Month: January 2023

nonfiction · true crime

Book Review: Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker

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A friend recommended Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker (Harper, 2013). I thought it sounded interesting, so onto my TBR it went. It wasn’t until I had my library copy in my hands that I went, “Wait…haven’t I read this author before?” And I had. I read his Hidden Valley Road last year and enjoyed it. Love it when this happens!

Imagine my surprise when I opened the book to find that one of its subjects came from the area I lived in in Connecticut for five years. Southeastern Connecticut is kind of an out-of-the-way place; there’s not much there, so you never hear much about it. But I was familiar with so many of the places in this book, so that definitely spoke to me.

Robert Kolker covers the stories of some of the victims of a suspected serial killer on Long Island, one who has never been identified or found. All the victims were escorts, leading to a lackadaisical attitude among law enforcement for finding their killers. Ten bodies were eventually discovered (including a toddler who, at least at the writing of this book, was never identified); law enforcement never seemed in much of a hurry to figure out who did this.

If anything, Lost Girls truly helped me understand the attitude among law enforcement toward sex workers. They aren’t people; if they get hurt, it’s their own fault; no one needs to waste time or resources on figuring out who killed them, since if anyone really cared about these women, they wouldn’t have been sex workers in the first place.

Except that’s not at all how any of this works. The families of these women are devastated. To this day, they’re still out in front of the press, pushing for answers, desperate for justice. These women were loved, cared for. They were HUMAN BEINGS who didn’t deserve their grisly fate – NO ONE DOES – and the fact that ten people were murdered and discarded and there’s still no answer and no push for answers, is unacceptable. What I truly learned from this book is how little society cares for sex workers, and that’s just depressing. That’s something that will stick with me, and I’ll challenge anyone I hear trying to push this attitude that women like these don’t matter.

Devastating story, one that I hope will have answers someday soon.

Visit Robert Kolker’s website here.

Follow him on Twitter here.

memoir · nonfiction

Book Review: Killing Season: A Paramedic’s Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Opioid Epidemic by Peter Canning

Stephanie2 Comments

No matter how much we think we understand something, we can always deepen our understanding, right? Addiction is a subject that I’m always trying to increase my understanding of, and thankfully, there are others, especially professionals, who feel the same. It’s for this reason I put Killing Season: A Paramedic’s Dispatches from the Front Line of the Opioid Epidemic by Peter Canning (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021) on my TBR. It’s an utterly remarkable read.

Peter Canning has worked as paramedic for the majority of his adult life (he’s also worked in politics), and when he first started, he had the attitude toward addiction that was pervasive at the time: addicts are the way they are due to personal weakness or some other character flaw. But as his career progressed and he worked with more and more people caught in the clutches of opioid and heroin addiction, he came to the striking realization that this is a condition that could happen to almost anyone.

Mr. Canning did something remarkable, something more medical professionals need to do: he talked with the people he served. He asked them questions. He listened. The most profound question he asked was, “How did you start using?” or something similar. And to his surprise, almost every patient responded with something like, “It was after I got in that car accident,” or “When I hurt my shoulder at work,” or “I had surgery on my ankle.” Almost every single patient got hooked after an illness or injury where they were prescribed opioids. If you’ve ever been in that situation, you could’ve been one of the people Mr. Canning stops from overdosing on the streets of Hartford, Connecticut. Opioids are that easy to become addicted to.

The tides have turned a bit in terms of how we look at and treat addicts, but not enough, and Peter Canning is working hard to turn them a bit more, to try to push society to understand that substance use disorder isn’t a moral failure; it’s a medical condition whose sufferers deserve to be treated with respect and dignity, and harm reduction measures are so important in order to maintain the health and safety of those caught up in the clutches of these substances. Corpses can’t go to rehab; people need to be taken care of until they’re ready to make that step.

This is an utterly remarkable book that will change the way you look at addiction and the people suffering from it. It’ll break your heart, and it’ll challenge everything you ever thought you knew. Opioids have their place (as someone who suffers from chronic pain, I understand this – and I also understand how dangerous they can be), but we need better options, better understanding, better education, more science – on pain control, on rehabilitation measures, on everything surrounding addiction medicine. We as a society deserve this, and people suffering from substance use disorder deserve the dignity of being seen and treated as the human beings they are. I’m so very, very glad I read this book.

