The Book: Shepherding a Child’s Heart, by Tedd Tripp

The Story: This really is just another parenting book. The “twist” on this one, I guess, is that Tedd Tripp claims that his method of parenting is firmly based in the Bible and is the technique that will guide your kid down the “straight and narrow” from the time s/he is very young.

What I Thought: Parenting is weird because you’ll read half a dozen books on parenting techniques/ideas in a true pursuit of “figuring it out” and then really just feel out what works best for you and go with that. I have taken a lot of tips and pointers from parenting books, but I have always had this idea that it was a kind of “take what you want and leave the rest” proposition.

Guys, there was nothing here for me to take.

I think I picked up this book because I liked the title and the blurb on the back. The idea is that we can never “fix” our kids without knowing their heart issues. We should be able to kind of get to the heart of their issues and work from there instead of just disciplining behavior or talking to them about their actions. This seems true and right to me, and not just for kids. When I take time to see my husband’s heart on a matter instead of just getting mad at what he’s doing, things seem to go more smoothly too. I guess I thought that this book would talk a lot about how to get to those heart issues and helping the kid work through them. I was pretty wrong.

Tedd Tripp’s (what is with the extra D anyway?) idea is that at the heart of every misbehavior is sin. Dirty, evil, rotten sin. Tripp’s “biblical plan of child rearing” is to first communicate why what the kid did is sinful and wrong and then get rid of the sin. And apparently the Bible says that the ONLY way to get rid of that is by spanking. Like… he started spanking his kids when they were around 8 months old. EIGHT MONTHS. I’m not a doctor or anything, but I’m pretty sure that the “cause and effect” area of a child’s brain isn’t fully formed at 8 months…. right? He says that if you fail to spank you are saying you don’t love your kids enough to raise them the way that God said… or something. What?

There is just so much wrong with this that I am not going to even go through it point by point. I think that the constant spanking was my huge turn off (he spanked his kids from the time they were infants until they were 12-13….. every.single.time they disobeyed their parents), but it was more than that. I just felt like Tedd Tripp really thinks that talking to kids about what they do wrong and then spanking them is it, is the whole goal of parenting. To teach our kids that all this stuff that they do is wrong and that they need to first honor their parents and, in that, honor God. This just feels… wrong… to me. Really, really wrong. He kind of sets up this relationship early on that, “I’m your parent, therefore your adversary,” and I will take the opposite approach with my kids. “We are family, we are in this together. I am your parent, so I will teach you things, but you’re my kid, so you’ll teach me things too.”

I guess that was the whole problem… Tedd Tripp’s method may work for some people. Whatever. I’m too soft/too much of a hippy for that.

The other thing is that when he wrote this Tedd Tripp’s kids were all grown and out of the house. Maybe he forgot that parenting- being in the thick of it- is much different than looking back later. He just kept saying he did the communicate/spank for every time his kids disobeyed or acted out. What about little stuff? What about just normal KID stuff? I think that there is a possibility that he was just too far separated to remember what parenting little kids is really like….

Anyway, I could go on and on, but I’ll leave it at this: this book set wrong with me like very few books have. While I was comfortable with the blurb on the back, that was about it for me. The rest of it felt very harsh and wrong. Yuck.

Conclusion: I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone. Ever.

The Book: Gone, Baby, Gone, by Dennis Lehane

The Story: A four year old girl, Amanda, is reported missing after having been gone several days. The private detective team of Patrick and Angie are put on the case because of their track record in being able to figure out tough cases that no one else can.

When they start to hear from Angie’s mom- a barfly and sometimes drug runner- they start to get the idea that something is way, way fishy. She had left Amanda- A FOUR YEAR OLD- in their house alone while she went down the street to watch TV with a friend on the night that she was abducted. They check out Amanda’s room and find it bare of toys or books. It’s just a mattress on the floor and a couple of blankets. When they interview people who knew Amanda, they heard over and over that Amanda was a small, shy kid who sunk into the background and was apparently used to being ignored.

With suspicions mounting that Angie’s mom is maybe not telling the whole story and their hearts breaking for this kid, Patrick and Angie start a journey through Boston to find Amanda.

