Review of Still, by Lauren F. Winner

Christian, Musings, Nonfiction Review, True Stories 0

Still

Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis

by Lauren F. Winner

HarperOne, 2012. 244 pages.

This is going to be one of those “reviews” that talks more about me than about the actual book. But it’s a book on musings about faith, and aren’t the best books of musings those that set off all kinds of thinking and musing in your own head? Many different things came together for me, and I need to write them out to get a grasp on them. In fact, in that I relate to the author herself. She says in the Author’s Q & A section at the back:

I’m sure a therapist somewhere could tell you why I do this, dissect my spiritual life on the page for readers. I like to think I’m called to do it. My own spiritual life owes so much to reading, to books; I like to imagine my own books help other people, that they are a debt offering, a gratitude offering. Also, frankly, it is a kind of writing I enjoy — it is “deep play” for me, this kind of writing. Still, I don’t think this book is really about me. If I’ve written it well, it isn’t about me. It’s about the questions: How does a spiritual life change? How do you enter that change?

First, I’ll talk a bit about what the book is. It’s a book of musings, and it’s also a book about middles. Mid-faith. Midlife. It’s a book about crises. Death. Divorce. And it’s a book about after crisis. Here’s another paragraph from that ending section:

I wanted to emphasize the subtle but hugely significant shift from depressed, intense crisis to pacific openness, from no sense of God to a new sense of God. From wrenched and wrecked to calm communion with a God I both know and don’t know. In part the structure was hard because what might be considered the real crisis point . . . is the prelude to the book. The spiritual unraveling, the alienation from God that I felt after my mother’s death and in the midst of my marriage — that is the backstory. Still opens at the tail end of that darkness. The book is not primarily a picture of the darkness. It is a picture of the end of the darkness, of the stumbling out of the darkness into something new.

Here’s what she says about it at the start of the book:

I was carried to the middle of my spiritual life by two particular events: my mother died, and I got married, and the marriage was an unhappy one. Had you asked me before — before my mother got sick, before I found myself to be a person thinking about divorce — I would have told you that these were precisely the circumstances in which one would be glad for religious faith. Faith, after all, is supposed to sustain you through hard times — and I’m sure for many people faith does just that. But it wasn’t so for me. In my case, as everything else was dying, my faith seemed to die, too. God had been there. God had been alive to me. And then, it seemed, nothing was alive — not even God.

Intuition and conversation persuade me that most of us arrive at a spiritual middle, probably we arrive at many middles, and there are many ways to get there. The events that brought me to the middle of my spiritual life were dramatic, they were interruptions, they were grief.

But grief and failure and drama are not the only paths to a spiritual middle. Sometimes a whole life of straightforward churchgoing takes you to a middle. Sometimes it is not about a conversion giving way, or the shock of God’s absence. Sometimes a life of wandering takes you to a middle. Sometimes you come to the middle quietly.

You may arrive at the spiritual middle exhausted, in agony, in what saints of the Christian tradition have called desolation.

Or your journey to the middle may be a little easier, a little calmer — it is not that God is absent — it is, rather, that your spiritual life seems to have faded, like fabric. Some days the fading doesn’t trouble you at all; other days, it seems a hollowing loss. You’re not as interested as you once were in attending to God. You no longer find it easy to make time for church, for prayer. . . .

This book is about the time when the things you thought you knew about the spiritual life turn out not to suffice for the life you are actually living. This book wants to know about that time, and then about the new ways you find, the new glory road that might not be a glory road after all but just an ordinary gravel byway, studded with the occasional bluet, the occasional mica chip.

So that should give you an idea what the book is about. If you’re the sort who likes spiritual musings (as I do) and books who make you think, there is much to enjoy here.

Now for the part about me. It began on a totally different topic. Our pastor’s been doing a series of sermons on politics, and last week he covered homosexuality.

