I Have Something to Tell You by Chasten Buttigieg

 

If you even remotely paid attention to me on Facebook, you would know who my favorite candidate was during the Democratic primaries. Going into them, I actually had three favorites: Buttigieg, Castro, and Harris.  They were the three individuals that I had been paying attention to for years, and will always hold a lot of admiration for. In the beginning, the three of them were pretty much grouped together, with no real order of preference. For that matter, I would have been in heaven had anyone found a way to set up triumvirate government, with the three of them sharing power. 

As the primaries slogged on, Pete started to edge ahead of the other two. And by the time he dropped out, he was my first choice. I won't go into the policy issues that pushed me his way, though I could list quite a few, this just isn't the place to do that. Stylistically, he was also the one I was able to connect to the most.  Again, since this isn't the real point of this post, I'll skip over that as well.  Which leaves us with the deeply personal connection I felt to him and his campaign, and his husband, Chasten, had a lot to do with that.  

As a gay man, who struggled with acceptance as a kid, seeing an out man have a real chance at the White House, was something I never thought I would see in my lifetime.  Seeing my lived experience as a gay man, in someone who could easily be President of the Untied States, was nothing short of life affirming.  Getting to know him, as well as you can through the media and his own book, was something I would have loved to experience when I was younger.  The visibility and example he lives, gives our youth a glimpse of what it means when we say, It Gets Better.

The truly joyful part of Pete's campaign, was getting to see and "know" his husband, Chasten. If you have ever followed Chasten on social media, how he comes across there, is the same way he comes across in his memoir. His intelligence, loving heart, and wit are on full display. He doesn't pull punches, but he wraps them in both understanding and humility. He owns up to the mistakes he made, and seems to be someone who truly knows who he is. He comes across as humble, but with the understanding that he and his husband represent a sense of hopefulness for the future in terms of LGBTQ+ acceptance in a country that doesn't always feel welcoming, and oftentimes dangerous. 

When I first saw their Time magazine cover, with the words First Family, I cried. If I had seen that as a kid, it would have been everything to me, like seeing Norm on the first season of The Real World or watching the 1993 LGB March on Washington. I hope this book  an be that touchstone for some of today's youth, just looking to know they aren't alone. 

What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton

Part Of The Synopsis From Dust Jacket: 

For the first time, Hillary Rodham Clinton reveals what she was thinking and feeling during one of the most controversial and unpredictable presidential elections in history. Now free from the constraints of running, Hillary takes you inside the intense personal experience of becoming the first woman nominated for president by a major party in an election marked by rage, sexism, exhilarating highs and infuriating lows, stranger-than-fiction twists, Russian interference, and an opponent who broke all the rules.  

Fair warning, a little of my political side comes out in this "review".

Frankly, I don't know how to objectively review this book. Even if I could somehow manage to be objective, how do you "review" a first person narrative of an election that is still tearing our country apart? I voted for Sec. Clinton in both the Democratic primary, and in the general election. What's more, I would do it again with a joyous heart.  But right now, my heart is broken by the wasted opportunity this country had to be lead by someone of her caliber. Instead, we have a man in the White House who is currently blaming hurricane survivors in Puerto Rico for their own suffering, while he's playing golf. He's poking at the leader of North Korea, his Justice Department is now saying it's okay for employers to fire you for being gay, and Dreamers are just months away from being deported. I told you I couldn't be objective about this.

In What Happened, Sec. Clinton is pretty frank in how she sees the mistakes she made, the fake email controversy and Director Comey's role, divisions on the left, and Russian interference combined into a perfect storm she just couldn't figure out how to navigate. This could be my own biases showing, but I think she's right. Throughout the book, Sec. Clinton lays out her case and does it without whining.  She accepts blame when she should, but doesn't hold back in holding others accountable when it's appropriate to do so.

Sen. Sanders used right wing propaganda to weaken her with his supporters. He painted a corrupt narrative of her that some voters, primarily younger who didn't really know her, bought into. They didn't understand the primary process, couldn't believe she was beating him in the primary, so they bought into this whole notion of the primary being stolen. The fact that it was the same primary system that allowed then Sen. Obama to beat her, was immaterial to their anger. They labeled her corrupt, badgered her supporters online, and a few in WI, PA, and MI threw hissy fits and either didn't vote, or voted for Dr. Stein, who has her own ties to Russia.

The letter Comey wrote to Congress days before the election truly was the final nail in the coffin. She is right when she says the momentum was on her side, but that the letter stopped it cold. It was an unprecedented act of interference in our election system by the FBI. His whole manner was suspect, from his initial statement to that final letter, he behaved in a most unseemly  manner.

The scope of Russian interference is staggering. Giving the Trump campaign opposition research, hacking the email systems of the DNC and John Podesta including the planting of fake emails, creating fake news stories, orchestrating anti immigrant rallies on US soil, taking out political ads on social media, employing thousand of social media trolls, stirring up racial tensions online, and only they know what else they did. The investigation is for from over, but what's already known should chill the blood of every American.

If you couldn't tell by my tone, I'm still a little bitter about the election. I wish I could find the grace and humor that Sec. Clinton shows in this book. Her pain and disappointment are on full display, but so is her warmth and compassion for those she feels she let down. This is a deeply personal memoir, and if it hurt for me to read it, I can't imagine how it felt for her to write it.

It's obviously a book by someone who is never going to run for office again, it's far too candid for that. And that's what hurt the most. Granted I've admired her for years, but seeing this openness from her cements the idea that regardless of how or why it happened, the missed opportunities that were only possible with her in office are a national disgrace.

