The More You Read

This is the true story told my a young man who recounts how he became a child solider and eventually was rescued from that life.  Ishmael Beah was twelve years old when war broke out in Sierre Leone.  Ishmael had gone with his brother and some friends to a neighboring town and tried to make his way back home to his family when he heard of the killing that had started.  He ran into people who had been mutilated and told stories of horror that made him turn around and eventually flee with a group of young boys.  For a year Ishmael fled from place to place trying to stay safe and find food and shelter in a time where no one could trust anyone else.  Ishmael got very close to being reunited with his family on tips he received from others that new them, just to find the town where they were supposedly staying burnt out with dead people everywhere.

After living in such close proximity to death for a year Ishmael was recruited to be a soldier by the government army.  He found that he had such anger and desperation in him that he was able to do the killing and other atrocities that he would have never believed.  He was part of a “family” of sorts again who looked after him and he fought and killed to stay part of it.

He was eventually selected by his commander to go to a UNICEF rehabilitation center where at first he was very upset and angry at being released from the army.  He was also going through withdrawal from the drugs that he had been using while in the army.  At first he described his time at the rehabilitation center making it clear that he would have rather been fighting then be there.  Eventually he formed a relationship with a nurse there and began making progress.  He was placed with an uncle and began living a life outside of the center.  He eventually is able to make his way to the United States.

This is a hard story to read as it is about war and child soldiers.  The way children, many who have been orphaned and have no other choices, are used is horrible to read about.  However the resilience that is shown by Ishmael Beah is admirable.  As I’m sure that it’s found in many who manage to continue through circumstances that I can not even imagine.  Throughout it all he has hope and is able to use that to make a better life.

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Ishmael Beah, Memoir, Sierre Leone

I have to admit that I may have made a mistake in reading this book as I had never read Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin.  My understanding (now) is that Something Blue is a sequel involving many of the same characters but told through a different character’s view.  I do plan to go back and read the first one now, but I just hadn’t been paying that much attention when I got it at the library.

This is the story of DarcyRhone, who is not a very likeable main character.  She comes from a background of believing that things are about appearance and that being beautiful is one of the most important parts of her life.  She works in PR, is very into shopping and partying and seems to judge everyone, even those she is closest to, on very shallow standards.  At the beginning of this story she is cheating on her fiance with one of his groomsmen, becomes pregnant and goes to break off her engagement only to find that her fiance has been seeing her best friend.

Darcy tries hard to play the part of the victim and becomes very obsessed with Rachel and Dex’s new relationship even as she tries to make a go of things with her new boyfriend.  Very quickly she realizes that her relationship with Marcus was about lust and not much more and she tries to figure out what to do now that she is pregnant and having relationship problems with just about everyone in her life. 
Darcy ends up running to England to visit Ethan, a childhood friend.  She stays with him for several weeks before he speaks very pointedly about the flaws he sees in her character and then she makes some effort to change.  However even in her efforts to change for the better I never felt that she actually did anything to truly change.  Darcy was able to make progress on some fronts but was very self-centered pretty much throughout the story. 

This was a good fast read (beach book?) and like I said, I’ll probably go back to visit Something Borrowed. 

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Chick Lit, Emily Giffin

I have enjoyed all of the books that I’ve read by Ben Mezrich so I was excited to see that he had a new book out.  He typically writes about exceptional college students who are able to use their intelligence to beat the system (Vegas, the Nikkei) and become very wealthy at a young age.  This book was no exception in that it focused on the founding of Facebook.  The difference between this book and others that I have read by him is that Mark Zuckerberg was not the narrator of the story.  In Bringing Down the House and Ugly Americans the main character was involved in showing the author around his life and telling his story.  In The Accidental Billionaires others who were connected to Mark and with him at Harvard when he started Facebook are the ones telling the story.

