Nonfiction Book Reviews

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I first heard about Schuyler’s Monster: A Father’s Journey With His Wordless Daughter by Robert Rummel-Hudson from a patron who was returning the book. He said that his wife read it, and thought it was excellent. Intrigued, I checked it out and brought it home, only to promptly forget about it.

It sat on my shelf for a while, until a couple of days ago, when I finally decided that I needed to either read it or return it. I figured I’d give it the first chapter to prove its worth, or it was going back to the return bin.

Well, I read it and fell in love with it.

Schuyler (pronounced “Sky-ler”) is a beautiful little girl (yes, that is her on the front cover of the book) who was born with an extremely rare disease that robs her of the ability to speak coherently. It also causes her to have only partial small muscle control, which means that it’s difficult for her to use sign language.  She does it, but it’s hard and some of the more difficult signs are out of her reach. And in the other cases of people afflicted with this disease, there is usually mental retardation, although they aren’t positive that’s something Schuyler has been afflicted with.

But up until Schuyler’s 18-month birthday, nobody realized anything was wrong with her. She was a smiley, happy baby who won the hearts of everyone around her; she was able to walk and eat like other babies, and she did make noises. During a routine check-up with the doctor, however, the doctor started to probe deeper and they started to realize that not all was right in the land of Oz. It took several years and many, many tests to finally receive a correct diagnosis.

The eventual result of the testing and diagnosis was that they realized that Schuyler was never going to be able to speak like “a normal person.”  Up to that point, they had been hoping that with enough therapy and work, Schuyler would eventually be able to speak clearly.  So they started looking at options that would provide Schuyler a way to communicate with the rest of the world.

Like I said before, sign language is something she can do, but not well, so they went after a high-tech option that if Schuyler would have been born 20 years earlier, never would have been available to her.  It was an “alternative augmentative communication device” or an AAC device.

An AAC in its most basic form allows the person to push buttons and then the device says the sentence outloud.  The picture I have posted is of the latest and most high tech version yet, the Vantage Lite, but at $7,295 it isn’t cheap.  The funding would normally come from a school district, but the majority of Schuyler’s Monster is spent chronicling their fight to get an AAC for Schuyler, and to get the teacher support needed for this type of device to work.

So that’s the story in a nutshell. Although it’s a sad story, on the surface there isn’t much there to grab you and hold your attention. But it’s the writing that really does it for me. Rummel is a blogger (check out Schuyler’s Monster blog) and in fact this book grew out of that blog, not the other way around. His writing style causes this to be one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read this year. I cried, I laughed, and everything in between.

I cannot tell you how thoroughly I enjoyed Schuyler’s Monster.  It is rare to find an author who is willing to be so open about his life and his feelings.  Life wasn’t hunky-dory.  The family went through a lot, and they almost didn’t make it.  I appreciated Rummel being willing to tell it exactly how it was, and to tell it so well, I cared about them through out it all.

For a darling video of Schuyler using her very first AAC (or “box of words” as Rummel calls it) check out the following.  Keep in mind, she’s 5 years old in this video.

I give Schuyler’s Monster 4.5 out of 5 stars.  Good luck, Schuyler - I know you’re going places, girl.

Havs

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The combination of working at a library plus reviewing nonfiction books in my spare time meant only one thing - Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron was a must read for me.

It is about Dewey, a stray cat found in the return bin at the library one morning after a terribly cold night in Spencer, Iowa. Someone had dropped the cat down the return bin shoot, and the library director, Vicki Myron, found him in there, clinging to life.

The Spencer Public Library adopted the cat and made him their own. In this autobiography, Myron chronicles not only Dewey’s life but her own, and also the background and history of Iowa, family farms, and libraries.  She discusses going to school to get her masters in library science,  Carnegie libraries, and remodeling libraries, all items that were especially interesting to me as a librarian.

But much more than that, it was a touching memoir of what it means to love a cat wholeheartedly, not only in good times (Dewey brought a lot of fame and attention to this small corner of the world) but in bad - when Dewey started to age and his coat wasn’t as shiny and youthful as it was before.  (Yes, believe it or not, the library board actually discussed what to do with Dewey “now that he was old” and didn’t look as good.  Apparently, we Americans are not only obsessed with human youthfulness but cat youthfulness too.)

If you love cats, libraries, or the small town life, then you’ll adore Dewey. There are pictures of Dewey throughout the book but all of them are printed in black and white, which for an orange tabby means you lose something in the process. But the Spencer Public Library has put together a web page dedicated to only pictures of Dewey with great captions underneath.  After finishing the book, I enjoyed looking through all of the pictures.

Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat touched my heart - it made me think, it made me grateful, and it made me cry.

4.5 out of 5 stars.

Havs

The following is a fantastic guest post by a fellow blogger, Jennifer L Price, here at Today.com. If you are interested in more of Jennifer’s writing, please check out her blog at Journeys and Adventures. She is an excellent writer, so be sure to give her lots of praise in the comment section! Thanks again, Jennifer!!

I should probably start this review by admitting that I’m a foodie; foodies are defined by Wikipedia as “amateurs who simply love food for consumption, study, preparation, and news.” Yup, that’s me - I like to make food, look at food, think about food, and, of course, eat food…so a book about a food writer attending the well-known Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris is exactly the kind of book I enjoy.

The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears in Paris at the World’s Most Famous Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn details her experiences as a former middle manager attempting to follow a life-long dream and navigate life in Paris after being fired from her job - while also trying to learn how to gut a trout without damaging the head, cook with rooster blood, and make the perfect 512-layer puff pastry.

The book is obviously about food; Flinn uses mouth-watering descriptions to illustrate the dishes she creates and enjoys: “My final menu [includes] fillet of veal in pastry, stuffed with apples, celery, and mousse de fois gras with Calvados sauce, endive flowers with marinara sauce, whipped cauliflower with salsify and roasted garlic, chanterelle mushrooms sautéed with parsley.” (Don’t worry if your stomach starts to growl while reading, more than 25 recipes are also included in the book!)