Finding Fontainebleau: An American Boy in France by Thad Carhart

Synopsis From Dust Jacket: 

For a young American boy in the 1950s, Fontainebleau was a sight both strange and majestic.  A provincial town just south of Paris, it is home to France's greatest chateau where Thad Carhart's father was assigned as a military officer.  With humor and heart, Carhart conveys a rich panoply of French life in the '50s: the discovery of a Paris still covered in centuries of black soot; the strange bewilderment of a classroom where wine bottles dispensed ink for penmanship lessons; the excitement of camping in nearby Italy and Spain.  What emerges is an insider's view of a postwar Europe rarely seen or largely forgotten. 

Against this background of deep change for France stands the Chateau of Fontainebleau.  Begun in 1137, fifty years before the Louvre and more than five hundred before Versailles, the Chateau was a royal residence for centuries.  A string of illustrious queens and kings - Marie Antoinette, Francois I, the two Napoleons - added to its splendors without appreciably destroying the imprint of their predecessors.  As a consequence, the Chateau is unique in France, a supreme repository of French style, taste, art, and architecture.  Carhat tells us the rich and improbable stories of these monarchs and of their love affair with a place like no other.

Before I started blogging, I could have counted on one hand the amount of memoirs I had read in my life. Over the last seven years, I have had the opportunity to read/review quite a few memoirs, and I have absolutely fallen in love with a genre I never knew I would.  Reading the lyrical beauty of Finding Fontainebleau has just added to that love affair.

Part memoir, part travelogue, and part history book, Finding Fontainebleau has given me a greater appreciation for France, and for the first time in my life, I want to book a ticket, and get my butt over there.  Mr. Carhart, who is now one of my favorite contemporary writers, has a skill in storytelling that makes me green with envy.  I could only hope to write half as well as he does, though I know that it will never come to be.  He weaves his personal history with that of France and Fontainebleau, and instead of being a fragmented mess, he is able to tie the two stories together.  The narrative undulates back and forth, but never feels out of control.

For the last few weeks, this was the book I would read once I was in bed.  And like any good bedtime story, the melodious tenor of Mr. Carhart's written cadence sent me to dreamland night after night. What I'm reading rarely influences what I dream of, but I can still recall my leisurely stroll through the rooms of Fontainebleau.  I can only hope that I will be able to visit those halls for myself, but if that never comes to pass, I will have Finding Fontainebleau waiting on my shelves.

I would like to thank Lisa of TLC Booktours for the opportunity to read and review this book.  Please visit the tour page to read more reviews.

Being a Beast by Charles Foster

Synopsis From Dust Jacket:

How can we ever be sure that we really know the other? To test the limits of our ability to inhabit lives that are not our own, Charles Foster set out to know the ultimate other: the nonhumans, the beasts.  And to do that, he tried to be like them, choosing a badger, an otter, a fox, a deer, and a swift.  He lived alongside badgers for weeks, sleeping in a burrow on a Welsh hillside and eating earthworms, learning to sense the landscape through his nose rather than his eyes.  He tried to catch fish in his teeth while swimming like an otter, rooted through London garbage cans as an urban fox, and as a red deer he was hunted by bloodhounds and nearly died in the snow. Finally, he followed the swifts on their migration route over the Strait of Gibraltar, discovering himself to be strangely connected to the birds. 

Within the first few weeks of my Freshman year in college, I was approached to take part in what was described as an immersive overnight experience designed to give us an idea of what it was like to be homeless.  They took a handful of college Freshmen down to the "big" city of Wichita, KS, and had them spend the night among those who didn't get to sleep in a warm bed the following night.  Needless to say, I passed on the "learning" experience because I was homeless as a kid, albeit for less than a few months.  I knew what it was like to sleep in a car, and not know where your next meal was coming from.  In my eyes, this night out on the streets was nothing more than a way for middle-class kids, who never wanted for anything in their lives, to spout out false empathy for those they got to leave behind less than 12 hours later.  You can not get a real sense of what it's like to be homeless, when you know you are going back to three meals a day and a warm bed in less than 24 hours. Unless you are really feeling the fear and uncertainty they are feeling, you are just a poser, trying to make yourself look good.  Now had Charles Foster designed this experience, maybe the kids would have really learned something from it.  But in the end, even with months and months spent out in the "field", they still would have gone back to their comfy beds, and three meals a day.  And that's the crux of my issue with this book, no matter what I thought of the experiences Mr. Foster put himself through, the lessons he tried to teach himself, in the end, he's still human.  And no matter what, he still sees through human eyes and rationalizes everything through a human brain.

To give Mr. Foster his due, he is pretty upfront about the limitations he is facing in regards to the experiment he is mapping out.  The entire first chapter is an examination of the pitfalls and problems he is facing in his quest to not only live like a beast, but to think like them, to truly experience the world as they do.  What follows was a extraordinary account of a man, and at times other members of his family, as he submerged himself as much as possible in a world he was never going to fully understand.   He describes his approach and observations with a sense of humor that I found to be off putting at times, but all together charming at the same time.  Mr. Foster is a talented wordsmith, and it shows on every page as he describes the sensory input he experienced.  I swear I was able to taste earthworm in my mouth as he described his culinary experience with them.

I'm still not convinced that everything Mr. Foster put himself through allowed him to experience the world as the beasts do, but I'm not sure such a thing is really possible.  Unless there is a shaman out there that can put his/herself into an animal's body, and live as they do for a few years, I'm not sure any human ever will.  I do think that he has a new understanding of the particular beasts he chose to live like, and that's just as worthy of a goal.  I don't think we need to necessarily become a beast to understand them in some small way, or to appreciate the role they have on Earth.   Being a Beast has given me a greater appreciation for the natural world, even if I'm not going to experience in quite the same way as Mr. Foster did.

