Good morning/afternoon/evening, readers! I hope you’re having a fabulous day. Would you look at that- it’s Wednesday again, so that means it’s time for another WWW Wednesday! (Again? Wasn’t it just Wednesday???)
WWW Wednesday is a superfun bookish meme hosted by the lovely Sam of Taking on a World of Words (hi Sam! Thanks for hosting!). It’s all about answering three VERY important book-related questions:
What are you currently reading? What did you recently finish reading? What do you think you’ll read next?
Are you ready? Let’s play!
What are you currently reading?
So, I’m still sick. I woke up yesterday feeling like I’d been run over by a bus, with pain still raging in the left side of my face, head, and jaw (and coughing! I’m still coughing!). Off to the doctor we went, and I came home with a prescription for stronger antibiotics. So far, they *seem* to be working out better (*crosses fingers*); I’m not as bad off this morning as I was yesterday. All that is to say that last night, I was half-dead and wanted to throw myself in bed and read something that I didn’t have to work for, that I could just lie there, try not to die, and get lost in the story. Second Chances by Lauren Dane, the story of a woman who returns to her hometown after years away, fit that bill. I read through 30-some percent of it and then crashed, but I’m enjoying it so far.
What did you recently finish reading?
I couldn’t resist Big Rock by Lauren Blakely; any book that can make such innuendos with both the cover and the title (and the font!) gets my inner twelve-year-old snort-laughing.
I also finished American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment by Shane Bauer. This was utterly amazing, infuriating, and eye-opening. It’s the kind of book that makes you need to take a breather every once in a while, because some of the information in there is just so brutal and intense. I cannot recommend this highly enough, especially if you live in the US.
What do you think you’ll read next?
So, usually I have a whole stack of books lined up, just waiting for me. This illness has seriously kicked my butt, and I’m plum worn out. I have no stack other than the books on my own shelves (and we all know those don’t count, right?). I’m really hoping to be back to my normal self in the next few days and get back to my regular reading. After making a stop at the grocery store today, my daughter and I are going to hit up the library in a nearby town; they’ve got a few books from my TBR list (whether they’re in stock remains to be seen), including The Solace of Water by Elizabeth Younts, Guantanamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi, andThe Idea of You by Robinne Lee. So hopefully one of those will be next on the list, and hopefully I’ll be back to normal soon!
And that’s it for this week’s WWW Wednesday! What are you reading this week???
Sometimes, you see a book’s cover and read the blurb and it’s so unbelievably over-the-top that you can’t even, and it goes straight onto your Goodreads TBR. That’s what happened with Big Rock by Lauren Blakely. Her name was one that kept coming up over and over again in the things I’ve been reading online and listening to, and so I figured I’d check her out. Off to my library website I went. Big Rock was one of two of her books that they had on the shelves, and after reading the premise, I snickered. Loudly. (For real, go read the Goodreads blurb. I’ll wait.) Apparently, the whole story started when, according to the acknowledgements, Ms. Blakely asked a friend if they could make a C look like an R, and…well, that’s some pretty clever graphic design, if you ask me. *snort*
Spencer is, to put it lightly, extremely well endowed. He knows how to use what he’s got, and the ladies about town appreciate his playboy ways. His life thus far is pretty sweet- son of the owner of one of the country’s most successful and well-known jewelry store chains, creator of the uber-profitable Boyfriend Material dating app (known for featuring absolutely zero dick pics), and now, with his best friend Charlotte, co-owner of The Lucky Spot, one of New York City’s hippest bars. With all that and a handsome face to boot, you’d think Spencer would be an insufferable asshole, but…he’s not. When his father decides he’s ready to retire and sail the seven seas with his wife, the man looking to buy his jewelry business is eyeing the WHOLE family before he makes his final decision, and this includes on-the-prowl Spencer. What’s a man about town to do but convince his best friend that a fake engagement will help Dad seal the deal?
But as we all know, when it comes to romance novels, best friends and fake engagements don’t stay fake for long, and within days, Spencer and Charlotte are seriously burning it down. Spencer can’t believe all of this was sitting right under his nose for so long. Just as he’s come to terms with the fact that he’s feeling something he never expected to feel, it all heads south, and Spencer’s got to make things right, FAST, before he hurts and maybe even loses everyone he loves.
First off, I’m usually not at all a fan of the whole ‘fake dating/engagement/marriage’ trope. I don’t like lying in fiction and usually find the premise so unlikely that it kind of throws the whole rest of the story off. That didn’t really change here; I’m definitely not a convert to the trope and you won’t catch me singing its praises anytime soon. But Lauren Blakely made the story work well for me. Spencer is a fantastic character, carefully crafted in order to not stray into chauvinistic territory. He’s confident without being smug, alluring without being cocky, self-assured without being irritating. That’s no simple feat for a writer and I very much appreciate her hard work in that area. He may have had a different woman on his arm most nights before his agreement with Charlotte, but there were never any hurt feelings, and Spencer was not only respectful to women- all women- he routinely stepped in when other men were letting their misogynist flag fly. As both a narrator and the hero, Spencer gets an A+ and two enthusiastic thumbs up from me.