Visit Peter Canning’s website here.

Follow him on Twitter here.

memoir · nonfiction

Book Review: Refocusing My Family: Coming Out, Being Cast Out, and Discovering the True Love of God by Amber Cantorna

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Cults and high-control religious groups are a longtime fascination of mine, and there are definite factions of evangelical Christianity that fall into this group (someone I attended high school with has fallen into one of these groups, unfortunately. It might actually be more than one; I’m not sure which group the second person affiliates with). I end up reading everything I can about these groups, and it was digging through a list of these books that I discovered Refocusing My Family: Coming Out, Being Cast Out, and Discovering the True Love of God by Amber Cantorna (Fortress Press, 2017).

Amber Cantorna grew up the daughter of one of Focus on the Family’s top employees; her father worked for Focus almost his entire career. If you’re not familiar with this organization, it’s an evangelical Christian organization that guides families using a strict evangelical interpretation of the Bible. Amber was homeschooled, she grew up steeped in purity culture, and she knew her future would be one of marriage and motherhood, because that was the only acceptable future for a Christian girl. But as Amber grew, things didn’t quite fit in place the way Focus on the Family demanded them to, and she was left feeling…out of place. Not quite right.

It wasn’t until her early adulthood that Amber realized she was a lesbian. Coming out to her parents took a lot of courage, work, and help from her therapist, and it still couldn’t have gone worse. Her parents ended up cutting off contact. They weren’t there at her wedding, and as of the writing of the book, it seems as though they no longer speak to her.

It’s painful still, but Amber has managed to salvage her faith and grow into the person she was meant to become, with her wife at her side. She writes books and speaks to groups about living as a gay Christian and the importance of inclusion. Despite being abandoned by the family who once told her they would always be there for her, she’s managed to craft a beautiful life for herself. Living well truly is the best revenge.

Tough read in terms of story, but it’s ultimately one of triumph. I’m glad Ms. Cantorna has turned her pain into support for others, and I hope all the people who need to hear her story will find their way to this book.

Visit Amber Cantorna’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

fiction · YA

Book Review: The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen by Isaac Blum

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Woohoo, Jewish books! Always looking to add them to my list, and I was super excited to learn about the existence of The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen by Isaac Blum (Philomel Books, 2022). There aren’t a ton of YA books set in an Orthodox community (I do manage to find some from time to time!), so this one particularly excited me.

Yehuda ‘Hoodie’ Rosen’s Orthodox community recently moved from its mostly-Jewish area to a smaller, non-Jewish area, and everyone is feeling the strain of being the new folks in town who don’t fit in (no thanks to the longtime residents who don’t exactly roll out the welcome mat). He’s a bit of a slacker at school, kind of laid-back, but things start to change in his life when he meets Anna-Marie, the daughter of the mayor. Hoodie starts to fall for her, despite her not being Jewish (really, he shouldn’t be talking to her at all, as per community norms…), and when his family finds out, Hoodie is in t.r.o.u.b.l.e.

But things aren’t going well for his community. There’s antisemitic graffiti. Nasty comments. Violence. Hoodie’s just trying to reach out, form some bonds, make things better, right? It doesn’t much matter; Hoodie’s definitely on the outs for spending time with not just an outsider, but a girl. And then the shooting happens.

This is a fabulous look into a world most of us don’t get to see. If you’re not Jewish, there may be a term or a concept here and there that’s unfamiliar; in that case, Google is your friend (understanding these things really does add depth to the story, and hey, learning is always good, so don’t miss out! And feel free to ask me in the comments if you read this and need help with anything. I’m always happy to help!). Hoodie’s world may seem a little small, but it’s really not; it’s rich with family, friends, community, learning. It may not always be the best fit for everyone, and some people may struggle a bit (and this is illustrated in the story in gentle ways), but I really appreciated Mr. Blum’s fair look at this particular community.

