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: 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.

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: Always Looking Up, by Michael J. Fox

The Story: After Michael J. Fox quit working on Spin City due to Parkinson’s, he was kind of depressed- day-to-day life was a struggle and after years and years in front of the camera, he felt bored and lonely. He decided to use his disease, his fame, and his money toward something that really mattered to him: finding a cure for Parkinson’s Disease, which had effected him for almost 20 years at that point.

By surrounding himself with excited, influential people and putting his heart on the line, Michael J. Fox developed The Michael J. Fox Foundation. Their goal is to hire scientists who are experts in their field to focus their whole attention on Parkinson’s. Through this, the foundation has been able to develop amazing drugs and therapies that are helping the tons of people effected by this disease.

What I Thought: When I went to the library in search of Michael J. Fox’s book, I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know that there were two. When the librarian handed me both of them, I know I looked confused. I decided to pick the newest one for no other reason than it was newer. I didn’t even read the book flaps. Had I read them, I think I would have picked the first one because what I was looking for was more of an overview of his life. While this book had a little bit of that, it really was more focused on his later life- his disease and post-TV/movie life.

That being said, I really did enjoy this. The first chapter just talks about his daily struggles- getting up and getting ready when his muscles just refuse to listen to him. For me, this was the most memorable part of the book. To be able to watch movies (Hello, Back to the Future, I love you!) where he is so adorable and totally in control and know that at such a young age that even brushing his teeth is quite the job… that’s tough. As I read the book and learned about all the good he is doing in the world, I kept reflecting on the fact that he’s doing all of this while almost unable to walk.

I sometimes get annoyed when celebrities “use” their fame to promote stuff, but I love that Michael J. was smart enough to realize that he could influence real change. He didn’t do it in this “look at me!” way- instead he got with smart people who knew what they were doing and basically told them that he wanted to be the face and the voice of this thing, but wanted them to use their knowledge, their training to make the real change. There is a powerful message in there.

Of course Michael J. Fox is brimming over with lovableness, but this book just hammered it home even more.

At points I got bored with hearing about the political side of what he does, but even in that I was impressed with his will, with his determination and with his vigor. He decided what he wanted to do and is totally going after it. I love that.

Conclusion: While I still haven’t read it, I think I’d recommend reading his first memoir first, but even as a stand alone, this is a moving book.

The Book: Breakfast with Tiffany: An Uncle’s Memoir, by Edwin John Wintle

The Story: Tiffany is a semi-wild 13 year old living with her mom and brother and just causing trouble at every turn.

Edwin as an urbane, successful New Yorker who is 40 years old and pretty proud of where he is in his life.

When Tiffany’s mom (Edwin’s sister) calls Edwin and says she can’t handle it, can he take Tiffany for awhile, he is kind of shocked. After he thinks it through, he realizes that that would be perfect for both of them.

She moves in.

Craziness ensues.

What I Thought: I love memoirs. I’m sure you’ve noticed. I would say about a quarter of the books I read are memoirs. I like the idea of pretty normal people encountering something that changes them, processing the changes and writing about it. I think that there is a raw emotion there that you don’t get with a full-life autobiography or really an other medium.

The raw-ness and honesty that generally draw me to memoirs was totally absent here.

I admit that I did enjoy Edwin and Tiffany’s relationship. I thought that it was turbulent and I could really identify with Edwin’s desire to change Tiffany but also to let her grow into the woman that she is meant to be. I have a crazy little brother and I always want to “fix” him into a better man, but the thing is this: He is on his own path and is going to do his thing. This is a hard thing to grasp and I thought watching Edwin struggle with that was the best, most real part of the book.

Here’s what made me pretty much hate the book: Edwin. Is that bad?

He’s a 40 year old gay man and that’s exactly how he sees himself. He doesn’t have much identity outside of his sexuality and he is just this caricature. He lacks any real emotional depth and the whole time I thought about how if I were gay, I’d be ticked about this book. It just promotes stereotyping in a way that is almost comical…. except it’s not. At all. It is insulting.

Even beyond that, he left two BIG things unsaid until the very, very last chapters of the books. It’s not like he hadn’t had a chance to say them. No, he had alluded to both things but was not forthright at all. When you find out these little bits, it is like. “Oh. Well that kind of changes a lot of what you said.” I hate that. It’s a MEMOIR. The idea is to be open and vulnerable and let people into your life. I thought that it was dishonest and it just didn’t work for me.

I don’t even really know what the goal in leaving out these huge chunks of information was. It didn’t make for a more cohesive storyline or anything… it was just weird.

So. That’s that. This wasn’t the best memoir I’ve ever read and if you are gay or have gay people in your life that you love, just don’t read this.