I would like to thank Emily with Henry Holt & Company for the opportunity to read and review this book.

My Thinning Years by Jon Derek Croteau

Synopsis From Back Cover:

As a child, Jon Derek Croteau tried desperately to be his father's version of the all-American boy, denying his gayness in a futile attempt to earn the love and respect of an abusive man.  With this he built a deep, internalized homophobia that made him want to disappear rather than live with the truth about himself.  That denial played out in the form of anorexia, bulimia, and obsessive running, which consumed his as an adolescent and young adult.

It wasn't until a grueling yet transformative Outward Bound experience that Jon began to face his sexual identity. This exploration continued during college, and he started the serious work of sorting through years of repressed anger to separate from his father's control and condemnation.

My Thinning Years is an inspiring story of courage, creativity, and the will to live - and of recreating the definition of family to include friends, relatives, and teachers who support you in realizing your true self.

Going into it, I knew this was going to be a hard book for me to read.  I think I even said no a few times, before finally agreeing to review the book.  And now that I'm sitting down, in front of my computer, typing up my review, part of me is wishing that I had gone ahead with my first instinct.  This was a hard book to read, it brought a lot of long buried emotions to the forefront, and it's left me feeling a little drained.  At the end of the day though, I'm glad I took the time to read it. It was a hard journey, but at the end of it all, like all stories of it's kind, it's as life affirming as anything else you will come across.

I didn't face the same issues Jon did, my father wasn't around and I never looked down on myself for being gay, but that doesn't mean I had it easy.  I think like many GBLT kids, I had a hard time dealing with what I was feeling, and couldn't understand all the thoughts running through my head.  For years I would pray before I went to bed, that if my being gay was wrong, I would rather die in my sleep.  I didn't want to be gay, I didn't understand why I was gay, but I knew I was from a young age, and over time, I grew to accept it.  I still wrestled with depression and contemplated suicide a few times.  I even went as far as making some half-hearted attempts at cutting my wrist with a pair of scissors.  But in the end, through some early acceptance of a few trusted people, I grew to realize that the only choice I had was in accepting my sexuality, or living a miserable life denying it.

Reading, or hearing, another's story, tends to bring all those long buried emotions back to the surface.  It's the reason why I initially turned down the invitation to read this book, those aren't pleasant memories, and I don't particularly like remembering them.  But I think what Jon did, what any of us do when we share our stories, is reaffirm an essential truth; that our lives are worth something, that regardless of the journey that was forced upon us, that the end result it worth all the pain, regardless of it was self inflicted or imposed on us by others.  By sharing his story, Jon has reaffirmed that an honest life is worth living, being true to yourself is the worthiest life goal there is.

I would like to thank Lisa of TLC Book Tours for the opportunity to read/review this book.  Please visit the tour page to read other reviews.

Sweet Tooth by Tim Anderson

Synopsis From Back Cover: 

What's a sweets-loving young boy growing up gay in North Carolina in the eighties supposed to think when he's diagnosed with type 1 diabetes?  That God is punishing him, naturally.

This was, after all, when gay-hating Jesse Helms was his senator, AIDS was still the boogeyman, and no one was saying "It gets better."  And if stealing a copy of a gay porno magazine from the newsagent was a sin, then surely what the men inside were doing to one another was much worse.

Sweet Tooth is Tim Anderson's uproarious memoir of life after his hormones and blood sugar both went berserk at the age of fifteen.  With Morrissey and The Smiths as the soundtrack, Anderson self-deprecatingly recalls love affairs with vests and donuts, first rushes, coming out, and inaugural trips to gay bars.  What emerges is the story of a young man trying to build a future that won't involve crippling loneliness or losing a foot to his disease - and maybe even one that, no matter how predictable, can still be pretty sweet.

One of the things I love about memoirs, whether they are from someone you have heard about before or not, is how they can get you thinking about your own life.  It's amazing how reading the narration of another life, can make you rethink yours, how it can bring memories to the front of your mind that you haven't thought of in years. I'm always surprised and overjoyed when something will trigger one of my memories, especially when they revolve around sex.

Within the first 25 pages of Sweet Tooth, I had already thought of a porn magazine and a church crush, both of which I hand't thought of in years.  I was a little younger than Tim the first time I stole a porn magazine, and sadly it wasn't an actual gay porn one, but it was Playgirl, and I got the same sort of thrill that he had when I got the courage up to stick it down the back of my jeans, and hide it under my shirt.  I can even remember the first time I was alone somewhere, and a bear skin rug was involved, so I could look at it and do what every man does on a regular basis.  It was the first time I really admitted to myself that the sight of a naked man, did it for me.  It was scary, electrifying, and self affirming all at the same time.

As far as the crush goes, I had a huge crush on my pastor's son.  Terry Kent was older, I think he was either a Senior in high school, or a Freshman in college when I first laid eyes on him, and he invaded my dreams for a very long time after that.  One of those dreams involved the baptismal, but you guys don't want those details.  Sadly nothing ever happened, except for a short shoulder rub at church camp, but that touch was enough for me, it was the fuel for fantasies for months afterwards.  When I remembered Terry Kent, I looked him up on Facebook for the first time, and I must say, he didn't age very well.

Sweet Tooth is one of those memoirs that I think anyone who has ever had an awkward adolescence, and who hasn't, should read.  It reaffirms the idea that while all of us are unique and have different lives from one another, we all share a core set of experiences that allows us to relate in ways that we tend to overlook in our day to day lives.  It's the kind of story that helps to remind us that we all share a common humanity, and I want to thank Tim Anderson for sharing his story, and reminding me of that.