Hoodie’s attraction to Anna-Marie is a little heart-breaking, at least it was from my adult perspective. It’s doomed from the start, and Anna-Marie has an entirely different mindset from him, along with a streak of…I don’t want to say cruelty, maybe indifference, that shows up later on. Both characters have some growing up to do – entirely understandable, as they’re both teenagers – so they struggle to navigate their differences and places in the world, and Anna-Marie’s reasons for getting to know Hoodie in the first place aren’t exactly noble. But the violence wrought upon the community changes everything, and Mr. Blum does a phenomenal job at handling this. Truly fantastic writing in the final quarter of the book.

I really enjoyed this. The characters are complex and well-crafted, each one a distinct personality; the Orthodox community is portrayed wonderfully and fairly, and the novel as a whole works really well. For a debut novel, this is amazing, and I’m seriously looking forward to reading everything Isaac Blum writes in the future.

Visit Isaac Blum’s website here.

Follow him on Twitter here.

Monthly roundup

Monthly Roundup: December 2023

Stephanie2 Comments

Happy New Year!

2023. I was born in the 80’s; 2023 sounds like we should be at the height of futuristic technology: flying cars, hologram traveling, that sort of thing. Instead, we have a pandemic that won’t die because we’ve decided it’s more important that the economy is strong and thriving than humanity.

OY.

It wasn’t a bad year here at the Library household, though. We’ve all remained healthy, knock-on-wood (we’re still extremely careful: N95s everywhere we go, hand sanitizers in every car, no hanging out maskless with anyone, everyone is up to date on vaccines. I have ZERO desire to get long COVID). My daughter came home from public school to be homeschooled when the mask mandates dropped, and we’re finally in a really good place, with a great schedule that works for both of us, and learning methods that really seem to work for her. I had to play with it a LOT this year, shifting things around when her behavior made it clear that what we were doing wasn’t working, but that’s all been a good reminder for me to stay flexible and never get too dialed in to whatever it is we’re doing. The point is that she learns, not necessarily that she learns with the first thing we try.

But let’s talk books and get this roundup started, shall we?

Books I Read in December 2022

1. The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

2. The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide by Steven W. Thrasher

3. The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischman (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

4. The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen by Isaac Blum (review to come)

5. My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

6. Refocusing My Family: Coming Out, Being Cast Out, and Discovering the True Love of God by Amber Cantorna (review to come)

7. Killing Season: A Paramedic’s Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Opioid Epidemic by Peter Canning (review to come)

8. The Worst Witch by Jill Murphy (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

9. A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School by Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire (no review)

10. The Travel Book: A Journey Through Every Country in the World by Roz Hopkins (no review; read as part of my daughter’s school)

11. The Worst Witch Saves the Day by Jill Murphy (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

12. Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker (review to come)

13. Life on the Line: Young Doctors Come of Age in a Pandemic by Emma Goldberg (review to come)

14. After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made by Ben Rhodes (no review; I’m not smart enough for that)

15. Eva and Eve: A Search for My Mother’s Lost Childhood and What a War Left Behind by Julie Metz (review to come)

16. You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) by Felicia Day (review to come)

Lots of reading to my daughter this month! The Egypt Game was one I missed as a kid, but both my daughter and I really loved it. The Travel Book is something I pulled off my shelves at the beginning of the pandemic, and we began learning about one country per day, moving the magnetized pin on our wall map onto the country of the day. And this month, we finally finished it! Such a cool experience. We may go back to the book in the future, but for now, we’re using different books in the morning: some nature stuff, a history book with a small entry each day, and a very large poetry book.

Still behind on posting reviews, but I’ll catch up, I promise!

Six fiction, ten nonfiction; five books read aloud to my daughter. Ten of these books came from my TBR.

Reading Challenge Updates

Okay, friends. Buckle up.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my reading lately. Now, y’all know how much I love nonfiction and challenging my brain a little bit. But I’ve been thinking a lot about balance lately, and how I really do need to dive into fiction a little more frequently. And so this year, I’ve decided to take part in the 2023 POPSUGAR Reading Challenge!

There are so many good categories this year, and out of the 50 categories, I can still fit in 25 books from my TBR, so that’s what made this challenge the winner for me. And for the remaining 25, I’ve got a lot of stuff that I’ve wanted to read, but that never made my TBR, so it’s really a win-win all around. I’m really excited to get started on this, so stick around to follow my progress. If you’re participating in this challenge as well, let me know!