Now I have to say that I was cringing at the very thought of these sermons. I’ve heard some very dogmatic sermons where I don’t think dogma is warranted. I don’t think the Bible is terribly clear on most political topics, and I definitely don’t think that one political party in America has the lock on the “Biblical view.” In fact, I really hate it when someone claims there is a “Biblical view” on most of these political topics.

But the pastor did a good job at doing his best to present two sides to each one of these topics. He never told us, “This is the Biblical view,” and presented different views on the Bible’s teaching on all of the topics, even when he had a clear leaning one way or the other. I appreciated that very much.

Part Two: Thinking about the sermon later, it occurred to me that it’s worlds easier to decide something’s sinful when it’s not something you’re tempted to do. For example, lying isn’t my weakness. My weakness is telling too much truth to too many people. So when my ex-husband lied, it was incredibly easy for me to think, “See! He has NO self-control!” But the fact is, I have no self-control when it comes to lying, because I need none. I’m just not really tempted in that direction.

Since homosexuals haven’t exactly been welcomed into the church, it’s so easy for those left to decide that homosexuality is sinful. We don’t have to look at the other sins that we actually are tempted toward.

Part Three: At Bible Study last night, one person asked what people at church thought of the sermon series. I mentioned a little bit about why I was so glad that two sides were presented. We talked about not being judgmental. Jesus told the woman caught in adultery, “Then neither do I condemn you.” But he also told her, “Go now, and leave your life of sin.” So he was not telling her adultery is fine.

I’d just been reading a novel where a gay person has to deal with a hate-filled Christian group. I said that Jesus started with love. But some in the group said that if you love someone, you are going to worry about them staying in sinful conduct.

Part Four: I was reading this book today, and this thought occurred to me: What if it isn’t sinful?

I know, this will seem pretty obvious to many of my readers. But it seems to me that was what the Pharisees were all about: Telling everyone exactly what was sinful and what was not. And Jesus challenged that dramatically, in many different ways.

What’s more — wait for it — I am not Jesus!

In Romans 14:4, it says, “Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.” If I am sinning, I believe that God Himself is going to be working on me, right where I need to be worked on. Can’t I trust him to do that for others?

Then came Part Five. Lauren Winner says this about her divorce: “Among other things, divorcing has shaken up the assumptions I bring to reading scripture. In leaving my marriage, I was doing something that was simply not permissible, not in the way I have always interpreted scripture, and that is something I remain troubled by, confused by — it is not something about which I feel cavalier.”

Now, for someone who is divorced myself, I’m still awfully judgmental about divorce. Because I KNOW what my husband did is wrong! I was hurt by it!

Today, thinking about these issues regarding gay marriage, and thinking that I approve much more of someone who sticks with his gay partner for 30 years than someone who breaks his heterosexual marriage vows after 15 years — well, I realized that I’m awfully judgmental in certain areas myself.

What if I applied that same question to everyone who isn’t me? Even *gasp* my ex-husband?

What if it isn’t sinful?

And what if it isn’t my business even if it is? Shouldn’t I spend my real scrutiny on the activities and attitudes that take up my own time?

As you can see, this author of spiritual musings really got me thinking. She must have been doing something right.

laurenwinner.net
harperone.com

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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.

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

Review of The Map of My Dead Pilots, by Colleen Mondor

Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

The Map of My Dead Pilots

The Dangerous Game of Flying in Alaska

by Colleen Mondor

Lyons Press, Guilford, Connecticut, 2012. 242 pages.
Starred Review

Full disclosure: Colleen Mondor is an acquaintance whom I like very much. It seems a little presumptuous to call her a friend, but I’m confident that eventually, after enough KidLitCons, we’ll be that. She hosted the last one I attended in Seattle, and I’ve definitely read her blog, Chasing Ray, many times. Today I was on her blog for an Unconventional Blog Tour, where she gave an insightful post about Bloggers and Authors. She mentioned that it’s been six months since her book came out, and it dawned on me that I really need to get her book reviewed! So watch me go! I got home from work, and I’m writing the review!

