Book #64: Global Mom: A Memoir by Melissa Dalton-Bradford

It's only five hours before 2013 is over, and I wanted to be sure that I reviewed the last book that I read in 2013 before it ends. I asked for this book for Christmas from my mom, because I had read about it in a bunch of different places and heard just stellar, amazing reviews about it. Global Mom is a memoir by Melissa Dalton-Bradford, an LDS woman who has raised her family of four kids in eight different countries (and still adding to that list). The book is a lot about her experiences living in all of those different places and all the richness this variety and these different customs have added to her life and the lives of her children, which is really inspiring and beautiful to learn about in and of itself, but what makes this book so powerful is when she writes about the loss of her eldest son in a water accident just one week after he left for college at BYU-Idaho. Dalton-Bradford writes so powerfully about the way she and her family has survived that earth-shattering loss and how their international lifestyle has continued and affected their healing process as well. This quote on almost the last page of the book defines well what I think this book is about:

"Of all the borders I've crossed, of all the addresses I've inhabited and of all the lands I've been privileged to call my home, there's but one terrain that's defined me more than any other: that is the land of loss. The very soil that no soul wants to visit. The one topography no parent ever wants to feel underfoot. The haunted land of loss has taught me more than any foreign land ever could. Unlike other geographies one might know for a year or two or even decades, the landscape of loss becomes a kind of permanent overlay to whatever and wherever follows. As much as I 'know' France or Germany, and as much as I at times feel quite Austrian or deeply Norwegian or even a little bit Singaporean or Swiss, no matter where I go or what language I speak, I am always and primarily a mother who buried her firstborn child."

I won't deny that I cried long and hard through about three chapters of the book while reading about her son's accident and the aftermath, not just because of hearing about the raw facts of the incident but also understanding and sharing Dalton-Bradford's experience with it and hearing her voice and her longing and sadness. I really can't emphasize how beautiful and poetic her writing is--you can tell it has been crafted by an experienced poet or musician (the latter of which she is) but it doesn't feel forced or fake. The language was just part of why I thoroughly loved this book. The experiences Dalton-Bradford shares from her time in different countries and the lessons she weaves through her stories about community and "blooming where you are planted" (as cliched as that saying is, that's really what she emphasizes again and again) are compelling all on their own as well. I also admired how she shared her testimony through the book--it was never outright or even explicit, but she mentions again and again her reliance on prayer through difficult experiences and her knowledge and love of God and what He is to her. Not that I mind explicit testimonies in books or anything, but I felt like how she wrote about it felt very organic and worked extremely well with the book as a whole.

I really, truly loved this book--it's one that I think I will want to re-read as a mother as I grow and change.

Book #63: Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

After a long, frustrating day with a sick baby who wouldn't nap or go to sleep at night, all I wanted to do was take a bath and read something not taxing. So I picked up Little House in the Big Woods, which I don't think I've read in over a decade. It really, really, really made me happy to revisit this amazing book. I have a soft spot in my heart for these books, as I'm sure millions of other people do as well, after reading them so many times and loving them so much when I was younger. I just remember loving all of the details and stories about how they made their living in those days. It was so fascinating to read about how they ate maple syrup on snow and how Pa smoked their meat in a hollowed out log and how Ma makes cheese out of stuff from the stomach lining of a cow--and it still is pretty fascinating to me today!

Nowadays, with Dane getting into everything and being this crazy baby boy, I always think about pioneers and wonder, "How did they keep their babies alive back then?" Pa was out getting food all day long and working and Ma was busy making the food and all of this crazy housework--how did they ever keep an eye on their kids and keep them from being eaten by wild animals or from falling into a big vat of boiling water? Reading these books still makes me wonder--and it makes me think I would have been a TERRIBLE pioneer woman.

After we get back from our Christmas trip visiting our families, I think I will re-read all of the other books in this series as well. They just make me happy to read!

Book #62: My Story by Elizabeth Smart

When this book came out I didn't really even think about reading it at first--but then I kept hearing about it and decided that I would. It isn't a book to take up lightly, because obviously the story that she tells is terrifying and depressing to the core, all the more so because you know that it is real. We all lived through Elizabeth Smart's kidnapping, and I was at BYU at the same time as her (even lived in the same dorm building our freshman year!). And reading about her experience made me so impressed that she has overcome the horrors she went through, at such a young age. She comes across as a very solid, mature narrator with the benefit of hindsight to help her make sense of everything that she went through, and she refers again and again to her testimony and shows how much that sustained her through the nine months she was held captive. Her testimony, her belief in God and his goodness, and her love for her family are themes that she strongly emphasizes throughout the book as the reasons why she was able to survive and why she has been able to recover emotionally and spiritually from her experiences. As the reader of this book, I felt strengthened by HER strength and amazed by her maturity as a fourteen-year-old able to hold onto her beliefs in such a situation. As I read, I thought about who her audience might be, and it seems like this book could really introduce many people to the core, most fundamental beliefs of our Church, because Smart focuses so strongly on our belief in God, our love of God, and our reliance on the Atonement to help us get through trials and to recover from them.

All in all, I really enjoyed this book. It was a page-turner in some ways, because I couldn't help but keep going to figure out how and when all of it would end for her. And it was nice because it only took a few hours to get through. After reading this, I admire Elizabeth Smart even more, for how she survived and for the work she has done since.

