Review of NurtureShock, by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman

Audiobooks, Current Issues, Nonfiction Review, Parenting, Starred Review 0

NurtureShock

New Thinking About Children

by Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman
read by Po Bronson

Hachette Audio, 2009. 7 CDs.
Starred Review

This audiobook was a fascinating one to listen to. I put a copy of the print version on hold, so I’d have some surprising statistics to quote for this review, but too many people want to read it and my copy still hasn’t come in, so I will have to go by memory of what I heard and be more general.

NurtureShock reviews studies on child development and breakthroughs in our understanding of nurturing children that have come in the last ten years, particularly studies that had results contradictory to prevailing belief.

The authors cover many different aspects of raising children and cover child development at all age levels. They begin with studies that show that too much praise is actually counterproductive for building a child’s self-esteem. They go on to studies about many other things, and cover each topic in great depth, explaining the implications of the studies and how the researchers approached their surprising results.

We learn about the importance of sleep for children — it’s much more important for children and teens than it is for adults. They look at the lies children tell, which happens much more often than their parents realize. It turns out that children know they are lying much younger than their parents realize, but it also serves a developmental purpose.

We learn that baby videos — with disembodied voices — actually slow down a baby’s vocabulary development, that responsiveness to the baby’s initiation is key. We learn that children’s programming like Arthur actually increases aggressive behavior. (The neat summing up at the end doesn’t seem to make up for all the unkindnesses portrayed earlier in the story.)

All ten chapters tell you fascinating things about children and teens and their developing brains. Not only do the authors present the surprising results, they also come up with plausible reasons for why those results are happening.

I highly recommend this book for all parents, and anyone who works with children or teens. People will also be fascinated who are interested in how the human mind works. Every chapter has interesting and surprising things to think about, and it may change the way you parent your kids. It would be nice if this book could even be used to change some school district policies.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/nurtureshock.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library audiobook from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Born on a Blue Day

Audiobooks, Biography, Mathematical, Nonfiction Review, True Stories 0

Born on a Blue Day

Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant

by Daniel Tammet
read by Simon Vance

Tantor Media, 2007. 6 CDs, 6.5 hours.

Lately I’ve gotten hooked on listening to nonfiction. It’s a little bit easier to stop listening when I get to work (most of the time), and there’s something about driving that makes it a good time to access the part of my brain that stores facts. (That may not be a scientific description, but that’s how it feels.)

Born on a Blue Day tells the story of person with a brain that stores facts much differently than mine. Daniel Tammet is on the high-functioning end of the autistic spectrum, and he has amazing powers of memory. He has recited the digits of pi to more than 20,000 places, and can learn a new language in one week. He proved this in a televised experiment with Icelandic and after studying the language one week, appeared on several Icelandic television and radio shows, speaking in the native language.

Part of the trick to Daniel’s memory is that numbers have a specific shape, color and personality to him. Primes look different than other numbers, and when he multiplies two numbers, he can see the answer by the process their shapes use to combine. He learned all those digits of pi by simply learning the “landscape” — the view as the numbers passed by, which to his mind’s eye was exceptionally beautiful.

He also sees letters and words as having distinct shapes and colors. This helps him learn words in new languages, because he associates the word and its meaning with how the word looks to him.

This book is the story of Daniel Tammet’s life. His prodigious mental feats are a sideline of the story. The focus is on how he grew up and coped with being so different. He is proud to now be living independently with his partner, making a living, and even traveling all over the world and raising money for charities to help people with neurological disorders.

This book is both fascinating and inspiring. I’m not sure that many other autistic savants could articulate the way they see the world so clearly and beautifully.

I was also delighted to discover the reader was Simon Vance, who also narrates the Temeraire books. In this book, there were no characters to distinguish between, since it’s all told from Daniel Tammet’s perspective. But I’m getting quite a crush on Simon Vance’s voice. He’s a treat to listen to.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/born_on_a_blue_day.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library audiobook from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Strength in What Remains, by Tracy Kidder

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

Strength in What Remains

A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness

by Tracy Kidder
Read by the author

Random House, 2009. 8 hours, 30 minutes on 7 compact discs.
Starred Review

Many years ago, I read Among Schoolchildren, a nonfiction book by Tracy Kidder, and was impressed by the thorough way he explored every aspect of his subject. Having been deeply moved by Immaculee Ilibagiza’s books Left to Tell and Led by Faith about surviving the Rwandan genocide, when I found out Tracy Kidder had written a book about it, I was eager to read it.

