Category: Book Talk

I decided to pick up Long Way Down on a whim. I saw that the Knitters Book Club had selected it as their book for March, and it sounded interesting. It was available through my library for free, so I downloaded it right away.

The premise of this book is that a young man’s brother has been shot and killed, and now he is going for revenge. The book takes place over the course of 60 seconds in an elevator. At each floor another character enters, and more of the backstory is told.

I don’t even have words for how beautifully this book is written. I was listening to the audio version and I had NO IDEA that it was written in prose. The narration is flawless. If you get the audiobook, I highly recommend that you also listen to the interview with the author at the end. It is excellent.

I noticed that many people recommend pairing this book with The Hate U Give. I agree that the books have certain parallels, but this book can easily stand on it’s own. I’m looking forward to hearing my teenagers’ thoughts on this book, and if they feel that the books should be read together.

I rated this book 5/5 without hesitation, and I really encourage you to pick it up. The audio version is less than 2 hours long and flies by. If you’re like me, you’ll be sad when it’s over.

Anytime I walk into the library, I have to check the “new releases” shelf before I go anywhere else. A lot of times I find new-to-me authors and books that I wouldn’t have otherwise sought out.

I had never heard of Anne Helen Peterson before picking up this book. I’ll admit that I didn’t even realize that Buzzfeed had serious authors… so I guess I went into this book with some preconceived notions. I was really wrong. This book is concise, engaging, and it really challenged me in ways that I didn’t expect.

The book is broken up into 10 chapters, each focusing on an unruly celebrity who is viewed as being “too much” in at least one area of their life. The first chapter, “Too Strong” is about Serena Williams and is an excellent way to open the book. Anne Helen Peterson covers how Williams’ gender affected the way that she was treated and how her race was used against her. Both the chapter on Williams and the chapter on Nicki Minaj address the fact that women of color are treated differently and held to different standards than white women in the same field. After reading the first chapter, I knew I’d definitely finish this book.

Some of the women in the book will be known to all (like Hilary Clinton and Madonna) and others might not be (Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson were new to me.) I don’t think this makes the book any less insightful. I still enjoyed every chapter and each one left me thinking for days and noticing the subtle ways that society judges these women and other women like them.

I’d definitely recommend checking out this book. Even when I didn’t necessarily agree 100% with the author, I still found myself challenged and seeing new perspectives. I also loved that the format of the book made it easy to read a chapter, take a break, ponder it for a while, and then return to the book.

I love reading books for review, and I was instantly intrigued when I saw the title of Donna Freitas’ new book, The End of Sex: How Hookup Culture is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled, and Confused About Intimacy. Now that I’ve finished this book, I feel like I have many new ideas about how I want our family to approach the topic of sex.

Donna Freitas uses The End of Sex to describe the findings of her research on hookup culture on college campuses. Hookup culture is defined by the absence of relationships and emotions in sexual encounters, with a hefty dose of alcohol added in for good measure. 😉 Freitas uses the students’ own words to explain how college students are expected to hookup, and the huge pressures within the culture for students to have no feelings for the person with whom they are hooking up. The students explain how dating no longer happens on campuses. In the majority of cases, students either didn’t know anyone who has ever been on a date or they only used the term to describe “serial hookups”, where you hookup with the same person, but still don’t spend time with them when you aren’t intoxicated or having a sexual encounter.

She polled students in a variety of settings — public and private secular colleges, private Catholic colleges, and private evangelical Christian colleges. The results of her study were fascinating. With the exception of private evangelical Christian colleges, the hookup culture was virtually identical on college campuses. Freitas found that private evangelical colleges have an alternate scene – a purity scene – which was filled with its own quirks. Having attended a private evangelical college, I didn’t need any further explanation. 😉 She does, however, suggest additional resources for people who want to read more about the culture of purity.

One of the things that I really enjoyed about this book is that Freitas looks at many different angles of the subject, including ways that different students have attempted to “opt out” of the hookup culture, and programs that have worked (and failed) at college campuses across the country. One of her biggest points is that students realize that they want to have GOOD, meaningful sex, but often don’t know how to get it in the midst of hookup culture. Young men are encouraged to act out macho roles, pretending that they only care about getting a lot of random sex. Young women are encouraged to play out fantasy roles, inspired by pornography, at theme parties every weekend, and feel extreme pressures to neither appear “needy” nor to want more than semi-anonymous sex.

I feel like I am walking away from this book with a much stronger understanding of the sexual attitudes that I want to teach my kids. Freitas’ research shows that students who feel empowered to make a stand to wait for meaningful, good sex are much more likely to avoid the depression and emptiness that many describe as part of hookup culture. She encourages the reader to not only reconsider religious, conservative abstinence-only programs (which do not influence a majority of college students), but to equally scrutinize the far-left curriculum which focuses primarily on avoiding STIs, pregnancy and rape as opposed to being selective about sex. She feels that there is a need for education that shows students that there is a middle ground, and that it is important for both sides to adjust the rhetoric for the sake of the students.

I really enjoyed this book, and I’d recommend it to any parent. It has not been many years since I was in college, but I know that the culture has shifted a lot in a short time. This book adds much to the conversation about young adults and sex, and it is well worth the read.

As I mentioned, I received an electronic copy of this book to review for NetGalley. I was not otherwise compensated, and I was under no obligation to give a good review.

I am not sure what led me to request a copy of No Easy Choice to review. Maybe I chose it because it deals with birth, which is a topic that I always love.. after all, I am a midwifery student, birth doula, and mom of 4. Maybe I chose it because the author is a Christian, and I was curious to hear her take on ethical and moral issues. Maybe it was that I was drawn to the idea of a book that asks the difficult questions about when life begins.. Whatever the reason, I must say that I was really blown away by the quality of this book.