I would also like to thank Lisa of TLC Book Tours for the opportunity to read and review this book.  Please visit the tour page to read other reviews.

A Farm Dies Once A Year by Arlo Crawford

Synopsis From Dust Jacket:

The summer he was thirty-one, Arlo Crawford returned home for the season at New Morning Farm - ninety-five acres tucked into a hollow in south-central Pennsylvania where his parents had been growing organic vegetables for almost forty years.  Unlike other summers from year before, this time he was there to change direction, as his father had years ago.

In the 1970s, Arlo's father, Jim, left behind law school and Vietnam to try his hand at farming.  What began as a tentative experiment in a new, more authentic way of living is now a family's fragile livelihood.  Years of farming has resulted in a familiar pattern: long days, uncertain weather, and busy markets, all set against the wild beauty of the Appalachian ridges. The cycle of these days will be endlessly repeated as the land is born and dies once each year:  the anticipation and optimism of spring planting, the long march through the summer harvest and into fall, followed by the inevitable quiet of winter.  As Arlo bends, picks, sorts, and sweats his way through the farm's rhythms, he begins to appreciate the depth of his parent's commitments to the acres where they've made their lives.  His return also prompts a reexamination of the murder of a neighboring farmer twenty years before, a tragedy that underscores just how much a farm can ask of those who tend it.

Imagine yourself sitting down at a desk, keyboard in front of you, and writing a love letter to your parents.  You want to tell them how much you love them, how appreciative you are of the way they raised you, how much you admire their strength, and how you will never truly feel as if you have lived up to their example.  You want them to understand how much they mean to you, how truly magnificent they are in your eyes.  You want to thank them for allowing you to have your own life, to follow your own path, even though it's not the one they themselves had chosen.  But most of all, you just want to say I love you.  A Farm Dies Once a Year, is that letter.  It's not in the words you would have used, but that's only because it's not your story, it's Arlo Crawford's.

With this book, he opened up this part of his story for the rest of us to experience.  The love and devotion his feels towards his parents, and towards their lives, wafts from each page.  He set the example on what it means to connect back to you roots, to really explore your childhood through mature eyes, and to allow yourself to say thank you.  He gives us all permission to go back home, to reconnect with our families and with our pasts.  But most of all, he makes it cool for us adults to tell our parents thank you, that we love them, cherish them, and that they will be missed when they are gone.

Following Atticus by Tom Ryan

Part Of The Synopsis From Back Cover:

After a close friend died of cancer, middle-aged, overweight, acrophobic newspaperman Tom Ryan decided to pay tribute to her in a most unorthodox manner.  Ryan and his friend, Atticus M. Finch, would attempt to climb all forty-eight of New Hampshire's four-thousand-foot peaks twice in one winter while raising money for charity.  It was an adventure of a lifetime, leading them across hundreds of miles and deep into an enchanting but dangerous winter wonderland.  At the heart of the amazing journey was the extraordinary relationship they shared, one that blurred the line between man and dog.

I'm the kind of guy who still cries when I watch Old Yeller.  For that matter, Nestor, The Long Eared Christmas Donkey has me in tears every time I watch it.  I even cried when they went deer hunting on Silver Spoons.  Let's just say I'm a sucker for animals.  So stick a cute dog on a cover, and I'm going to agree to anything you say, just so I can read the book.

Because of the adorable Atticus M. Finch on the cover, it was almost a sure bet that I was going to enjoy the book.  What wasn't a given, was whether or not I was going to enjoy the voice used to tell the story.  As much as I love dogs, I tend to not enjoy books written by journalists that feature their own lives as the subject material. I understand that you have to have a bit of an ego to write a book about yourself, but for some reason, journalists seem to revel in their own self importance.  In the case of one book I reviewed earlier this year, the journalist in question was so self involved, I actually lost respect for him after reading the book.  So when I finally found the time to crack the book open and dive in, it was with a bit of trepidation.

At the very beginning, I was almost convinced that I wasn't going to be pleasantly surprised.  When the author talks about his paper and the roll he played in town, I was reading some of the same words as I did in the book I read earlier this year.  It was a little too self congratulatory for my taste.  So I hunkered down to delve into the world of Tom Ryan, hoping that I would get something out of what I was reading.

As I kept on reading though, I started to enjoy the time I was spending with Tom as he meandered his way across town.  The man I quickly judged, just a quickly started to surprise me.  As Tom started to talk more about himself, my brain started to change what I read as ego, into pride.  Pride for what he had built with his paper, and pride and gratitude for the story he was about to relate to his reader.  He opened himself up in ways that few of us would be willing to do.

It's when, first Max then Atticus come into his life, that Tom truly comes across on the page as a humble man who feels blessed to have had these two wonderful dogs in his life.  To my fellow dog lovers out there, you know what a wonderful blessing it is to have a canine friend share your life, both the triumphs and the setbacks.  What Tom shares with his readers as he recounts the time spent with Atticus up in the mountains isn't a travelogue or a manifesto on the joys of mountain hiking.  What I found in the pages of Following Atticus, was a story of two friends who come together and help each other heal in ways that neither could have expected in the beginning.

I would like to thank Trish of TLC Book Tours for the opportunity to read and review the book.  Please visit the tour page to read other reviews.

Rather Outspoken by Dan Rather & Digby Diehl

Part Of The Synopsis From Dust Jacket: 

For half a century, Dan Rather has covered the major news stories of our time:  the civil rights movement, the assassination of JFK, Vietnam, Watergate, 9-11, Iraq, Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib.  For 24 of those years, he was the network "face" of TV journalism as the anchor of the CBS Evening News.