If you’re more in the market for a chaste romance, you can probably guess from the cover that Big Rock isn’t the book for you. This book is a five-alarm habanero bouquet with extra ghost pepper sauce. Have your fans and fainting couches at the ready, readers, because Lauren Blakely leaves scorch marks on every page, and you’ll find yourself panting, “I’ll have what she’s having!” after every smoking scene with Spencer and Charlotte.
Phew. I’m glad I picked this up. Spencer’s definitely more alpha male than what I typically enjoy, but having the story narrated by him and having his every thought accessible made him such a sympathetic character that it absolutely made this story. I’m definitely looking forward to reading more Lauren Blakely in the future! *dons fireproof suit*
Going hand in hand with my fascination with cults and other closed groups is my interest in prison (I mean, they’re all on the big list of Places I Will *Hopefully* Never Be, right?). I’ve got a list of ten other books I’ve read about prison; it’s one of those subjects that both intrigues and infuriates me, and I’ll almost always at least read the inside flap or back cover if the title makes it obvious prison is the subject of the book (and most of the time, the book ends up coming home with me). Hearing about American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment by Shane Bauer had me running straight for Goodreads and clicking on the Want to Read button.
In 2014, working with Mother Jones magazine, Shane Bauer went undercover at Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield, Louisiana, employed as a prison guard making $9 per hour. You read that correctly; starting pay for prison guards in a private correctional center, whose lives are in danger the second they step into their workplace, who suffer from rates of post-traumatic stress disorder higher than soldiers returning from the Middle East and who commit suicide at a rate two-and-a-half times higher than the general population, barely make over minimum wage. This assignment wasn’t just a way for Bauer to get a sneak peek at the world of privately run prisons; it was personal. In 2009, Bauer, along with two others, were hiking in Iraqi Kurdistan and accidentally strayed too close to the Iranian border; as a result, Bauer spent 26 months in an Iranian prison. Upon his return home, still suffering from PTSD, he became interested in the US prison system and found himself at Winn, a private prison run by then-Corrections Corportation of America (CCA), now known as CoreCivic.
In the four months that Bauer spends as a guard at Winn, he witnesses a host of human rights violations, including denying inmates medical care (while no one died under Bauer’s watch, he does recount the story of several inmates passed away due to Winn’s negligence, and mentions contact with an inmate who lost his feet and fingers due to gangrene that Winn refused to treat until it was too late; Robert Scott eventually settled out of court with CCA, but you can read his complaint here, where they gave him corn removal strips and shoe inserts to treat his gangrene), denying them food and water, and cutting security in order to save money until no one is safe (one correctional officer watches video feeds from at least 30 cameras; at meal time, two unarmed officers supervise 800 inmates). Physical and mental health care for inmates is stripped to the bone or whatever is past that, and Bauer and his fellow guards have nothing but a radio with which to call for backup to protect themselves (presumably to call other officers who are armed solely with a radio?). If you’re familiar with the Stanford Prison Experiment, Bauer’s experiences at Winn mimic that; over time, he finds himself becoming angrier, enjoying the power he holds over the inmates, acting out of a sense of revenge and malice instead of the level-headed reporter he walked in as. He realizes he’s changing but is powerless to stop the prison’s effect on his thinking, his demeanor, his morale. Just as he’s considering quitting but is finding it difficult to break away, his hand is forced due to an emergency situation with a fellow reporter and the local police, and Shane Bauer flees Louisiana to write and publish his story.
Interspersed with Bauer’s personal tale is the history of corrections in America and how racism and the drive for profiting off the suffering of others has shaped the industry. There is no discussion of prison in America without delving heavily into America’s history of racism, and there’s a LOT of information in here that will have any decent person seeing red. Penitentiaries only came into favor in the South in order to give white people a separate punishment from slaves. Consider this quote: “People like Governor Claiborne worried that whites, kept in the same miserable quarters as enslaved African Americans, might naturally sympathize with their plight and become potential recruits for the abolitionist cause. A penitentiary would help that.” Adding to that horror is the fact that pre-Civil War Louisiana made money from selling inmates’ children into slavery; when slaves were imprisoned in mixed-gender populations, female prisoners would become pregnant, and though they were allowed to raise their children until the age of 10, past that, the child would be auctioned off, and the proceeds would be used to fund white schools. I spent a lot of time reading this book, staring off into space, taking a few deep breaths and quietly seething.