Book #61: The Associate by John Grisham

A road trip, like the one we just took to the Outer Banks, is always a cause for us to find a quick and gripping book on CD for us to listen to while we drive. It makes such a huge difference for how long the trip feels for us to have something good to listen to! John Grisham and Tom Clancy are some of our favorite authors for that sort of reading/listening because they're so easy to follow and they keep your interest really well. I went into the library with Dane while picking up the sister missionaries from the library and had about .4 seconds to choose a book on CD while the sisters were waiting for me and Dane was trying to escape from me, so I just grabbed three John Grisham books and hoped for the best. We chose this one and enjoyed it while we drove. It seemed very similar to The Firm, which we listened to while we drove across the country last summer, but it wasn't as good. The Firm was awesome because it kept you jumping and wondering how the guy would survive, and it had a great ending where he beat everyone and got away. The Associate was almost exactly the same idea, where the new lawyer gets blackmailed/forced into doing something he doesn't want to do, but it seemed kind of anticlimactic in comparison. I did enjoy the peek into the corporate lawyer world that Kyle works in, as it confirmed to me how happy I am that we don't have a lifestyle like that and that Tommy is going to have a very different work experience. Thank goodness! It was a great, quick read (listen) that definitely fulfilled our goal of getting us to the OBX and back.

Books #58-60: The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins

I feel like I'm kind of a slacker re-posting about books I've already read when I read them again, but I guess it all goes back to what I think the point of this blog is--and I like to know how many books I read over the year, and it counts to me if I'm re-reading. The Hunger Games trilogy is especially bad because I think this is the fourth time I've read all of the books--possibly even the fifth. I started reading these books again because I was preparing to go see Catching Fire in theaters with Tommy, and I'm glad I did. It was a good vacation-y book (or set of books) for me to read while we were in the Outer Banks with the Sines. (The other books I'm in the middle of are much heavier and more serious--not at all the type of book you want to read curled up on the couch while you're on a trip.)

And I know I wrote this before when I've posted about the books, but every time I read these books I get so into them and can't pull my head out of the storyline for about a week afterwards. I just catch myself dwelling on the story and thinking about the characters and remembering specific parts. And I guess that's a sign of how compelling the plot is and how much I identify with the books! I still am not sure what exactly it is about them, but I do just love them and I am very happy to indulge in them every once in a while.

Book #57: The Great Influenza: The Story of the Greatest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry

I was babysitting at a friend's house the other night and happened to see this book on their bookshelf. It sounded interesting enough to me that I checked it out from the library and read it this week. The book was really very interesting because of the magnitude of the 1918-1919 pandemic and also because of how little I'd ever heard about it. It's also interesting because it was published in 2004, before the swine flu and bird flu epidemics that everyone was so worried about in the last decade. (Interestingly, Barry says that the deadly flu strain in 1918 was H1N1, which should be instantly recognizable to everyone from the swine flu epidemic.)

It seemed to me that this book was a very ambitious project. Barry didn't just want to talk about where and how this flu pandemic started and spread, but he tried to discuss the actual medical and physiological processes that are going on in the body with viral and bacterial infections and diseases. He also talked a lot about the developments in the general scientific community in the few decades before and after the epidemic (which is obviously a huge topic and probably could be an entire book or books by itself). I was very fascinated in his history of how science and the field of medicine changed in the United States over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; according to Barry, at least, prior to Johns Hopkins University being set up, medical schools and the field of medicine in the U.S. were absolutely terrible and had no standards or expectations at all. Most medical schools didn't expect their students to have any prerequisite education (any, at all) and had no opportunities for their students to practice on patients, but around the turn of the century there was a lot of momentum for change in the system and Barry discusses how that happened. That was a really interesting part of the story for me. I wasn't so interested in all of the really technical and scientific chapters about how the immune system works and how the flu attacks different parts of the body, etc. I remember enough from my high school and college science classes to understand it, but it was pretty dry. I was also fascinated by the spread of the disease and how it literally covered the entire world.

One other thing I wasn't too energized about with this book was a few small things about Barry's writing style. He really liked to be a little dramatic with his writing, and emphasize certain sentences by setting them off in their own paragraph, like this (I'm making this up as an example, it's not from his book):

"The scientists worked really hard. They thought they were close to finding the cure to the disease and solving this epidemic.

They were wrong."

That "They were wrong"-type sentence happened over and over and over again. It's a good thing to do sparingly, but I noticed it enough that it started to bother me. Again, just a silly little thing, but I feel like if you start to notice elements of the writing style it distracts from the actual reading of the book.

Book #56: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain (a re-read)

It seems odd to be writing about this book again when I only just posted about reading it the first time four months ago. But I am in charge of our book club for this month and when I suggested this book as an option, everyone was very enthusiastic about reading it. I looked forward to the chance to revisit it again too.

As I read the book this time, I realized that I think I was over-exaggerating my introversion when I read it a few months ago. I am definitely not a true-blue introvert, but I am definitely more introverted than I thought before I read this book. That's why it was such a revelation to me to think about being an introvert at ALL. I realized as I read it that a lot of the elements she described do apply to me, but there are lots of other elements that don't--I do look forward to parties and socializing, most of the time; I don't feel nervous about speaking in front of groups, usually. But I am perfectly content a lot of the time to just hang out with Tommy every evening. In one of the later chapters of the book, Cain talks about the debate over situation vs. personality--that psychologists are divided over whether people have core personalities that hold true all the time, or whether the situation decides what how people act and feel. (The answer, of course, is a combination of both, I would imagine.) But I think that's a good indicator of how I feel about whether I am introverted or extroverted--some nights I am dying to get out of the house and go have a girls' night out, and other nights there's nothing I would rather do than take a bath. It changes from day to day.

Some things I want to talk about with the book club when we meet tomorrow:
-how Cain says our culture has morphed from a Culture of Character to the Culture of Personality--100 years ago people were more focused on inner accomplishments like being an honest person and now it's all about having a "good personality," being outgoing and friendly
-her discussion of extroversion in evangelical Christianity and how that relates to Mormonism
-the "person-situation" debate
-relationships between extroverts and introverts--any experiences?
-creativity and collaboration