This is actually the story of a Burundian medical student, Deogratias, who barely escaped the genocide in Burundi and spent six months on the run. The first place his escape took him was to refugee camps in Rwanda — just in time for the genocide to start there.

There were several miracles in his escape story that could have so easily gone the other way. For example, on the day the genocide started, he hid under his bed in the medical school’s dorm, but forgot to close the door to his room. He was too afraid to get out from under the bed and close it, so he huddled under the bed in terror, hearing the killers coming and breaking down other doors and killing people. When they got to his room and saw the door was open, they said, “The cockroach has left!” and moved on. He escaped that night, walking through a building full of dead bodies. And that was only the beginning of a six-month ordeal.

Deo’s troubles weren’t over when he arrived in New York City with two hundred dollars in his pocket. He found a job delivering groceries for fifteen dollars a day and spent his nights in Central Park. He tried to sleep as little as possible, since he had terrible nightmares from what he had experienced back home.

But Deo survived. He made friends. He went to Columbia and later to medical school and did well. Now, he has built a clinic in his parent’s village in Burundi, bringing hope and health to people, easing the conditions that spawned the genocide in the first place.

The website for his organization is www.villagehealthworks.org. When I looked at the website after having listened to the audiobook, I couldn’t imagine a worthier organization to support.

Deo’s story is amazing. I was riveted and found myself lingering in the car to listen a little more when I got home from work.

Immaculee Ilibagiza’s book, Left to Tell, is more a story of faith and forgiveness, as she had visions and miracles while she hid in a bathroom. In Strength in What Remains, Tracy Kidder takes a secular, objective view. You can tell he is amazed at what Deo survived and how he managed to process and deal with his memories, and then rise above his experiences and bring healing to his people. Tracy Kidder presents the facts, but the listener can’t fail to be inspired.

I also did not realize how bad things had been in Burundi. I’d heard of the “Rwandan genocide,” and hadn’t realized that the same conflict between Tutsis and Hutus happened in Burundi as well, but lasted much longer in a civil war. I think of myself as relatively well-informed, but I knew nothing about Burundi until I listened to this book.

I highly recommend that you listen to or read this amazing story. Yes, some horrible things happen that you won’t want to think about, but ultimately you will be moved and inspired.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/strength_in_what_remains.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library audiobook from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of My Stroke of Insight, by Jill Bolte Taylor

Biography, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

My Stroke of Insight

A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey

by Jill Bolte Taylor, PhD
read by the Author

Penguin Audio, 2008. 5 CDs. 5 hours, 44 minutes.
Starred Review.

Jill Bolte Taylor was a Harvard brain scientist, a neuroanatomist, when she experienced a stroke at age 37, completely disabling the left hemisphere of her brain.

Because she knew so much about the brain, she found herself watching with fascination as the stroke took away more and more of her abilities, as blood was flooding different parts of her brain. She was home alone, unable to understand spoken language or read written language, but she did get occasional waves of clarity, so she managed to figure out what was happening and call for help, even though it took her a long time to figure out what number to call and how to call that number and she didn’t know what the other person on the end of the line was saying.

It’s fascinating when she tells how she perceived the world when only her right brain was working. She says she felt at one with the universe, like a fluid. She didn’t know where her own body began and ended. She didn’t know what she was seeing, because her eyes just saw random pixels, and she lost her ability to find edges and define shapes.

It took her eight years, but she eventually recovered completely. Though maybe her voice isn’t as accomplished as a professional actress, it meant a lot that she read the audiobook, because the listener can hear for yourself that she is now once again fluent with language.

This book is informative and interesting on so many levels. For the merely curious, it offers all kinds of fascinating information about our brains and how they work. For those who experience stroke some day, it tells you the warning signs, so you may recognize when they are happening. For those who care for a stroke survivor, it tells you how to be an understanding and uplifting caregiver. For example, it’s helpful to remember that they are not deaf, they are just having trouble processing what they hear, so raising your voice is the opposite of helpful. The book also explains the things that helped Dr. Taylor to recover completely.

I found it fascinating that when only her right brain was working, Dr. Taylor found herself much more sensitive to a person’s energy. She could easily sense if someone was angry or tense or worried, and those people were not nice to be around. But she could also easily sense loving, compassionate people, and she experienced those people as a healing presence.

