Mary V

Eye-Opening!

Revisado: 12-16-20

The lack of oversight is appalling. I'm not sure that I am one who would use donor sperm, but if I were in the position of the parents who did and later found out my child may have a genetic disposition to mental health issues, I WOULD BE LIVID.

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Murder in Quarantine

Revisado: 09-11-20

Inside Jobs is a collection of three short reads centered around the COVID19 quarantine.
Mobsters can't meet in person so they work from home and meet via zoom.
An on-again 0ff-again dating couple suspect a neighbor of murder.
Two brothers settle their father's affairs after his death. This last one didn't seem very "inside" to me.

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Too Political

Revisado: 04-17-20

This was shaping up to be a 5-star read of a hillbilly girl from eastern KY who made it through Harvard Law School (sound familiar?), until her considerable section disparaging Donald Trump. Sure, this is a memoir and the author became heavily involved in politics in the Democratic Party. Her views are a legitimate part of the book, even if it spills over into her relatives' views, and the opinions of people in her state. Too bad. I can get negativity from the news channels. I was just looking for a non-political memoir.

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Book covers much ground

Revisado: 03-09-20

Roxane Gay is brilliant and articulate. Early in the book I felt a great pity for her because of the event that she suffered as a 12-year-old girl which greatly contributed to her weight problem.
But the book is about so much more than that, and it is heavily stuffed with Gay’s strong opinions. I don’t deny her right to these opinions, some of which seem almost militant.
Her worldview is a little skewed from the point of a fat person’s eyes, glaring, almost daring someone to slight her on that basis.
She recounts an event she participated in with Gloria Steinem in which the sign language interpreter blocked the audience’s view of Gay and Steinem. As the audience complained, the sign language interpreter sought to reposition herself but Gay told her not to move. This was supposedly such a wonderful thing Gay did for the hearing impaired audience members.
What happened to the rights of the rest of the people in the audience, whose experience was diminished because they were not able to see these keynote speakers? Couldn’t a way be found to accommodate the small minority as well as the larger audience? Why do small minorities need special rights to the detriment of the larger population?
A lot of issues are discussed in this book, but because I mention one here please do not think I do not care about rape, or eating disorders, etc.

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Camp's story to become movie

Revisado: 03-06-20

Jeremy Camp didn’t live the good “church kid” life growing up. Although his dad was a pastor and he knew all about Jesus and the Christian life, Camp actually lived a double life. A popular football-playing jock, Camp drank with his friends but hid it from his parents. Camp realized the dichotomy of his life while attending a retreat. There he made a commitment to live for Jesus.
This commitment played itself out in Camp giving up football during his senior year, even though he was a star player with a shot at a scholarship. Camp made some tough choices which took him to Bible School and affected his dating life. When he met a like-minded lady, he knew she was the one for him.
Not everything went as planned for Camp, that is, as Camp had planned. But the bigger theme behind Camp’s story is learning to follow God’s plan, not only when it differs from your own, but also when your pain is so great you don’t know how you will survive. It was during just such a time Camp wrote his well known song, I Still Believe.
Camp isn’t perfect, but his attempt and desire to be faithful to God’s leading is inspiring. This is especially true as his life progresses, and we see the faith required for him to continue to trust God after he experiences bewildering disappointment. Camp’s story is soon to be a movie, also called, I Still Believe.

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No, I'm not qualified. Okay, make it a book.

Revisado: 11-06-19

Alan Alda has been asked to give speeches many times simply because he is famous. He himself realizes this gives him no particular authority to stand before people who usually know more than he does about a particular subject, and talk for ten or fifteen minutes.
But over and over he accepts these speaking assignments, because he can't let so-and-so down, or some other insubstantial reason. Now he has collected these commencement addresses, eulogy’s, and talks into a book. Sounds reasonable, right?
Alda is not a bad writer, but I can't go along with all of his conclusions, nor can I ride his far left train. Otherwise enjoyable.

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Audiobook carried sense of foreboding

Revisado: 11-06-19

Climbing with Mollie was written by an older father about his only daughter, and their involvement in rock climbing. This story, supposedly true, was read by the author. His laconic tone carried a sense of foreboding of an inevitable catastrophe when paired with the high risk of this sport. It made me uncomfortable to listen.

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Not forsake, but will remake

Revisado: 09-16-19

Lysa’s life wasn’t turning out like it was supposed to. After raising their kids and watching them fly away to college and lives of their own, it was time for her and her husband to enjoy the empty nest. But that’s when he admitted to an affair. So instead of date night any night of the week, now she was home alone, crying into her pillow.

Then the rumor mill started. Lysa was head of a national women’s ministry, but she and her husband were breaking up? Lysa had tried to keep the matter private while she and her husband worked things out, but news or at least half-truths were floating around and now she had to deal with that too.

Then Lysa developed severe abdominal pain that would not go away. For days she lay in the hospital in agony. Finally she was rushed into surgery to remove most of her colon. The surgeon said she had come very close to death. It was actually her pain that let the surgeons know what was wrong and where.

Then Lysa’s town made her move her driveway at her own expense so they could put in a new turn lane.
Then her doctor called to say her mammogram didn’t look right. Yes, it was breast cancer.

Have you experienced an, “It’s not supposed to be like this,” series of events in your life? One of my favorite quotes from this book is Lysa saying,

“God isn’t ever going to forsake you, but he will go to great lengths to remake you.”

She is still fighting some of these battles, and you may be dealing with long-term, seemingly never-ending, compounding problems that just keep stacking up. If that’s you, I recommend this book. It won’t solve all your problems, but it can help you obtain a godly perspective on your trials.

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Sad Life Without Limits

Revisado: 08-28-19

Augusten Burroughs, as he renamed himself once he reached leagal age, is a highly intellegent man who suffered a childhood of abuse and neglect under his biological parents. His father was a college professor who became a mean drunk every evening, and his mother suffered with mental illness which included hallucinations of deamons. His brother, John Elder Robison (Look Me In the Eye), has Asperger's and made up names for everyone. He called his brother Varmint. After his parents divorced, Burroughs' mother signed his custody over to her psychologist, a Dr. Finch who from all accounts was as nutty as any of his patients and eventually lost his license to practice medicine.
Living in the Finches' house with an assortment of non-blood related misfits was chaotic and unrestrained. There were no rules. No one told Burroughs when to go to bed or to school, or that he had to go at all for that matter. Respect of his elders was not insisted upon and nothing was off limits or sacred. When Burroughs felt depressed, Dr. Finch reached to the shelf behind him and without looking picked up a drug sample and tossed it to Burroughs. Dr. Finch told him to take that until it was gone and he would be feeling better. Burroughs had already decided he was gay, so he figured the answer to his depression was a new boyfriend. Somehow that wasn't the answer either.
I was depressed at the sad state of affairs in the lives of these characters by the end of this audiobook. I was binge-reading his brother John's books on Asperger's and thought I might get a little more insight from Burroughs' book. There wasn't any insight about Asperger's, just a sad sick feeling that comes from a life without boundaries.

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Not interested in voodoo or spells

Revisado: 08-19-19

I did not finish this book. Shortly into the first chapter I discovered it contains talk of putting spells on people. I have no interest in this.

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