trek: Next Generation. He barely knew what Star Trek was when he was suggested for the part, though his kids had avidly watched the original series and were duly impressed.

My least favorite parts were learning about him cheating on his first two wives, and I was prepared to be judgmental when I learned his third wife is younger than his son. But then I thought – wait a second, someone my age or younger is married to Patrick Stewart? Okay, I can believe that she’s in love with him. And why would he mind marrying a much younger woman? He kept mentioning her throughout the book, and is clearly happy and in love and still happily working in theater, always striving to accomplish more – and I can only be happy for him.

He’s lived – and is still living – a rich, full, and interesting life. It was a delight to get a window into all that he’s experienced.

The audiobook ended with an excerpt from A Christmas Carol. Made me want to listen to that audiobook all over again.

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Review of Hunting Magic Eels, by Richard Beck

Christian, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Hunting Magic Eels

Recovering an Enchanted Faith in a Skeptical Age

by Richard Beck

Broadleaf Books, 2021. 237 pages.
Review written August 21, 2024, from my own copy, purchased via Amazon.com
Starred Review

I picked up this book at exactly the right time. I’d just finished a book I was reading during my daily devotional time and was looking for one to bring on a retreat I was attending in North Carolina with Lorna Byrne. Lorna Byrne is the author of Angels in my Hair and has all her life been able to see and talk with angels. My natural tendency is to bring skepticism to her teachings – and this book helped me get out of my head and listen with my heart to her words.

Here’s a section from the Introduction where the author explains the magic eels of the title:

Llanddwyn Island was a famous site of pilgrimage because of its holy well. Inhabiting the well were enchanted eels that could predict your romantic future. According to the legend, if the eels disturbed a token thrown into the well, your lover would be faithful for life. Not surprisingly, the church became very wealthy due to all the pilgrimages. Who needs premarital counseling when you’ve got magic eels?

Today, there is no longer a well there with magic eels. And we hear the story with skepticism and condescension.

Five hundred years ago, life was enchanted. God existed, and the devil was real. The world teemed with angels and demons. There were magical creatures and dark, occult forces. It was a world of holy wells and magic eels.

But with the Protestant Reformation and the beginning of the Enlightenment, the world – in the West, at least – has grown increasingly disenchanted. We live in a world dominated by science and technology. Increasing numbers of us don’t believe in God anymore, to say nothing about believing in the devil or angels. We don’t expect miracles. We know that stage magicians aren’t sorcerers, that there’s a rational explanation behind their “tricks” and “illusions.” The world of St. Dwynwen is viewed as quirky and quaint but also naive and superstitious. We’ve grown up and left those fairy tales behind.

This is the topic of the book. Recovering enchantment with our faith. Getting it centralized not so much in our heads as in our hearts. Experiencing and encountering God, rather than just knowing about God.

And yes, there’s a section at the end about discerning the spirits – because not everything “spiritual” is of God. But overall, the book is about paying attention and being willing to have some enchantment with your faith.

The final page sums up much of where this book takes you:

And so, dear reader, this is my final encouragement: Love like the sunshine and the rain. Ask forgiveness of the birds. Be a drop more gracious, tender, and kind. Go gently in this mean world. Offer up prayers of Thanks, Help, and Wow. Recover your sacramental wonder. Count your blessings. Look to the horizon in the Valley of Dry Bones. Remember that you are a child of God. Rush to kiss the lepers. Listen to the voice in the night calling you to the cross. Turn yur attention to the God dancing right in front of you. God is everywhere present, breathing on this world and turning it to fire. Where you stand is the gateway to heaven. The world is shining like transfiguration. Even the eels.

It only takes a little willingness to see.

If you’re a Christian whose life seems lacking in enchantment lately, or even if, like me, you want encouragement to believe in mystical things like angels or miracles, to get your faith more in your heart than in your head – this book will encourage you along that path.