In her right brain, Dr. Taylor was much more peaceful and joyful. She did find, as she recovered, that she could choose which of her old brain patterns to allow to come back into play. She chose not to restore old patterns of resentment and anger. A big part of her stroke of insight was finding out how much that goes on in our brains is our own choice.

The word I keep thinking of in association with this book is “fascinating.” It’s a tremendously interesting story for anyone who has a brain.

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Review of Why Does He Do That? by Lundy Bancroft

Current Issues, Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Relationships, Starred Review 0

Why Does He Do That?

Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

by Lundy Bancroft

G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 2002. 408 pages.
Starred Review.

This is a fascinating, informative, and tremendously helpful book. Lundy Bancroft has worked for years with abusive men and their partners. He understands how they think and why they do what they do. He’s seen the same behaviors and patterns come out again and again.

This book communicates his deep understanding of abusive men, clearing up many common myths about domestic abuse. He talks about what a man needs to do in order to change and helps the partner understand how she should respond.

His introduction says it well:

“I have been working with angry and controlling men for fifteen years as a counselor, evaluator, and investigator, and have accumulated a wealth of knowledge from the two thousand or more cases with which I have been involved. I have learned the warning signs of abuse and control that a woman can watch out for early in a relationship. I’ve come to know what a controlling man is really saying, the meaning that is hidden behind his words. I’ve seen clues to recognizing when verbal and emotional aggression are heading toward violence. I’ve found ways to separate out abusive men who are faking change from those who are doing some genuine work on themselves. And I have learned that the problem of abusiveness has surprisingly little to do with how a man feels — my clients actually differ very little from nonabusive men in their emotional experiences — and everything to do with how he thinks. The answers are inside his mind.

“However, as delighted as I am to have had the opportunity to gain this insight, I am not one of the people who most needs it. The people who can best benefit from knowledge about abusers and how they think are women, who can use what I have learned to help themselves recognize when they are being controlled or devalued in a relationship, to find ways to get free of abuse if it is happening, and to know how to avoid getting involved with an abusive man — or a controller or a user — next time. The purpose of this book is to equip women with the ability to protect themselves, physically and psychologically, from angry and controlling men.”

Along the way, he presents answers to twenty-one questions he is commonly asked by women about their abusive partners, as a way of giving them the information they most need to hear.

I like his central goal:

“If your partner’s controlling or devaluing behavior is chronic, you no doubt find yourself thinking about him a great deal of the time, wondering how to please him, how to keep him from straying, or how to get him to change. As a result, you may find that you don’t get much time to think about yourself — except about what is wrong with you in his eyes. Once of my central reasons for writing this book is, ironically, to help you think about him less. I’m hoping that by answering as many questions as possible and clearing away the confusion that abusive behavior creates, I can make it possible for you to escape the trap of preoccupation with your partner, so that you can put yourself — and your children if you are a mother — back in the center of your life where you belong. An angry and controlling man can be like a vacuum cleaner that sucks up a woman’s mind and life, but there are ways to get your life back. The first step is to learn to identify what your partner is doing and why he does it, which is what the pages ahead will illuminate. but when you have finished diving deeply into the abuser’s mind, which this book will enable you to do, it is important to rise back to the surface and from then on try to stay out of the water as much as you can. I don’t mean that you should necessarily leave your partner — that is a complex and highly personal decision that only you can make. But whether you stay or go, the critical decision you can make is to stop letting your partner distort the lens of your life, always forcing his way into the center of the picture. You deserve to have your life be about you; you are worth it.”

At the beginning of the book he explains what abuse is. It’s surprisingly hard to spot in your own relationship, since the partner never starts out by being abusive.

“One of the obstacles to recognizing chronic mistreatment in relationships is that most abusive men simply don’t seem like abusers. They have many good qualities, including times of kindness, warmth, and humor, especially in the early period of a relationship. an abuser’s friends may think the world of him. He may have a successful work life and have no problems with drugs or alcohol. He may simply not fit anyone’s image of a cruel or intimidating person. So when a woman feels her relationship spinning out of control, it is unlikely to occur to her that her partner is an abuser.