There is more to the book than the food, though - Flinn offers an honest portrayal of life in a challenging culinary school, including demanding chefs and competitive classmates from around the world. The facts used to support her story (like the history of Cordon Bleu and how restaurants started) add a fascinating background to the already enchanting Paris. Trips to the market and glimpses of the Eiffel Tower bring the city to life.

At the forefront, however, The Sharper Your Knife is a memoir. In addition to her culinary experience, Flinn honestly shares the stresses, joys, and trepidations of losing her corporate job, moving to a foreign country, discovering herself, and searching for love: “As in cooking, living requires that you taste, taste, taste as you go along—you can’t wait until the dish of life is done.”

So, foodies like me will definitely enjoy the book—as will anyone who ever thinks of starting over and following their dreams overseas. There’s quite a bit of French in the book and Flinn covers a lot of territory in a short amount of time, sometimes moving too quickly and seemingly glossing over important parts, so The Sharper the Knife, The Less You Cry gets a 4.5 out of 5 stars from me.

~Jennifer

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Again, you can find Jennifer’s blog at Journeys and Adventures - she writes about countries all over the world that she has visited, and that the tips and ideas that she has to make your trips more enjoyable and stress-free. Even if you’ve gone no further than your own backyard but you love to dream, you’ll love her site. Check it out!

Havs

I first heard about Adrift: 76 Days Lost at Sea by Steven Callahan when I read Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales.  Gonzales referred to Callahan’s experience quite extensively in Deep Survival, and I thought it sounded like a fascinating story.

Turns out, it was.

Callahan was an avid lover of the sea.  He would spend weeks out in the ocean on his boat, go into port to get some supplies, and then after just a day or two, head back out into the ocean.  He lived on the sea like you and I live in our homes.  He was extremely knowledgeable about the plant and animal life that lived and thrived out in the vast space he called the wet desert (an apt description: There you are, surrounded by miles and miles of water, but there is nothing to drink).

He entered into a race but there was bad weather from the start.  Undeterred, he went ahead with it, a decision that almost cost him his life.  The race was an extensive one and included crossing several oceans, and he had the smallest ship in the race.  He was also all alone.

Six days into the race, the weather became stormy again and the seas were rough.  Callahan did all that he could, and then he went to bed.  He was awakened with a jolt - he later figured out that the most likely cause of the accident was a whale hitting up against the side of the boat.  Either way it happened, the end result was that his boat was sinking, and he needed to get off of it as soon as possible.

There are quite a few things that contributed to Callahan’s survival against odds that have killed every other person ever faced with them:

*He was extremely knowledgeable about the ocean and how to survive in its environment.
*He had bought a six-man raft instead of the standard four-man raft after trying to climb into a four-man raft with two other friends. Apparently, life boats are like tents: You never actually want to go by the count on the outside of the box. *He had not stocked the “normal” emergency kit and left it at that. Instead, he had bought the standard kit and then added a whole lot more, throwing the whole bundle into a sea bag that he was able to grab and go with when the ship started to sink. Because of this extra preparation, he had things like a spear to kill fish with and other items he would have died without.
*He kept his cool and did not panic when the boat started to sink, allowing him to retrieve extra supplies that were very useful.
*He kept his desires to drink fresh water contained - he knew he had a very limited supply of water and was only able to procure more fresh water at a slow rate, so he rationed the water even when every fiber of his being screamed out for more.
*He was creative and smart with his hands, finding fixes for problems that would have been the death of almost anyone else.

As I read the book, I kept thinking, “Okay, what would I have done in that situation? How would I have handled it?” I compared myself to Callahan throughout, and let me just tell you right now: It’s unlikely I would have lived through the night of the boat sinking. If I had been lucky enough to scrap by through that, I wouldn’t have lasted the week.  Depressing but true.

I don’t have the knowledge of the sea and the fish that he did (I know I would have ate a poisonous fish, not realizing what I was doing), I don’t have the ability to fix things easily with my hands (I am a thinker, not a doer, at least in that sense), and most of all, I don’t keep my calm in tense situations. I would have panicked straight out of the box and died.  Lovely, eh?

Other than the interest that the book provided by helping me understand myself better, I also enjoyed it because Callahan is an excellent writer. Just imagine, for a moment, that an entire book is centered inside of a very small area (perhaps the size of your couch) and that there is only one person in that whole book. No one else to talk to, no relationships to develop - nothing but this guy and the ocean.

In most author’s hands, that would have been a recipe for disaster. Talk about boring. But Callahan did a great job of keeping the story line interesting throughout, and making you feel as if you were really living everything that he was. I found myself a lot more thirsty than normal while reading Adrift, which, when I realized what was happening, made me laugh. But after reading so much about fresh water and high temperatures, you can’t help but hit the faucet often while reading.

I also enjoyed his writing style. He has an almost poetical style of writing, and was very enjoyable to read.  He did not focus on just mere survival for the duration; he also spent quite a bit of time contemplating his life, the grand scheme of things, and of course, the great circle of life.  Not boring or dry, but definitely thought-provoking.

My only (small) critique was that there were parts of the book that were confusing to me, since I have only been on a boat a couple of times, and I certainly have no nautical knowledge. It wasn’t enough to make me not want to read the book, but I do have to say that there were some paragraphs that I skipped over, because I just didn’t have any idea of what he was talking about. Luckily that didn’t happen too often, and quickly petered out after his boat sank and he was just on the raft.

I can’t say that’s really his fault - after all, I’m the one who is knows nothing about boats.  But I thought I ought to warn you in case you get very easily frustrated with that kind of thing.

Overall, I give this book a 4.75 out of 5 stars. If you are at all interested in survival stories, or you just want a good autobiography to read, be sure to check out Adrift: Seventy Six Days Lost at Sea. It was on the New York Times bestseller list for 36 weeks - I am positive you’ll love it.

Havs

When Rabbit Howls by Truddi Chase is, by far, the most unusual book I have ever read.  It was recommended to me by Stephanie of Rocket Scientist as a good book to read if interested in multiple personalities.

