Nonfiction Book Reviews

China Ghosts: My Daughter’s Journey to America, My Passage to Fatherhood by Jeff Gammage was an excellent autobiography. I’ve read a string of less-than-stellar autobiographies lately (ie Hope’s Boy, Shattered Dreams, Enter the Past Tense) and I was ready for a great one. I found that in China Ghosts.

Jeff Gammage is a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, and I think that had a LOT to do with how much I enjoyed the book - a newspaper reporter has to learn early on to weave a deft and interesting tale without using too much over-the-top descriptions, and that writing experience shows in his writing of this book. I’m starting to realize that I can put up with almost anything but a poor writing style: Typos, missing information that I think is important, and even swearing doesn’t bother me like bad writing does. Luckily, China Ghosts is very well written.

He spares no quarter for himself; he talks about how he never had any desire to have children, because he was self-centered and if there was another person in the equation, then that would mean his family and wife would pay attention to someone else other than himself - the horrors! He didn’t want that, and thus, he would’ve been happy if he and his wife stayed childless. Or so he thought.

But his wife was born with a nurturing instinct, and she wanted children, so Jeff said yes to make his wife happy. They tried for several years to have children, but eventually it was declared that they were infertile. My heart broke for them at this point - that’s actually something that my husband and I are struggling with. We have been trying for 4 years to get pregnant, and thus far, nothing has happened. It’s a very tough row to hoe. (If that’s something you also struggle with, make sure to check out the Infertility blog here at Today - it’s a great blog for infertility information).

Anyway, back to Jeff Gammage: He and his wife finally decide to go the adoption route, and for reasons he explains in detail in the book, they decide to adopt from China. He jumps back and forth in time, keeping your interest high, wondering what will happen next. This is not just a book about adopting a toddler, but of becoming a father, an especially difficult task for him since he had no previous experience with children. His transformation is astounding, and you realize that a parent’s love is truly boundless. When they finally pick their new daughter up, he falls head over heels in love with her, which was so sweet to see. It was beautifully written and by the end, I too had fallen in love with his daughter. She’s a cute little girl, and I loved watching her “grow up” (the book ends when she’s 6 years old).

He spends time explaining the background on different cities in China, and since that wasn’t as interesting to me, I simply skimmed those parts. I think that could have easily been left out of the book, but it wasn’t a huge deal. Even with that in there, it was a quick read (I finished it one day - I had a hard time putting it down!) and I’m hoping to someday read a “sequel” by his two daughters (he eventually adopts a second daughter from China). That would just be so fun for me.

I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars. And don’t forget - with the Chinese Olympics coming up quickly, it might be a good read for anyone interested in learning more about China. Oh, and if you’re thinking about adopting a girl from China, I would rate this book as an absolute must read - it had so much interesting and helpful information in there about the whole process. Two thumbs up!

Havs

The Sound of Music Companion by Laurence Maslon was a fantastic book for Sound of Music aficionados like me.  I had just finished reading Home: A Memoir of the Early Years by Julie Andrews, when I saw this book at the library.  I picked it up and read it cover to cover in just a couple of days.  It’s meant to be a coffee table book, true, but it also provides a ton of interesting information.

I had read and watched specials on the Fox version of The Sound of Music with Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, so most of that information was not new to me.  I hadn’t heard or read as much about the von Trapp family themselves, so I learned new information there, but by far the most new info came when I was reading about the various theater productions of the musical.  I hadn’t realized that so many different versions had been done, and so I got a much more rounded picture of how The Sound of Music became the international powerhouse that it did.

Some of the stories about Maria von Trapp were eye-opening to me - she could be a difficult lady to get along with, and the producers of the movie did their best to avoid her at all costs.  And Christopher Plummer seemed like quite the stinker - he looked down his nose at the whole movie as being too cutesy and sugary for him.  His character was aloof and proud in the movie, and apparently that wasn’t much of a stretch for him.  “Inside stories” like that and more made the book a page turner for me.

The pictures are huge, colorful, and beautiful, and the information was well laid out.   For any huge Sound of Music fans out there, I strongly suggest picking this book up at Barnes and Noble and adding it to your collection.  And to everyone else, if you’re simply interested in learning a little more about this global phenomenon, the pictures alone make this book worthwhile.

4.75 stars out of 5

Havs

I picked up Home: A Memoir of my Early Years by Julie Andrews from the library because I grew up watching Sound of Music and it remains to this day one of my all-time favorite movies.

I discovered a lot of interesting information about her in this book, although it wasn’t quite all that I was hoping for. Because of my love of Sound of Music, I had hoped that she would go through to that part of her life, but it stops short of her starting work on Mary Poppins, which was the movie she completed directly before Sound of Music. So I was rather disappointed about that, although if I hadn’t expected anything about Sound of Music, that obviously wouldn’t have been a big deal to me. The subtitle was, “A Memoir of my Early Years” but I was still hopeful.

The other thing that struck me strange was how the book ended. She’s married to a guy that she had known and had been friends with since the age of 14. They had dated for a long time, eventually moved in together, and eventually after that got married. She never hinted at any sort of trouble between them. She talks about having a baby girl together. Life is great. The book ends with them literally flying off into the sunset (they were off on their way to California for Julie to shoot Mary Poppins). You never would have guessed from what she was writing, that her marriage was anything but idyllic. Except because of comments made earlier in the book, you know that 11 years later, she’s divorced from her first husband, and married to the second one. ??? Perhaps she was trying to protect the first husband by not going into personal details, I don’t know, but it made for a rather confusing ending, because I kept waiting for an explanation as to why her first husband and her divorced. I never got one.

Other than those two items, I really enjoyed the book. I hadn’t spent a lot of time previously exploring Julie’s life, so I don’t know how much of the information in the book had been known before to Julie fans, but to me, it was all new, and all quite good to read. It’s amazing how much she’s gone through in her life - you would never have guessed it, looking at her and how she comports herself in the movies and in interviews. Her mother was a drunk and not at all a stabilizing influence; Julie spent most of her childhood taking care of herself; they were very poor and as a teenager her family almost completely depended on her to bring in the income to keep them off the streets; her stepfather was a drunk too who couldn’t keep down a job and who tried to molest Julie as a child - it was not a picturebook childhood, to say the least. It’s amazing to me that she can portray such an amazing motherly persona as an actress, with virtually no role model to get the inspiration from. Her childhood story is quite depressing, although Julie relays it all with the famous British stiff upper lip - she didn’t bemoan and groan that childhood as others might have done. She simply talked about it as “that was the way it was” and there wasn’t much else to it.

If you’re looking for a great biographical read on one of the best known actresses/singers out there, you’ll really enjoy this book. She’s a talented writer (she wrote the book herself, which is rather unusual for star autobiographies) - I give it 4.25 out of 5 stars. Also, if you want more information, she has a website - The Julie Andrews Collection , which has lots of info on the children’s books that she’s written.

Havs