What I Thought: It’s no secret that I think that Dennis Lehane is the absolute best at what he does. Sometimes I read crime books or mystery novels as little “filler” books- something that’s fluffy but readable, something without substance. Dennis Lehane takes the genre in a whole different direction. His books are thoughtful, well written and go deep. I’m a big fan.

This one especially left us with this horrible question to ponder: is it possible that wherever Amanda is, that she is better off there than with her parents? Is it possible that a mother can abuse not with fists or words but with straight up neglect of spirit? As we get a view of Amanda’s life, the whole thing just becomes more and more bleak, and in the end, Patrick and Angie are left with a very, very hard ethical dilemma. If I’m being honest, I still don’t know which side of the line I fall on. I don’t want to spoil anything for you, but this is one of those endings that will keep you thinking for a long, long time.

Something that I really love about Dennis Lehane is how he writes about Boston. He writes it from his gut- you can tell that he loves it with everything he as and wants to show all the gritty parts… and somehow leave you loving it just like he does. Boston is a character in and of itself in his books. I love that.

My only real complaint about this book is that it drug a bit in the middle. I guess solving a crime is probably kind of like that- quick and crazy to start, muddled in the middle, and then this resolution (kind of) at the end. Before figuring out what was really up, Patrick and Angie followed some totally false leads. During that “muddled” part, the story seems to slow down a bit and while I was still intrigued, I wasn’t stealing minutes here and there to read like I was in the beginning and the end.

I didn’t know when I started this book that it is part of a series. I was perfectly fine reading this and didn’t feel lost, but especially when the characters were being introduced, I could tell that there was some background that I was missing. Turns out this is number four in a series of books about these detectives. I haven’t read any of the other books in this series, but if I see one at the bookstore, I will not hesitate to pick it up. I loved this book and want to know more about Patrick and Angie’s lives.

Conclusion: A great mystery novel by a great genre-bending author. Highly recommended.

The Book: Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way, by John Krakauer

The Story: I don’t know how many of you have read Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson, but I remember for a hot minute that book was EVERYWHERE. When I read it, I wrote this review on Goodreads (oh days before my little blog!). Pretty much I was very unimpressed with the writing but did think that Greg’s story was phenomenal and inspirational.

Apparently, so did John Krakauer. Because he is an avid climber (according to Mortenson, he got lost after climbing down a mountain, ended up in his sherpa’s village and then committed to building a school for them), the story really touched home with him. He poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the organization that Greg Mortenson had started and even spoken at events to introduce the guy. They had never been friends really, but Krakauer did think that they had similar passions and wanted to get behind what Greg was doing.

After years of this, John met someone who he thought was a mutual friend of he and Greg. Greg’s name came up and the friend confided in John that he knew stuff about Greg’s organization that made him very, very uncomfortable. Because he had given/was giving so much money (and had had little suspicions of his own), John was instantly intrigued. He is an investigative importer- it’s what he does- so that kicked in and he started investigating and was really ticked at what he found.

Pretty much, Greg had fabricated a huge percentage of his story, and more upsetting- he was taking money that people were donating and using it just for himself. The board of his charity-organization was quitting left and right because Greg wouldn’t answer calls or be in anyway accountable to the money he was spending. Again, when John Krakauer contacted him to let him know that he was going public with this information, he refused to comment and pretty much acted like a jerk about the whole thing- to a guy who had bankrolled him in a big way- so Krakauer went ahead with the piece and this little 80-something page book is the result.

What I Thought: Like I said, I didn’t love or hate Three Cups of Tea. I thought what Greg was doing was cool but thought that the book itself was kind of dumb. When I heard about this book, I kind of rolled my eyes. I thought that the “big deal” was that Mortenson had kind of flubbed the order of stuff or whatever. I was totally willing to be forgiving because who on earth can remember the exact order of everything? Had that been the case, I would have said that he just had a bad memory. No. That’s not the case at all.

The money thing is SO CRAZY. Dude just makes money off of donations- people that go to his signings/talks, kids in schools where he presents his “Pennies for Peace” deal, and big time philanthropists. The money is SUPPOSED to go to building these schools in Afghanistan. There is no sign that that is happening. John Krakauer even went over to check out some of the “schools” that had been built and they were just standing empty- there was no research done into where to build them so the few that are standing are totally unused because they are not in areas with children. What?! Who does that?