And I’m choosing to believe that my timing in reading this book wasn’t a coincidence, but was from God.

experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/
broadleafbooks.com

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Review of The Woman They Could Not Silence, by Kate Moore

Audiobooks, History, Nonfiction Review, True Stories 0

The Woman They Could Not Silence

One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear

by Kate Moore
read by the Author

Blackstone Publishing, 2021. 14 hours, 37 minutes.
Review written August 1, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.

This book is both fascinating and horrifying. It’s the story of Elizabeth Packard, whose husband had her locked up in an insane asylum for three years beginning in 1860. It’s about her fight for her freedom, for custody of her children, and ultimately to reform laws and the treatment of the “insane.”

The story was hard to listen to, because Elizabeth was locked up basically because she developed religious views that disagreed with her pastor husband. And she was too vocal about them. Everything he did was completely legal, and he was able to have her committed to an asylum on his say-so. Even more horrifying was the later corroboration from the superintendent of the facility that he was convinced she was insane, because he based that assurance completely on her opinions, which he did not agree with.

Or another example of her obvious insanity was that she was angry with her husband – the same man who’d put her in the insane asylum when she was completely sane. Because it’s not “womanly” to hate your husband.

The book also told about the horrors of the asylum. At first, Elizabeth was in the best ward, but as punishment for speaking up, she got moved to a much worse situation and witnessed much abuse and many horrible things. Any letters she received or sent were confiscated. And she never had any idea how long she would be incarcerated.

Eventually, she was able to get a trial. The way the doctors used her ideas as proof that she was insane was chilling to me. It reminded me of present-day people telling transgender folks they are “confused” – indeed the book included a postscript about modern women being called insane or crazy for their political views.

After she was free, Elizabeth Packard went on to work to change the laws – so that women couldn’t be incarcerated on the word of their husbands, so that insane asylums had to be independently inspected, and many other issues. She was free, but she used her powerful voice to help the many others she’d seen who had been victims of the current system.

Not realizing the narrator was the author, I wondered why they picked a narrator with a British accent, but as usual I very much enjoyed listening to that accent. With the one bothersome detail that she didn’t pronounce “Packard” the way Americans do, putting more of an emphasis on the second syllable. But that was easily overlooked, as I enjoyed everything else about her reading. The book was obviously scrupulously researched – using Elizabeth’s own writings and other contemporary writings and reports to put together the whole story.

It was wonderful to learn about this true American hero, as well as sobering to learn the situation women could find themselves in only 160 years ago.

kate-moore.com

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Review of Beauty Will Save the World, by Brian Zahnd

Christian, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Beauty Will Save the World

Rediscovering the Allure and Mystery of Christianity

by Brian Zahnd

Charisma House, 2012. 234 pages.
Review written July 27, 2024, from my own copy.
Starred Review

In this book, Brian Zahnd makes the case that Christianity – as Jesus taught it and lived it – is inherently beautiful. Christianity as we practice it today, when we meld it with power and politics, not so much.

As I began reading, I glanced at the copyright page and realized he wrote this book before the age of Trump. I wondered if it would have changed if he wrote it today. Then today – the day I finished reading the book – Brian Zahnd posted this Tweet:

Christian

It was originally a mild derogatory term for the first followers of Jesus who sought to be Christlike.

Humble
Merciful
Gracious
Gentle
Forgiving
Compassionate

It had nothing to do with seeking political power.

It still has nothing to do with seeking political power.

So I don’t think the intervening years have changed the author’s perspective. I do think the message has become more important.