Now, I should point out that there are two main reasons I took so long to review this book, and neither one has anything to do with how much I like it (very much).

1. It is nonfiction.
2. I own it.

The reason Nonfiction slows me down is this: I learned many years ago that if I read nonfiction at bedtime, I will think about it, and I won’t be able to go to sleep. Sometimes fiction does this, but not as often as nonfiction. So I read nonfiction sitting at the table, either eating or knitting while I read. What’s more, I rotate books. I’ve got a hugely complicated rotation system. Generally, every day I read a chapter of inspirational nonfiction, one of narrative nonfiction, and one of informational nonfiction. With the other two categories, I even rotate books within categories, but I’m finding that with narrative nonfiction (like this book), I tend to stick with one book until I finish, though I usually do just read one chapter a day.

This book worked well with that method, since almost every chapter is essentially a story in itself. The chapters do work together and do have an overarching theme, but they definitely work as separate stories. And I have to say, there were many times, and more and more as the book went on, when I definitely couldn’t bring myself to stop with one chapter.

I also had an interruption in reading the book when I flew to ALA Midwinter Meeting in Dallas. This is decidedly NOT a book you want to read on an airplane or within about a week of flying on an airplane! It will not be a spoiler to say that many pilots die in this book.

The reason owning the book slowed me down is that continuing problem of it, unlike library books, not having a due date. I am getting better at putting my own books higher in the stack to be reviewed, or, well, at least I thought I was. But apparently I still have a ways to go. Because I did finish it quite some time ago.

In The Map of My Dead Pilots, Colleen Mondor tells stories from her days of working for “The Company” that had a flight business in Alaska. Her stories are eye-opening and amazing. She helps you understand how people could fudge on cargo weights in order to get the job done — with possibly life-threatening results. She talks about the many factors that sometimes lead to narrow escapes but sometimes lead to disaster. She talks about the kinds of people who end up living a life of adventure in Alaska.

The whole thing is completely fascinating. Sometimes in the way that a train wreck is fascinating — in this case, I should say the way a plane wreck is fascinating, because there are several of those. Though they don’t always find the wreckage.

Another part of the fascination is the whole look at bureaucracy and how bureaucracy so often does not lead to good decisions and how people try to get around it with bad results. I know about bureaucracy because I was an Air Force wife. I think many things said about The Company can be applied pretty easily to the military. (But these views are entirely my own and do not in any way reflect the official views of the US Air Force.)

The book reads like friends sitting around and telling yarns. Colleen admits that they don’t sound believable, so it’s a treat when she’s with someone who was there and knows it’s all true.

I’ll quote a few sections to give you the feel of the book:

Sam Beach . . . didn’t see himself as Ben Eielson, heading to Fairbanks in 1922 on his way to fame and glory as the first pilot to fly across the Arctic. By 1995 commercial flying in Alaska wasn’t really about the bush anymore; it was about commuter schedules and hauling mail and building flight time to get a jet job. But he still had that same vision of Eielson’s in his head. This time it would be different; this time the job wouldn’t go away; this time he would make it. Sam had been in aviation long enough to know what Alaska meant; it was the place where pilots were needed, where they mattered. This is my chance, he told his parents, and he said it just like Eielson did so long ago, with promises to be smart and careful and come home again soon.

He said it like he believed it, and maybe then he did. Sam believed a lot of things in the beginning, and he learned to repeat those things every time his parents called, even after he realized they were lies. And he never told them Ben Eielson crashed in 1929. And of course they never thought to ask.

Some things never do change after all.

There’s a section right at the start about things the pilots learned. Here are some bits from that:

If they were based in the Bush, flying out of a place like St. Mary’s or Aniak or Bethel or Kotzebue, then they flew with a specific set of habits. Out there it was about the snow and the ice and the wind. It was also about illusions, about pretending you could see when you couldn’t and accepting that no one else could see either. They learned to trust one another in those places, or at least to trust every sane guy and avoid the ones who were nuts. Mostly though, they just learned to hate it. . . .