I could go on and on about all these little facts that made me want to punch Greg Mortenson. This is just a short little book- more like a long article- and as I read it, I could feel my mouth dropping further and further open. It is absolutely shocking what a total arrogant crook this dude is. I walked away from Greg Mortenson’s book feeling a big inspired. I walked away from this one feeling almost sick to my stomach. I would love to know what has happened with Greg Mortenson and his organization since this was printed- if people that backed him pulled their funds and if Greg Mortenson is continuing to speak at schools. I hope that all of it is getting pulled out from under his feet because he absolutely deserves it.

Conclusion: If you read Three Cups of Tea, I really, highly recommend you read this.

Millard Fillmore, by Paul Finkelman

So I told you guys last month that Zachary Taylor was actually pretty sweet for how unknown he is and the length of his presidency (only about 18 months). The biography that I read talked about how had he lived, the civil war may had been totally avoided. The weird part? His vice president, Millard Fillmore, was his polar opposite. They didn’t meet each other until inauguration and even then never became close. After Zachary Taylor died, Millard Fillmore immediately (like within days) fired his whole cabinet without having replacements and just… did his own thing entirely.

Dude hated blacks, Jews, Catholics, Masons… and made laws/decisions based on all of this. It was kind of a wreck. Any advancement toward a compromise that Zachary Taylor had made, Millard Fillmore set back years and years. Totally wild. I know that Pierce and Buchanan are often sited more for escalating things leading up to the civil war, but I think that there is a strong, strong argument for Millard Fillmore getting that ball rolling, especially when he approved the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. I shudder just thinking about it.

So that’s that. He finished up Zachary Taylor’s term then ran a couple more times unsuccessfully then pretty much faded into obscurity.

I really did like learning a little bit about Millard Fillmore, only because I knew literally NOTHING about him before…. but, guys? Not the best biography. There were a lot of actual writing problems (sentence structure, SERIOUS repetition of whole phrases), but the real issue was that this guy, Paul Finkelman, straight up hated Millard Fillmore. He did not say one single positive, nice thing about him. Ever. He talked VERY little about his regular life (as in… I had to look on Wikipedia to find out that he had two children) and nothing about decisions that he made as president that did actually have positive results. The only thing he talked about was the slavery issues. Doing a bit of research myself online after finishing the book, I realized that there were a few other things that he had his hand in that turned out well in the end. After reading a biography, I probably shouldn’t have to Google/Wikipedia the subject, right? Right.

The thing is, I knew when I bought this book that it had low reviews. There are only a handful (like 3 or 4) biographies on Millard Fillmore- he’s one of those overlooked guys- and some had higher ratings, but they all cost OVER THRITY DOLLARS. Was I about to shell that out on an unknown? Never. This one was cheaper (but still like sixteen bucks!) so I went with that one. So. This isn’t a glowing review, but for like half the price, I honestly was pretty happy with what I ended up with.

If you want more info on the Presidential Challenge, read this and check out the current participants. If you want to join, email me or comment here and get started!

The Book: The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green

The Story: Hazel is a 16 year old girl that was diagnosed with terminal thyroid cancer two years ago. Because of some experimental drugs, she is still alive and still hanging on. She isn’t in school and most of her friends have ditched her, but she goes to support group and hangs out with her family and watches a lot of America’s Next Top Model. She’s stuck to an oxygen tank, but still chugging along with this kind of cancer-normal life.

One week, at support group she meets Augustus Waters. He has his physical faults- such as, you know, only having one leg- but mostly he is beautiful and smart and funny and… well, totally into Hazel.

What starts as just one little conversation turns into months of talking and sharing books and becoming totally wrapped up in each others lives and families and dreams. Finally being drawn out of her hermit-like life and being forced to deal with real issues that she’s been able to put at bay all this time lead her to ask serious questions about love, living, dying and what a real “legacy” looks like.

What I Thought: Ok, guys. This is going to be gushy and unbiased and one sided and totally honest.

Totally honestly? This is probably one of the best books that I’ve read in years. It’s amazing. AMAZING.

