Category Archives: Memoir

Review: Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson

Book Review and Content, Memoir, Nonfiction, , , , , ,

Furiously Happy: A Funny Book about Horrible Things
Jenny Lawson
Flatiron Books
Published September 22, 2015

Amazon | Barnes & Noble |  Goodreads

It doesn’t seem possible to write a hilarious book about depression and anxiety, but that’s exactly what author Jenny Lawson has done in Furiously Happy. Her wacky adventures fill the pages and her unique view of herself and the world around her challenge readers to embrace their own weird. She has a keen sense of irony and writes in a rambling-yet-engrossing way. She takes readers through the highs and lows of book tours, a trip to Australia, and the challenges of depression and anxiety in daily life.

I think I read this book at exactly the right time. I’d seen it on several blogger’s Top Ten Tuesday lists for various reasons, and had it on my wish list. This fall, as my own anxiety levels rose, I felt like maybe the time had come to read something funny and perhaps to add some additional coping skills to my arsenal.

Reading the book challenged me to think about my own life and the areas in which I pressure myself to be perfect or to perform a certain way. There are a lot more than I realized. I love the openness in Furiously Happy and the way Lawson sort of throws things out there, acknowledges her shortcomings but embraces even the difficult parts of who she is. I think we all need more of that in our lives.

Parts of the book made me laugh out loud—actually, much of the book did exactly that. Sometimes that’s all we can do, right? Laugh at the difficult times and find the irony or bizarre humor in the way events unfold around us. Life’s too short not to enjoy the quirks and weirdness that makes us tick. I definitely needed that message, and I recommend this book for anyone struggling with similar feelings.

Recommended for Ages 16 up.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used with moderate frequency.

Romance/Sexual Content
Jenny receives a small handmade model of a vagina with a doll inside that’s meant to be used as an educational aid for kids learning about childbirth.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
None.

Drug Content
Several mentions of drinking alcohol or being drunk.

 

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Review: Irena’s Children by Tilar J. Mazzeo

Blogger's Favorites, Book Review and Content, Memoir, Middle Grade 8-12, Nonfiction, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , ,

Irena’s Children: Young Readers Edition
Tilar J Mazzeo
Translated by Mary Cronk Farrell
Margaret K. McElderry Books
Available September 27, 2016

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

During World War II, Irena Sendler worked with an underground network to rescue 2,500 Jewish children from Nazi occupied Poland. Her unwavering commitment to human rights began long before the war, and endured through her own incarceration and torture. She worked tirelessly to save as many as she could, and through it all insisted that she was not a hero. She’d only done what any ordinary human would do.

Though it’s nonfiction, I could not put this book down. I was so captured by the life of this incredible woman and the way her life affected so many people. I love that there’s a young reader’s edition of this story, especially because it was a group of students whose research drew community interest in Irena’s largely untold story.

This may be one of the most inspiring stories I’ve ever read. I think what touched me most was the fact that throughout her life she insisted she wasn’t a hero. That anyone could do what she’d done. And I believe that is true. That we can each make an incredible difference in the world if it’s what we pursue.

I read her story and think about some of the things happening in our own country now. While I don’t want to draw a comparison between our nation and Nazi occupied Warsaw, there are injustices happening around us. I think about the courage with which Irena Sendler faced each day, and the resolve she must have felt as she set out to rescue each child. It didn’t begin with the Nazi occupation. She stood up against prejudice during her time in college, and it nearly cost her education. It would have been easy to sit down quietly and ignore what was happening around her. To just worry about herself and her own life. Instead she protested along with her Jewish peers.

It’s easy to look back at history and say we would have been among those who fiercely opposed Nazi ideas. How many of us really would have done it, though, at risk to our own lives and the lives of our families? This is the kind of story that really challenges you to think about those things. And they’re worthy things to think about. In the end, I want Irena to be right that she’s not a hero, that her faith in us, in humanity to stand up for one another, is well-placed. That truly, ordinary people reach out to help and protect others, no matter how different from us they may be.

Recommended Reading Age: 12 up.

Cultural Elements
Follows the story of Jewish and Polish historical figures.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
None.

Spiritual Content
Irena and her network save some children by having them baptized into the Christian faith. Some families and members of the Jewish community object to this practice and some refused to let their children participate

Violent Content
Disease and starvation plague the Jewish ghetto. The story talks briefly about the terrible cruelty of the Nazi soldiers toward the Jews, even toward babies. Few details are given, but it’s tragic and awful to think about it.