Along with the words, they also had to play the game — fly when it was legal but maybe not safe, and lie when it was illegal but definitely much safer. There was physical survival, job survival, and career survival to consider. Rarely did the three converge on any flight. They had to pick and choose which was most important and fake it when they made a mistake. Some guys figured this all out in the first day with the Company, but others never got it at all.

If they were the kind to worry, there were a lot of things to be concerned about. The planes they flew were old and tired. The exteriors were patched, the interiors stained, and in a hundred different ways each of them was suffering from some sort of neglect. They were used for hauling sled dogs and snow machines as well as any other freight that fit, and they looked it. There were a lot of things that went wrong, and flying a broken airplance quickly became part of the job, just another test of loyalty in a place too cheap to do things right.

She tells sad stories, poignant stories, amazing stories, and a lot of fun stories like this one:

I can still remember Tony coming back from every single Mount McKinley sight-seeing flight and his passengers going on and on about how spectacular the mountain was to see. I ask him how come the mountain is never clouded in when he’s flying, and he laughs and says the trick isn’t finding Denali on a good day but any mountain on a bad one.

This book is hard to describe because I haven’t read too many others like it. It’s true-life adventure, but not one big saga like a trip to the South Pole. No, this is the story of people for whom life-and-death adventure becomes a matter of course, and all wrapped up in working for a Company that’s trying to make money and cutting corners to do it. Meanwhile, she talks as well about what drives the pilots today and the pilots of the past whose names are now legendary. And she makes it all fascinating.

chasingray.com
LyonsPress.com

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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.

Source: This review is based on my own copy, ordered from Amazon.com.

Review of Charles and Emma, by Deborah Heiligman

Award Winners, Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, History, Nonfiction Review, Romance, Science, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Charles and Emma

The Darwins’ Leap of Faith

Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2009. 268 pages.
Starred Review
2010 Winner YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award
2009 National Book Award Finalist
2010 Printz Honor Book

Okay, when this book first came out, I wasn’t too interested. I grew up in a conservative Christian family, and didn’t exactly see Charles Darwin as a hero. Then the book kept winning awards, and got strong comments from the judges in School Library Journal’s Battle of the Books. I thought I really should read it. Then I met Deborah Heiligman at the 2010 ALA Annual Conference. When I found out why she wrote it, I knew I had to read it. I purchased a book and got her signature. However, it still took me until this year, when I was taking a class on the Printz Award, to finally get it read.

Deborah explains in the Acknowledgments at the back of the book how her husband got her interested in the story that would become this book:

“Jon’s been writing about science and evolution since we met. I had just graduated from college with a major in religious studies. We started talking immediately — about science and religion and writing and pretty much everything else — and we haven’t stopped since.

“One day, about seven years ago, Jon said to me, ‘You know, Charles Darwin’s wife was religious.’ I looked at him. He continued, ‘And they loved each other very much. She was afraid he would go to hell and they wouldn’t be together for eternity.'”

Evolution is supposed to be opposed to Christianity, right? So how is it possible that Charles Darwin’s wife was deeply religious — and yet the two were very much in love.

Deborah Heiligman tells the love story of Charles and Emma Darwin beautifully. It’s clearly a work of nonfiction — she relies heavily on letters and journals and notebooks written by the two of them — but it reads like a novel. Of course, in a story book, the marriage probably wouldn’t have worked. I found it especially interesting that Charles’ father advised him not to tell his new wife about his doubts about religion. But Charles couldn’t hide them from her. And she loved him anyway and even edited his books, including The Origin of Species.

