Book #83: The Triple Package by Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld

I picked up this book because I'd read a summary of it somewhere and Mormons are one of the rising cultural groups that Chua and Rubenfeld describe in their analysis. Naturally, anything that says relatively positive things about Mormons (by a relatively well-known non-Mormon, especially) is interesting to me, so I requested it at the library. The goal of this book is to define what traits are common to groups who are currently experiencing above-average levels of success in America, to possibly explain why these groups are doing better than the rest of the country. Chua and Rubenfeld focus on some seven or eight groups, like Chinese Americans, Indian Americans, Jews, Iranian Americans, Mormons, and a couple of other ones I don't remember. And according to the authors' thesis, all of these groups have the "triple package" of these three traits of success:

-Superiority complex: Every group has a deep belief in its own exceptionality.
-Insecurity (or, as I think of it, inferiority complex): Each group has the need to prove itself and its place in America, due to fear or scorn or the need to live up to impossible expectations.
-Impulse Control: Every group has the ability to resist temptation and exercise self-discipline, which creates a strong work ethic and ability to move past failures.

Looking at the one group that I belong to, I thought that these three traits apply perfectly to Mormons. Superiority complex: We believe that we are the true church and children of God. Inferiority complex: We talk about the "extermination order" and the persecution against the Church, and want desperately to be accepted as "normal" members of society (in the world, not of the world?). Impulse control: Chua and Rubenfeld devote quite a lot of time talking about LDS missions and the Word of Wisdom--we are probably the group that best exemplifies the impulse control idea. And according to the authors, these three traits are the reason behind the recent spate of Mormon successes in the business world (how many super-rich CEOs and business leaders are LDS out there?). Most of their discussion about Mormons seemed positive, although they of course took a few pages to describe how women in the Church are not at an equal level to men, providing men in the Church with an extra superiority complex.

Although the whole idea behind this book seems a little problematic (looking at entire racial and religious groups, which seems like it could rely heavily on stereotypes), Chua and Rubenfeld do give a disclaimer for what they're trying to do at the beginning, explaining that there truly ARE differences between how groups are succeeding and how they behave, even though we don't like to acknowledge them and even though these generalizations don't apply to everyone within the group. They rely heavily on social scientific research and studies, and provide a lot of evidence to back up their claims about any sort of group that they make (except Mormons, interestingly, which seem to rely a lot on memoir-type accounts written by LDS members, including Joanna Brooks' book). I thought that their whole thesis is interesting and definitely makes a lot of sense, and as a whole, I enjoyed reading their book.

Book #82: Emily's Quest by L. M. Montgomery

This was the third and final Emily book, and you guessed it--I finished it the same day I finished the second. I couldn't wait to find out what happened to Emily, I guess. But this book ended up being my least favorite of the three, possibly because it was mostly focused on Emily's love life and it was really very unsatisfying. The best things about the other books--her relationships with her friends and her escapades and adventures--really didn't show up in this book. In this book, Emily's friends all move on to other places and go to further schooling (like in Montreal) and she's left as the only one in their town of Blair Water, where she's chosen to stay and write from her home instead of taking an amazing job offer in New York. She doesn't regret that decision, but she does miss her friends and feel left out. Montgomery shows Emily and her friends moving apart, in a world where the only form of communication is letters, and they can't come home to visit for years at a time, and I kind of hated how they grew apart and distant, because I really loved their little group in the first book. Emily does become really successful with her writing (which is, I suppose, the Quest in the title) and publishes her first book throughout the story (and by the very end has published more), and makes her own substantial living from writing, but honestly, her writing seems kind of secondary to the romances of the story.

Here's the gist of that: Emily has basically always been in love with her neighbor Teddy Kent, but she has always been too proud to say anything and never will give him any sign that she likes him. So basically, this whole book is years of Emily pining away for Teddy and then these chance encounters that they have where they are both too proud to say what they're really thinking and afraid to confess their love for each other. So they both eventually get engaged to other people, then eventually break them off (blah blah blah), and then years (and years) pass and Emily and Teddy finally get together three pages before the end of the book. I felt like so much of this nonsense could have been prevented if one of them would have been a little more straightforward and grown-up about this, and although I wanted them to end up together they were both so stupid about it. Teddy is basically a non-character in the story--we hardly know anything about him except that he is a good artist--but you still like him enough because Emily does.

Overall, I had to read this because I had to know what happens to Emily, but I was more frustrated over this book than I was over the other two, probably because I just wanted Emily to be happy and stop keeping her love at arm's length.

Book #81: Emily Climbs by L. M. Montgomery

After reading Emily of New Moon, I ended up starting (and almost finishing) the second book in the trilogy that same night. I was really interested to learn about what was going to happen for Emily! In this second book, similar to Anne's progression to Queens Academy, Emily goes to Shrewsbery High School and continues her writing. She moves in with another severe older aunt, who is even worse than the original ones she was living with, and has clashes with her and gets into scrapes with her friends. She has romantic intrigues and boys proposing to her, but she remains aloof and secretly in love with her childhood friend Teddy Kent (which doesn't really become that much of a plot point until the next book).