The last reading challenge I completed was the 2020 POPSUGAR Reading Challenge, and then the pandemic screwed with my schedule and I couldn’t get it together to do any others, but I’ve got everything planned out this year, and I’ve totally got this. : )

State of the Goodreads TBR

Last month, I started off at 127 books. A few got taken off, a few got added on, leaving me currently at…125 books.

Book math, y’all.

But it really could be worse. It didn’t explode back into the 150’s or 160’s like I was kinda expecting it to, so I’m definitely happy with this number.

NOW.

I’m ending the year at 125 books, but I started it at 162 books.

I read 180 books this year, most of them from my TBR, but MY TBR ONLY WENT DOWN BY 37 BOOKS?!?!!??

RUDE.

Books I Acquired in December 2022

I picked up a few Jewish books from Half Price Books early in the month; It’s a Mitzvah by Bradley Shavit Artson, and Remix Judaism: Preserving Tradition in a Diverse World by Roberta Rosenthal Kwall (which is on my TBR). Both came home with me, so I’m looking forward to engaging with them.  

I did buy some other books, but those were for my daughter. She received the full set of Raina Telgemeier graphic novels, and she was THRILLED! Now she can stop checking them out of the library every. single. time. we. go.

Bookish Things I Did in December 2022

No bookish events!

Current Podcast Love

Listening to Behind the Bastards as I fall asleep; Robert Evans is so smart and funny and such a great researcher and writer, and I really enjoy this one a lot. I’ve also been listening to some Ologies with Alie Ward, which is always lovely.

I’ve also been working on a lot of cross-stitching lately, and as I stitch, I listen to Leaving Eden, the story of Sadie Carpenter’s life in and exit from the IFB cult. I adore this one SO MUCH, and I’m so very, very far behind in it, but I have a *lot* of stitching to do, so I may get caught up yet! I also listen when I’m in the kitchen, so that helps as well.

And when I bike or treadmill at night, I’m listening to Digging Up the Duggars, which is also a lot of fun and keeps me looking forward to exercising!

Stephanie’s Read Harder Challenge

Still making my way through The Good Earth by Pearl Buck. I don’t have much left to go; when I finish, I’m already planning on starting Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, which I’ve somehow managed to not read yet. It’s already waiting for me on my footstool!

Real Life Stuff

Another pandemic year down in the books.

It’s been another weird one. Started out pandemic-normal, and then the schools near us dropped their mask mandates, and we pulled our daughter out of school and became instant homeschoolers. Not as crazy as it sounds; I homeschooled my older son until he went to fourth grade (at or above everywhere he needed to be in terms of grade level, tyvm!), so I knew what I was doing. It hasn’t been without its challenges; my daughter is a completely different kid in terms of personality, so it’s taken a LOT of switching things up and around to figure out what works for her. I *think* we’re in a good place right now in terms of the kind of schedule and learning methods that work for her. We’re far beyond the place I thought we would be at this point in terms of what we have done, so I’m happy with her progress. We’re going to be focusing a lot on her writing in this new year. She’ll eventually go back to school, and I want her to be a strong writer when she does.

My grandmother died this past month. It wasn’t unexpected; she was in her late 80’s and had pretty severe Alzheimer’s and cancer, so we’re glad she’s not suffering anymore. She was my last grandparent. I feel pretty fortunate to have lived to 42 having grandparents in my life. She was a librarian and a teacher, and my love of books is, in a large part, thanks to her. I find comfort in the fact that I’ve passed that love on to my children, that I taught them to read, and that that little part of her lives on in us, in my children, every time they read a word.

Other than that, December was a pretty quiet month around here. No hustle and bustle here, just Hanukkah candles, a delicious platter of latkes (I get better at making these every year!), a low-key Christmas, and lots of reading during the cold snap.

In terms of New Years goals, I’ve got plans to continue my personal Read Harder challenge, and I’m going to use that to encompass reading everything in the house. This has been on my mind for a while; I own so many books that I *want* to read, but that I just don’t make time for. This will be a way to force me to make them for them, even as I continue (slowly) reading down my TBR. (WHICH I WILL. I WILL CONQUER YOU, TBR.) So stay tuned as I update my progress on that.

I wish you all a happy, healthy, peaceful, and prosperous 2023, full of many good books and lots of insight and introspection!