This book tells the story of how Charles Darwin’s scientific theories developed, but it especially shows us the man who loved his wife and children very much. And whatever your views, you can’t help but fall for the man presented here, and the wife who provided exactly what he needed to be such a distinguished scientist.

This book is wonderfully presented. I like the quotations at the head of each chapter and the way Deborah Heiligman has arranged the facts in such an interesting manner. This book presents a compelling story that is all the more amazing because it’s true.

“You will be forming theories about me & if I am cross or out of temper you will only consider ‘What does that prove.’ Which will be a very grand & philosophical way of considering it. — Emma to Charles, January 23, 1839”

DeborahHeiligman.com
HenryHoltKids.com

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Source: This review is based on my own book, purchased at ALA Annual Conference and signed by the author.

Review of To Timbuktu, by Casey Scieszka and Steven Weinberg

Graphic Memoir, Nonfiction Review, Travel, True Stories 0

To Timbuktu

Nine Countries
Two People
One True Story

by Casey Scieszka and Steven Weinberg

Roaring Brook Press, New York, 2011. 492 pages.

This book reminds me of Mo Willems’ You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When It Monsoons. Both are about overseas adventures taken by people fresh out of college, complete with plenty of illustrations. To Timbuktu, however, has more text, since the cartoonist, Steven Weinberg, teamed up with a writer, Casey Scieszka. It’s less light-hearted because of having more text, but it also gives a lot more information about their cross-cultural experiences.

Casey and Steven met as students abroad in Morocco. They decided, after graduation, that they would go overseas together. This is the story of their adventures.

I think they had the most fun in China, where they spent the first six months and both taught English. That section is especially fun, with the descriptions of the kids and their antics trying to teach. After that, their time was a little less structured. Casey had a grant to study Islam in the schools in Mali, and Steven was working on his art.

The story is fascinating, and you’ll learn a lot about the countries they visited. Okay, I confess: I didn’t even know that Timbuktu was in Mali, let alone what living there is like. I didn’t know there’s a language spoken in Mali called Bamankan, or much about Mali at all.

I actually met Casey Scieszka at ALA Annual Conference a couple years ago when I was fangirl-ing her Dad, and I liked her very much. They said at the time that she was writing a graphic novel. This isn’t really a graphic novel; it’s an illustrated memoir. But it’s heavily illustrated, and that makes it all the more fun. After all, since they visited these cultures I know nothing about, it’s nice to have pictures to help understand.

This is an excellent book for anyone who’s ever dreamed of picking up and traveling around the world. You can enjoy their experiences without having to get hot and dirty.

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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.

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

Review of The Wilder Life, by Wendy McClure

Audiobooks, Biography, Musings, Nonfiction Review, Travel, True Stories 0

The Wilder Life

My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie

by Wendy McClure

Performed by Teri Clark Linden

Brilliance Audio, 2011. 9 discs, 10 hours, 43 minutes.

This audiobook was a fun one to listen to while driving to work and back. It felt a little on the long side, but I handled that by giving myself breaks of a few days in between discs. The narrator sounded a little too much like a teenager to me, actually sounding a whole lot like Natalie Moore, who narrated Dairy Queen. However, I got used to her voice and rationalized that the author was indeed a lot younger than me, so it was okay.

The book is about Wendy McClure’s childhood passion for the world of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and her quest to revisit the world of the books by seeing all the Little House sites peppered over America.

Now, I’ll confess right up front that I never read the Little House books myself. I think I read the first one, Little House in the Big Woods, on the urging of Karen Iwata, my best friend in second and third grades, but I thought it was frightfully boring. Those pioneer books didn’t grab me. I remember I also gave up on Caddie Woodlawn.

However, when my sons were growing up, my husband read them all the Little House books, which he had read and loved when he was a child, and I listened in and found them not so bad at all. What’s more, we had visited the home in Missouri where Laura lived as an adult and wrote the books.