I have to say, I haven’t ever read or watched anything about multiple personalities before, so I started this book with a clean slate.  Even so, this book blew me away.  I don’t even know where to start.  I guess the general outline of the book would be as good as any…

Truddi Chase was two years old when her mother left her father, and moved in with her stepfather.  This turned out to be a Very Bad Thing in Truddi’s life, because the stepfather was the biggest slimebag to ever walk the earth.  He raped Truddi, at age two.  The sexual abuse continued unabated until her teenage years, when her mother finally, finally, threw the guy out.

On top of that, Truddi was also subjected to emotional and physical abuse by both her mother and her stepfather.  Her mother knew what the stepfather was doing to her daughter, but instead of defending her daughter, she blamed the daughter for all of it, saying that she was a “dirty” person, and that it was all her fault that this was happening to her.  There were also step-siblings in the picture who were also being abused, although Truddi doesn’t focus on that very much.

There is much, much more to the emotional, sexual, and physical abuse than what I’m stating above, but it was hard enough to read the first time around - I don’t think I can bring myself to type it out.  The bottomline is, the overwhelming pain and degradation was so extreme, Truddi’s mind formed other personalities in order to deal with it all.

There are several things that are fairly common when someone has multiple personalities:

First, the core personality is the one that was present at birth, and that personality is still around and available.

Second, most counselors try to help the personalities reintegrate into one, so that there is only one person left inside of the body.

Neither of those statements are true in Truddi’s case.  When she was raped by her stepfather at age two, her core personality died, and her multiple personalities were born.  Two core personalities came into being: One that was the child personality, and one that eventually became the adult personality.  On top of those two came 90+ other personalities, all of them serving their own functions in support of Truddi.  Some personalities died, and only an echo of them was left.

Sound confusing?  Oh yeah.  This was a mind-bending book.  The multiple personalities called themselves as a whole “the Troops,” and it was the Troops who actually wrote the book.  If you look at the front cover, it says, “The Troops for Truddi Chase” as the author.

When the counselor talked to Truddi, he could see differences in her as he spoke to her, depending on which personality was controlling her.  She was tested, and there were measurable differences in speech pattern, brain wave activity, intelligence level, handwriting, posture, voice, etc, depending on the personality.  Even her eye color and cheekbone structure changed.

Get this: Some of the personalities had allergies, so during allergy season, they couldn’t come out front and be in control, because then Truddie would have been miserable.  Oh, and when one personality was in control, Truddi tested positive for pregnancy.  As soon as another personality took over, the pregnancy disappeared.

It was a mind-blowing book.  I had absolutely no idea any of this existed.  And because the book was written by the Troops, you got to see all of this from their perspective - talking to each other, talking to the counselor, doing the day-to-day tasks required to live.

I think one of the hardest things to understand was how utterly difficult this was for the woman.  The Troops created a personality that knew nothing of any abuse, so she could be the front to the world.  This personality did not think by itself, or have any desires by itself - it only did what the other personalities directed it to, which isn’t something you (or this personality) find out until late in the book.  That part just made my head hurt.

After the book was released, Truddi went on tour - she appeared on Oprah and the Phil Donohue Show.  I tried to find clips online from those appearances, but came up empty handed.  I did find out that a reporter from the Washington Post searched for Truddi’s family, and from there, found out that all of the step-brothers and sisters supported Truddi’s story, and even said that Truddi didn’t reveal all in her book: They said that on top of sexual abuse from the stepfather, she also suffered from sexual abuse from the mother too.

That was never once even hinted at in Rabbit Howls, so I’m guessing Truddi’s personalities suppressed that information very, very deep.  On the other hand (not surprisingly) the stepfather denied everything.  Wow, who saw that coming?

I tried to find follow-up information on Truddi - where is she now, how is she doing, are all of the personalities still there, etc, but came up with zip.  It’s as if she fell off the face of the planet.  If anyone has any information on what happened to her after the finish of the book, I’d love to hear about it.

I don’t know how to rate this book.  As with everything to do with it, I’m at a loss.  So I’m going to do something I’ve never done before: I’m not going to rate it.  I just don’t see how to attach a number to this book.

I will put this out there: Please, please, do not give this to your children or teenagers to read.  This is an extremely difficult book to read in terms of descriptions of different abuse that happened; if it were a movie, it would be rated X.  If language and sexuality bother you, absolutely do not pick this book up.

On the other hand, if you’re wanting to learn more about the multiple personality world, and are not easily offended, you’ll definitely want to read this.  As far as I know, this is the only multiple personality book written by the personalities themselves.  It is a rare glimpse into that world - not a pretty one, not an easy one, but one worth finding out about nonetheless.  It was hard enough for me to read this book - I cannot imagine living it.

Hava

PS If you’re interested in an in-depth look at When Rabbit Howls and multiple personality disorder in general, be sure to check out Trauma, Testimony, and Fictions of Truth: Narrative in When Rabbit Howls. It was an interesting (but long!) article that I thought did justice to the book.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw the headline for an article, Herman Rosenblat’s Holocaust memoir of love is exposed as a hoax. Worried, I clicked on the link.  I have read some Holocaust memoirs, and I didn’t like the idea of being duped.

Well, in this case, I was fine - Angel at the Fence: The True Story of a Love That Survived wasn’t scheduled to be released until next month. I hadn’t been hoodwinked after all.

Except, I have been before.  I read another biography called Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich, and it was only afterwards, as I did a couple of searches on Google, that I found out that much of the book was made up.  I was not impressed.

One of the latest cases of fake memoirs comes from Margaret B Jones (her real name was Margaret Seltzer, btw) who wrote a memoir that had absolutely nothing to do with reality. At least Angel at the Fence and Bringing Down the House had some vague resemblance to the real world.

Entitled Love and Consequences, it was supposedly about Margaret being a drug runner for the Bloods in LA, growing up as a foster child in the LA system, blah blah blah.  Not a word of it was true.  She was caught when her sister saw her picture for an interview done with the New York Times, and called in to tell them that it was all a lie.

I’d love to be a fly on the wall at their next family reunion.