Here’s how he explains in the middle of the book that to follow Jesus, we shouldn’t be after the kind of power the world seeks:

Our first priority as the church is not to make all these things happen in the world through political action, but to be a prophetic witness to the hope of a world remade according to Christ. Every redemptive action – political and otherwise – must proceed from our faithful witness. In the midst of a hateful, violent, and idolatrous world, the church is to be an enclave of love, peace, and holiness. To be a faithful church, the church must be distinguished by holiness. Not holiness as puritanical moralism, but holiness as otherness – we are to be other to the values of this present darkness. Christian holiness is not based upon a certain set of rules but upon the fact that we are from another time. If we approach holiness as a legislative issue, we are prone to get it wrong. And even if we are not wrong in our judgment, we are likely to be ugly about it – haughty, condemning, and condescending. Holiness is not that. Holiness is not moralism. Holiness is not legalism. Holiness is not puritanical rule keeping. Holiness is otherness. Holiness is prophetic untimeliness. Holiness is the transcendent beauty that comes from belonging to the redemptive future. Holiness is a preview of the world to come. Holiness is a picture of the beauty that is to be. To live now according to the beauty that shall be because the future belongs to God is what the psalmist means when he calls upon us to “worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.” We are holy when we are other. We are holy when we transcend the dominant paradigms of present corruption. We are holy when we are from the future.

He finishes up the book by going through each one of the Beatitudes, the heart of Jesus’ greatest sermon, which teaches the church how to be a shelter from the storm.

It is first of all vital we understand that the Beatitudes are not platitudes. They are not commonsense sayings. They are the very opposite. The Beatitudes are often paradoxes and deeply counterintuitive. The Beatitudes are subversive to the established order – they are the subversive values of the kingdom of God. The Beatitudes are the counterintuitive wisdom of God that turns the assumed values of a superpower culture on its head. The Beatitudes are the antithetical ethos to the superpower mantra of “we’re number one!” The Beatitudes are deliberately designed to shock us. If we’re not shocked by the Beatitudes, it’s only because we have tamed them with a patronizing sentimentality – and being sentimental about Jesus is the religious way of ignoring Jesus! Too often the Beatitudes are set aside into the category of “nice things that Jesus said that I don’t really understand.”

More about the Beatitudes as countercultural:

It’s also helpful to understand that the Beatitudes are not advice or instructions or qualifications. They are nothing like that. They are not dictates or laws; the Beatitudes are announcements. Jesus is proclaiming the arrival of the kingdom of God, and with the Beatitudes Jesus is announcing who it is who is going to be most blessed with its arrival. Jesus is telling us in whose ears the gospel of the kingdom is going to really sound like good news. It is an unsettling fact that the inauguration of the kingdom of God brings a radical change to the accepted order of how the world has always been run. The Beatitudes announce that change. This is why Jesus says things like, “The last will be first, and the first will be last.” It is at this point that those accustomed to confessing they are “number one” should squirm.

What Jesus is announcing in the Beatitudes is a radical reordering of assumed values; some will hear it as good news, while others will be threatened by it. Those for whom the long-established order has been advantageous – the winners in the game, the top dogs – are not really looking for things to change; they have a vested interest in the status quo. This is going to place Jesus at odds with the power brokers of the age – then and now. After all, it wasn’t the poor and marginalized who conspired to crucify Jesus; it was Caiaphas and Herod and Pilate – those who had a powerful stake in the present arrangement. But for the losers in the game – those scraping the bottom of life’s barrel, the marginalized and forgotten, the left out – what Jesus announces is indeed good news.

Reading this book gets me thinking about whether the way I live out my faith is beautiful or not.

brianzahnd.com

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Review of The Age of Magical Overthinking, by Amanda Montell

Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Starred Review 0

The Age of Magical Overthinking

Notes on Modern Irrationality

by Amanda Montell
read by the Author

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2024. 6 hours, 5 minutes.
Review written July 22, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I got to hear Amanda Montell speak at George Mason University’s Fall for the Book festival a few years ago. I purchased her book Cultish and thought it was wonderful and insightful, so I was very happy to listen to her latest offering. My only regret is that I listened to it instead of reading the print copy, because then I would have retained more, and I could have given you pithy quotations from each chapter.

The “Magical Overthinking” she refers to in the title is logical fallacies and cognitive biases – as applied to our everyday lives.