And I certainly know about loving childhood books! Some day, some day, I will visit Prince Edward Island, where Lucy Maud Montgomery set her books. Hmm. Maybe I should write a book about it when I do. Though at least Laura Ingalls Wilder had many, many home sites, so Wendy McClure did have a book-length story to tell.

I found the book all the more fascinating because right now I’m in the middle of researching my family history. I keep thinking of the old picture I saw of my grandma as a baby with her brothers in front of their sod house. I remember her telling me, “Just like Laura Ingalls Wilder!” She and my grandpa were actually born in Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma — so quite near the original Little House on the Prairie. What’s more, lots and lots of my ancestors were pioneers and farmers, moving steadily west, so the world of the Little House books is really quite close to the story of my own roots — and that made Wendy McClure’s visiting the home sites all the more interesting to me.

And I have to admit, Wendy McClure knows how to make the tale interesting. She tells about each place she visits, the people she sees, and what she felt to see them. She explores lots of her feelings about the books and about the places, many of which any book lover can easily relate to. She also throws in facts about Laura and her family, but sprinkles them nicely so we don’t get bored.

In short, I recommend this book for anyone who loved the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, or just anyone who loves going back to the children’s books they cherished as a child. The story doesn’t have a lot of tension or a driving plot, but that actually makes it nice listening for a commute. And, hey, anyone who gets a chance to do a Little House road trip, following the steps of Laura Ingalls Wilder (and Wendy McClure), will definitely want to have this for the ride.

www.terriclarkvoiceover.com

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

Review of Sex, Mom, & God, by Frank Schaeffer

Biography, Christian, Nonfiction Review, Stand-outs, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Sex, Mom, & God

How the Bible’s Strange Take on Sex Led to Crazy Politics — and How I Learned to Love Women (and Jesus) Anyway

by Frank Schaeffer

Da Capo Press, 2011. 298 pages.
Starred Review
2011 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #4 Biography

Sex, Mom & God continues along the lines of Frank Schaeffer’s earlier book, Crazy for God. Frank’s parents, Edith and Francis Schaeffer, were my own parents’ heroes, and in these books, Frank Schaeffer reveals that his upbringing was even more extreme than my own. Much more, in fact.

Frank Schaeffer has ended up with a theology much more liberal than my own, but I still appreciate his words in this book. Be careful when you revere Scripture so much, you don’t stop to think if the God you worship would really be behind what you think Scripture is saying.

I do have a very high respect for the Bible. But I still think we would all do well to listen to Frank Schaeffer’s words about any holy Scripture:

‘There is another choice: To admit that the best of any religious tradition depends on the choices its adherents make on how to live despite what their holy books “say,” not because of them. “But where would that leave me?” my former self would have asked. “I’d be adrift in an ocean of uncertainty.” Yes, and perhaps that’s the only honest place to be. Another name for uncertainty is humility. No one ever blew up a mosque, church, or abortion clinic after yelling, “I could be wrong.”’

The book is also entertaining, though I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it. He tells what his mother told him about sex, her take on what the Bible says about sex, and what he learned for himself. The stories about what his Evangelical culture said about sex still give me a fascinated horror. But what can I say? I really like the perspective he has ended up with in writing this book, somehow laughing at the crazy ideas we humans come up with, yet as his subtitle says, managing to love women and Jesus anyway.

I also love it that he shows so much love and respect toward his Mom, who now has Alzheimer’s. He makes it clear that, no matter what her theology, her heart was kind and loving.

A very interesting book, especially for those who grew up Evangelical. I suspect it would also be interesting for those who think that Christians are narrow-minded. Frank Schaeffer definitely does not take a narrow-minded approach himself.

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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.

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

Review of Drawing From Memory, by Allen Say

Art, Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Graphic Memoir, Stand-outs, Starred Review, True Stories 1

Drawing From Memory

by Allen Say

Scholastic Press, 2011. 64 pages.
Starred Review
2011 Sonderbooks Standout: #4 Children’s Nonfiction

Drawing From Memory is not quite a graphic novel (make that graphic biography). There are some speech bubbles, but the majority of pictures don’t have them. This is a remembrance with lots and lots of pictures. The pictures vary from drawings to photos to comics to realistic paintings.

