Reading Roundup April - June 2015

Women at Church: Magnifying LDS Women’s Local Impact

by Neylan McBaine (4 stars)

If you are Mormon, you should read this book. It is really important. I admire McBaine's contribution to the whole discussion enormously, and I think her approach will prove to be incredibly effective in the long term in making real change for the experience of Mormon women. She is not combative, and that bugs some people. But on the other hand, many people are willing to listen and pay attention to her, which should not be underrated. If every unit in the church implemented the ideas she has in this book, things would change. There would be an immediate change, and then there would be a long, slow change as people realized and experienced things in new ways. It would make a difference, and it could start happening next week.

The Screwtape Letters

by C.S. Lewis (4 stars)

It's a classic and clever and insightful.

Ballad of the Whiskey Robber: A True Story of Bank Heists, Ice Hockey, Transylvanian Pelt Smuggling, Moonlighting Detectives, and Broken Hearts

by Julian Rubinstein (3 stars)

Ballad is an apt title for this story. The rest of the title makes it sound like a rollicking good time, as did reviews, but it didn't strike me as very funny. There is a desperate, sad man with obvious talents and a country spiraling out of control as it transitions rockily to capitalism. After escaping his horrible, sad life in Romania, Atilla arrives in Budapest and finds he is unable to make a decent life for himself there, either. So he starts robbing banks. And the police force is so desperately underfunded and understaffed that they can't really do anything to stop him. There were some hijinx-y moments, but it mostly felt sad to me.

Brown Girl Dreaming

by Jacqueline Woodson  (4 stars)

This is a gorgeous, evocative memoir of growing up as a black girl in the 60s and 70s in South Carolina and Brooklyn. It is deceptively simple, capturing moments in poetry-like verse from her childhood. Each moment was so clear, that even though there were relatively few I felt such a full experience of what her life and family and places were like. Lovely read.

A Farewell to Arms

by Ernest Hemingway (4 stars)

The thing that irritated me the most about this book - the bizarre "love story" in which the only thing Catherine and Frederic talk about is how much they love each other - turned out to be one of the things I like best about the book, the more I thought about it. It is relentlessly jarring to read the dialogue between those two characters; I just kept thinking, "What is going on here? Why are they acting this way?! It is like they are just shells of people." And then I kind of got it. They actually are just shells of people. The war has so traumatized them, they are both so fragile, so in shock, that all either of them want is to not think about anything at all and just enjoy some warmth and safety and, well, companionship. That is all they can handle. The war has hollowed them out. So, this is a really terrible love story but a really good book about war. And, fair warning, it rains a lot.

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

by Marie Kondo (4 stars)

The relationship this book suggests that we should have with our life, as manifest by our relationship with our things, is absolutely marvelous. Instead of decluttering by looking for things to get rid of, we need to only keep things in our life that spark joy. I love this change of paradigm. We do not need to see ourselves as being assaulted and dragged down by things; our life and our house is our own, and we can invite in and surround ourselves with things that we love. We will want to care for the things that we love. As one reviewer here said, the book is pretty woo woo. I'm usually not much for the woo woo, but I truly was into this. Yes, it is crazy to think about socks as "needing rest". But there is something just lovely about the whole paradigm of gratitude and appreciation for all the things that perform valuable functions in our lives. Perhaps it is a bit wacky to vocally thank our handbag at the end of each day for the work it does for us, but really, I think it would be life transforming to actually feel thankful for it. I love the idea of greeting our house each time we return home, and feeling a relationship with it. I can understand why she claims that the method is life transforming. It is the best antidote to our throw-away consumerism that I think I've read, at least in my own mind. It is empowering and transforming to see things not as ruining our lives by cluttering things up and weighing us down, but as serving us and bringing us joy. I really loved it. (Also, I already reordered my pants drawer by folding and stacking the pants vertically, and it is AMAZING. Do it.)

Pretty Birds

by Scott Simon (2 stars)

I was really excited to read a book about the siege of Sarajevo since I am going to travel there soon (!!!), and hoped this book would give me some insight into what went on there. Unfortunately the book has fairly clunky writing and characterization, which I guess is to be expected from a first-time novelist, even if the author is very well respected in other fields. It does humanize the terrible suffering caused by the siege, which lasted over three years, although I hoped for a bit more insight into what actually caused the fighting. The book makes it clear that for most Bosnians, they were totally confused by what was going on and why, as well; they weren't especially religious and didn't identify very strongly with their ethnic group, so when they were suddenly targeted for it they were taken aback. But what I still didn't understand very well after reading this was who was targeting them and what they were getting from it. But can there really be a good reason behind the war coined the term "ethnic cleansing"? Message to humanity: war is the worst. Let's stop.