“The symptoms of abuse are there, and the woman usually sees them: the escalating frequency of put-downs. Early generosity turning more and more to selfishness. Verbal explosions when he is irritated or when he doesn’t get his way. Her grievances constantly turned around on her, so that everything is her own fault. His growing attitude that he knows what is good for her better than she does. And, in many relationships, a mounting sense of fear or intimidation. But the woman also sees that her partner is a human being who can be caring and affectionate at times, and she loves him. She wants to figure out why he gets so upset, so that she can help him break his pattern of ups and downs. She gets drawn into the complexities of his inner world, trying to uncover clues, moving pieces around in an attempt to solve an elaborate puzzle.”

A partner being abused commonly accepts all that blame when it begins. Lundy Bancroft’s words are comforting:

“Part of how the abuser escapes confronting himself is by convincing you that you are the cause of his behavior, or that you at least share the blame. But abuse is not a product of bad relationship dynamics, and you cannot make things better by changing your own behavior or by attempting to manage your partner better. Abuse is a problem that lies entirely within the abuser.”

“The abuser creates confusion because he has to. He can’t control and intimidate you, he can’t recruit people around him to take his side, he can’t keep escaping the consequences of his actions, unless he can throw everyone off the track. When the world catches on to the abuser, his power begins to melt away. So we are going to travel behind the abuser’s mask to the heart of his problem. This journey is critical to the health and healing of abused women and their children, for once you grasp how your partner’s mind works, you can begin reclaiming control of your own life. Unmasking the abuser also does him a favor, because he will not confront — and overcome — his highly destructive problem as long as he can remain hidden.”

Some good points the author makes about abuse, based on years of working with abusers are:

“Abuse grows from attitudes and values, not feelings. The roots are ownership, the trunk is entitlement, and the branches are control.

“Abuse and respect are opposites. Abusers cannot change unless they overcome their core of disrespect toward their partners.

“Abusers are far more conscious of what they are doing than they appear to be. However, even their less-conscious behaviors are driven by their core attitudes.

“Abusers are unwilling to be nonabusive, not unable. They do not want to give up power and control.

“You are not crazy. Trust your perceptions of how your abusive partner treats you and thinks about you.”

Here are some good points from the chapter on how abuse begins:

“You do not cause your partner’s slide into abusiveness, and you cannot stop it by figuring out what is bothering him or by increasing your ability to meet his needs. Emotional upset and unmet needs have little to do with abusiveness.

“Certain behaviors and attitudes are definitional of abuse, such as ridiculing your complaints of mistreatment, physically intimidating you, or sexually assaulting you. If any of these is present, abuse has begun.

“Abused women aren’t ‘codependent.’ It is abusers, not their partners, who create abusive relationships.”

Then he talks about how abuse looks in everyday lives. These are some of the points:

“For the most part, an abusive man uses verbally aggressive tactics in an argument to discredit your statements and silence you. In short, he wants to avoid having to deal seriously with your perspective in the conflict.

“Arguments that seem to spin out of control ‘for no reason’ actually are usually being used by the abusive man to achieve certain goals, although he may not always be conscious of his own motives. His actions and statements make far more sense than they appear to.”

“Be cautious, and seek out assistance. You don’t deserve to live like this, and you don’t have to. Try to block his words out of your mind and believe in yourself. You can do it.”

In the chapter toward the end on abusers who change, the author advises:

“You cannot, I am sorry to say, get an abuser to work on himself by pleading, soothing, gently leading, getting friends to persuade him, or using any other nonconfrontational method. I have watched hundreds of women attempt such an approach without success. The way you can help him change is to demand that he do so, and settle for nothing less….

“Those abusive men who make lasting changes are the ones who do so because they realize how badly they are hurting their partners and children — in other words, because they learn to care about what is good for others in the family and develop empathy, instead of caring only about themselves.”

There’s a lot more in this book. I like some of the advice to the abused woman toward the end:

“If you give yourself a long enough taste of life without being cut down all the time, you may reach a point where you find yourself thinking, Go back to that? For what? Maybe I’ll never stop loving him, but at least I can love him from a distance where he can’t hurt me.…

“The only time an abusive man will deal with his issues enough to become someone you can live with is when you prove to him, and to yourself, that you are capable of living without him. And once you succeed in doing so, you may very well decide that living without him is what you would rather do. Keep an open mind, and make sure you are not clipping your own wings on top of the clipping that he has given them.”