Beyond that, the history of American corrections is one that leans heavily on torture. There are content warnings for this book due to descriptions of fairly graphic punishments that absolutely qualify as torture, some of which result in death (multiple torture-based deaths are mentioned throughout the book). There are also multiple mentions of prison rape, but none are graphic; more disturbing is the general attitude of the corrections industry that rape in prison is inevitable and there’s no point or reason in trying to prevent it.
American Prison is an absolutely chilling and upsetting exposé that needs to be read by every American citizen. While I take no issue with prison itself and the need for a place to rehabilitate criminals, I very much take issue with our lack of rehabilitative programs in general. We are a society whose corrections correct nothing; instead of preparing criminals to return to society as better citizens and human beings, we exact revenge on them for their crimes, and if we return them to society at all, it’s as people who are far more damaged than when they went in, who have few or no skills necessary to make a healthy place for themselves in American society, and who have little chance to avoid returning to prison. (Along those lines, American society does little to invest in its people from the start; watching any show based on prison- Jailbirds on Netflix is an example of something I’ve recently watched- or reading anything about prisons and prisoners make it obvious that this is a society-deep problem; parents and parenting, lack of jobs that pay a living wage, drugs, lack of basic necessities such as food, medical care, and housing, underfunded educational systems, poor daycare options, all of this and more go into the failure of what leads people down the path to imprisonment, and we do little to counter any of it. The prisons alone aren’t at fault, but their brutality doesn’t remedy anything.)
Bauer does a phenomenal job of maintaining a cool journalistic mien in his reporting of the absolute hellhole that is CCA/CoreCivic. In many, many instances, CCA falsifies data to the state and remarks that they had no record of incidents that Bauer personally witnessed and recorded (and for which there would have been a paper trail). Bauer’s accounts of the travesties committed by CCA/CoreCivic aren’t the first criticisms I’ve read about the private prison industry, and I have nothing even close to resembling a positive opinion of them or the idea of making money off of forced labor or imprisonment.
If you’ve never read a book about prison, American Prison would be a good place to start. I’ve read quite a few, and while some of the historical information was both new and shocking to me, nothing Mr. Bauer stated about working in a private prison or about CCA/CoreCivic itself was new to me. Even before his article came out, the company was on the defensive, guns blazing, with accusations about Bauer’s journalistic integrity and his lack of understanding of company policy (which is rich, coming from a company who was ready to promote him right before he left). His every mention of CCA/CoreCivic left a bad taste in my mouth, and honestly, it’s horrifying to me that a company is allowed to run like this at all. In other words, based on the reading I’ve done over many years, I’m entirely confident in Mr. Bauer’s account of his time at Winn, I wouldn’t trust a single thing said by CCA/CoreCivic, and I highly recommend American Prison.
Another glorious month of reading is in the books! (Heh. Pun intended.) These monthly roundup posts are probably my favorite kinds of posts to pull together. Seeing everything I read throughout the past month, reflecting on the things I’ve learned…it feels kind of cool, you know?
This hasn’t been the easiest month. My daughter was sick, AGAIN. Two doctor appointments later, she was finally diagnosed with a sinus infection…and then I got sick (which is what happens when you spend an entire week mopping up your kid’s snot and catching her coughed-so-hard-she-puked vomit in your bare hands). It was a pretty awful three-day weekend over Memorial Day (yes, we have urgent care, but it’s still $100 bucks just to walk in the door, but suffering and misery for three days until you can see the regular doctor means only a $25 copay! Yay, American healthcare…). I was able to get into the doctor Tuesday morning; she peered into my ears and up my nose and threw a crapload of antibiotics at me, because my ears and sinuses are a hot mess. I’m still experiencing some discomfort, but it’s not as fierce as it was in the beginning, thank goodness.
Fortunately, this was a pretty great month for reading, so let’s get down to the business of what I read this month, shall we?
23. This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America- Morgan Jerkins (no review due to illness)
24. What the Witch Left- Ruth Chew (no review, read out loud to my daughter)
25. The Butterfly Mosque: A Young American Woman’s Journey to Love and Islam- G. Willow Wilson (no review due to illness)
26. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic- Alison Bechdel (no review due to illness)
27. The Best We Could Do- Thi Bui (no review due to illness)
Doing nothing but hanging out at home and being sick gives you a lot of time to read…
Book Challenges Update
This is the month I finished both the reading challenges I took up at the beginning of the year! Having never finished a challenge in the past, this feels like a big deal for me. 🙂
For a book in the backlist of a favorite author, I read Welcome to Temptation by Jennifer Crusie; for my third book of the year by the same author, I read Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren; and for a book I chose for the cover, I read Sold on a Monday by Kristina McMorris. Voilà! First completed challenge. 🙂
And then, because I have to get everything done as fast as possible in order to prevent my anxiety from flaring because there are THINGS LEFT UNDONE, I also completed Book Riot’s 2019 Read Harder Challenge! Here’s what that list looks like:
Yay me!!! I’m pretty proud of myself for being able to stick with these tasks until completion. I’ve discovered a ton of new authors, learned some fascinating and disturbing things, opened my mind to new ways of thinking, visited far away places in distance and time, read new-to-me formats… I started the Modern Mrs. Darcy Reading Challenge because I wanted to see if I could even complete a challenge at all, and I picked up the Read Harder Challenge because I felt like it would help me grow as a reader. It definitely did, and I’m planning on taking up this challenge in the future as well.