At the end of his tenure, he became part of the news himself.  Now for the first time, Dan tells the real story of his final months at CBS, including his removal from the anchor chair in the wake of the controversy surrounding the story of George W. Bush and the Texas Air National Guard.  He also exposes the frantic and secret behind-the-scenes machinations that followed.  These clandestine maneuvers unmasked the "independence" of the investigation by the Thornburgh commission, revealing a News Division that had, Rather believes, temporarily abandoned its principles in order to enhance the bottom line of the parent company.

I was going to start this review off with the last paragraph, but after some more thought, I decided it wouldn't be a fair way to start things off.  Instead I'm going to admit why I wanted to read this particular book.  I think, like most people who have picked Rather Outspoken up, I was wanting to hear Dan Rather's account of what happened behind the story that brought an end to his career at CBS.  For that reason alone, I think this book is worth the read.

I was never one of those who thought Mr. Rather or his producers did anything wrong in their coverage of the story.  From everything I knew then, and know now, what happened to them felt like a raw deal.  Now that I've read the book, and understand everything that went on behind the scenes, I'm even more convinced that Mr. Rather paid a steep price for telling the truth.  His account of the way political and business pressure interfered in the way news was and is being told, scares the hell out of me.  It should scare everyone who cares about the public's right to know what our government does and how our corporations behave.  His story is not only an example of what can happen when things go wrong, but it's a call to arms.  It's a defense of the concept that journalism should be separated from politics and business considerations.  Sadly, I think it's a call to arms that has come just a bit too late.

I almost wish that this memoir only dealt with that one situation.  I would love to be able to divide that aspect from the rest of the book.  But I can't.  I have never gone into a memoir/biography with a higher opinion of the subject, than I had when I turned the last page.  It's been a fear I've had for years, so now that it's finally here, all I can say is that it made me sad. I hate the idea that I can read a book and come away with less respect for someone.  But less respect is what I'm left with.  I know it's hard for anyone writing a book about themselves to leave their ego out of it.  A good writer should be able to minimize the way that ego is expressed and how it will come across on the page.  I'm not sure what happened, but it seems as if the opposite took place.  Instead of the ego being minimized, it seems as if the ego was expanded and forced into every sentence.  I can't imagine someone in Mr. Rather's place wouldn't have a good sized ego, I just dont' want to be reminded of it on every page.  I'm positive that Mr. Rather is a terrific journalist, has covered stories in such a way that made a difference, and is an all around great guy.  I just don't want Mr. Rather telling me that himself.  Let it come across in the storytelling, not in the tonal voice of the narrative.

That ego got in the way of everything else for me.  It kept what should have been an informative read from being anything other than a justification of his life.  I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with that last concept, I just wish wish he would have been able to mesh the two ideas together in such a way that didn't leave me feeling cooler towards him.

The Remains of War by G. Pauline Kok-Schurgers

Part Of The Synopsis From Back Cover:

When the Dutch Army surrenders to Japan in 1942, nine-year-old Sofia is imprisoned with her mother, younger brother, and two baby sisters in different concentration camps on Sumatra, Indonesia.  Her father is sent to work on the Burma-Siam railroad, and the family doesn't know if he is dead of alive.  In this memoir, author G. Pauline Kok-Schurgers narrates a story of hate and torture, starvation and disease, and physical and psychological abuse experienced during her interment.

Sofia toils through those years, taking care of her younger siblings and trying to prevent her mother from sinking deeper into depression.  Sofia longs for her father's return and her mother's attention and love.  The gruesome years in those camps, the loneliness, and the loss of dear friends transform Sofia into a silent, inward person, scarred for the rest of her life.

I dont' even know where to being on this one.  I'm not sure if it's even possible to "review" a book like this.  There is no way I can critique such a personal, raw story of dehumanization and war.  All I can do is state how I reacted to the book and how it made me feel on a visceral level.

I found the narrative choice to be interesting and provocative.  Instead of  recounting her time in the camps from an adult perspective, the author chose to narrate from the eyes of herself as that little nine year old thrust into a world she can't begin to comprehend.  The emotions are that of a child, so hate, jealously, bitterness is all the more palpable for me.  The contempt she feels for certain people oozes off the page as does the vast suffering she had to endure.  I'm a little torn on how that decision influenced the way I feel about the book.  On an emotional level, I was in heartache reading what this child had to go through.  On a academic level, I would have liked to see what she thoughts now, as an adult, about what she and her family had to go through.  I think both are valid outlooks but I think I would have liked a little of both.

I'm not going to recount everything she and the rest of the prisoners had suffer as it would take too long and would make me wince with every word I typed.  I will say that nobody, especially a child, should ever have to endure the humiliation, torture, and neglect that these people had afflicted on them.  The fact that any of them survived the camps is a testament to the human spirit and desire to live.  I'm not sure I could have survived after four years of what they had done to them.

My only other wish is that the book had not ended when it did.  It left me feeling a little disconnected from what happens and how Sofia reacts to her father not recognizing her.  If is was her father.  I would like to know what happened after she wandered away, how the family reacted and dealt with being reunited once again.

No matter what, Sofia and her story will stay with me for the rest of my life and I would love for more stories to be told.  I would like to read other accounts from survivors of the concentration camps, that I think the world and history have forgotten about.