Here’s the thing: writing about kids with cancer is nothing new (Hello, Lurlene Daniels!). I went into this thinking that I knew exactly how it was going to play out… but I was wrong…. because while books about kids with cancer are about a dime a dozen, books written honestly are not.

Hazel and Augustus are not cardboard cut-outs of cancer patients (”I will inspire everyone to lead a better life! I will sew blankets for orphans!” and so on and so forth), nor are they cardboard cut outs of teenagers (”Oh my god, I totally have cancer which means I can’t shop! Woe is me!” and so on and so forth)… they are real, true blue, intelligent, feeling humans who are dealing with serious issues. I love that they maintain their sense of humor, their snark, their personalities but still manage to grapple with life-and-death questions. It is the most honest thing I’ve ever read.

And maybe even this (honest, teenage cancer patients) has been done before, I don’t know… what really set this book apart was the writing. Guys, I’m not kidding you, John Green can write like no one else out there right now. It’s not just words on paper- it is poetry, it is art, it is…. stunning. I read the whole book in about two giant chomps- I laughed, I cried, I turned the pages as fast as I could- and still have the book sitting here for a re-read. There were so many quotable, highlightable parts that I just couldn’t slow down to highlight. I can’t explain it because I don’t know how, but his way with words is amazing and perfect and swoonworthy.

I had to wait before I wrote a review because when I finished this book, I was totally smashed, slaughtered, gutted…. by the storyline and by the fact that I had just read something so amazing. I wanted to let it marinate so that I could attempt to write a balanced review. Guys, I can’t do it. It is nearly a week later and I can’t think of even the smallest fault in the book. It’s that good.

Conclusion: *sigh* Read this. Then buy it for your friends. Then re-read it. And then read it again. Seriously.

The Book: The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan

The Story: Michael Pollan had been curious about where his food comes from for a long time. It’s just something that we, as Americans (or people living in a first world country) take for granted every single day, but it was something that Pollan had really put thought into. He decided to figure it out.

His goal was to follow industrialized food, “organic” food, and food that had been hunted/gathered. He wanted to start from the bottom and just watch the items in the meal until they made it to his plate.

While he ran into a lot of obstacles (harvesting yeast is hard, but not as hard as obtaining fresh salt or, well, seeing ANYTHING that the industrialized food factories do), he basically did what he set out to do and the result was this book!

What I Thought: The “where does my food come from” thing is something that is really fixed in my head. I grew up in a farming community and my mom was (and still is) very, very loyal to local farmers. We grew up talking about this type of thing and understanding the importance not only to our health, but to the environment and our community that we live this way. As I grew up and moved out, this became more difficult for me. Not only did I not have the money to spend on anything other than, well, boxed mac and cheese, but I went to college in a big city where it truly is harder to buy local. When I got married and moved to Akron, we became part of a CSA and regulars at the local farmer’s markets. All that to say, I went into this book already knowing what I was going to take out of it… or so I thought.

Even I, who grew up under the parentage of a total hippie, had no idea how brutal and disgusting the industrialized food situation is. The way they treat animals makes me sick to my stomach- and I happily eat meat. Bleh. I’m not going to gross you out here, but it’s bad, bad news. Seriously.

I think, though, that Michael Pollan did manage to come at this as unbiased as he could. He admitted that he (like pretty much everyone) enjoys a trip to a fast food restaurant every once in a while. He said that it is us, hungry, feeding machines of Americans that allow for this to go on. If we didn’t buy food packed with HFCS, if we refused to eat meat from cows given antibiotics or fed corn, there would be no reason for this huge industry to exist. That is 100% true.

I also really enjoyed the history of the organic food blow-up. That was an area where I really knew nothing and I thought it was interesting how it went from a small movement to this huge money maker and how some farmers have “sold out” and some have stayed really true to that original mission. Good stuff.

One thing, however… if you’ve already seen Food, Inc. and that was enough for you, you could probably easily skip this. While it did go much more in depth, it had a lot of the same key players (that awesome/awkward farmer from Virginia) and covered much of the same ground.