She’s more interested in how the “sunk cost fallacy” keeps a person in a bad relationship than about how you might throw good money after bad – she applies these cognitive biases to our relationships and daily decisions.

But I like the way Amanda Montell explores all sides of each cognitive bias, including bringing up scholars who suggest that sometimes staying longer in a “bad” relationship can be a good thing. She doesn’t make any of the issues sound cut-and-dried, but explores ideas and asks questions. She includes stories from her own life – including the abusive relationship she got pulled into as a teen.

Relationships aren’t the only thing she talks about. There’s the halo effect of celebrities. Another is nostalgia and how we don’t necessarily think realistically about the past, and how that can affect our decisions. And honestly, if I had the print book in front of me, I’d now go back and list each fallacy. (My complaint being that it didn’t have chapter titles – each chapter was about a different fallacy.)

She talks about the thought patterns we fall into with lots of compassion, and plenty of insight. And helps open our eyes to the ways they might not be as logical as we think.

amandamontell.com

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Review of A Journey of Sea and Stone, by Tracy Balzer

Christian, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

A Journey of Sea and Stone

How Holy Places Guide and Renew Us

by Tracy Balzer

Broadleaf Books, 2021. 228 pages.
Review written June 26, 2024, from my own copy purchased via Amazon.com
Starred Review

A Journey of Sea and Stone includes thoughts and meditations on spiritual direction – taken from the author’s experience guiding people on retreats on the Isle of Iona.

Now, I’ve been on Iona, and somehow when a friend proposed an exercise of visualizing where I want to be in ten years, I came up with the thought that future Sondy would be booking her annual personal spiritual retreat on the Isle of Iona. The spiritual retreat part being annual, the Isle of Iona part being special. I still hope it will happen – and meanwhile, this book let me do that in spirit, if not in person.

I read it slowly, a short section at a time. But it’s full of inspirational thoughts about sacred places and how the holy fits into our lives. Each chapter ends with Questions for Spiritual Direction. As an example, here are the questions at the end of the first chapter:

1. Where are the sacred places in your life? How have they changed you?

2. If you were to be honest with God about the deepest longings of your heart, what would they be? What is keeping you from admitting them?

3. When have you experienced kairos? Is there something in your life that creates an obstacle to kairos?

Even though it was a very different place than Iona, I took this book with me on my 60th birthday trip back to Germany and finished it there. I like the author’s way of raising thoughts and asking questions. She gets you thinking about how the holy touches your life.

tracybalzer.com

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Review of The Brave In-Between, by Amy Low

Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

The Brave In-Between

Notes from the Last Room

by Amy Low

Hachette Books, 2024. 210 pages.
Review written June 26, 2024, from an Advance Reader Copy.
Starred Review

First, great big thanks to my friend Suzanne for passing this Advance Reader Copy on to me. She knew I would like it, and she was absolutely correct. She knew I’d appreciate a memoir about divorce and picking up the pieces with a background of Christian faith.

This memoir is about those things – a husband’s betrayal and trying to build her life again, with the help of her faith – but it’s also about living in the “Last Room” – which is literally the last room of life. The book tells about the author’s diagnosis with Stage IV colon cancer and four years of treatment, with no expectation of a cure. For years, she hasn’t been expecting to live long, and this changes your perspective.

She begins the book with her husband taking tender care of her after surgery – when they were already divorced. Then she backs up and tells about the betrayal and all that followed. And then the doctor appointment when her life changed. And then what that means for dating, for time with her children, for her career, and how she thinks about life in general.

And she frames all of this with Philippians 4:8 — “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things.” In the prologue she explains that in the last room she uses those intentions as spotlights to bring clarity to the chaos, and I love the way she weaves them and thoughts about them into her story.

I was riveted by this book and Amy Low’s story — and I was also uplifted. The book isn’t heavy on Christian content, but it’s there, and indeed her reflections on these values from Philippians make the story one of light and not of despair.

amylow.substack.com

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