And don’t even get me started on that Frey dude.  I think we’ve all heard enough about him to last us a lifetime.  Poor Oprah - she said that the Angel at the Fence story was “the single greatest love story…we’ve ever told on air.”  That, coupled with her initial backing and enthusiasm for James Frey, makes me think that she’s going to be a lot more choosy about which guests she has on the air from now on.

So comes the inevitable question: Why?  Why would authors take the chance at being revealed as fakes before the world, when they could write the story either as it really did happen (now there’s a novel idea!) or write it as fiction?  To me, the chance of discovery is just too great.

Do you really think you can go on a national book tour, have your book made into a movie, etc, and never have anyone catch on?  What, are all of your childhood friends living in caves, where they wouldn’t see the coverage on your triumphant book tour?  (And I am assuming here that if someone has the balls to completely fabricate a story and get it published as truth, that they’d also dream that the book would be a smashing success.  What would the point be if no one cared about the memoir after all?)

Here’s my armchair analysis: These people are whacked.  They have some inner need to be recognized beyond what their life would naturally give to them, and the only way to get that recognition that they crave is to make up a life much more exciting than the one they really lived through.

In yesterday’s review of Identical Strangers, I said that the book was not an interesting read, and in the comment section, Hindleyite jokingly suggested that they should have taken “creative license” with their story to make it more interesting.  Perhaps that’s what these fake memoir authors were afraid of: That if they didn’t “spice things up” that no one would care enough to read.

The bottom line though, is that fake memoirs give a bad reputation to the whole industry.  It is hard to trust what you read, when there have been so many bad apples passed off as truth.

By the way, Love and Consequences was published by the same publishing house as A Million Little Pieces by James Frey.  They don’t have a real stellar track record here.  (I bet Oprah is counting her lucky stars she didn’t invite Margaret Jones onto her show too.   How much bad luck can one talk show host have?)  Perhaps this publishing house and Oprah can join forces and hire an investigative team in an attempt to not get mud smeared all over their faces again.

So, to all of my easy chair psychologists reading this: Why do you think the authors of the fake memoirs do what they do?  Recognition?  Money?  To see if they can get away with it?  Because they’re flat-out nuts?  Tell me what you think below.

I picked up Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited by Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein because the title caught my eye. Identical strangers? Wow - talk about a mind-bending idea!  How would it be to have a twin somewhere in the world but never know it growing up, and only finding out the truth as an adult? And when those twins first find out the truth, how do they deal with it?  And (question of the century!) why on earth would the twins be separated in the first place?

As you can tell, I was quite intrigued by the premise of the story, and I started reading it with high interest.  It was a lot like my reasoning behind picking up Mistaken Identity: Two Families, One Survivor: There’s really not that many people out there who have this kind of thing happen to them in real life.  It was a plot worthy of a Hollywood movie.

I’m sad to say my interest soon waned, and I ended the book feeling “ehh” about it.  Yes, you heard me - ehh.  It’s the technical term for “so-so/blah/or otherwise not inspired.”  Now you know.

First, a bit of background on what happened:

Elyse and Paula were identical twins born to a mental health patient who was not married and could not take care of her children. She gave the children up for adoption, but unbeknownst to her, the Jewish adoption agency, Louise Wise Services, had agreed to be part of a scientific study being conducted on twins.

The scientists had a goal in mind: They wanted to settle, once and for all, the debate between nature and nurture.  They decided that if they took identical twins and split them at birth, then they could watch them grow up and see how they turn out.  Would they still be similar, despite the different environments?  Or would they be molded by their families and show that nurture really does triumph over nature?

The book goes through chronologically, starting with how Elyse first found out that she had a twin sister, to contacting Paula, to meeting each other for the first time, and on to developing a relationship with each other.  The book switches back and forth between the two, first one talking exclusively in first person and relating an event, and then switching to the other twin who was also talking in first person and (usually) relating the same event you just finished reading about.

This style of writing allows you to “see” inside of each person’s head which gave me a feeling of immediacy, as if I was really living through all of this.  Unfortunately, with the repeating of information again and again, it got to be boring and repetitious.  (In reality, life is boring enough the first time around - almost no one except apparently Britney Spears has an interesting enough life that it bears being repeated again and again.  Paula and Elyse are not exceptions to this rule.)

Also, they spent much of the book upset about being a part of the study done, and working to uncover what the study was for, who was doing it, etc.  Although I understood their need to know this information, it honestly wasn’t that interesting to me.  Just because I knew they cared didn’t mean that I did.

Along with trying to find out information about the study, Elyse and Paula also spent much of their time looking for their mother.  That is what actually got me to the end of the book - would they find her?  Would she welcome them into her life, or say ‘No way, you’re part of my past’?  I won’t ruin the ending for anyone who picks the book up, so I won’t say what happens there, but I will say that that question was really the only thing that kept me reading.

It was a very honest and real book - the twins spend quite a bit of time talking about each other and their innermost thoughts that most people wouldn’t tell the world.  They didn’t always get along after they met, and they are genuine enough in the telling of their story to repeat all that happened.  I give them kudos for being truthful in their memoir.

But in the end, I guess I just felt like it was a book that could have been helped with some editing work.  I didn’t need to hear the same conversation repeated, this time just from another point of view.  Also, I had a hard time keeping the twins straight in the beginning (now which was which?) and so when the story would jump from one head to the other, sometimes it just plain lost me all together.

I think this would be an especially interesting read for anyone who was adopted, or was a twin (or, even better, both).
If you are a gigantic fan of memoirs everywhere, then you’d probably want to pick this one up, if only for the unique idea behind it.  But for the rest of the world, I’d probably recommend to just skip Identical Strangers.

Although there was plenty of interesting information in it (like some of the stories they dug up about other twins who had been separated and reunited - there are some doozies out there!) there was just enough uninteresting information and repeated “stuff” to make me yawn one too many times.

I give Identical Strangers 3.75 out of 5 stars.

Hava

PS If you are interested in memoirs about adoption, make sure to check out my review of China Ghosts by Jeff Gammage.  That is a beautifully told story of international adoption, and its impact on a family.