There were some little controversies involved with Facebooks creation that I was unaware of.   Eduardo Saverin plays a big role in this book.  He was one of Mark’s friends at Harvard and eventually was involved with Facebook’s creation as a managing partner when Mark needed money for servers and, as the site grew, to pay other students to help keep up with development.  Eduardo put some money in up front and worked one summer to find investors in New York while Mark and the other developers moved to Silicon Valley and concentrated on bulding the huge social networking site.  It was during this time when Mark became friends with Sean Parker (Napster) and started connecting with investors on his own.  Facebook began growing by leaps and bounds during this time and Eduardo was eventually phased out.  My understanding is that he is involved with a lawsuit at the present time to redeem some of the recognition (and I assume monetary rewards) that come with being a cofounder of Facebook.

The other main story line had to do with the Winklevoss twins who had approached Mark during his time at Harvard to be a programmer for a site that they had been working to develop.  Their idea was to have it exclusive to Harvard and have it be a dating/social site to help save time for busy college students.  From Winklevoss’ side Mark acted as though he was programming their site for weeks before giving reasons why he was not going to do it and then coming out with Facebook, which initially was only open to Harvard students.  The Winklevoss twins eventually started a website called ConnectU but felt that their idea had been stolen out from under them.  They also became involved in a legal battle with Mark Zuckerberg and according to the book eventually settled for many millions.

While all of this was interesting, what I really would have liked to hear was this story from Mark Zuckerberg’s perspective.  He is the one that developed this idea that took off to become the 2nd most visited website on the internet.  It’s not that I don’t believe the accounts of others but it would have been much more interesting to hear about how this skyrocketed and his accounts of the problems with Eduardo and the Winklevoss twins.  I just didn’t finish the book feeling like a full picture of the true creation of Facebook had been painted.

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Ben Mezrich, Non Fiction

Tracy Kidder writes about an exceptional young man who escaped the horrors of genocide in Burundi and Rwanda in 1993 and 1994 only to spend the next ten years working hard to pick up where his life left off and return to make his home in Burundi a better place.

Deo was a third year medical student in Burundi when violence erupted between the Hutus and Tutsis, two different ethnic groups in the area.  Deo shares some of his earlier life and how he first heard the words “Hutu” and “Tutsi” but also how this was not a difference that you could necessarily see by looking at your neighbors and friends.  These are two groups who lived side by side, shared food religion and culture.  As a Tutsi his life was threatened during this time in Burundi and Deo hid in the hospital that he worked in while many people were killed and then fled for six months on food into Rwanada and straight into the midst of more killing and death.  Deo unlikely got a work visa that allowed him to escape to New York City.

Deo arrived in New York City with $200 knowing no one.  He working as a delivery person for a grocery store and slept in abandoned warehouses and Central Park until he started making friends who worked together to help him.  He ended up being able to go to Columbia and continue his pursuit for a medical degree.  Deo experiences a lot of confusion, nightmares and depression while he is living in New York and adjusting to his life in America.  He finds his peace through medicine.

Deo is connected with Dr. Paul Farmer (from Mountains beyone Mountains by Tracy Kidder) and ends up working for Partners In Health (PIH) and learning about their system of health care and clinics in Haiti and other countries.  Deo decides to return to Burundi to try to bring a similar system of healthcare there.  He takes Tracy Kidder through Burundi and goes through the horrors of his escape as wll as some of the highlights of his life there.  Deo returns to his parents village and along with the community begins building a clinic that will serve all without regard to payment.  They train local workers to work within the community on prevention and other health issues.  One of the things that is mentioned in this book is that Deo does this in a community that is primarily Hutu at this point.  And he promotes peace and works to teach people to overlook this and live with each other promoting well being. 

I was very moved by this book and was glad to hear about how the work of Dr. Paul Farmer continues to impact individuals to promote change in the world.  I am sure that there are many other stories of horror and escape during this 1993-94 in Burundi and Rwanda and that there is resilience that I can not begin to understand.  What impressed me so much with this story is Deo’s drive to return to the place of his nightmares and work to make it a better place.