Can you tell that I’m trying to cram all the good advice and important information into this review? There are many common myths about abusive situations in our culture, and this book cuts through the mythology and shows you the truth. If you suspect you might be in an abusive relationship, or if you have a friend or relative in an abusive relationship, I highly recommend reading this book.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/why_does_he_do_that.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Review of Making Mischief, by Gregory Maguire

Art, Biography, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Making Mischief

A Maurice Sendak Appreciation

by Gregory Maguire

William Morrow (HarperCollins), 2009. 200 pages.
Starred Review.

Lavishly illustrated with Maurice Sendak’s creations, Making Mischief is based on a symposium on Maurice Sendak’s work which Gregory Maguire presented in 2003. He goes into far more depth than I expected, and gives the reader a whole new appreciation of Maurice Sendak as an artist.

The approach Gregory Maguire takes is much more interesting than a simple chronological summary of Sendak’s work. He begins by discussing Maurice Sendak’s artistic influences, with fascinating examples from his artwork.

Next, he looks at four motifs that appear throughout Sendak’s work: Flying, reading, children, and other monsters. He approaches Sendak’s life work “as if it were a single creative act,” looking at it as a whole.

Then he looks at some unifying factors, such as the way his paintings so often look like a scene on a stage, with a traveling ensemble of characters.

I especially enjoyed the last two chapters. In Chapter Four, he shows us his personal answers to the following question:

“Suppose all of Sendak’s artwork were hanging in a museum on the corner, and the building caught on fire. You have the chance to save only ten pieces of artwork for posterity. Which ten do you save, dear?”

The final chapter, Chapter Five, I found especially delightful. He presents the complete text of Where the Wild Things Are, illustrated with wholly different illustrations from Maurice Sendak’s work, including eleven different images for the phrase, “and it was still hot.” Almost as much fun as a wild rumpus!

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Review of Kitchen Table Wisdom, by Rachel Naomi Remen

Musings, Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Kitchen Table Wisdom

Stories That Heal

by Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.

Riverhead Books, New York, 10th Anniversary Edition, 2006. 337 pages.
Starred Review.

In her Preface to the 10th Anniversary Edition, Rachel Naomi Remen writes,

“Because I am not a writer, when I sat down to write, all I had were my memories. The stories I had lived through and the stories I had shared. The stories people had told me in the supermarket, on airplanes and in the ladies room. So I told my computer a story. And then another. And another. When the manuscript deadline arrived, I had four hundred pages of little stories.

“I was mortified that this was all that I had to show after a year of work. In the world of medicine, where things that can be expressed in numbers are considered truer than things that can only be expressed in words, stories are considered poor form and storytellers are highly suspect. My tendency to tell stories had always been frowned upon by my medical colleagues and rejected as ‘anecdotal evidence.’ They preferred to measure truth in terms of hard data. So I had learned to keep my stories to myself….

“Now, ten years later, I too am less afraid, less apologetic. When I wrote Kitchen Table Wisdom, I had no idea what it would come to mean to people, about the way it would reach people and strengthen them, the way it would touch people and make them feel less alone. I have discovered the power of story to change people. I have seen a story heal shame and free people from fear, ease suffering and restore a lost sense of worth. I have learned that the ways we can befriend and strengthen the life in one another are very simple and very old. Stories have not lost their power to heal over generations. Stories need no footnotes.”

In the original Introduction, she talks about how she found these stories, when male doctors asked her to talk with patients, expecting a woman to be more comfortable with that.

“At first, I was surprised that people with the same disease had such very different stories. Later I became deeply moved by these stories, by the people and the meaning they found in their problems, by the unsuspected strengths, the depths of love and devotion, the rich and human tapestry initiated by the pathology I was studying and treating. Eventually, these stories would become far more compelling to me than the disease process. I would come to feel more personally enriched by them than by making the correct diagnosis. They would make me proud to be a human being.

“These stories engaged me at another, more hidden point. I too suffer from an illness, Crohn’s disease, a chronic, progressive intestinal disease which I had developed at the age of fifteen. So for me, these conversations eased a certain loneliness. This was a different sort of connection than the easy banter and camaraderie I enjoyed with the other medical residents. This was the conversation of people in bomb shelters, people under siege, people in times of common crisis everywhere. I listened to human beings who were suffering, and responding to their suffering in ways as unique as their fingerprints. Their stories were inspiring, moving, important. In time, the truth in them began to heal me.