Prophet’s Daughter: My Life with Elizabeth Clare Prophet Inside the Church Universal and Triumphant by Erin Prophet was the story of a cult that I had never heard of previous to picking this book up at the library.  I guess the Church Universal and Triumphant reached their heyday in 1990; I was just a child at that point, so I missed the whole thing entirely.

So here’s a brief synopsis for those who are likewise oblivious:

Elizabeth Clare Prophet (yes, her last name really was “Prophet” - she married a guy by the name of Mark Prophet) was the head of a New Age religion that incidentally, Mark Prophet started.  After his death, Elizabeth took over, and over time, the power quite simply went to her head.  She stopped talking as much about “decrees” and “energy” and moved on to prophesying that various catastrophes would hit the United States, everything from earthquakes to nuclear warheads.

Many religions have spent their time and energy in prophesying the end of the world - Elizabeth’s undoing came when she stated exactly when these catastrophes would happen, down to the very day they were to occur.

Her followers, sure that her words were divinely inspired, followed the call and moved with her to Montana, where they started building underground bunkers and storing up food to survive what had been prophesied to be a deployment of nuclear warheads, followed by a 7 year period of no ability to farm or grow food in any way.  Add in the destruction of all civilization (with only the righteous being spared, of course) and this was a true Armageddon scenario.

In an attempt to be one of the righteous (and prepared) ones to survive, the members of the church handed over their life savings and property to the church, quit their jobs, and moved to Montana to help build these bunkers.  Over a two-year period, the church spent roughly $20 million dollars in their quest to be ready for the end of the world, and caused environmental damage that took years to repair.

Well, the night came and went, and no nuclear bombs exploded.  Life continued on as it always did.  The cult survived, damaged, but still limping forward.

It sounds like an incredibly interesting book, right?  Except something about it just fell flat for me.  The book was labeled a “921″ in the Dewey Decimal system at the library, meaning that it was supposed to be either an autobiography or a biography, but it read more like a history of the Church Universal and Triumphant, with only a part of it being about Erin Prophet, the daughter.

Also, I think Erin was striving hard to be balanced and factual in her telling of the story, which I heartily applaud, but for some reason with this book, it only served to make the story removed from me, like I felt like I was reading everything through a thick glass wall.  I never felt like a part of the story, and I never really cheered on the protagonist or worried about what she was going to do next.

This distance is surprising - Erin certainly had a lot to be upset about.  Elizabeth ran her life with an iron fist.  She told Erin who to marry (worse yet, she told the husband-to-be when to propose and where to propose), she told Erin she couldn’t use birth control, and even went so far as to control when the newly married couple could have sex.  It was very disturbing.  The control that Elizabeth Prophet had over her daughter would be almost incomprehensible to the average American.  It seems like there would have been more anger on Erin’s part than she showed in the book.

So in the end, I have mixed feelings about the book.  I am glad to have learned more about cult culture, especially its history here in the US, but on the other hand, I think this is a book that I’ll easily forget about.  There are some books that stay with you long after you turn the last page (like Seabiscuit or Three Cups of Tea) but for me, this just won’t be one of them.

If you are intensely interested in cults in general, or the Church Universal and Triumphant in particular, than you’ll definitely want to check Prophet’s Daughter out.  I think you’ll find it fascinating.  But for the rest of us, I only give it a 3.75 out of 5 stars.

Hava

PS Just to see what others thought of the book, I went and checked out the reviews on Amazon and was surprised by what I found on there. Either people loved it or they hated it, and almost all of the reviews seemed to be done by people who are either current or ex-members of this cult. The ex-members all seemed to love the book - the current members (not surprisingly) all seemed to hate it. So I’d take anything you read on there with a grain of salt.

I had heard about The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls from SmallWorld Reads (another book blog), who highly recommended it.  It turns out that Glass Castle was on the New York Times bestseller list for two years, and yet I had never heard of it until SmallWorld mentioned it.  Don’t ask me where I’ve been.

Now that I’ve finally read it, I can see why SmallWorld (and the rest of the world, incidentally) loved it so much.  This autobiography reminded me in some ways of Three Weeks with my Brother by Nicholas Sparks.  Both sets of parents had an “interesting” outlook on parenting (basically, let the kids do whatever they wanted, as long as it didn’t actually kill anyone else) and they were both raised in extreme poverty.  But while Nicholas’ parents at least tried to feed and clothe their children, Jeannette’s parents didn’t always even do that.

This is an honest and open memoir - the some of the things that Jeannette went through as a child makes your heart hurt.  Her parents, at many points during her childhood, did not provide even the most basic of necessities - food, clothing, and at some points, shelter.  Yet unlike A Child Called It, where this is because the parent is trying to torture the child, in Glass Castle it is more simply because the parents are free-spirits, with a distinct lack of planning skills.  Oh, and the father is an alcoholic who drinks most of their money away.

At one point, a family member dies, leaving the parents with a house and quite a bit of money.  I was cheering for the family at this point - surely they would use this money to actually get ahead in life, right?  But even as I was cheering for them, I knew it wouldn’t happen.  The parents are beyond irresponsible, and sure enough, the money soon disappeared. The house fell into major disrepair, and they eventually left and moved back East, leaving the house empty behind them.

The most mind-boggling part of the book is that Jeannette clearly loves her parents.  Even though they leave her and her siblings nothing to eat at various times (forcing Jeannette to eat butter for dinner at one point) and even though their parenting style is far beyond neglectful, into the realm of outright child abuse, Jeannette seems to have been able to look back on her life and appreciate the good parts about her parents, and the things they tried to do for their children.

I think this is what makes this memoir so wonderful - it is not bitter or hateful in any way.  She loves her parents, warts and all.  It is a testament to the human spirit that she could endure something like this, and still look back on it all with love for her parents.

Despite this upbringing (or perhaps in some ways, because of it) Jeannette became quite successful in the news world, eventually becoming a columnist for MSNBC.com, until she decided to take a break and just write books for a while.  If you’re interested in more information about Glass Castle, then you’ll definitely want to check out this interview done with Jeannette Walls (warning: It’s long!) where she talks about her parents, the book, and the impact it’s had on her life.

