Monday, June 24, 2013

Book #38: The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life by Terryl and Fiona Givens

Terryl and Fiona Givens came here to our stake to give a fireside a few months ago, and we pulled it together enough for both of us to go (with a sleeping Dane in his carseat--those were the days when he would sleep anywhere!). The fireside was about having faith even in the midst of having doubts, and it was a really beautiful and thought-provoking fireside. They talked a little bit about their book, and Tommy bought it for me as a gift for Mother's Day.

The book is basically explaining the basics of LDS theology. I'm interested in thinking about who the audience of this book is, because it's kind of hard to tell who they're writing for. It's not specifically meant for LDS readers (although obviously it's very applicable to us), but it is for people who accept the basic tenets of Christianity (that there is a God, that Christ is our Savior). The Givenses explain certain things that are clarified in our LDS scriptures and beliefs, like the nature of God as a loving, merciful Father instead of as an all-powerful, unknowable being; the necessity and benefits of the Fall and the reasons why coming to earth was more of an ascent than a descent, as a stepping-stone to eternal life and divinity; the reality of heaven as more than just angels floating around on clouds but instead as the glorified versions of the relationships that we have and cherish now.

I was interested by the logic the Givenses used as they explained all of these points. Like I said, they started from the assumption that they (and the audience) believe in God, and instead of trying to prove empirically that He exists, they simply point to elements about ourselves as humans that make the idea that there is a God reasonable and resonant. For example, to justify the idea of a premortal existence, they discuss "the sense that we are pilgrims in a strange land" that is "one of the most universal themes in human culture" (page 40). They quote many different poets (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Herbert) and philosophers who wrote about this deep feeling, which the Givenses claim is "a simple longing for our true home." I personally feel like this explanation resonates with me, but I don't know if it would be accepted by people who don't share our faith or basic assumptions of Christianity. (Although maybe those people just haven't yet felt this yearning.) I think that discussion of feelings and emotions, and basing decisions and beliefs based on those, is not given the same credit in our society as logical, empirical knowledge. Religion is based on faith and trust and feeling the Spirit, so people who don't give those things much credence wouldn't be swayed by these arguments. But I believe both types of knowledge are important, and the Givenses are kind of mixing the two of those, it seemed.

Both of the Givenses are incredibly well-read. This was obvious in the fireside, but it is incorporated into nearly every paragraph of this book--there are quotes from famous poets, novelists, and philosophers, as well as from the scriptures. I really liked how they included these quotes as evidences of the points they were making--lines from poems to explain what we humans long for and quotes from plays to show snippets of human character. These quotes gave a lot of depth to their arguments and emphasized the universality of the theories and thoughts about God and life that the Givenses were claiming. The writing in this book is also clearly affected by their reading, because it is beautiful, metaphorical, and poetic.

These were some of my favorite points made in the book (there were many more, but these are the only ones I marked and could therefore find again):

"The philosopher Bertrand Russell may have stopped short of seeing the giver behind the gift, but he was right about the poverty of puritanism for its own sake. 'The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible,' he said. He then made his point with the simple example of a taste for strawberries. 'There is no abstract and impersonal proof either that strawberries are good or that they are not good. To the man who likes them they are good, to the man who dislikes them they are not. But the man who likes them has a pleasure which the other does not have; to that extent his life is more enjoyable and he is better adapted to the world in which both must live. . . . The more things a man is interested in, the more opportunities of happiness he has'" (pages 70-71). I think this is so true! People's lives seem so much more rich when they have deep interests in things and when they have a positive outlook on life. It's part of living an abundant life.

"We are becoming what we love and desire. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, 'We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. . . . What we are worshipping we are becoming.' Every moment of every day our choices enact our loves, our desires, and our aspirations. And we are molding ourselves into the God or gods we thereby worship" (page 87). The authors are here talking about becoming more like God, and how we do that every day (if we choose to). And I think it can also be applied on a more mundane basis as well: if we look up to people who are well-read and love them, we can work to become that type of person every day. Our actions every day impact what type of person we are becoming (all the way up to becoming like our Heavenly Father).

Monday, June 17, 2013

Book #37: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain

When I was around the age of 9, I did two things for fun. I would read, and I would go kick the soccer ball into the backstop across the street and tell myself stories as I did it. I did both of those things for hours and hours and HOURS on end, and I never got tired of it.