Conclusion: If you care about the food going into your body, I would say that this is a must-read. If not, McDonald’s on happily. You won’t be able to once you read this

The Book: The Late Bloomer’s Revolution, by Amy Cohen

The Story: Amy is thirty years old and unmarried and has no children and she has been fired from her job and can’t ride a bike. She starts to think that she’s old and washed up and decides to better herself.

What I Thought: Here’s the thing: I am a sucker for memoirs. Last year, I’d say a good twenty five percent of the books I read were memoirs and I liked 98% of them. Do you think it is a coincidence that this one and Breakfast with Tiffany were the ones that I hated? They were so similar it was almost comical. Both people have media jobs in NYC, cushy lives and are just giant whiners.

You hear me? WHINERS.

I guess that it does all add up to a book deal: she lives in NYC, has a job in media, meets famous people, is hot, has “hilarious” friends, and has an epiphany that she needs to get her crap together. The problem is that it didn’t read like a memoir at all. It read like the fluffiest piece of chic lit I’ve ever gotten my hands on. There was not a bit of raw, real emotion and it made the whole thing seem even more #firstworldproblems than it really was…. (That’s right- I just used a hashtag in my blog. It’s my blog. I’ll do what I want )

And the real bummer is that it didn’t have to be like that. Because she did have serious stuff come up- her fiancé dumped her totally unexpectedly and her mom died and she got fired and…. all these things that should bring out real emotion, real feeling from people. Not Amy. I mean, I’m sure she experienced real human emotions, real grief, but she didn’t write about them at all. The whole book was this “oh my God, I’m QUIRKY and ALONE!” and whine whine whine.

Barf.

That’s it. If you want to read a memoir, read something legit. If you want to read good chic lit, do your thing. This is neither.

Conclusion: Don’t read this. Don’t buy it for your single friends. Don’t even crack the cover. Yuck.

The Book: Thirteen Moons, by Charles Frazier

The Story: When he is young, Will Cooper is orphaned and sent to live with his aunt and uncle. They don’t have time money to take care of him so they get him hooked up with a job running a small trading post out in the middle of Indian country.

He has just twelve when they put him on a horse, give him a key to the trading post and send him off. He is initially, of course, terrified and not great at what he does. As he gets to know the Indians and starts to understand their customs, in a lot of ways he becomes part of their tribe.

He is wildly in love with Claire, the daughter of the feared and respected Featherstone. Their love ties all the parts of Will’s life together and spans over the course of his entire life.

Told looking back on his life at an old age, Will is able to connect dots and draw lessons from the unique and powerful things that he experienced.

What I Thought: In short, I thought that this book was amazing.

Charles Frazier is one of those authors that can just write his butt off. He makes gorgeous description and haunting detail seem easy. His writing ebbs and flows in a perfectly lyrical but not too over-the-top way. It’s hard to pull off and he does it like no one else out there today.

I really like books that are written from the perspective of an older person looking back on their life. Sometimes it can feel cheesy, but again- Charles Frazier hit the nail right on the head. I think that this voice of “This was my life and I’m not always proud of it, but this is how it happened” was perfectly, perfectly captured. His relationship with Claire was literally enough to bring tears to my eyes. So, so beautiful.

This book, however, is not super plot heavy. I was totally ok with this because I was enamored with the characters and mostly with the writing, but if you are a person that needs a plot that skips along, you should probably pass this one up.

After I finished reading, I Googled a bit to see what parts of this book were completely fiction and what was drawn from fact. I was really impressed to see actual historians discussing this book and how completely accurate it was. I even saw where someone had said that it was pretty much the perfect historical fiction because it is very accurate but blends in really well written characters as well. I have to agree. This book was totally magical to me.

Conclusion: I don’t think that this is for everyone, but if you love historical fiction and stunning detail, you will devour this.

The Book: The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, by Catherine Howe

The Story: Connie is an academic who is challenged a bit by her academic advisor. He asks her to consider the possibility that the people accused in Salem in the 1690’s were actually just witches.

She kind of shoves his question to the back of her mind and goes about her life… which just so happens to include going through/cleaning out her deceased grandmother’s house. She finds a few clues that lead to more clues and pretty soon she is taking her advisor’s questions much, much more seriously.