Glass Castle was a terrific memoir - one of the best I’ve read.  I give it 4.75 out of 5 stars.  If you’re one of the few people left who haven’t read this book, go check it out.  You won’t regret it.

Hava

Just Checking: Scenes from the Life of an Obsessive-Compulsive by Emily Colas was just as the subtitle says: A compilation of random scenes from the life of a person afflicted with the obsessive compulsive disorder.  I was expecting more of a chronological story (I was born here, I started having problems with OCD at age 15, blah blah) and so the jumping from one time period to another, and from one story line to another, really threw me for a loop at first.

So here’s the scoop: There were parts of the book that were funny.  I even laughed out loud in several places.  But overall, it was a difficult book for me to read, and I hesitated to review it, because there’s a very good chance that other people will react very, very differently than I did to it (much like what happened with Tweak.  Either you loved it or you really…well, didn’t.)

For me, Just Checking was frustrating to read, because her whole outlook on life was illogical.  She had an obsession with blood tainting her food, people poisoning her by chopping needles into tiny pieces and putting them into her food, with germs of any kind, etc.  (Side note: Not recommended dinner-time material.  She mentions garbage and blood and needles one too many times to read this while eating.)

She comes up with the wildest plots you could ever imagine, and all of them ended with her getting some dread disease in a very bizarre way.  The strange part was, she knew it was illogical.  She freely admitted it.  But she couldn’t control it.  I understand that OCD is a disease, but my logical brain just spent the book saying, “Just calm down, lady!” and “Breathe, you’ll be fine!”

I guess the point to my story is that I definitely do not have a future as a therapist.  I could just see myself looking the person in the eye and saying, “You’re just nuts.  You know that, right?”  But in the nicest way possible, because I hate ever making anyone mad.

More than that, I think this book bothers me because it is so light on actual human emotions.  Her husband leaves her for another woman; they get back together and then split up again multiple times; she cheats on him with an ex-boyfriend - lots of human drama here.  Yet I don’t ever really feel any of it.  A definite lack of character development (or plot development, for that matter).

So I guess I will recommend this book to people who find themselves in all of the following categories: Interested in psychology and OCD in particular; like having their stories thrown together in a random way; want a very quick and light read; and want a dash of humor in that reading.  But seriously, if you have a low tolerance level for crazy people who do things that make absolutely no sense to 97% of the world’s population, you aren’t going to like this book.  Sorry.

In the end, when I look at strictly how much I enjoyed this book, I have to give it 3 stars.  For anyone who fits the above categories, I’d probably nudge that up to a decent 4.25.

Take it for what it’s worth.  Anyone else out there read it?  What did you think?  Just wondering how far off base I am from everyone else…

Havs

Shut Up, I’m Talking (And Other Diplomacy Lessons I Learned in the Israeli Government) by Gregory Levey was a downright hilarious book.  I spent at least half of the book laughing uproariously.  I think it rather annoyed my husband, actually.

But here’s the general gist of the book: This is the autobiography of Gregory Levey , who grew up as a secular Jew in Canada.  He went to a Jewish school for elementary and junior high, and then went to regular public school for high school.  So he was raised somewhat in the Jewish background, although he is atheist and doesn’t believe in the Jewish religion, or in God in general.

Well, he decides as a second-year law student that law school was just way, way too boring, and he wants to go join the Israeli Army (yes, this is rather random, but as you’ll see as you read his book, most of his life seems to be have been rather random.  In fact, I’d say that sums up his life in a nutshell: Random).  While waiting for his army stint to begin, he decides that he wants to be an intern at the UN for the Israeli government, and so he spends several months trying to do just that.  He ends up getting a job as a speech writer instead.

His story proceeds from there, and I don’t want to give everything away so I won’t, but can I just tell you again how darn FUNNY this book is?  Usually when I read a book, I try to mark the pages that I think are particularly humorous/heartwarming /touching, or otherwise noteworthy, so I can use the quotes in my review.  For Shut Up, I’m Talking, I realized that I would basically have to quote the entire first chapter.  But I’m just not that dedicated to this job, sorry.

But I will quote from the introduction (the Author’s Note).  Here it is:

As I write this note, things don’t look good in the Middle East.  I’m not sure when you’re reading this, but I assume that things still don’t look good in the Middle East, because they never really do.  If things looked good in the Middle East, it wouldn’t look like the Middle East.  It might look like, say, Canada, with camels.

Having been to the Middle East, and having ridden on a camel, that struck me as particularly funny.  Or perhaps my sense of humor has been seriously screwed up by a lack of sleep lately, who knows.

Although this is a great book about the inside workings of the UN and of the Israeli government, it by no means is a definitive book about what is happening in the Middle East.  In fact, that is rather the point of the book: The author realizing that there really is no plan when it comes to politics and policy.  Everyone in the Israeli government is basically playing it by ear, 24/7.  It’s a disheartening, eye-opening, and laughter-inducing book.

I couldn’t put it down.  4.75 out of 5 stars.  Great book - I’m hoping this won’t be the last we hear of Gregory Levey.

Hava

I had to read His Favorite Wife: Trapped in Polygamy by Susan Ray Schmidt after I found out that it was written a sister wife of the author of Shattered Dreams (in other words, they were both married to the same man, Verlan LeBaron.)  Irene Spencer had had a lot to say about Susan in her book (mainly, that she was Verlan’s favorite wife, and why was she always being treated so special?) and I wanted to see it from Susan’s perspective.

I’m glad I did - it was definitely one of the better written polygamy books.  I enjoyed it a lot more than Irene’s book, simply because Susan didn’t spend half of the book complaining about how she wasn’t “getting any,” like Irene did.  Susan was definitely unhappy with Verlan most of the time, but she didn’t wallow in it, and I was grateful for that.

I also felt like this book was a lot more exciting and gave a better understanding of that time period when it came to polygamy, because Susan talks quite a bit about her brother-in-law, Ervil LeBaron, a famous polygamist that had his own brother killed, along with some of his wives, children, and other people he thought deserved to die.   Irene said in her book that she specifically didn’t talk about Ervil because she didn’t want him to overwhelm her story, but because of that, I felt as if a large chunk of important information was left out.  Susan’s story was much more complete.