This book reminded me a lot of Anne of Avonlea or whatever the third book is in the Anne series. It's a very similar coming-of-age series, so that connection has to keep coming up. Montgomery's style is so effusive and focused on the joys of nature and the beauty of life, coming from both Anne and Emily, that I can't help imagining that Prince Edward Island to be the most beautiful, amazing place on earth. I really and truly would love to go there--we WILL go there someday, maybe for an anniversary trip or something. But reading this book made me a little bit sad that we live in such an ugly, ugly place, and that I didn't grow up in or live in a place with a lot of nature. I don't even know if such idyllic, romantic places like Montgomery describes even exist any more, but I know they aren't here in Frisco. Anywhere. I was feeling very nature-deprived today so I took Dane to the nature preserve/museum this morning to get us outside (and it was so hot we were tired of it after about an hour).

SO, after that tangent, I did love this book and Emily's development and self-realizations throughout it. I love how she decided in the first book that she was going to become a famous author, and she just set herself to work, ALWAYS, always writing and practicing and developing, and then in this book she actually starts to do it. She begins working at the local newspaper, she writes a lot for school stuff, she begins sending her poems and stories off to magazines for publication (and gets lots of rejections but then the acceptances come). I don't necessarily think that this sort of path would be so easily followed today (or maybe it would be? In a world of blogs and internet magazines and journals?) but Emily set her goal and then worked really hard to achieve it, and I loved that.

Book #80: Emily of New Moon by L. M. Montgomery

I loved, loved, loved Anne of Green Gables growing up, and I still do. But for some reason, I was never introduced to Emily of New Moon, and when I was later in life, I never was interested enough in starting a new Anne series to pick it up. I finally was convinced to do it, and I really can't believe I never have read them before. The story is so similar to Anne, at least in how it starts out--Emily is orphaned and taken in by conservative, older relatives--but she seems deeper and darker than the light-hearted Anne, in some ways. The little stories that happen are very similar--Emily cuts her own hair and regrets it, like Anne when she dyes it; schoolyard teasing and problems with the teacher, etc.--but Emily seems to have a sadder soul, possibly because her father died when she was eleven and she has the ache of missing him instead of never knowing her parents, like Anne. Like Anne, Emily is able to win people over with her winsome and outspoken ways, and she makes some "bosom friends" (without using that term) who are adorable and fun. I feel like we get more of Emily's internal commentary, and she is much more insolent in her thoughts than I remember Anne being, and it's very fun to get to know her, and I can't wait to read the other two books (hopefully starting tomorrow!).

I loved this book from the second chapter, when Emily meets all of her mother's older relatives, who are coming to pick her up after her father's funeral to take her home with them. The way that Emily looks at all of them, and the picture of this gathering of eight old/older people sitting around staring at her, and how each of them are described, and how Emily thinks about each of them in turn--it was exactly the sort of character-based story-beginner that sucks me in. But throughout the book, I loved Emily's development and growth from a queer, quiet child to a more confident tween. I thought the ending seemed rather contrived (and reminded me of something from on of the Anne books, as well, although I can't think of what)--when Emily solved a decades-long mystery by "second sight" while she's deliriously ill one night and changes her unhappy neighbors' lives. Come on.

Book #79: Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan

This is a book someone recommended to me back at the beginning of the year when I asked for recommendations on Facebook. I've had it on my "to-read" list on Goodreads ever since then and just got around to it. I got the impression that it was a Hunger Games/Divergent type book, the first of a trilogy, in a post-apocalyptic universe, and I thought it sounded semi-interesting. Let's do a quick summary before I delve into my reactions to the book: the book is set on the Empyrean, a massive self-sustaining spaceship which is traveling to "New Earth," some eighty years away from the old, destroyed earth. The kids on the ship have lived there their entire lives. Waverly and Kieran are two of the oldest kids (16 years old) on the ship, and they have been dating for almost a year and get engaged to each other (because fertility and having babies is super important to everyone on the ship, so you're supposed to start that stuff early). But all of a sudden, their ship gets attacked by their sister ship, and all of the kids get separated and all the adults are either killed or taken hostage. The rest of the book goes between Waverly and Kieran's perspectives from their locations and their attempts to get back together and save all the kids.

I think this is a pretty interesting premise, really. It's definitely intriguing to imagine what it would be like to be born on a ship like that, to never have been anywhere else, and to live with a mission like "repopulate the entire population of the earth" and how that would affect you and your life. So I like that idea. And when it's compared to Hunger Games I feel like I can predict exactly what it's going to be like, but it'll probably be pretty enjoyable and easy to read, right? But turns out, I was so annoyed by basically everything that happened in this book.