“Everybody is a story. When I was a child, people sat around kitchen tables and told their stories. We don’t do that so much anymore. Sitting around the table telling stories is not just a way of passing time. It is the way the wisdom gets passed along. The stuff that helps us to live a life worth remembering. Despite the awesome powers of technology many of us still do not live very well. We may need to listen to each other’s stories once again.”

For some time now, I’ve been reading one or two of these stories every morning. What a blessing! They are stories of healing, stories of wonder, stories of transcendence. And they do pass along wisdom, a wisdom Dr. Remen learned from people coming from all walks of life. Truly a beautiful book.

“All stories are full of bias and uniqueness; they mix fact with meaning. This is the root of their power. Stories allow us to see something familiar through new eyes. We become in that moment a guest in someone else’s life, and together with them sit at the feet of their teacher. The meaning we may draw from someone’s story may be different from the meaning they themselves have drawn. No matter. Facts bring us to knowledge, but stories lead to wisdom.”

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Review of The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life, by Steve Leveen

Musings, Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth 0

The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life

How to get more books in your life and more life from your books.

by Steve Leveen

Levenger Press, 2005. 123 pages.

This book is a celebration of reading. Steve Leveen talks about how to get more books into your life, with ideas like making a personal lifetime reading list, listening to audiobooks, and sharing books with others in book clubs. As an avid reader myself, most of his ideas were not new to me, but I did enjoy reading the ideas of another book lover for savoring books.

Some of his writing is a celebration of the reading life:

“Book love is something like romantic love. When we are reading a really great book, burdens feel lighter, cares seem smaller, and commonplaces are suddenly delightful. You become your best optimistic self. Like romantic love, book love fills you with a certain warmth and completeness. The world holds promise. The atmosphere is clearer and brighter; a beckoning wind blows your hair.

“But while romantic love can be fleeting, book love can last. Readers in book love become more skilled at choosing books that thrill them, move them, transport them. Success breeds success, as these lucky people learn how to find diamonds over and over. They are always reading a good book. They are curious, interested — and usually interesting — people.”

I especially like his conclusion:

“On the first page of this little guide, I suggested that I could help you find more time to read. I hope that by employing some of the ideas in this little book and others you discover, you’ll fall deeply in book love — not once but perpetually. Then you will not have to worry about finding the time to read; that time will come to you. You will naturally do some things less as you read more. What those things will be is obviously your decision.

“Finally, I hope you read some books for no reason other than pure enjoyment. Let a fine story grab hold of you, let yourself be embraced in this uniquely human pleasure with sweet abandon. As you collect books for learning, also collect books that make you laugh and cry and shudder and forget the real world completely. It is good for us in more ways than we know.”

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Review of He’s Just No Good for You, by Beth Wilson

Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Relationships 0

He’s Just No Good for You

A Guide to Getting Out of a Destructive Relationship

by Beth Wilson
with Mo Therese Hannah, Ph.D.

GPP Life (Globe Pequot Press), Guilford, Connecticut, 2009. 271 pages.

“Destructive relationships make women small. They eclipse the vitality and expansiveness of our spirit, reducing the parameters of our world. They make us feel unworthy and ‘less-than,’ eventually leading to a hunger in our soul as we inhabit a relationship that doesn’t nourish us. Instead of being as luminous and full as the feminine moon, we become too constricted to bring forth our light — and may no longer feel the right to shine.”

So begins Beth Wilson’s book, designed to help women face unpleasant realities. First, she discusses the dynamics of a destructive relationship. They are hard to spot when you are in the middle of one, because we don’t want to admit what’s happening. She asks some questions that will help you evaluate if this applies to you.

She doesn’t focus on obvious abuse, physical abuse and threats of violence:

“This book is about the more subtle behaviors that, unchecked, systematically disintegrate a woman’s vitality and self-confidence. Verbal abuse coupled with cruel behaviors are the main culprits we’re focusing on.

“Verbal abuse is tricky. Unless it’s blatant — threatening physical assault or direct character assassination — it can be more likened to a razor blade than a machete. In the hands of an extremely skilled man, it can be a scalpel of control, with each incision creating a small but significant wound that must be perpetually mended in order for a woman to remain intact. And because these people want to avoid being labeled ‘abusive’ — and many of them have convinced themselves that they are not — their first line of offense is to undermine, manipulate, confuse, invalidate, and dismantle a woman’s sense of self, and her self-confidence. This they do very well. The more easily you can spot words and actions that undermine and invalidate you, the better off you’ll be. This book will help you understand his maneuvers and sleight-of-hand tactics so you can make better sense of a crazy-making situation — and see things for how they really are. It will help you learn how to differentiate between thoughtless words and actions and those devised to undo you.”