The Honored Dead by Joseph Braude (Plus Giveaway)

Part of Synopsis From Tour Site:

Joseph Braude is the first Western journalist ever to secure embed status with an Arab security force, assigned to a hardened unit of detectives in Casablanca who handle everything from busting al-Qaeda cells to solving homicides. One day he’s given the file for a seemingly commonplace murder: a young guard at a warehouse killed in what appears to be a robbery gone wrong. Braude is intrigued by the details of the case: the sheer brutality of the murder, the identities of the accused—a soldier—and the victim, a shadowy migrant with links to a radical cleric, and the odd location: a warehouse owned by a wealthy member of one of the few thriving Jewish communities in the Arab world. After interviewing the victim’s best friend, who tearfully insists that the true story of the murder has been covered up by powerful interests, Braude commits to getting to the bottom of it.


This will probably sound a little strange coming from a mystery fan, but I have never really enjoyed reading about real crime.  I have tended to stay away from true crime books, I think mainly because they seem sensationalized to me.  I've always gotten the impression that the author cares more about making money than telling an accurate and fair story.  Because of that bias, I almost passed on this book.  I wasn't sure it would be something I could really enjoy or get into.  I was somewhat familiar with the author's work in journalism, so I was hoping for a little bit more of a story, less "pizazz."  


I was also intrigued by the setting of this book, Morocco.  I'll be the first to admit I know almost nothing about that region of the world other than what I see in the news.  It wasn't a region we really ever studied in school, which I still think the Middle East, Africa, and Asia should get more attention but that's another thought for a different post.  The book itself takes place in the country's largest city, Casablanca.  Now this may sound dumb, but I've never even thought of Casablanca outside the movie, which I've never seen.  So the idea of reading a book set in a country in Northern Africa that I'm not at all familiar with, hooked me.  That was all I needed to set my hesitations aside and dig in.


The book opens after the author has already embedded with the 5th precinct in Casablanca.  He has already witnessed both sides of the way the police force deal with crime and suspects.  Sometimes the heavy hand of violence comes out and others an almost strange emphasis on human rights.  I almost felt as if the police force was schizophrenic in it's approach to the populace of the city.  They can't quite make up their minds on what direction the country should go in.  I will also say that their definition and my definition of human rights probably don't compare very well.


It's not longer after that he is handed a file on the murder of a homeless
Berber man on the property of a Jewish owned warehouse.  The author, who's mother was an Iraqi Jew knows how sensitive of a subject, Judaism and Jews can be in a Muslim country.  The file states that the killer, a member of the military, has already been detained and confessed.  Mr. Braude quickly becomes interested in the case as it deals with cultural, ethnic, religious, and society issues all rolled up into one.  He takes it upon himself to delve into the case further and once he meets the best friend of the murdered man, the author finds himself agreeing to help the friend prove the police are lying about what happened.


The investigation takes them into the shanty towns of Casablanca and rural villages miles away from the city.  They discover that not only are the authorities lying about what happened. but that their are larger motives at work.  It just so happens that they authorities feel that if the truth comes out it will damage societal structures as a whole, so they see it as their duty to hide the truth.


I actually find that concept fairly interesting.  I find the idea of a government or government official covering up the truth of a crime to be rather abhorrent and against what I instinctively feel would happen in this country.  Then I start to think a little more and realize that governments, including ours, constantly try to hide or blur the truth in order to protect "the common good."  What that common good is, I have no idea, but I do know people are always talking about it.  All you have to do is look at the Pat Tillman case and realize that no country is clean of this behavior.


I really got into this book and found myself caring about the case.  I wanted to know what happened to this man and why he had to die.  I found myself sympathizing with him when certain aspects of his life came out.  I would think, but for the fact of where I was born, I could have found myself living the same life.


I even liked the way this book forced me to dust off my sociology degree and delve into the cultural aspects of a country that has so many ethnic and religious layers to it.  It was an insightful look into a way of life and thinking that I'm not at all familiar with, and I thank the author for that.


I would like to also express my thanks to Lisa of TLC Book Tours for the opportunity to read and review this book.  You can read so more insightful (and better written) reviews by visiting the tour page.


Now for the GIVEAWAY!


You will have a chance to win a copy of this book for yourself.  All you have to do is leave a comment with your email address, that's it.  I would love for you to start following the blog as well, but you don't have to.  The giveaway is only open for the US and Canada.


The contest will be open until 11:59 CST on 7/13/11.  After the deadline I will pick a winner using random.org.  I will then email the winner who will have 48 hours to contact me with their shipping info.  If they do not, a new winner will be picked.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

Synopsis From Back Cover:

Author Barbara Kingsolver and her family abandoned the industrial food pipeline to live a rural life- vowing that, for one year, they'd only buy food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it.

One of the unforeseen benefits of starting my own book blog has been the fact that I've now read more non fiction books in the last year than I ever have before.  What's really wonderful about it is the wide range of topics I've been able to read about. I have since discovered a new found love of memoirs, so when I had the chance to sign up for Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I jumped for it.

 I wasn't sure what I would get out of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle before I read it, and now that I'm done, I'm still not really sure what I got out of it.  When I started the book I assumed it would be a detailed account into the lives of the author and her family as they took a year off from outside sources of food and for the most part, that's what I got.  What I wasn't expecting was the almost dogmatic tone directed at the food industry as a whole.

The reason I'm bringing this up is that this book, for the most part, worked for me and I really enjoyed reading it.  I was amused and somewhat jealous of this family's year long experiment.  I can only imagine the pride of growing your own food and seeing it nourishing your family.  The sense of well earned accomplishment is one to be admired and I applaud the author for caring enough about her family to take on such a life changing journey.   It's one that I wish I had the resources to experience for myself. I would love to feed my son vegetables grown on our own land.

