Reading Roundup July - September 2014

Gift from the Sea

by Anne Morrow Lindbergh (3 stars)

I think this is much better than most books aimed at middle aged women.

Home Waters: A Year of Recompenses on the Provo River

by George B. Handley (3 stars)

There is some beautiful writing in this book, a philosophical, environmental self-reflective memoir. Over a few years Handley explores the head waters of the Provo River, and there are important things we each learn in our experiences in nature. I wanted to love this book more than I actually loved it, but it did enjoy it.

Let the Great World Spin

by Colum McCann (4 stars)

This really pulled off the technique of telling interweaving stories from various points of view. Every chapter was in large part a self contained short story, with some of the characters very closely related to stories told by others, and some only tangentially related. They are held together by Philippe Petit's actual feat of walking between the twin towers on a high-wire in 1974, but the characters are all fictional. And they really run the gamut, from a prostitute to judge. So many voices, and every one was really well done; I was sad at the end of every chapter to not have more time with each person. I think this succeeds magnificently at making a sort of post-modern statement: choose any moment and place, and there is so much unique, deep, roiling humanity attached to it. The meaning is different and significant to every person, and the ripples extend forever in every direction. 

A Song for Issy Bradley: A Novel

by Carys Bray (3 stars)

As a Mormon, I thought I would love this book, an honest story about a Mormon family coping with loss. But I found the Mormonism in the book to be somewhere between repellant and horrifying. It is clearly an insiders view, and there is nothing technically incorrect, but it felt like all our worst moments and tendencies on display (chewing gum lesson, teenage girls in wedding dresses, neurotic unmarried 29yo, obsessive end of days weirdness, kitschy RS crafts, self-justifying “sympathy” cards) stripped of anything redeeming or beautiful. I am very much in favor of honest reflections of who we are, including the problems in our culture and theology, but this did not feel honest or accurate to me. The people in this book are almost exclusively motivated by fear of exclusion and keeping up appearances to maintain status in the group. It was, frankly, a cult. There felt like almost no genuine interaction or love between people, only forced, correlated, manipulative, stilted weirdness, even between family members. And most significantly, people’s spirits were just not being fed. They felt no real love from God, no acceptance from or worship of Jesus, no warmth and hope and grace. The father and bishop is one of the most stilted, underdeveloped, pathetic people in literature, not at all reflective of many of the genuine, compassionate, good men I know in the church. It all made me extremely sad. If only our worst tendencies went amuck, I do fear we would get a culture akin to that in the book, but that has not been my experience. I have felt love, acceptance, and soul expanding moments in the church, both in my interactions with God and with my ward members. I regretted that Bray apparently did not. If this reflected my experience, I would get me and my family out too. The ending is extraordinary, however, but only because for a short moment everyone was finally getting out of the horrible restrictive straightjacket their faith put on them, so they could actually breathe for once and feel something real.

Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats

by Kristen Iversen (4 stars)

This book is absolutely stunning. Denver was very nearly wiped out by a nuclear meltdown, averted only by a serendipitous interaction of three mistakes (including someone driving a truck into a pole and inadvertently cutting off the power supply), and pretty much nobody knows about it. I certainly did not. All the plutonium triggers in the entire nuclear arsenal of the United States were manufactured just a few miles outside the Denver suburb of Arvada (which is upwind from the population center.) The plant, Rocky Flats, had a horrendous safety record, doing things like punching holes in the air filters that were meant to trap plutonium because they slowed down production, or leaving radioactive waste in rusting barrels out in a field for years as the radioactivity leached down into the ground. It was a nightmare, really. And it really happened, with elevated cancer rates and other health issues as its legacy. Now it's a nature preserve with no signs indicating what happened there. Really, the magnitude of what happened and the lying liars who lied about it all is very upsetting. Sometimes conspiracy folks are right on the money, it turns out. 

The book is really well written, intertwining the history of Rocky Flats with the author's childhood growing up just a few miles from the plant. Childhoods in the 1970s were pretty wild. We bemoan helicopter, overprotective parenting, but reading about old-fashioned letting children run free completely unsupervised has its own issues. And growing up in a home with an alcoholic is fairly traumatic no matter the era. 

You should read this book, especially if you live in Colorado.

Dear Committee Members

by Julie Schumacher (4 stars)

A very fast read, and laugh out loud funny, with a nice touching bit of humanity by the end. I highly recommend this if you need something fast and fun. I loved it.

A Short Stay in Hell

by Steven L. Peck (3 stars)

Eternity is a very, very long time. This book is a sometimes funny, mostly desperate rumination on that idea. Don't get sent somewhere even for a finite length of time if the length of time involves large powers of ten. And if you do, the whole meaning of existence and life is twisted in really significant ways. It is interesting. And disturbing.