After analyzing destructive relationships in their various forms, Beth Wilson helps you decide whether to stay or go, and if you go, helps you to plan when and how. Then she gives you advice for recovering and going on to live a better-than-normal life.

I could relate to the fantasies she described in the chapter on why people stay.

“When it comes to destructive relationships, love is not enough. It can’t fix our problems and it can’t fix our problem person. But why should we let that stop us? We try to love harder, to be kinder, to be more understanding and more patient, often bending ourselves into elaborate contortions to take up the slack and, hopefully, achieve a more harmonious relationship. Unfortunately, all the qualities that define love prove to be futile instruments for change. More often than not, they simply add to our stress and make us more anxious to please in an effort to demonstrate our undying devotion. We overcompensate. Meanwhile, he keeps on doing what he’s doing.

“The truth is, none of us can force another person to change, not even if our intentions are noble. And though love can transform, when it comes to toxic men we can’t love them strong enough or hard enough. We can’t heal them and make them into someone better. We can’t fill the holes in their heart and the pain of their childhood. Recommitting ourselves daily to be a better wife — or a better girlfriend — hoping to fill in the gaps so all will be well is simply unrealistic and, sadly, an exercise in futility.”

Here’s a book to help women face reality so they can make better decisions about how to act. This is a life-affirming book.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/hes_just_no_good_for_you.html

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And the Rest…

Adventure, Award Winners, Children's Fiction Review, Christian, Classics, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Historical, Mystery, Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Teen Fiction Review, Writing 0

At the start of 2010, I had 43 books I’d read in 2009 that I wanted to review. I’ve been madly writing reviews, without posting them to my main site, waiting until I’ve caught up. I have eight books left from 2009. They were all very good, and worth mentioning, but in the interests of time, I’m only going to mention them with a short blurb in this post, and not give them a full page on my main site.

Once I finish them, I have another stack of seven books that I finished reading already in 2010. After I have caught up on writing those reviews, I hope to post all of the new reviews to www.sonderbooks.com. So here goes!

Children’s Fiction

These first three books I read as part of my class on the Newbery Medal. They are all historical novels, set in medieval times, and all well-written though just a tad old-fashioned. As Newbery Medal winners, you will be able to find more information about them than these reviews.

The Trumpeter of Krakow
by Eric P. Kelly

Scholastic, 1990. First published in 1928. 242 pages.
1929 Newbery Medal Winner.

Here’s a tale of intrigue and danger set in old Krakow. There are some strange sections about alchemy, and you can tell if someone is bad or good based on how they look, but despite its old-fashioned feel, this book still is very interesting. It’s almost more for teens, because the language is at a high reading level, and the main character is almost grown up, but he is still treated like a child, so the book has the feel of a children’s book.

Fifteen-year-old Joseph Charnetski and his family are fleeing to Krakow. As they almost reach the city gates, someone shows interest in an especially large pumpkin, which his father is not willing to sell.

They use an assumed name and find a hiding place in the city, near an old scholar and his daughter. Joseph’s father takes a job as the city trumpeter. The trumpeter is also the watchman, tasked to raise the alarm if there is a fire in the city. They never play the last three notes of the trumpet call in honor of an old trumpeter who gave his life keeping the call going during an invasion.

Joseph learns the call as well as his father, and as danger approaches, he finds a clever way to raise the alarm.

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Adam of the Road
by Elizabeth Janet Gray

Scholastic. First published in 1942. 320 pages.
1943 Newbery Medal Winner.

Adam of the Road is the story of a minstrel’s son in medieval England. The book starts out at school, with Adam waiting for his father to pick him up after some time apart, to go to London and back on the road. Adam has gained a beloved dog, Nick, who can do tricks and help with their act.

Along the way, a sinister rival minstrel steals Nick. As Adam’s chasing after him, he loses track of his father. He ends up wandering across England on his own, trying to find his father and his dog, and having various adventures along the way.

This is a good story that has stood the test of time. Adam is awfully young to be on his own, but people are kind to him, and he cleverly makes his way, never in real danger. A light-hearted and enjoyable adventure tale for kids interested in medieval times.