But not only was it more complete, but Susan’s writing style was better.  When she was a child, the writing was more simplistic, and the reasoning she did was more simplistic too.  As she grows up, the book becomes more in-depth, and you can see her change and mature before your eyes.  I felt that really added to the book.

If you’re interested in a follow-up after finishing His Favorite Wife, you’ll want to check out this website, where Susan does a question and answer session with readers.  Make sure to read the comments too - she and her daughter write out responses there also.  It was very interesting to see that Susan and Irene are good friends even to this day - I would think that would be very difficult, but I guess they’ve had years to get past all of the baggage that would have come with this lifestyle.

Tangent: While researching on the internet, I found out that Susan is living in the same city I am, here in Idaho.  What an incredibly small world this is!!  I wonder if she has ever come down to the library and I’ve met her and simply didn’t know it…I’ll have to keep my eyes open for her.

Well, out of the four polygamy books that I’ve read (Shattered Dreams, Stolen Innocence, Escape, and now His Favorite Wife) the tally is two Christians, one (maybe) Mormon (still not sure about that one), and one atheist.  As I’ve read these books, I’ve wondered what the majority of ex-FLDS believers become - if they do tend to go towards Christianity or another religion (or none at all).  I’m sure that no formal study has ever been done, so I guess I’ll just have to keep wondering…

Anyway, if you’re interested in polygamy in the 1960’s and 70’s, then you’ll definitely want to pick His Favorite Wife up.  It gives an eye-opening insight to what it is truly like to be a polygamist wife (and there is pretty much nothing good about it).  If you’re wanting an up-to-date picture of polygamy and what’s happening now, you’ll want to check out Stolen Innocence instead.

I give His Favorite Wife 4.25 out of 5 stars.  I’ll be keeping my eyes open for Susan around town!

Havs

I am the Central Park Jogger: A Story of Hope and Possibility by Trisha Meili was an amazing testament of the human will to get better - the indomitable human spirit.

I was only 8 when Trisha Meili was attacked in Central Park, and so I have no recollection of the event being publicized across the nation.  Kids can be so oblivious, and I think I tended to be more oblivious than most.  I had heard references of it in passing through the years, so when I saw her book on the shelf, I knew the very general outlines of what had happened.

But nothing could have prepared me for this book.  It was an autobiography (one of my favorite kinds of books) but better yet, it was written by a person who didn’t wallow in self-pity, who didn’t whine and complain about how hard life was, and who certainly didn’t play the blame game.  She was too busy getting better!

Can I just say how darn likable she is?  Trisha pushes herself through therapy, determined to get better, determined to not let this ruin her life.  And she had a lot of therapy to go through - she was in the hospital for seven months.  In a coma for weeks.  She has to learn how to swallow, how to roll over, how to walk, how to eat, how to think, how to make decisions - all over again.

She said that she went from being a baby to being an adult in seven months.  She is a true inspiration because she has such a can-do spirit.  For anyone who has suffered through a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) there couldn’t be a better book to read than this one.  And even for those of us who haven’t, there is still so much to learn from her.

Part of the story is her love life - she dated quite a few men throughout the book, and I kept hoping she’d find her true love by end.  And (not to ruin the story or anything!) but she finally did.  I loved reading that part, because it just seemed so fitting that after she’s gone through a rebirth in her life, she would finally be ready to find The One.

If you want a feel-good, inspirational story, you honestly couldn’t get any better than this one.

4.75 out of 5 stars.  Good luck, Trisha - I wish you all the best!

Havs

For any readers of young adult paranormal books, Lois Duncan is probably a very familiar name.  She produced such hits as I Know What You Did Last Summer and Hotel for Dogs (another book that is being produced into a movie - this one is coming out in January of 2009.)

I don’t happen to be one of those people - I had heard the name Lois Duncan before and vaguely recognized it, but as far as I can remember, I haven’t read one of her books before.  I saw the book, Who Killed My Daughter? by Lois Duncan while doing check-in on Friday, and was instantly intrigued.  I don’t read true-life murder mysteries by writers like Ann Rule, but I figured that since this was a true-life murder mystery written by the mother of the victim, it would make it more interesting to me.

So I came home with it, and figured that since I was so tired, I would take it into the bedroom with me and read it until I fell asleep for my afternoon nap.  Two hours later, I was wide awake, and thoroughly engrossed in the story.  Unlike most true-life murder mysteries you can find on the bookshelf, I knew that this one ended on a question mark.  Here’s a quotation from the book flap:

Our teenage daughter Kaitlyn was chased down and shot to death while driving home from a girlfriend’s house on a peaceful Sunday evening.  Police dubbed the shooting “random.”  But to our family, the circumstances didn’t add up to “random,” especially after we made the shocking discovery that Kait had been keeping some very dangerous secrets from us…

After spending two years investigating Kait’s death, our family has managed to accumulate enough information to form a fragmented picture of what may have happened to her, but the jigsaw puzzle still lacks the few key pieces that could nail the identity of her killers.  It is my hope that reading Kait’s story will motivate potential informants to supply us with those pieces.

The shooting happened July 16, 1989, and the book was published in 1992.  I read the book knowing that it was solved now - after all, this book was old, and there was no way that it could still be an unsolved mystery.

I was wrong.

I finished the book Friday night at 1:00 in the morning.  It had made me so paranoid and freaked out (not only was this some wild stuff, but it was true wild stuff, and there are some really bad people in this book!) that I went around closing all the blinds in the house, convinced that the Vietnamese mafia was outside of my house, watching me.  Nevermind that I’m in Idaho, and as far as I know, there is no Vietnamese mafia for hundreds of miles.  I was convinced they had it out for me.

I then jumped online, happy to finally be able to find out “whodunnit.”  I had made myself wait until I finished the book before I looked, because I didn’t want to spoil the surprise by knowing the ending before I got to it.  I was shocked and a little mad that there wasn’t an ending to be found.  Not mad at Lois and her family, but mad the police force for not figuring it out. It’s almost 20 years later, and still no arrested killer? It seemed impossible.