And now I’m completely challengeless! What’s a girl to do? Well, I’ve got 97 books on my Goodreads TBR (it WAS down to 50, thank you SO much, fellow book bloggers, for constantly posting about interesting books that I just HAVE to read… :D), so I’m going to focus on plowing through that for a bit. I’ve got so many books on there I’m looking forward to!
Books I Acquired in May 2019
There was this book haul:
from that used book sale, which was unbelievably magic because it was the place where I found the book I’d been looking for since I was TWELVE YEARS OLD. I still can’t get over that, and I’m soooooooooo looking forward to reading that book (which I’m entirely sure is going to be all kinds of early 1980’s romance problematic) as soon as I finish with my current stack. This is going to be FUN.
And then I was lucky enough to win The View from Alameda Island by Robyn Carr from Always With a Book! Kristin always posts such interesting content and hosts fantastic giveaways; Robyn Carr has gotten a lot of mentions on the podcast I’m listening to lately, so I’m really looking forward to reading this. Thanks, Kristin!
Bookish Things I Did in May 2019
The aforementioned book sale was the absolute highlight of my month! I don’t know if I’ll ever stop being happy I found that book and can stop wondering what the heck it is! Once I read down what my library has of my TBR stash, I’ll start reading the books I got from that sale while I wait for interlibrary loans to come in. 🙂
I wasn’t able to make this month’s library book discussion group (my son had a choir concert that night), but I did go in on the first day and sign up for the adult summer reading program! There’s not a ton I want in regards to prizes (I’m putting all my tickets in for the Kindle Fire, but I assume most everyone else will be as well, so I’m not holding my breath), but I’m thrilled just to participate and help bump the library’s numbers up. Each sheet has ten spaces to fill in; after that, you can pick up a new sheet, up to five sheets. I figure I’ll get pretty close, if not finish it; I’ve already turned in two sheets…
Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is fabulous!!! I’ve added a buttload of books to my TBR and learned a whole lot from the amazing variety of guests they have on- authors, bloggers (the episode with Kristy, aka Caffeinated Fae, talking about the #copypastecris scandal is so interesting!), podcasters, publishing industry people, there’s really something here for everyone. If you’re a writer (especially of but not limited to romance), there’s also a ton of great advice to be found in this podcast (which I’m mentally squirreling away for when my daughter goes to kindergarten and I have quiet time once again!). I’m SO enjoying every second of listening to this podcast.
Real Life Stuff
Again, not the greatest of months. We *just* had the pukes mid-April, and then my daughter started coughing the day of her birthday party, April 28. The cough lingered for a few weeks…and then came the snot. Rivers and rivers of it, and then a nasty fever that wouldn’t die. We had a few more episodes of puking (snot and coughing, they’re not great together), and finally, on her second doctor trip, they diagnosed a sinus infection. I was already coughing with a sore throat then, but eight days later, I was back in the office, feeling as though someone had kicked me in the face. Antibiotics for everyone! Great googly-moogly, we need a healthier month around here.
My daughter finished preschool!!! I don’t often post photos of her online, but this is too cute not to. First day of preschool:
And the last day (she still had a mega-runny nose here, but had been on meds long enough that I felt okay with her attending the hour-long goodbye party):
She’s changed SO MUCH these past two years! She won the Sweetheart Award, for being sweet and kind and polite to everyone at school (which thrills me and makes me mildly irritated that they’re getting such a different version of my child than the one I get! :D). Onward to kindergarten in August! 🙂
My son finished up his junior year; he’ll be attending some choir-related camps in June, which will include being gone for his birthday, which is a bummer for me, but I understand. He made Madrigals for his choir next year, which is a HUGE deal, and I’m so proud of him (and can’t wait to see him dressed up in Madrigal clothing).
Coming up in June, my son will turn 17 (NOT ACTUALLY POSSIBLE), and he’ll do one and possibly two choir camps. I’ll have another book sale put on by the same people who did the last magical book sale, so who knows what I’ll find there???
My daughter and I are going to be working on her reading this summer. She can read Level 1 books at a slow pace (although she does a lot of guessing. She knows how to sound things out, but she’d rather take what she thinks is the faster route), so my goal is to just keep swimming with her and increase her fluency and fluidity. She’s not a huge fan of the process, but she’s super excited having DONE the reading, and she does enjoy a good story, so hopefully we’ll start her off on the right foot in kindergarten. 🙂
And that’s it! How was your May? Hopefully much healthier than mine!!!