What I Thought: I really wanted to like this. When I was in middle school, I took a trip to Boston and we visited Salem. I LOVED it. I was totally enamored with the history, the town, the stories, everything. The cover art for this book is what made me pick it up, but when I read that it was about the Salem Witch Trials, I bought it in about 3 seconds.

It had a lot of potential. It really did. But there were some serious, serious flaws. Allow me to make a list.

1. Connie is supposed to be an academic. She is an idiot. She had supposedly been studying the colonial time period for the entirety of her academic career and she couldn’t make simple, simple connections (like “bottel” being an older, phonetic spelling for… well… “bottle”). One or two little slip ups would have been alright, but at a certain point her ignorance became annoying.

2. The whole book was written in a way that a middle schooler could have read it. In fact, had I read this during my middle school trip to Salem, I probably would have loved it. They should take out the crappy love story and just market this to kids.

3. The love story really is crappy. The predictability is off the charts and Sam just fell totally flat for me. Gag.

4. There are maybe 1,000,000 stereotypes represented in this book and each one annoyed me more than the last.

5. The past storyline (about Deliverance Dane) was actually pretty interesting. Unfortunately, these parts were few and far between and most of the time we were stuck with stupid Connie.

I honestly could keep going, but I’ll spare you.

Conclusion: This book is gross and awful. Please don’t read it.

The Book: Cloudsplitter, by Russell Banks

The Story: Cloudsplitter is a novel about the abolitionist John Brown (of Harper’s Ferry/Bloody Kansas fame), as told by his last surviving son, Owen. This book is Owen’s life story and confession.

Owen describes what it was like being John Brown’s son, kind of revealing him as a deeply religious father with high moral standards and expectations for his children, as well as for himself. John Brown is a strong, compassionate, but demanding and commanding figure. When John Brown decided to really “go big” he took his sons along with him. Owen went, though reluctantly and became his father’s right hand man. Although he was admittedly reluctant at first, once he decided he was in, he was all the way in.

From the little cabin that he has lived in for years, Owen writes his long-winded tale about not only his upbringing, but his adulthood and the effect his family is still (in the early 1900’s when he is writing) having on politics and race relations.

What I Thought: Whew. It is always so hard to try to boil down an 800 page book into a few sentences.

I had this book on my TBR pile forever but kept putting it off. I even started it once and was totally turned off by the prose itself. In an attempt to really capture Owen’s voice, Russell Banks developed this old, long winded, preachy way of writing and at first it seemed awful. After I got into the flow and started to really identify who Owen was, the writing seemed perfect and I just sunk right into it. There are areas where it’s just way too wordy and was almost frustrating to read, but it just worked somehow. John Brown himself was a talker and a schemer and it just seemed like Owen picked up part of that. If nothing else, I applaud Russell Banks for picking a voice and sticking with it in a big way. It made Owen come to life.

I didn’t know a huge amount about John Brown before I read this and was pleased to find out that a good part of his life took place really near where I live! I even found out that there is a little memorial set up near here and I plan to go and see it once it gets warmer. It’s always fun to hear references to familiar places.

I knew very little about John Brown going into this- I knew that he was a white guy that wanted to end slavery and raided Harper’s Ferry which, in a lot of ways knocked over the dominoes that started the Civil War. Yes, dominos started the Civil War. You heard it here first, folks. Anyway, I loved learning more about his upbringing and family life. The father-son relationship here, the dynamic between Owen and John Brown is pretty much what made the book for me. Owen’s need/desire to rise to John Brown’s expectations despite his own inner voice was fascinating to me and just so well written. You could just feel this tension that was taking place in the young man’s mind- this cognitive dissonance. He knew what was right (not killing people, also not slavery) but also wanted to please his father (who thought that bloodshed was the only way to fix this problem) so badly. That back and forth in his mind was intense.

That’s all I’ve got. This is one of those books I could talk about for a long time- the race relations, how we change as we grow, childhood’s effect on our adulthood, the need for comfort and people, the Civil War… all fascinating things. I went into this book honestly expecting little but came away knowing a bit more not only about John Brown but about that time period and, really, about human nature. Pretty big deal.

Conclusion: Not a light, easy book by any stretch but one that I would say is worth the effort.