Conclusion: Skip it.

The Book:Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson

The Story: This is the story of Steve Jobs’ life: his youth, his family, his beliefs, and primarily his successes and failures at Apple and his other companies.

Steve Jobs is one of these modern “celebrities” that has been part of the tech revolution since its earliest days. He and Steve Wozniak started Apple in Jobs’ parent’s garage when they were way young. As the company grew and developed so did Steve. Sometimes they developed together, and sometimes not.

Toward the end of his life, he talked to Walter Isaacson about doing a really open biography of his life. Unlike most things he’d taken part in, Steve wanted to have no control over the biography. He wanted Isaacson to interview everyone he could and get the good stuff and the bad stuff and put it all together. Later, he admitted that his real motivation in this project was to have a really honest book for his kids to read so that they could know their dad a little better.

This is the result.

What I Thought: We are Apple people. Shaun had an iPod before I had ever heard of an iPod. Right now, on our desk I can count 6 apple devices and, for some reason, an iPhone 3GS box. So. We’re part of the cult. All that to say that I went into this with a pretty good opinion about Steve Jobs, a fairly clear idea about his past, and an expectation about what I was about to read.

And I still thought Steve Jobs was a real, real prick at times. Wow. For whatever reason, I’ve always had a real interest in people who end up in positions of great power. I’ve always kind of thought that it is ok for them to be jerks, to have big egos, and to kind of do their own thing. People who believe in their vision strongly almost HAVE to push hard to get that vision get realized. I think that Steve Jobs kind of took that to the extreme. He was a perfectionist to beat all perfectionists and had very clear ideas about what was “good” and what was “crap” and he never ever held that back- at board meetings, at restaurants, at home… This is part of what made him so extremely successful, but also what made him distant from his family, was cause for his long separation from Apple, and is why many people just refused to work with him.

I think that that dynamic part of Steve Jobs is what made this biography perfect for me. Walter Isaacson was very fair. He obviously got emotionally attached to Jobs, but was not shy about pointing out the crazy things that Jobs did or said. He struck this really great balance. I didn’t think that he made Jobs out to be Jesus or to be this awful demon of a person. He just made him look like a real person, and it seems like that is hard to do to a person who pretty much requires strong reactions.

I loved the little stories here and there about fateful hires, game changing meetings and incredible ideas. Because Walter Isaacson had full access to Steve for over a year and to his family and friends and co-workers and ex-everythings, he really got this really broad view of Jobs, he really got some great little stories that even those of us fully emerged in the “cult of Apple” had never heard.

I love non-fiction that reads easily. Walter Isaacson put together a well written, well thought out, seamless book. At times, he was bouncing around in time a lot but it never felt overwhelming or confusing. I’m not a computer programmer nor do I know much about business/stocks/whatever and both of these things were very easily accessible throughout the book. I never felt bogged down by jargon. It was a smooth, easy, fascinating read.

Guys, I can’t say anything about this book that isn’t just gushing. Oh, no, wait. I’ve got one. The word “unfurnished” was probably in this book 200 times. I got really tired of hearing about how Jobs was such a perfectionist that his house was unfurnished. “So and so came over and since Jobs’ house was unfurnished, they sat on the floor” was repeated until it was comical. I don’t know if anyone else noticed this or cared, but it bugged me.

And that’s it. This book is incredible. Steve Jobs is incredible. I could go on and on about parts of his story that just really struck me, but I won’t bore you. I am blown totally away by his unique way of thinking, his passion for his products and his view into the future. Love him or hate him, you have to admit the huge impact he has had on the world. Amazing, amazing, amazing. I can’t say enough.

Conclusion:Get this. Read it. Thanks.

John Tyler, by Gary May

John Tyler is one of those forgotten presidents. He was the first vice president to take over after the death of a president and to be perfectly honest, he didn’t really do much in office. He got himself really hooked on Texas and slavery and tried to get stuff done in those departments. Because of the forever-villian Henry Clay, he didn’t succeed there or really anywhere else.

The real problem was that he had very different beliefs than William Henry Harrison, who he took over for. In fact, at one point his entire cabinet (minus one!) just walked into his office and quit. He was even nearly impeached. During his term, his party dumped him and he had to start his own party. Wild, right? Why don’t they teach this stuff?

Also, he married a 23 year old while he was in office. He was 55. Seriously. They had a bunch of kids (I want to say like 7 or 8?), including one when Tyler was 70 years old.

He didn’t run after his term was up, he just headed back home to Virginia. While he was there, the Civil War started and he ran for and got elected to the Confederate Congress.

One little tidbit at the end of the book said that John Tyler was born the year that Washington was inaugurated and his last child died when Truman was president. I guess that that is one benefit of marrying someone less than half your age, huh?