It’s been a rough few weeks around these parts. My daughter has basically been sick in some form or another since the end of March, and my body finally gave up the fight last week and succumbed to the current form of crud that she’s suffering, leaving me with a combo ear/sinus infection, which made me feel like I’ve been kicked in the face. After a few days on antibiotics, it’s improving, but I still have some face/head pain and a cough, and I’m still worn the heck out.
That’s not to say that I’m not reading- being sick has actually been pretty good for reading. But I’m like four reviews behind, and I have a review book I need to get a post up for, plus another post for someone else, and that’s not counting the 238423794832 things I do and have to do in my daily life (I’ll be mowing the lawn again this weekend, for example, and cleaning the entire house because we have family coming over for lunch one of the days).
So I’m going to skip writing reviews for those four books (library books that I’ve read on my own, not review books. I would never skip out on those!) and hopefully work on those other two posts this weekend instead. Next week is a little more calm, the kids are done with school for the summer, and there should be less running around for me, so things will be a little more relaxed (in theory!), and I’ll start up writing reviews for what I read then.
We all need to throw in the towel sometimes. I just need to pause, catch my breath a little (in between the coughing fits, of course), and then get back on track.
What do you do when you get overwhelmed with life? How do you keep your blogging on track? Do you review every single book you read, or do you skip some here and there?
Ahhhh, love. And books about love. Aren’t they both grand? And no one knows books about love better than Sarah Wendell, the woman behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. If you’ve never checked them out, don’t let the name fool you: this is a site about feminism, female empowerment, and encouraging and promoting the best of ourselves and our sisters, all under the guise of kissing books (and I love it all!). I’ve been listening to the podcast for two months now, slowly (I start it up as I get into bed, and then the next night, I start it again where I fell asleep…A single episode sometimes takes a few days!), I enjoy their cover snark posts, their reviews, their sense of humor and their ability to snark on anything, and I’ve learned so much from them. Years ago, I read and enjoyed Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan, and so I knew I’d also love Ms. Wendell’s Everything I Know About Love I Learned from Romance Novels.
Straight off, this is a love letter to the genre. It’s a book that emphasizes everything good about romance novels, from empowering women to take charge of their own lives and destinies, to helping women understand what they do and don’t want in a romantic partner. There are so many myths out there about romance books- that they raise women’s expectations in an unrealistic manner (trust us, we all know we’re not getting a mullet-haired, open-shirted, kilt-wearing beefcake whose abs have more waves and ripples than the Pacific, to bend us backwards for an almost-kiss in the moonlight with a snow-capped mountain in the background), that they’re so formulaic and predictable ANYONE could write them (the people who say this never seem to have author credits to their name, nor can they name any romance novels that they’ve read), etc, but Ms. Wendell blasts these myths out of the water with real-life examples from both readers and authors. It’s charming, it’s funny, it’s moving and inspiring, and I added a few books to my TBR list because of it. (And the podcast. Dear God, that podcast has added SO much to my TBR. I woke up the other morning around 4 am with the podcast still going in my ear, just in time to hear the guest talk about a book she recently loved and it was 100% right up my alley, and I added it to my Goodreads list at that very moment, in the dark, at 4 am. It’s a dangerous listen for the TBR!)
If you write romance or write books or stories with any kind of romantic element in it, you NEED to read this book. Trust me. There is SO much good advice in here when it comes to writing the kinds of healthy, realistic relationships that readers want in their books. I spent a lot of time reading this nodding my head, then staring off in the distance to think of how I was handling whatever issue was being discussed in my current WIP (on which I’m rarely able to W, because my daughter is engaged in an all-day-long monologue, broken up only by her need to have 27483274932 questions answered, and I’ve tried, but it’s utterly impossible to write when she’s here, so come August, I’ll hopefully get some writing done when she’s off to school!)
I definitely enjoyed the advice from the romance authors, but what stood out the most to me were the sections where the readers chimed in with the things they learned from the books they read: “That kind of hero makes for a good read, but I wouldn’t be able to stand him in real life,” “When the heroine was acting like that, I realized I do that too, and I immediately began to change my behavior,” and “It helped me to understand that I’m worthy of being treated better than I had been in my previous relationships” are all epiphanies that dawned on romance readers while they had their noses buried in a book. Who says you can’t learn anything from romance???
Everything I Learned About Love I Learned from Romance Novels is a fun, insightful look into a genre that has been demeaned since its inception but still marches on strong and never backs down. I for one am seriously glad that it does not, and I very much look forward to whatever Sarah Wendell offers us next, because her keen observations on the romance genre always strike the perfect chord with me.
Today was my weekly grocery shopping day, so that means it’s time for another WWW Wednesday, hosted by the fabulous Sam at Taking on a World of Words. Thanks for hosting, Sam!