First off, Ryan does an absolutely terrible job at building her characters and making them into people we might actually care about and be interested in seeing them survive and love each other. The book and the action start at the exact same time; the attack happens and I could honestly care less that Waverly and Kieran are separated because who are these people anyway? Also, Ryan has no subtlety in the few things she does try to tell us about the characters. Waverly is introduced to us and about two pages later she's complaining about how she can't get engaged to Kieran and just be his "passive little wifey." (Actual words from the book.) Oh, okay, I get it--Waverly is MORE than just a little princess wanting to get married first thing. What a brand new original thought, Ryan! Thanks for telling that to me so explicitly because I would never have suspected that from a contemporary dystopian novel with a female main character. She also creates the weakest love triangle I have ever seen, throwing in some random boy named Seth who apparently also likes Waverly, but she gives you about 1.5 pages where Waverly and Seth have a conversation, where it's clear that they haven't talked at all for the last 13 or so years and there's no reason we should be interested in them at all. So who does Waverly really like? I just don't know who she's going to choose and I'm so torn up about it!! (And note: I think the comparison to Hunger Games is weak here. Waverly is soooo much more annoying than Katniss.)

Lastly, and more important thematically, I was really bugged by Ryan's commentary on organized religion throughout this book. The evil sister ship, which kidnaps all the girls at the beginning of the novel, is run by Anne Mather, who is apparently just completely evil and is in charge of the church services run on that ship (which is significantly more religion-centered than the Empyrean, where Waverly grew up). On that ship, the common people are depicted as these clueless, ignorant sheep who just follow Mather because she's their religious leader, while she's secretly doing these terrible things and not telling them. And then when they get back to their original ship, Waverly freaks out and basically breaks up with Kieran because he's started religious services on their ship to help the boys' morale. Waverly equates religion with evil after her experiences with Mather, and I would have appreciated a much more nuanced portrayal of religion and God. I honestly feel like that was a kind of random element to add to the story, which just made me annoyed and just gave Waverly (and Ryan) some group to heap all their hatred on.

So, all in all, I was not a big fan of this book. Like I said, it's the first of a trilogy, but I do not intend to read the other two, because I couldn't wait to get through this one and be done with it. I think this is the first book I've given a one-star rating to on Goodreads, so there you have it. Did not like it. (But my other friends on Goodreads who have read it all gave it four or five stars, so maybe you will like it.)

Book #78: Mary Poppins by P. L. Travers

Okay, I decided I wanted to read this back after watching Saving Mr. Banks over Christmas (was that when it came out?), which makes me feel kind of like a cheater to read a book because of a movie. But I felt like I had only just realized that this original movie was based off a book, which I'd never read, so I wanted to check it out. I read it today, while both my boys were napping (and I of course couldn't fall asleep), and it was the weirdest deja vu experience--every image and every sentence reverberated in my mind and sounded so familiar. And I knew I'd read this before. I must have read it when I was in the 10-12 age range, because I read lots of books like this and they have all blended together (I feel like the Shoes books, like Ballet Shoes and Tennis Shoes, were right along this same time), and I honestly had no idea I'd read this before. But I knew every story in this whole book, and I'm remembering even more, so I know I've read some of the sequels as well.

This book is different than the all-familiar movie that we all know and love. First off, Mary Poppins is cranky. All the time. Not this sweet Julie Andrews character (although she's kind of tart in the movie too, but not like this Mary Poppins). Also, the book is like a collection of unrelated short stories, with each chapter as its own self-contained adventure, which gives it a different feeling than the movie--it feels like they last over a longer period of time, to me, and makes you wonder what other adventures they are having in between the ones recorded in the book. And I loved that. But--and it's been a long time since I've seen the movie, so I don't know if this is in contrast to the movie version or not--what stands out to me from the book is how magical the magic of Mary Poppins is, and how miraculous every adventure is to Jane and Michael (and the other kids--I forgot that there were several other Banks kids that they left out of the movie). I thought it was so fun and exciting and darling to read. And I want to look at a few of the sequels now that I've revisited this one too!

Book #77: And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini

I have meant to read this book for months now. I have checked this one and The Kite Runner out from the library, actually, multiple times, and then always ended up returning it without having gotten around to it because I never could gear myself up to reading it. (Still haven't read Kite Runner--probably will now that I enjoyed this one, though!) But I did get around to it yesterday, and I was surprised by how quickly I got into it and how fast I got through it, because I could hardly put it down.

This book centers around the story of Abdullah and Pari, a big brother and little sister who mean everything to each other. Their parents make the tragic decision to sell Pari to a rich childless couple for adoption, because they are too poor to afford to warm themselves through the winter, and Abdullah spends the rest of his life longing for her and missing her--while Pari was young enough that she completely forgot that she'd had another life than the one she was adopted into. The book is made up of different stories from different perspectives, all from people who have some relationship to Abdullah's and Pari's lives, some only tangential and some very close to them. Each of the stories helps you to learn what has happened to each of them as they grow up, and to create a full picture of all of these relationships and the culture they live in. And each of the stories has something to tell you about remembering and forgetting and loving--how people deal with tragedy and loss, and what the good and bad things are about being able to remember and love things forever.

This book was so, so sad to me. I was just tortured by the parents' decision to give away Pari and how that affected Abdullah. It's just a horrible decision that no parent can imagine having to do--but it's even more horrible to realize that that is real life for some people (and another reminder of how privileged we are). And so sad to see how those decisions affected people throughout their whole lives (for good and for bad). But after so many quick and easy romances lately, it felt really good to read something with some substance and real meaning.