Which is how Lois and her family feel about it too, I’m sure.  Six months after the shooting, on New Year’s Day of 1990, Lois’s husband said, “I thought they would have arrested the murderer by now.”  Little did he know he’d be saying that 19 years later…

You wouldn’t believe everything included in this book: Vietnamese mafia, insurance scams, drug cartels, psychics, frighteningly real (and accurate!) dreams, and the most inept police force you’ll ever meet.  If you asked this police force to add 2 + 2, I have no doubts but that they’d come up with the number 7, and then defend that answer within an inch of their lives.

If you’ve heard of this case before, or if you’ve already read Who Killed My Daughter?, you’ll want to check out the family’s website, Who Killed Kait Arquette? and read through the different links on there.  There are quite a few updates on there, like the fact that part of the inept and stupid police force has been convicted of felonies, and have been exposed as “rogue” cops.  That really doesn’t surprise you after reading the book.

There is also a cool section where you can read and post comments, and Lois Duncan will respond to those comments personally.  I put a comment up on Friday night/Saturday morning, and Lois had already responded to my comment by Sunday afternoon.  She is very on top of that board and responds quickly to each and every comment.

But the coolest part was the excerpts section - apparently, Lois Duncan is writing a sequel called, The Tallykeeper and might publish it also without an answer of “whodunnit.”  If she does, you can be sure that I’ll read it quickly and write up a review for it on here.  The excerpts alone made me breathless and sent my heart racing.

My only real problem with Who Killed My Daughter? was the psychics readings.   I’ve always been a skeptic when it comes to that kind of thing, but then again, so has Lois Duncan.  She was sort of dragged into it at first, but by the end, she had become very reliant on what they said.

I didn’t mind that so much (I don’t have to believe something or be thoroughly convinced about its validity in order to enjoy a book) but instead my problem lay in the readings themselves.  Here’s an excerpt from one of the psychic readings:

 There will be this that will show that she will have had some kind of connection to these two suspects and that they know her.  There is something about them which will cause her to recoil as if there will have been some kind of other encounter at another time.  They will seem to have some way to fear that something is known about them by her and thus now by others.  This will seem to put a fear into them they will still be under the containment and control of the questioners and can be asked questions even if there is not fully know the meaning of the questions even by the questioners.

Come again?

Some passages make more sense, and some make less sense.  I found myself skimming the psychic readings after a while, because the stuff like above doesn’t make sense to me.   Perhaps I’m a little slow, I don’t know, but it seems rather convoluted to me.

Other than that, it was one of the most gripping books I have read in a very, very long time.  I simply could not put it down.  I think anyone who has even the slightest interest in true-life murder mysteries should pick this book up.

I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars.  Good luck, Lois - I hope you find the killer soon.

Havs

I’m not sure how to describe 1 Dead in the Attic: After Katrina by Chris Rose. It was very depressing, yet at times made me laugh and gave me hope for this world.

I guess I could start with the easy stuff: The author is a columnist at The Times-Picayune, the local newspaper for New Orleans. The book is a compilation of his daily columns, starting after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005.

Some of the columns were darkly funny, some of the columns were just plain dark.  Some of them gave you a renewed confidence in mankind, others made you question how people that horrid could have lived for so long.

I can say one thing for sure: This was an eye-opener of a book.  I have never been to New Orleans, and so I witnessed the destruction on TV with horrified detachment, much as most of America did.  A few months after it happened it faded from view and I forgot about it, to be honest.  I didn’t want to, and I didn’t mean to, but life does have a habit of going on.

1 Dead in the Attic was a needed reminder that although I may have moved on, life in New Orleans didn’t, at least not in the same way.  Many people suffered through bouts of depression; some people committed suicide because of it.  I’ve never lived through anything like Hurricane Katrina, and I had never thought about what would be happening a year after the storm hit, or two years, or three.  If I had, I would have realized on an intellectual level that people would be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, but I never got that far.

I’m feeling rather guilty now for my negligence, but that can’t be blamed on Rose.  He doesn’t set out to make the readers depressed.  It’s just how I reacted.

Lest you think the whole book is depressing, let me share one of the funnier columns with you.  Although Rose stayed in New Orleans after Katrina, the rest of his family went to Maryland and stayed for several months, so he would travel back and forth between the two cities regularly.  Here is a column about one such trip:

[B]efore each journey, I check with my kids by phone to see what they need from our house in New Orleans.

Of course, they need everything, they tell me.  Every toy, every article of clothing, every piece of furniture, everything that hangs on the walls, every piece of building material down to the studs.

“Itemize,” I urge them.

“Barbies,” they tell me.

“I can do that,” I tell them.

And so my chore began one afternoon, as I crouched and crawled into their secret places in our house - small, dark spaces I have never been in, places that are not hospitable to people larger than, say, a dorm refrigerator.

In the process, I discovered that there has been a population of approximately fifty Barbies living under my roof.  I did not know this.

An absurd number, I was thinking, but then I remembered that I used to collect empty egg cartons when I was a kid and I probably had a couple hundred - a closet full of them - before my mother brought the hammer down on that curious little hobby of mine.

Truth is, I don’t recall even the barest notion of why I collected egg cartons nor what I did with them.   I just did.  So who am I to tell my kids they have too many Barbies?

Let them be, I say.  I mean, I turned out okay, right?

Don’t answer that.

~Page 81 - 82 of 1 Dead in the Attic by Chris Rose

He is extremely easy to read; I’ve had good luck with newspaper writers in the past, and this book was no exception.  He is a talented writer.  He is frank and direct, and everything is so real that you feel as if you too lived through the destruction that Hurricane Katrina wrought upon New Orleans.

My only critique of the book was that the columns were not in chronological order, nor could I see that there was any rhyme or reason to how they were published.  It was disconcerting to see that we had jumped back in time three months for no apparent reason.  I eventually stopped paying attention to the dates of the columns so it would stop bothering me, an easy fix.

Overall, I give 1 Dead in the Attic 4.75 out of 5 stars.  And my thanks to Mr. Rose for publishing it.  I needed to read this book.

Havs