(Also, I just remembered it’s WWW Wednesday. Just as my daughter started to recover from what was eventually diagnosed as a sinus infection, I started my downhill slide and ended up coming home from the doctor with two prescriptions yesterday. The three day weekend was no fun, and it’s been a looooooooooooooooong few weeks around here. I’m SO far behind on blog-related stuff, so if I owe you a post, I WILL get to it; I haven’t forgotten anything, I’m just sick and in pain. Anyhoo.)
WWW Wednesday is a superfun bookish meme all about answering three bookish questions:
What are you currently reading? What did you recently finish reading? What do you think you’ll read next?
Let’s get this party started!
What are you currently reading?
I’m a little over halfway through The Butterfly Mosque: A Young American Woman’s Journey to Love and Islam by G. Willow Wilson. The author had found herself drawn to Islam in college and ended up converting on a plane on her way to working as a teacher in Cairo. After a little bit of difficulty getting into this, I found my bearing and am really enjoying seeing Cairo and Islam through her eyes.
And that’s it! Hopefully by the next WWW Wednesday, I’ll be feeling more human, instead of feeling like I’ve been kicked in the face, because that’s apparently the thing with a sinus/double ear infection. (And if not, I may take a chainsaw to my own head…)
Happy reading, friends! What have you been reading this week???
If you’re new here, hi, my name is Stephanie and I’m deeply fascinated by all things cults and closed or insular groups (religious or otherwise, although adding in the religious factor does make the topic way more intriguing for me). I’ve got a document on my computer titled ‘Cult Books’ (although to be fair, some of the books on the list are just ‘I left this religion and here’s my story’ books, which I find equally interesting), and I whip it out and wave it at just about anyone who expresses even a vague interest in cults.
Because that’s a normal thing to do. Totally.
So when I came across Breaking Free: How I Escaped My Father- Warren Jeffs- Polygamy, and the FLDS Cult by Rachel Jeffs (HarperLuxe, 2017) last summer, I had to add it to my TBR, because duh. The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or FLDS, has long been a horror-filled obsession of mine; it’s not the polygamy that interests me (I mean, it does, but it’s not the main factor), but more the secretive nature of the group, its customs and mores that differ from the way you and I live. Its leader, Warren Jeffs, has been in the news for being the human version of a toxic waste spill almost all my adult life, and while I didn’t think I could find him even more despicable, Rachel Jeffs has proved me wrong.
First off, MAJOR content warnings for this book. Warren Jeffs is a molesting piece of crap, and while Ms. Jeffs never veers into graphic description of the sexual abuse she suffered at his hands, neither does she back down from exposing exactly what he did to her. (And it wasn’t just girls, either, as Brent Jeffs, nephew of Warren, bravely pointed out in his memoir Lost Boy, co-written with Maia Szalavitz.) If this is something you’re not able to read about without experiencing distress, be kind to yourself and choose something that lets you breathe easier.
Breaking Free is Rachel Jeffs’ life story in the FLDS. She was the daughter of Warren Jeffs and his second wife Barbara Barlow (her sister Annette also married Jeffs; their parents, Rachel’s grandparents, were not happy about their daughters not being able to chose their own husbands and subsequently left the FLDS…leaving their daughters behind…). If you’ve read other accounts of life in this group, her tale is fairly typical: unaffectionate and overworked mothers, an abundance of siblings, never enough food, jealous sister wives taking out their anger on the hated wife’s children, terrible illnesses and near-fatal accidents treated with herbs and prayer. Rachel was eight years old when her father began molesting her; this abuse stretched on for years. At one point, she told her mother, who marched off to speak with Warren; the matter was never spoken of again, and the abuse continued.
Although Rachel stopped attending school after eighth grade, at age fifteen, she taught third grade at the Jeffs Academy in Short Creek- for no pay, of course. And at age 18, her father married her off to a man with two other wives. Rachel didn’t want to be married, but in the FLDS, women suffer from an extreme lack of agency. She was fortunate that Rich, her husband, was a decent guy whom she eventually came to love and who never forced her to do anything she wasn’t ready for. So many women in this group aren’t so lucky.
Warren’s control over the group expanded exponentially. While I was aware of his increasingly bizarre rules and restrictions (laughter is a sin! Parents aren’t allowed to hug their children!), I hadn’t known much about how he kept his followers always living on the edge, constantly moving them around and separating families (some permanently) as punishment for often minor (or even imaginary) infractions. Before his eventual cross-country game of hide and seek with the Feds, followed by life in prison, he became even more sexually creepy, implementing something he called ‘the New Law of Sarah, which allowed him to have multiple naked wives with him at one time, all in the name of God, to give him “heavenly comfort” as he solemnly atoned for the sins of the people. This law required the women to sexually touch and excite each other as well as Father with the promise that they were all working together for Father’s benefit as ‘God’s servant.‘” For a person who preached that even thinking of the opposite sex before marriage was a sin, it’s awfully convenient how a quick ceremony can turn hordes of women (Ms. Jeffs counts his wives, some as young as twelve years old, at at least 78) into his own personal harem. This is horrifying.