Anyway, I really thought that John Tyler was super interesting. I think part of it was the fact that he never really aspired to be president, and had William Henry Harrison not died in office, he never would have been. They called him the Accidental President and it was way interesting to see how someone who had not really wanted the position did with it. The answer was not very much at all.

Because I thought John Tyler was going to be pretty boring and forgettable, I just read a little, skinny book about him. It was another one from the American Presidents series, which has been really hit-or-miss for me so far. What I really enjoyed about this book was that the author seemed to just tell Tyler’s story. He wasn’t trying to push an agenda and he wasn’t obsessed with Tyler. It was just really factual and unbiased. That was refreshing.

I thought that the little political skirmishes got to be a bit much, but if you are into that kind of stuff I’m sure that you’d be way interested. He was, however, a president, so I guess I can forgive him for talking too much about politics

Seriously though, pretty good book on a really interesting guy. I may try to go back and read a little bit more about him (and Henry Clay! He keeps popping up!) when I complete the challenge.

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: Schindler’s List, by Thomas Keneally

The Story: Oskar Schindler ran a factory in Southern Germany during WWII.

Because of his place in the “food chain,” he found out pretty early on what was happening with the Jews. He was totally appalled and decided that he was going to do everything he could to protect as many people as he could. Through working them in his factory and housing them there, he saved over 1,100 Jews.

Not only did he save them from work camps and death, he treated them with respect in a time that they were not respected at all. He went to bat for them and was an absolute hero.

What I Thought: This books is called a “documentary novel” because most of it is put together through interviews and documents, of course the conversations are not word-for-word. The fact that even one word of this is true just totally blows my mind.

If you’ve been following my blog for any amount of time, you know the that I usually don’t shy away from the grisly stuff. I even read quite a bit of stuff about WWII, but for some reason this one effected me differently. It was just powerful.

I read this with my jaw just to the floor. It is just absolutely unreal. Mostly it was the stories of kids that just absolutely tore my heart out. It is just so hard for me to believe that things like this happened so recently.

I could go on and on, but here’s the thing that really stuck out to me: Oskar, at times, was a pretty big jerk. He cheated on his wife, he lied and stole… but there was just this part of him that was absolutely horrified about the Nazi camps, so he did everything that he could do to save Jews. There is just something powerful about that. It makes you reconsider the judgement that we place on people from just a few facts or a few interactions.

Here’s another crazy thing: I’ve never seen this movie. I can rarely stay awake through a movie so when I watch one, I like them short and sweet. And generally cheerful. I know that this i one of the most acclaimed movies… well…. ever. Have you seen it? Have you also read the book? What did you think? Should I tough it out and give it a go?

Conclusion: This is not an easy read by any means, but it is worth your time and tears. Really wonderful.

The Book: The Story of My Father: A Memoir, by Sue Miller

The Story: Sue Miller, a well known novelist, is taken totally off guard when her reliable, wonderful father is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. It’s a hard pill to swallow for any child, but for Sue it seemed especially hard because he had always been the firm foundation that her family was built on. Her mom was a little kooky and so her dad served to hold everything together.

In order to hold on to the person she remembered, she set out to document his life and in the process ended up documenting his mental decline as well.

What I Thought: If you have ever read Sue Miller’s novels, you know that she writes in this gritty, real, compelling way. She is just one of those authors who has a finger on people’s emotions and just the “human condition.” Hearing her use that same tone and emotion to talk about her own family was kind of extraordinary.

My Grandma was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s last year and it has been absolutely heartbreaking to watch her go from doing the crossword every morning to struggling to remember what grandkids/great grandkids belong to what children. She is the mother of 8 and her sons and daughters and her husband have just come around her and loved her in the best way that they know how. It is hard to watch her decline, but it is wonderful to see the love flowing out of the people who love her even as she is becoming less and less the mother and wife that they know.

With that as my background, reading this kind of tore me to bits. Sue Miller really struggled with watching her Dad’s memory and personality go but didn’t shy away from it. She spent time with him just loving him and being with him and struggling right along side him. One thing that she said that was really beautiful and true was that there are all these awful things that come with a disease like Alzheimer’s, but it seems like families always pride themselves on something. Her dad never got mean or violent and that just touched her, that even when parts of him were slipping away, he never lost that kindness and politeness that made him who he was. She saw all the negative things that were happening but made the choice to focus instead on this one positive thing that she could pull out. There is something really powerful in that.

Conclusion: If you have a family member going through this, I would recommend this without a doubt. Still Alice is another one that has really helped me empathize with my Grandma as she loses more and more of her memory. They are tough reads but really, really beneficial.