What I loved about this book more than anything was how personal it felt.  The author is more than willing to share all the details of her experiment.  It felt like I was living with them during that year and I never wanted to leave.  I laughed along with her while she was recounting her story of breeding heritage turkeys.  My mouth watered at some of the fantastic recipes sprinkled throughout the book, some of which I will be trying out very soon.

Where this book didn't work for me, and I may be in the minority on this one, is the almost condescending tone taken throughout the book towards the modern food industry and those of us forced to deal with it.  I'm not here to defend the industry, quite honestly I don't agree with half the things done to the animals and crops we get our food from.  Every time I see a video of a egg hatchery or a slaughter house I wish I had the luxury to swear off it's products, but like millions of other I don't. 

I know the author wasn't judging those of us who can't do what she did, but there was a tone used throughout the book that almost felt snobbish.  The sense of being better than the rest of us was implied though I don't think it was intentional.  I think when people write a memoir about any aspect of their life, a little ego will come out.  It's normal and not something done on purpose.  It's the lens we view life from.  For the most part this was a very small aspect of what I got from the book and not one that should deter anyone else from reading it.  It may be simply that I was being over sensitive and judging myself through the author's eyes.

Now I would like to say that this book changed my life and that I'll be eating differently.  This book made me want to and for a day or two after I finished with the book I was in that mind set. My reality quickly set in though and while I may be more conscious of my choices, I don't seem them changing all that much.  I will be visiting the farmers market more often to buy local, fresh produce and I will pay more attention to where my food comes from.  But in the end, though I loved reading this book, it won't be life changing for me.

You can read more about Barbara Kingsolver by visiting her website.

I would like to thank Trish of  TLC Book Tours for giving me the opportunity to review this book.  This was part of a larger Barbara Kingsolver book tour featuring 5 of her books.  You can view all the other stops on the tour by visiting the tour page.

The Legacy of Beezer and Boomer by Doug Koktavy

Doug Koktavy adopted two little black lab brothers as puppies and lived a long and happy life with them for almost 9 years.  They had a really deep emotional connection with each other so when Beezer contracted fatal kidney disease, it threw the household into turmoil.  Doug and the dogs embark on a hard fought and emotional ordeal with the disease and through that experience Doug grows in his understanding of his dogs and himself.  When 9 months after Beezer dies, Boomer is diagnosed with bone cancer it seems like the battle is only beginning.

I'm warning you right now that my review of this book is going to give you a glimpse in the way I think about things and how I sometimes wrestle with how I react to a story.  I've been going back and forth in my head about whether I wanted to just talk about what I loved about the book and how it moved me or give you the whole gambit of what I think of it.  The whole thought process won out.

The book opens with a letter that Doug wrote to Beezer a week after he passed away.  I could feel the emotions coming off the page in an almost tangible way.  It felt like I was reading something so personal that I felt almost guilty about it.  It moved me to tears and I was grateful that the author chose to share that with us.  The whole book felt as if I was reading someones journal as they jotted down their journey of personal growth and understanding by going through something that is so horrifyingly sad.

Doug recounts how he battled with himself and how he approached problems when Beezer was first diagnosed.  By the end of the journey Doug, with the help of Beezer and Boomer, seemed to have grown both emotionally but spiritually as well by helping his dogs through both their illnesses and deaths.  It changed his approach to life and how he thinks about himself.   I felt that Doug puts himself and his journey out there to helps others deal with their own journey as they care for a terminally ill animal.

This in a lot of ways was a hard book for me to read.  I've always been a dog lover and still find myself crying over "Old Yeller" and "Marley & Me".  Actually you have any animal on screen/page die and I'm crying, including the episode of "Silver Spoons" where they went deer hunting.  So this book hit at home for me and I'm grateful for Doug sharing his story.  Beezer and Boomer could have been a lot of the dogs we had growing up, one of which I still miss to this day.  So no matter what I'm about to say next, I'm glad I read this book.

This is the part I almost left out of my review.  This book is so personal that I still kind of feel that I should keep what I didn't like about it to myself.  After a lot of back and forth within my own head, I felt I couldn't give a fair review unless I did talk about all my reactions to the book. 

Remember a thousand paragraphs ago I mentioned the opening letter and how moving it was?  Well that was the beginning of many letters.  In my mind there were too many of them.  They interrupted the flow of the narrative which kept me from totally immersing myself in what was being told to me.  My focus kept being shifted so much that I was never able to get fully vested back into the story.  More than that though they almost took on a gimmicky quality.  They stopped feeling genuine and it felt like they were written for the book more than anything else. This really hit home when a letter from Beezer to Doug was inserted in.  I was never able to take the letters at face value after that and it made me doubt the "realness" of all of them, including the very first letter.  I guess what I'm trying to say is that the letters hindered the book for me.  They took a book that I wanted to stay with me for years and turned it into a book that was good for one read and one read only.

Now I realize that his is just one person's reaction to a storytelling device and for the most part, others would not be bothered by this.  With that in mind I do strongly urge all pet lovers out there to read this book.  It will move you and make you think about how you would react in a similar situation.  It may even prepare you for a future that we all wish would never come.

In The Sanctuary Of Outcasts by Neil White

Synopsis From Back Cover:

Daddy is going to camp.  That's what I told my children.  But it wasn't camp....

Neil White wanted only the best for those he loved and was willing to go to any lengths to provide it - which is how he ended up in a federal prison in rural Louisiana, serving eighteen months for bank fraud.  But it was no ordinary prison.  The beautiful, isolated colony in Carville, Louisiana, was also home to the last people in the continental United States disfigured by leprosy - a small circle of outcasts who had forged a tenacious, clandestine community, a fortress to repel the cruelty of the outside world.  In this place rich with history, amid an unlikely mix of leprosy patients, nuns, and criminals, White's strange and compelling new life journey began.