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Burundi, Non Fiction, Rwanda, Tracy Kidder

This is a book that is set in Afghanistan from the 1970s through the present time.  It follows the rise and fall of different forces and how it impacts the every day life of every day people.  The two main characters are women and the violence and pain that they experience is hard to read about.

Mariam is born as an illegitimate child to a rich father who makes weekly visits to see her where she lives alone, with her mother, isolated from society and the rest of her father’s family.  A tutor comes to teach her every week and that is her primary contact to the outside world.  On her fifteenth birthday she asks to go to her fathers movie theater with her father.  He does not come to get her and she sets out to her father’s home on her own.  He does not accept her into his house and when she returns home her mother is dead after commiting suicide.

Mariam goes to her father’s home where she is quickly arranged into a marriage with a man much older than her.  She travels to his home and begins making a home for him and hoping for children.  She travels there and initially has some hope that life will be better and that she will have a family of her own to love and care for.  Mariam suffers many miscarriages and her marriage quickly falls apart.  Her husband is abusive and he also keeps her in isolation believing that he does so to protect her from the outside world.

The second woman this book focuses on is Laila.  She is born during the time that Mariam is trying to have children to a neighbor woman.  Laila’s mother is not well after her two brothers leave to fight in the war.  She and her father are very close.  She also has a best friend named Tariq that she spends most of her time with and eventually falls in love with.  After 9/11 the bombs start to fall and many people leave Kabul, including Tariq.  Laila stays behind with her parents and her parents are soon killed by a bomb.  Laila is injured and Mariam’s husband rescues her from the rubble and  begins to take care of her.  During this time someone comes to visit Laila and tells her that he met Tariq in a hospital and he has died.  Laila is very depressed and agrees when Mariam’s husband suggests that she become his second husband to make the living arrangement appropriate. 

Laila and Mariam initially have a difficult time living together in the same home but they soon become very close, united together against the rules and abuse that they suffer from their husband.  Laila has two children and the children bring great joy to both women.  Eventually the situation gets so bad in both Kabul and in that it is unbearable.  During a particularly bad beating where Mariam is afraid Laila will be killed, Mariam ends up killing their husband.  Mariam is punished for this and Laila is able to take the children and starts a new life.  She does so always remembering Mariam who gave her life so that she could start fresh.

This book was excellent.  There were many parts that stood out but what I took away most was the daily hardship that these women suffered and that with changes there was still hope that life could get better.

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Afghanistan, Fiction, Khaled Hosseini

This is the second book that I’ve read by Sherri Reynolds.  Rapture of Cannan had been part of Oprah’s Book Club and that’s how I was first introduced to this author.  The Firefly Cloak was very good and looked at three women in a family.  Sheila leaves her children alone at a campsite when Tessa Lynn is eight and Travis is three.  She writes her mother, Lil’s, phone number on Travis’ back so that the authorities who find them call their grandparents to come and get them. 

Seven years later Tessa Lynn goes looking for her mother.  She has heard that she works in a town two hours away and goes to find her to tell her thather brother, Travis, has died.  For a long time we don’t know how Travis has died, but it is central to the story that Tessa Lynn and Lil are grieving.  Tessa Lynn finds her mother and tries to speak with her but her mother leaves and runs away before she is able to tell her the news. 

Lil and Tessa Lynn try to heal and form a new life with the two of them.  During this time Sheila is trying to heal and find a way in herself to brave facing her daughter again.  Sheila has lived a hard life of drugs and prostitution and has a lot of cleaning up to do before she feels able to see her daughter and her church going mother again.

The relationships between these three women are strong, even when Sheila is not there.  There is a lot of grief and sadness and trying to find who they are and what they mean in the world.  This was a good stong book that I enjoyed quite a bit.

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Fiction, Sherri Reynolds

I was excited to see that there was a new book out by Tawni O’Dell and was happy to find that it was enjoyable.  While this was not quite as hard of a story as Coal Run or Back Roads it still had some of the same bite, dealt with some tough issues, and even took place in the same setting with some of the same people (the great Ivan Z) as her previous books.