It’s not until Jeffs, exerting his draconian control even from behind bars, separates Rachel from her husband and children multiple times, for long periods of time, that she begins to consider that life on the outside may have something to offer. Rachel fled with her five children to her grandparents’ (the ones who left the FLDS, remember them?) in Centennial; they were still polygamous but not FLDS. With their help, and the aid of an organization called Holding Out HELP, Rachel Jeffs was finally able to break free from the community that had caused her so much pain.
There’s no co-author mentioned, and I’m going to assume that this isn’t ghostwritten. That said, having been subjected to the FLDS brand of education and barred from reading anything but FLDS religious material and the books she was able to sneak, Ms. Jeffs tells her story in an engaging and intriguing manner. Her writing style puts you right there with her, surrounded by sister wives in pastel dresses. Not all of her story is unhappy; she writes of the good times she had with her sisters and sometimes even her sister wives, and speaks happily of many aspects of her childhood, including her skill at playing the violin (which would eventually help her to earn money after her escape. Practice those instruments, kids!). Breaking Free does go a little deeper into the nightmare that was living under the control of Warren Jeffs, so if you’re at all interested in cults or the FLDS, you don’t want to miss this one.
Ms. Jeffs is more than just a victim of her father and the predatory culture in which she was raised, and I admire her courage, strength, and ability to change when she realized the need. Not everyone, not even in regular society, can do that, and I find her growth inspiring. I’m so glad she’s been able to move beyond her past (with all of her children by her side) in order to live a more authentic, free life and to share her story with the rest of the world. I only wish I had that kind of courage.
Everywhere I go, I seem to find new-to-me authors that end up on my ever-expanding TBR list, and it was an episode of Smart Bitches, Trashy Podcast that clued me in to the awesomeness that is Dahlia Adler. I don’t think Ms. Adler had uttered more than three sentences before I was grabbing my phone, opening my Goodreads app, and punching the ‘Want to Read’ button (literally punching, hard. I meant business). There’s something seriously infectious about her humor, her charm, the way she talks about writing and her job and life, and I knew that anything she wrote, I was going to enjoy.
And I was right! My library has a few of her books in its collection, but the first one that came up in my library’s catalog was Behind the Scenes (Daylight Falls #1) (Spencer Hill Contemporary, 2014), and I checked out an ebook and settled down to read.
It’s senior year and Ally has a LOT going on. She’s already been accepted into Columbia, college of her dreams, but there’s a massive snag: her dad’s looking-like-it’s-terminal cancer is costing the family so much that continuing her education in New York might have to stay the stuff of dreams. A part-time job flipping burgers isn’t going to come close to paying for tuition, but Ally’s got friends in high places: her lifelong best friend, teen actress Vanessa Park, has just been cast as the female lead in what could be TV’s hottest teen dramedy, and she’s more than happy to pay Ally to work as her assistant. Ally agrees to this; she’s never been interested in Hollywood, but she needs the money and it’ll give her a chance to hang with her bestie.
What Ally’s not expecting is Van’s MEGAHOT costar, Liam Holloway. She knew he’d be there, but she didn’t think he’d be THAT hot in person…or that normal…or that…into her??? How could he be, when he’s so Hollywood, and Ally’s so not? Just as their relationship is starting to blossom, the show’s producer (I *think* it was?) comes up with the idea to have Liam and Van pretend to date in order to drum up publicity, and while Ally hates everything about the idea, she knows it’s the best thing for her friends’ careers. She can handle being Liam’s secret girlfriend while he and Van pretend in public…but for how long?
Superhot celebrity falling in love with a regular person: it’s my favorite trope of all time, and OMG, Liam is a thousand kinds of adorable. Ms. Adler has written a totally swoonworthy character and I’m trying to figure out who I can write to to demand that time be turned back and we are all issued our own Liam Holloway as teenagers, he was just that wonderful (he may go on my list of Best Swoonworthy Male CharactersEVAR, next to Levi from Fangirl).
Ally, poor Ally. For someone so obviously intelligent (already accepted to Columbia, at home studying on Friday nights, AP classes out the wazoo), she lacked confidence in herself and struggled so much with trusting Liam and Vanessa. In any other character, I think her trust issues *might* have been annoying, considering how much she was hot/cold, back and forth with Liam, but she was someone who had been close to but not a part of Hollywood her whole life via Van. She’d seen how fake people could be, how many times Van had gotten hurt in the past, and she already knew to be wary around anyone in the industry. Add to that the stress of watching her father dying day by day, trying to support her mother and sister through it all, worrying about how she’d manage to pay for school and how she’d be able to be away from what would be left of her family…yeah, pretty much anyone would be flailing and freaking out at that point. It was easy to see where her constant whirlwind of panic was coming from, and I thought Ms. Adler handled that exceptionally well.