I had first heard about this book while I was driving in my car listening to NPR, which is always on if I'm in the car.  It was June 3. 2009 and it was sometime between 10:00 AM and 12:00 PM.  I only know the time because it's the only time that The Diane Rehm Show is on here in Wichita.  I remember sitting in my car and listening to the author talk about his experience in the prison as well as what landed him behind bars to begin with, and I was utterly fascinated by the story.  I actually sat in the car until that hour was over, just so I wouldn't miss anything.  I'm listening to the show now while I'm writing my review, you can click here if you are interested in listening to it, which I would advise anyone interested in this story to do so.  So needless to say when I got a chance to read the book for myself, I grabbed it with both hands.

Now that I got that rather lengthy introduction out of the way I will get to what I thought of the book once I did get a chance to read it.  In a few words, I loved it.  This was a fascinating memoir into a short period of time in the author's life, that thankfully changed him for the better.

Neil White was a magazine publisher who was living the American dream.  He had a loving wife, two adorable children, and a thriving business.  He published various regional magazines serving the Gulf Coast.  Little did anyone else know that the only thing keeping this "successful" business afloat was the fact that Neil was kiting checks between two checking accounts.  Now he didn't know, or didn't want to know, that what he was doing was against the law and when he got caught, he had to pay the consequences.  Those consequences sent him to the federal prison at Carville.  What he did not realize was that Carville also served as the last leper colony in the United States.

What this book accounts is how Neil, who was  initially scared of the patients he was sharing this space with, grew to accept these people without fear or suspicion.  Through encounters with various patients Neil began to understand who they are as people, not as "lepers".  They became friends and bonds of trust grew between patients and prisoners.  Neil relates his story with humor, some of which is self effacing at times, which allows the reader to not only get to know him, but his fellow prisoners and the patients.

It was a pleasure to read how Neil grew as a person in prison and how he learned to see life in a new way.  Through interacting with the patients and his fellow prisoners, Neil was finally able to understand that what he had done to those he hurt, including his family, was his fault.  That the harm he caused was real and he needed to make amends.  Through the friendships he built, he was able to see his life in a new way and when he got out of prison, he was able to take those lessons and build a new one for himself and his children.

I'm going to end this rather rambling review here, as there is so much I could talk about that if I don't end it now, I'll never stop.  All I want to say is that I encourage everyone to read this book, that there is a lot all of us can learn from Neil and from those who suffer from Hansen's Disease (the more accepted name for leprosy).

I would like to thank Trish of TLC Book Tours for the opportunity to read this wonderful book.

To find out more about Neil White and his book please visit his website.

To read more reviews of this book please visit the other stops on this tour.

To read more about Hansen's Disease and Carville, please visit The National Hansen's Disease Museum.

Psychic: My Life in Two Worlds by Sylvia Browne

Synopsis From Dust Jacket:

At the age of seventy-three, New York Times–bestselling author Sylvia Browne is ready to tell the whole story of her extraordinary life. In Psychic, we meet the woman behind the public figure: from the teenager doubting her own sanity to the new mother living through staggering highs and lows; from the burgeoning celebrity to the successful, happily married woman she is today. Filled with never-before-told stories, Psychic is a riveting account of how Sylvia Shoemaker, a traditional girl from Missouri, became world-famous psychic Sylvia Browne.

Nothing is off-limits. Sylvia tells the little-known truths behind her three failed marriages — including physical abuse, bankruptcy, and legal troubles — and the financial and emotional damage they wreaked. She revisits her personal demons and describes her physical challenges, from a series of painful hip surgeries to her relatively recent discovery that she’d suddenly gone blind in one eye. And then there is the greatest surprise of all: Sylvia tells how, once she had reached her seventies and believed her romantic life was over, the real Mr. Right finally — impossibly — showed up.

I've never known much about Sylvia Browne outside of the fact that she was a psychic and appeared on the Montel Williams show a lot.  That lack of knowledge is the main reason I wanted to read this book and hear her life story from the source, not some tabloid you find at the supermarket checkout counter.  For the most part I was disappointed, I felt that I cam away from this with a little bit of an understanding of who she is a woman who passionately loves her family and who takes her ability and the help that she can provide to people, seriously but with gratitude as well. 
 
Throughout the book she comes across as a woman of strength who has overcome and lived through some truly horrible times, including an abusive husband.  Growing up in a household where my father wasn't exactly the nicest person on the planet and who would show that on my mom, I have a great deal of sympathy and respect for women or men who come out of abusive relationships stronger for it and who are willing to give life a second chance.
 
The rest of the book has Sylvia explaining her beliefs on where we come from, where we go when we die, who the angels are, and various other segments of her beliefs.  Now I'm going to be honest, I'm not sure how much of what she says I believe myself.  I'm not even sure it matters, all I know is that she truly believes it.  The odd thing, at least to me,is that her beliefs made more sense to me than I thought they would when I first started in on this book.  The way she views life and the afterlife meshes to a degree with my own personal beliefs, though I think we may think of them in completely different terms.  I will say this, my curiosity has been grabbed and I have every intention of checking out some of her other books. 
 

Sylvia Browne is a number one New York Times–bestselling author and world-famous psychic. She has appeared regularly on The Montel Williams Show and Larry King Live and has made countless other media and public appearances. She is also the founder of a church, the Society of Novus Spiritus, which will celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary in 2011.  Visit Sylvia at her website, http://www.sylviabrowne.com/.

I would like to thank Tricia of TLC Book Tours for the opportunity to review this book.  For more stops on the tour please visit the TLC Book Tour page.