When I was in school, I hated groupwork with a passion. I didn't have a birthday party the entire time I was in high school. I hated the whole dating game SO MUCH, and first dates were pretty much torture. When I found out about the whole business school ethos of networking, I instantly knew that I never, ever, ever wanted to get an MBA and have to schmooze with anyone, ever. (It seriously sounds like worse than having to go get a PhD.) In every workplace I've ever been in (temping, internships, grad school cubicles), it takes months or even years for me to get to know the people around me.

Now, I still love to read. I also hate small talk, but I love talking about "deep" things that are important to me--I feel so happy and connected with people after those conversations. I am surprisingly happy staying at home and not seeing anyone else all day long (although that changes depending on Dane's whininess). 90% of the time, Tommy and I will spend time together playing Boggle, doing crosswords, or curling up and watching a movie together. I fluctuate between feeling guilty that we don't do enough social things with other people and feeling guilty that we aren't best friends with everyone we know. I often let calls go to voicemail, not for any specific reason but more because I often feel like I need to be in the right mental spot to talk to someone over the phone. I have a horror of awkwardness. None of this is to say that I'm antisocial or anything, but I don't thrive on all social interactions.

Guess what? I'm an introvert. After all of these facts about myself, you'd think it would have been obvious before reading this book, but I had honestly never thought about myself in that way. One major reason is because of our culture's fascination with the Extrovert Ideal, as Cain puts it--we value extroverts far more than introverts and push employees, students, kids, and friends to be more extroverted so that most everyone learns how to act like an extrovert, no matter how much they don't like it. Introverts tend to feel guilty (like me) or wonder if there's something wrong with them when they don't enjoy large dinner parties or networking events or when they feel exhausted after giving a presentation at work. But Cain's whole point is that there's nothing WRONG with being introverted--there's actually a lot of value in introversion that our culture is missing out on by forcing everyone to act and work like decisive and talkative extroverts. It's okay to be introverted! There are times when it's important to use extroverted skills (like when teaching Relief Society, for me) but it's even more important to be aware of where your natural preferences and skills lie and to know how to recharge your batteries and interact with the introverts and extroverts around you. (Luckily for us, Tommy's an ambivert--according to a self-test in the introduction to the book, and yes, that is a real word!--so we don't have any real conflict over how we want to spend time together. He's just as happy reading in bed together as I am.)

I really liked this book. I think Cain did an excellent job of incorporating scientific studies and real-world experiences into her points in the book, and the final chapter included specific tips for dealing with children or students who are introverts (for parents and teachers), which I think is a fantastic resource. But mostly, I liked it because it gave me so much to think about--and it really helps me to legitimate my desires and my interests. I like hanging out with people, but it's okay if I don't love big events with lots of people and if I want to leave early. And it's okay if we spend almost all of our evenings doing nothing exciting. It's just some cultural expectations that make us feel that way.

Friday, June 14, 2013

Book #36: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

I feel like I've heard about this book several times, but finally got around to reading it after a friend wrote about it on her blog. I love a good mystery, and this one won the "Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger Award," according to the cover, which I have no idea what that means, but it seems like it must be a good thing.

It's interesting, because the main character is an eleven-year-old, but it's not a book written for children. It would probably work as a YA novel, but it's definitely not specifically for that audience. Flavia de Luce, though, is not your typical eleven-year-old girl. She is a precocious chemist obsessed with creating poisons, with an instinctive way of manipulating the adults in her life to get what she wants/needs and a very good sense of how to solve a mystery. She wakes up one morning and finds a dead man in her yard, and decides to be the child detective and find out who the killer was, managing to uncover a lot of her father's personal history (and recover an extremely valuable stamp stolen from the king's personal collection!) along the way.

When I read The Age of Miracles just a few weeks ago, the thing that I hated about it was how the heroine was an eleven-year-old who did not act or think or talk like an eleven-year-old. That was still the case with this book, but Flavia was quirky and crazy enough that it didn't really seem to matter that she wasn't a typical eleven-year-old. And this book wasn't meant for the same audience as The Age of Miracles so it made more sense. I liked this book very much, although I kept putting it down and not coming back to it for a few days, so I wasn't as totally invested in the story as I am with many books.