I’m not much of a series reader, but I’m definitely going to read #2 in this series, Under the Lights, which focuses on Van and Josh Chester, Liam’s bad-boy buddy. It’s a dual POV, which I LOVE (Behind the Scenes is narrated solely by Ally), and Ms. Adler has created a world in which I will happily and enthusiastically spend more time in, and characters that I’m looking forward to hanging out with again.
Two thumbs up from me, and I’m extremely happy that I discovered Dahlia Adler!
Every once in a while, you add a book to your TBR based on some glowing recommendations. You read it and finish the book, going, “Was it me? Am I just not smart enough to understand this book?” That was History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund (Grove Atlantic, 2017) for me.
Madeline lives way out in the woods of Northern Minnesota. It’s an isolated life with her parents (who might not actually be her parents?), especially since she’d grown up surrounded by the members of the Christian cult her parents had once participated in. Madeline’s life is school, chores, her dogs, the lake, the woods…and that’s it. Until Mr. Greierson, a teacher who ends up being marked as a pedophile, appears at her school. Madeline develops what ends up being a lifelong obsession with both Mr. Greierson and Lily, a fellow student whose involvement with Mr. Greierson is never really clarified.
What really sets the story in motion is the appearance of a new family, the Gardners, in the house across the lake. Patra and her son Paul are staying there while her husband Leo, a supposedly brilliant astronomer, is doing work in Hawaii. Patra, to whom Madeline introduces herself as Linda (for reasons that are also never clarified), enlists the young teenager to babysit Paul, and Madeline/Linda develops a strange attachment to this family as well. But all is not well with the Gardners, as we see in snips and flashes early on in this non-linear story; a death and a trial are looming large in everyone’s future.
This was so…strange. At first, I wasn’t sure of how reliable a narrator Madeline/Linda was. She was a bizarre character who, at the very least, lacked a large range of social skills, possibly because of having been raised in the cult- due to the non-linear story structure (which I didn’t care for at all), bits about the cult background only appeared here and there and it wasn’t fully expanded upon, so I was left feeling empty about that. Her peculiar behavior towards pretty much every single character in this book, with the exception of Paul, kept me squinting at my kindle. Her obsession with Mr. Greierson, who ended up being caught with a bunch of child pornography in a box in his bathroom, stretched on far into her adulthood and, at least for me, didn’t add much to the story, other than to reinforce that there was something completely off about her. And was she planning on killing Lily at one point? Was that was that was? I was seriously confused about so much in this book.
What I did enjoy was the seeming contrast between Leo’s ‘genius’ (Madeline/Linda didn’t find him impressive, for what that’s worth) and his steadfast devotion to Christian Science, the religion he was raised in. Even though he was a scientist (in the literal sense of the word), Leo remained committed to the idea that his son’s illness wasn’t real in the face of conflicting evidence. Sadly, this isn’t uncommon; an excellent book that expands on this topic (and will help you understand the outcome of the trial, if you’ve read this or are planning to) is Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment by Janet Heimlich. It’s anger-inducing, especially in regards to the laws that allow religious-based child neglect (and the people who fight so hard to keep those laws in place while children suffer and die), but it’s a hugely important book that I don’t think has gotten enough attention. It’s one of those books that has a permanent place on my shelves. Leo’s ability to draw Patra into his beliefs, even though she wasn’t as dogged as he was, was…chilling, to say the least, but I suppose that’s where the naiveté everyone talked about in regards to Patra came into play.
So this book? Strange. I didn’t care for its non-linear structure (sooooooooo many times, after yet another zillion pages’ worth of description of the events leading up to The Event, I was mentally screaming at my kindle, ‘JUST GET TO THE POINT! GET IT OVER WITH ALREADY!’); I didn’t find the narrator at all sympathetic, relatable, likable, or interesting; and I felt as though I never quite understood what the author was attempting. Knowing that this was on the list for the Man Booker Prize shortlist for 2017 made me feel…like I wasn’t smart enough to get this book. Like I was missing some crucial part of my brain that would’ve helped me to understand why this was a piece of literature to be celebrated. I understand things like, say, Lolita; I see the value in telling ugly stories in a beautiful way. I didn’t get this particular book, though, and it left me with the feeling that somewhere, there are a bunch of champagne-sipping highbrow professors and literary critics who are mocking my lack of understanding and ability to think critically about this book.
Did you read this? Stacey from Unruly Reader mentioned she couldn’t get into it either, which makes me feel a little better that I’m not the only one! If you loved it or weren’t a fan, I want to hear your thoughts. What do you do when you come across books that you just don’t get?
She's probably at the library... 