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The Door in the Wall
by Marguerite de Angeli

Yearling Newbery (Bantam Doubleday Dell), 1990. First published in 1949. 121 pages.
1950 Newbery Medal Winner.

The Door in the Wall is another story of a boy on his own in medieval times. Robin’s father went off to the wars, expecting his son to go train to be a knight. His mother went to be the Queen’s lady-in-waiting, expecting John-the-Fletcher to come soon to take him to Sir Peter de Lindsay, to train as a knight.

But Robin gets sick, and when John-the-Fletcher comes, he is not able to go along. For a month he is bedridden, unable to move his legs. He is lame and will never be a knight now.

Some monks take Robin under their wing. They help him learn to swim, to strengthen his arms, and eventually to walk with a crutch. They take him on a journey to meet his father, and they have adventures along the way. By the end of the book, only Robin is able to get a message out and save an entire castle.

This book is shorter than the others. It’s a fairly simple story, but interesting with the medieval setting and inspiring as Robin overcomes his handicap, and learns that his life still has significance.

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Teens

Growing Wings
by Laurel Winter

Firebird (Penguin Putnam), 2000. 195 pages.

All her life, Linnet’s mother has touched Linnet’s shoulder blades before she tucks Linnet into bed. One day, when she’s eleven, Linnet learns why. She’s itching horribly, and she has strange bumps on her shoulders.

Linnet’s mother assures her she doesn’t have cancer. She is growing wings. Linnet’s mother also grew wings when she was Linnet’s age, but her mother cut them off. Linnet’s mother is determined not to do that to Linnet, but she doesn’t know what to do to hide them.

Linnet finds a community of others with wings, living in a house in the wilderness. Some adults who are “cutwings” are in charge. So far, none of the teens with wings have been able to fly. They are trying to learn, but also to stay hidden.

This is an intriguing story, with plenty of conflict in the community of winged children. Linnet explores her heritage and wonders what she can make of her life. Will she have to spend her whole life in hiding?

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Fiction

Miss Zukas and the Island Murders
by Jo Dereske

Avon Books (HarperCollins), 1995. 258 pages.

This is the second mystery about Miss Zukas, librarian extraordinaire. In this book, Miss Zukas and her exotic friend Ruth arrange a twenty-year reunion on an island in Puget Sound for their high school class from Michigan.

While they’re preparing, she gets threatening letters that refer to the long-ago death of one of their classmates. Once they’re on the island, naturally a storm strikes, isolating them, and a murder occurs. Can they solve the murder and keep from getting killed themselves?

This is a fun mystery. Miss Zukas’s librarian nature didn’t come up as much in this book as in the first one, and I felt that she leapt to conclusions without a lot of reasons. But she’s an entertaining character to read about. Gotta love a librarian detective!

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Nonfiction

Gratitude
A Way of Life
by Louise L. Hay and Friends
compiled and edited by Jill Kramer

Hay House, 1996. 312 pages.

This book is full of essays about gratitude, written by many notable people. How can you possibly go wrong? I went for quite awhile, reading one essay per day. It’s a nice way to put your day on track.

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The Bait of Satan
Living Free from the Deadly Trap of Offense
by John Bevere

Charisma House, 2004. First published in 1994. 255 pages.

In this book, John Bevere teaches that Satan’s biggest trap is taking offense. What’s more, you feel justified and in the right!

“Pride causes you to view yourself as a victim. Your attitude becomes, ‘I was mistreated and misjudged; therefore, I am justified in my behavior.’ Because you believe you are innocent and falsely accused, you hold back forgiveness. Though your true heart condition is hidden from you, it is not hidden from God. Just because you were mistreated, you do not have permission to hold on to an offense. Two wrongs do not make a right!”

This book looks at many different ways the devil deceives us into taking offense, and encourages you in many different ways to overcome and find forgiveness. A valuable, helpful book.

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Write Is a Verb
Sit Down. Start Writing. No Excuses.
by Bill O’Hanlon

Writer’s Digest Books, 2007. 212 pages. DVD included.

This is a book about getting it together and actually writing. I read it after I had already made and was keeping a resolution to write at least fifteen minutes per day, every day, so this book only reinforced what I had already determined to do.

If you want to write, and are having trouble motivating yourself, this book has some great ways to think through your motivation and ideas for marketing yourself. Think of this as a great pep talk, complete with a DVD so you can see and hear an additional pep talk.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.