Allen Say moved into his own apartment (from his grandmother’s house) when he was not-quite thirteen years old. Shortly after moving to the apartment, he read a story about a boy three years older, who was apprenticed to Noro Shinpei, one of the most famous cartoonists in Japan. Allen decided to find him and ask to be an apprentice as well.

The book tells the story of Allen’s years with his Sensei, learning and growing, and eventually getting the chance to go to America. He talks about the process of learning to draw, those who learned with him, and especially the close relationship with his teacher. Best of all is the wide variety of illustrations that accompany the story and make it alive.

This is one of those wonderful books in large format that may get hidden in the Biography section of the library. This isn’t the sort of story you’d want for a report, but it’s very much an inspiring story of someone’s life and about finding and following your calling. This is a delightful book.

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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.

Source: This review is based on an Advance Review Copy I got at 2011 ALA Annual Conference.

Review of Traveling With Pomegranates, by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor

Musings, Nonfiction Review, Stand-outs, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Traveling With Pomegranates

A Mother-Daughter Story

by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor

Viking, 2009. 282 pages.
Starred Review
2012 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #1 Biography

Sue Monk Kidd does meditative books very well. She catches you up in her musings and helps you reach life-changing insights along with her.

In this book, she pairs up with her daughter and both of them will speak to your soul.

This book covers some journeys the two took together, to Greece and France and home to South Carolina. The travels were momentous for both women. The first journey happened when Sue was turning fifty and Ann was graduating from college and growing up. So Sue was dealing with aging and maturing as a mother. And Ann was dealing with her life direction.

They both write in such a way that I felt I shared in both journeys. And both are dealing with a calling to write. Here’s a passage that Sue wrote:

“Perhaps she fought any urge to be a writer out of a need to separate herself from me and my path, the same way I separated myself from my mother and her path. When Ann went to college, I felt the invisible way she broke from me, in that way mothers feel barely discernible things. Even now, as we weave this new closeness, I do not mistake the separate core in her, her own nascent true self, and I watch how she protects it, even as she struggles to unfold it. Do her intuitions about writing come now because she has finally found enough of her separate self to entertain them?

“In my case, losing the small, true light was more like turning my back on it and finding something manageable. Becoming a nurse seemed more doable and sensible. You graduated and took a board exam. When you said, ‘I’m a nurse,’ you knew what you were talking about. You had proof. Nobody would register me as a writer. Would I be a writer if I never published anything? Would I be one even if I did? And the real question: how likely was it to happen? At eighteen, I couldn’t find the courage. I took all that passion and sublimated it into nursing. Until, at twenty-nine, it simply refused to go there anymore.

“I wonder if that’s the perennial story of writers: you find the true light, you lose the true light, you find it again. And maybe again.”

Later, back home in South Carolina, Ann writes:

“One day I thought: what if I approached learning the craft of writing as if it were an apprenticeship? Just do myself a favor and accept that it’s going to be a process, a slow, laborious process. In the Middle Ages, an apprenticeship lasted seven years. That was believed to be the minimum amount of time it took to learn a craft. I started to think of myself as an apprentice. I would tell myself, Relax, you’ve got seven years.”

That’s just a little taste of the luxurious explorations these women do, bringing the reader along into symbolism, and archetypes, and mother-daughter bonding. I read this book slowly and meditatively, a little at a time, and stretched out the enjoyment all the longer that way. A lovely book. You’ll feel you have two new friends when you finish.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/traveling_with_pomegranates.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 book given to me by the publisher at 2010 ALA Annual Conference and signed by both authors.