Ellen Painter Dollar uses this book to share her story of living with osteogenesis imperfecta (OI) — a dominant genetic bone disorder that causes bones to break, often without warning — and the impact that OI had on her decision to become both a wife and mother. She passes OI on to her first daughter, and then grapples with the decision of whether or not to use reproductive technology, including preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to attempt to ensure that she will carry a child who does not have this trait.

Besides being beautifully written, Dollar does a superb job of explaining the views on both sides of the debates. She goes far deeper than just the question of whether or not life begins at conception, and explains why focusing on that one issue can lead you to overlook dozens of equally important questions.

The way that the reader is taken on the journey is beautifully crafted, and I can honestly say that I will never consider the ethical choices surrounding reproductive technology and even the pro-life and pro-choice movements the same again. I recommend this book very highly.

I received an electronic copy of this book to review for NetGalley. I was not otherwise compensated, and I was under no obligation to give a good review.

After reading several heated threads about this book, I decided that I needed to read it ASAP. I have to say that I didn’t expect to like this book as much as I did, and it has given me new insight into cultural beliefs about food that are decidedly American (but I thought were universal.)

As the longer title suggests, this book is about a family who moved to France, revolutionized the way their family ate, cured their picky eaters, stopped snacking, and then ultimately moved back to North America and realized that it was much harder to maintain when you’re outside of the French culture.

First, let me say that this is not the same author who wrote French Women Don’t Get Fat. That’s a whole different lady, making a whole different point.

This author, Karen Le Billon, married a Frenchman and decided that it’d be fun to go live in France for a year. At first, it was hard for her to adjust to the way of life in France. She was one of the few people at the supermarket. The locals shopped at their local fresh market that was held downtown. At the market downtown, you tell the vendor which day/meal you plan on eating a particular food, and they pick the perfect item for that timing. It is a slow process, and very personalized.

As she adjusted to the ways of shopping, she also learned that the French approach food education with their children completely differently. They encourage the kids to view new foods as exciting, rather than scary, and expect for kids to need to try foods many times to develop a taste for it. They don’t snack, as that makes the child less hungry for real food at the meals. They also view mealtimes as a special occasion (with most people still going home for hot lunches, their biggest meal), and eating on the go is a big no-no.

The author also learns first-hand that school lunches are a whole different beast in France. There is only one option, the kids sit at tables with tablecloths and real silverware. The meal is a traditional 4-course meal, with a cheese course and everything, and there is NO personalizing the meal. The idea is that if you are given good food, you should eat it. They view the idea of giving kids a choice in what they eat as stunting — leading to having an adult population who is still picky like toddlers.

One thing that I didn’t expect, but really appreciated, is that the author is coming from a background of what she considers attachment parenting (although it is bordering on permissive), and she has no desire to adopt the parts of French culture that are far from AP, including the appalling low breastfeeding rate in France. I didn’t feel like she took an overly rosy view of French culture, but I did like how she took the things that worked and found ways to use them in her life, both in France and when they returned to North America.

I think this book is well worth the read. It has yummy recipes in the back, including a killer mousse au chocolat that we made. Her descriptions of how food is approached in France were really eye-opening for me, and have changed the way we approach mealtimes. Definitely check it out if you get the chance. 🙂

Well, not every book can be a winner.

My kids LOOOOOVE animal encyclopedias. They read them like novels. We were at Barnes and Noble a few days ago when my kids found the National Geographic Animal Encyclopedia and begged us to buy it. We ended up surprising them with it later. Tonight I asked my son how it is, and he said, “It is nice, but a lot of the pictures are wrong.”

We sat down, and he showed me a picture of a Ground Squirrel that was labeled as a Prairie Dog. I agreed with him that it was a Ground Squirrel, but a fairly innocent mistake. Next he showed me a picture of a King Vulture that said it was an Andean Condor. There was definitely no mistaking that one. Next he showed me this page:

Erm, yeah… That’s pretty bad.

He went back to reading, and just a second later noticed that the Sea Nettle was labeled as an Urchin, and the Urchin as a Sea Nettle. I’m sure he’ll find more mistakes as he continues to read it.

What a bummer. I expected them to have better editors at National Geographic. 🙁 If your kids want an animal encyclopedia, I definitely recommend on passing on this one.

While browsing to see which book I might want to review next, Cliques, Hicks, and Ugly Sticks by K.D. McCrite immediately caught my eye. It is the second book of “The Confessions of April Grace” series, although I didn’t realize that until I finished the book.

The story is told by April Grace, an 11-year-old in Arkansas in 1986. April Grace is starting junior high and her world seems to be falling apart. The new school year starts and one of her best friends is now snotty and mean to her at school, boys are starting to notice her (which makes her uncomfortable), and then her parents drop the bombshell that they have a new baby on the way. The book follows April Grace’s life through the first half of her school year as she tries to adjust to all of the changes in her life.

Reading this book was fun. I smiled at the descriptions of life in the 80’s. April Grace’s character has a great blend of innocence and spunk that translates well for the tween crowd. I think my daughter will really relate to her. I’m going to get the first book of the series and I plan on reading them aloud with my kids.

This book is published by Thomas Nelson, but the Christian message is very subtle in it and I think it would be an appropriate book regardless of a person’s faith. The overall tone of the book is positive without being syrupy. I’d definitely recommend this book and I look forward to checking out the rest of the series.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”