This was the story of Shae-Lynn Penrose, a 40 something year old living in Jolly Mount, PA.  Her son, Clay, is a police officer in Jolly Mount following after Shae-Lynn’s footsteps as she had been a cop for many years.  She is a taxi driver running her own one person company and has a way of helping many people in her community as well as putting pieces of a mystery in her past together.

Shae-Lynn lived in a home with an abusive father and moved out as soon as she could leaving her younger sister, Shannon, behind.  She had not seen Shannon again and had some thoughts that her dad may have killed her sister.  To her surprise several strangers show up looking for Shannon, and Shannon herself drops back into Shae-Lynn’s life almost as if she had never been gone.

Shae-Lynn pieces together the stories from the people she has met who are looking for Shannon and learns that her sister has been having babies and adopting them out at a high price…a very high price.  And as she is looking to get out of the baby business she has promised the baby that she is pregnant with to two different people, trying to draw in enough to “retire.”

This story is filled with the same colorful characters as past books and even with the subject matter I felt it was a little lighter then her previous novels.  I only hope that she keeps writing.

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Fiction, Tawni O'Dell

I finally broke down and started reading the Twilight series.  I hadn’t been planning to but after hearing so many people rave about them and after noticing that Stephanie Meyer had three (or was it four?) of the top five selling books in 2009 I decided it was time.

New Moon continues on where Twilight left off with Bella and Edward happily in love and together.  This quickly changes after an accident at the Cullen household where Bella gets a paper cut and starts to bleed…leading to a potentially dangerous situation as she is in a house full of vampires.  Edward breaks up with Bella and the family moves away, but only after Edward makes Bella promise to be careful.

After she goes through a period of depression she decides the only way to bring Edward back to her is to start living dangerously.  She befriends an old family friend, Jacob, who begins to repair a motorcycle for her and who also develops a crush on her.  They become very good friends until Jacob goes through a change.  Bella later finds out that he is a werewolf, with the goal of hunting vampires.  She also learns that a vampire is in the area to get her as revenge to the Cullens.

Bella continues to take risks, including a cliff jump that Edward’s sister sees and interprets as a suicide attempt.  Edward, thinking that Bella is dead, goes to the leading vampire family in the world to ask for death.  Bella is able to barely stop him but because they learn that she knows about them they need to promise to turn Bella into a vampire. 

As I read through this summary, I have to think that my initial reaction to this book still holds true (to me).  It was an interesting story line but not the typical genre that I like to read.  I like books that I can believe in, stories that ring true.  I was entertained by this book but I did not feel that it was something that really touched me in ways that many other books have.

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Fiction, Stephanie Meyer

This book ties in several main themes.  It is a story about the immigration of Greta and Johanna Cahill, and their friend Michael Ward, from Ireland to America.  Johanna and Greta grew up in an isolated region of Ireland.  Johanna was always the leader and Greta was more of an awkward dreamer.  Michael is a “tinker” a part of a family who travels around Ireland with no real routes.  His mother dies in a field near the Cahill’s home and when Michael decides to put down roots he is drawn back to the place where his mother was buried.

Johanna wants to explore and convinces Michael to go to America with her.  Johanna’s mother decides that Greta will go with them.  They take a boat to New York and soon are living a new life.  Greta is unexpectedly thriving in a new place.  Johanna gets pregnant with Michael’s baby and soon after having the baby decides to leave, leaving her baby in care of Greta.  Greta and Michael become partners, a team, raising the baby as there own and falling in love themselves.  They have more children and weather through many years together, both good and bad. 

Johanna comes back into contact with them and it is a dividing decision that Greta has made to never tell her daughter that Johanna was her birth mother.  This keeps the sisters and the family apart for many years, eating at a relationship that was once very strong.  This book has a nice resolution in the end and I felt like it was a good easy read.  The characters were well developed and the relationships were strong.

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Fiction, Mary Beth Keane