Review of Erika’s Story, by Ruth Vander Zee

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Picture Book Review, True Stories 0

Erika’s Story

by Ruth Vander Zee
illustrated by Roberto Innocenti

Creative Editions, Mankato, MN, 2003. 24 pages.

I actually found this book when I was weeding library books that hadn’t been checked out in two years. This one was in good condition, and when I started reading it, I was transfixed. It was too good to weed from the collection, and too powerful not to check out and review.

I should add that nonfiction picture books like this one easily get lost on the shelves. It’s not suitable for a school report, and kids usually don’t go looking in the nonfiction section for powerful stories. So they don’t get read as often as they deserve to be.

The story in this book is simple, and it’s powerfully told. The author met a Jewish lady in Rothenburg, Germany, and relates her story. The lady, Erika, speculates about how it must have been for her parents, herded onto a cattle car headed for the concentration camps. But she doesn’t know anything about them for sure.

“As the train slowed through a village, my mother must have looked up through the opening near the top of the cattle car. With my father, she must have tried spreading the barbed wire that covered the hole. My mother must have lifted me over her head and toward the dim daylight. What happened next is the only thing I know for sure.

“My mother threw me from the train.”

Erika was taken in by a woman who risked her life by caring for Erika and giving her a name and an approximate birthdate. She grew up and married and had children of her own.

The story is told simply and starkly. The pictures are beautiful and realistic. It’s interesting that the artist doesn’t show anybody’s faces except the baby, as if to emphasize all that Erika doesn’t know about her family. The pink baby blanket is also the brightest spot of color in the pictures from the past.

The story is also gently told, with an emphasis on Erika’s survival. You could read this to a child and then talk about it as much or as little as you like, but it’s a relatively gentle introduction to the horrors of the Holocaust.

And it’s definitely powerful for an adult reader, too. What would it take for a mother to throw her baby off a train? The book doesn’t ask any questions like that, which leaves the readers asking themselves.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/erikas_story.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 book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Here’s Looking at Euclid, by Alex Bellos

Mathematical, Nonfiction Review, True Stories 0

Here’s Looking at Euclid

A Surprising Excursion Through the Astonishing World of Math

by Alex Bellos

Free Press, New York, 2010. 319 pages.

I’ve already confessed to being a certified Math Nut. So no one will be surprised that I could not resist a book with this title and snapped it up and enjoyed it thoroughly.

This author takes the human approach. He does talk about some fascinating mathematical concepts, but mostly it’s through meeting and talking with people who are even bigger Math Nuts than me. (I say that with reverence, by the way.) I like his chapter descriptions in the Table of Contents, which give you an idea of where he’s going. For example, here’s the first chapter, Chapter Zero:

“In which the author tries to find out where numbers come from, since they haven’t been around that long. He meets a man who has lived in the jungle and a chimpanzee who has always lived in the city.”

Another chapter, “The Life of Pi,” is described:

“In which the author is in Germany to witness the world’s fastest mental multiplication. It is a roundabout way to begin telling the story of circles, a transcendental tale that leads him to a New York sofa.”

So this is one of those books that covers lots of fascinating mathematical ideas, but also about the people who deal with them. And that’s probably enough for my readers to know if they’re interested or not.

I’ll conclude with the end of the author’s Preface:

“When writing this book, my motivation was at all times to communicate the excitement and wonder of mathematical discovery. I also wanted to show that mathematicians can be funny. They are the kings of logic, which gives them an extremely discriminating sense of the illogical. Math suffers from a reputation that it is dry and difficult. Often it is. Yet math can also be inspiring, accessible and, above all, brilliantly creative. Abstract mathematical thought is one of the great achievements of the human race, and arguably the foundation of all human progress.

“The world of mathematics is a remarkable place. I would recommend a visit.”

Let me add that this author makes a wonderful tour guide for your visit.

www.SimonandSchuster.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/heres_looking_at_euclid.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 book from the Fairfax County Public Library.