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Book #35: Thirteen at Dinner by Agatha Christie

I stayed at a friend's house today watching their kids all day while she was in surgery, and this book was on their bookshelf in the front room. And would you believe that I read the whole thing during the day while watching three kids (their two and Dane)? Because I did! Ridiculous, I know. I still felt totally wiped out and exhausted at the end of the day (and, I was there for eleven hours so it makes sense) but obviously I wasn't too crazy busy because I managed to read this entire book while I was there.

A famous actress, Jane Wilkinson, approaches Poirot and asks him to help her get rid of her husband. She jokes about killing him but mostly asks him to help her get a divorce. A few days later, her husband actually ends up dead--and the actress has a solid alibi. It's a classic whodunit!

Honestly, I don't have too much to say about this book. It was a Hercule Poirot mystery, and of course I didn't figure it out until the end, so it was a success. That's the great thing about Christie's novels. I don't know, but I feel like many of Christie's novels with Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot don't have very satisfying reasons for how the sleuth figures out the mystery in the end. Usually it's just that they just get a lightbulb to go on in their mind and that helps everything to fall into place and then they can explain how they knew the whole thing happened, but it's not usually that it's something that anyone (such as the reader) could figure out. AKA, sometimes I feel like Christie makes things a bit too convenient for her sleuths. But you know what? Whatever. She does do a fantastic job of weaving the mystery and making it too hard to guess, so she does her job as the author just fine.

Book #34: The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen

I read a really good review of this book on a book blog, and there are really good reviews of it on Goodreads, so I thought I'd try it out. I think the genre for this book was actually even a bit younger than YA--more of a middle grade book (so probably way too young for me to be reading). So maybe I just don't understand or appreciate the genre or audience very much, but I just did not agree with the many good reviews of this book.

Quick plot review: The king, queen, and crown prince of Carthya are murdered in their beds, and in order to save the country from civil war, one of the regents goes to a bunch of orphanages to find a young boy who will act as the long-lost younger prince to unite the country and become the king. Sage, a defiant and angry pickpocket orphan, is one of the boys chosen to try and become the prince. Conner, the regent, trains them and tries to break them to his will--and the boys not chosen are promised that they will be killed.

The plot itself for this story was actually pretty interesting--I liked Sage as a character and felt myself rooting for him. But man, I just felt like the writing in this book was WEAK. None of the dialogue was believable and so many of the characters were just stupid. I found myself rolling my eyes at so many conversations in this book and skimming through them because they were so obnoxious and unrealistic. I think it may have been Stephen King in his book On Writing (or it wasn't and it was someone else) who said that good writing doesn't let you remember that you're reading writing at all. You forget that you're reading anything and you think you're in it--and you KNOW when you're reading something terrible. But that was not the case with this book at all. I'm glad it only took me a few hours to read, and even though it's a part of a trilogy I'm not planning on reading any of the other ones.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Books #31, 32, and 33: The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins

I've already written about these books a year and a half ago when I read them back then. And I've really read them four times by now. But I guess since the purpose of this book blog is for me to keep track of how many books I've read and for me to be able to record/work through all the thoughts I have while I'm reading and have no way to share them, I'm going to write about them again. (And I probably will do so again, haha. These books just keep popping up for me.)

When I bought the trilogy on Amazon, I remember putting them on our shelf and telling Tommy, "I don't think I'll ever really read these again. I'm glad I read them once, but I don't think we needed to buy them. Oh well." But obviously I've proved myself wrong, because every time I think about the books I end up needing to sit down and read them again (like Harry Potter). So I'll just go ahead and say it: Suzanne Collins did something right with these books, because I love them. I really do. I get sucked into them SO HARD that every time I read them I finish wanting more, more detail, more explanations.

Mockingjay is definitely my least favorite of the three. I know she must have had so many expectations to finish off the trilogy, but I honestly feel like a lot of it was a cop-out. Katniss gets knocked out about 15 times in the book, over and over and over again, and every time all the action happens while she's asleep and someone just tells her what's happened after she's woken up.

And I'll also say this: I'm team Peeta, all the way. So glad she ends up with him in the end.

I had a lot more comments in my head while I was reading, but I've forgotten them all now. So we'll just call that a wrap.