Drug Content
Irena visits a club in the wealthier side of the ghetto to hear a famous singer. Doctors perform operations with limited medical means. Irena smuggles vaccines into the ghetto.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Review: Every Falling Star by Sungju Lee and Susan Elizabeth McClelland

Book Review and Content, Memoir, Nonfiction, , , , ,

Every Falling Star: The True Story of How I Survived and Escaped North Korea
Sunju Lee and Susan Elizabeth McClelland
Amulet Books
Published September 13, 2016

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

About Every Falling Star

EVERY FALLING STAR, the first book to portray contemporary North Korea to a young audience, is the intense memoir of a North Korean boy named Sungju who is forced at age twelve to live on the streets and fend for himself. To survive, Sungju creates a gang and lives by thieving, fighting, begging, and stealing rides on cargo trains. Sungju richly re-creates his scabrous story, depicting what it was like for a boy alone to create a new family with his gang, his “brothers”; to be hungry and to fear arrest, imprisonment, and even execution. This riveting memoir allows young readers to learn about other cultures where freedoms they take for granted do not exist.

My Review

Intense is a great word for this book. I’ve seen a couple of documentaries about North Korea, but nothing is more personal and moving than the story of someone who lived there. Sungju describes his early life in Pyongyang and the fierce national pride he felt for his country. His beliefs are challenged when his family is forced to leave the capital for a small impoverished city where food shortages cause many people to risk trips into China—an offense punishable by execution if they’re caught.

While EVERY FALLING STAR is a difficult story, Sungju shares so much hope. Ultimately it’s a story about the bonds of love, both within family and between close friends, and redemption. To read the end of the tale and learn what the author has accomplished can’t help but be inspiring, and to make us grateful for the freedoms we have, and the ability to share them with others.

I highly recommend this book. EVERY FALLING STAR was so good, would read it again. It would make a great resource for a current events class or a world cultures class.

Cultural Elements
Most characters are North Korean.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
At one point, the boys work as runners for a brothel, helping recruit customers.

Spiritual Content
A few references to Chilseong, a deity and shan-shin-ryong-nim, good spirits thought to live in rocks and mountains. Sungju’s family shared these beliefs with him and they bring him comfort during his life as a street boy.

Violent Content
Sungju and his schoolmates have to attend public executions. Sungju describes them briefly. Later, his gang must battle other street boys for the right to stay in a particular city.

Drug Content
The boys in the street gang drink alcohol and smoke.

Note: This post contains affiliate links which do not cost you anything to use but which help support my blog. I received a free copy of EVERY FALLING STAR in exchange for my honest review.

Review: Life Animated: A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes and Autism by Ron Suskind

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A Life Animated: A story of heroes, sidekicks and autism
Ron Suskind
Kingswell

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

When the Suskind family moves to a new home, they begin to see startling changes in their youngest son, Owen. He loses the ability to communicate with them and seems to retreat inside himself. The family embarks on a journey to find ways to reconnect with Owen via one of his favorite things: Disney movies.

This is an amazing, truly inspiring story. I’m awed by the courage it must have taken for both Owen and his family to continue pressing forward without giving up, even in moments when field experts were at a loss as to how to help, when specialized programs proved disappointing. Throughout the book, Owen’s father describes his son with love and affection, clearly impressing on readers his value, not just to his family, but as a human being.

For people who don’t personally know someone with an autism diagnosis, I imagine it could be easy to overlook the autistic community. Suskind makes this impossible. Though the book focuses on the family’s experience with their son, there are a lot of references to larger issues faced by families with autistic children or injustices within our system that limit the ability of families to provide much-needed care and assistance. I thought that was a great value, too. Many of those things I simply wasn’t familiar with. For a short time after I graduated, I worked for a behavior analyst extremely well-respected in the field, but that was more than ten years ago now, and I’m grossly under-informed these days.

The Disney references were really fun, and you’ll definitely get a lot more out of the story if you’re familiar with those classic movies, but they’re not the point of the book. The point is that those tales became a vehicle by which a remarkable boy rebuilt a way of communicating with the world around him.

I recommend this book because it’s such a great, triumphant story, and we all need that message, and also because this reminds us that we are all human, all valuable, no matter how we process information.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used infrequently. There’s one chapter in which most of the profanity occurs as part of an exposure therapy to help Owen deal with aftermath of a bullying incident.

Romance/Sexual Content
Brief references to kissing.

Spiritual Content
The family prepares for and celebrates Owen’s Bar Mitzvah.

Violent Content
None.

Drug Content
Owen’s older brother hosts a high school party which gets a bit out of hand. Lots of alcohol stored in the Suskind’s basement disappears during the party.

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Review: Tattooed by Jesus by Bonnie Kae Lentz with Patti Lacy and Angie Reedy

Book Review and Content, Memoir, Nonfiction, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , ,

Tattooed by Jesus by Bonnie Kae Lentz
with Patti Lacy and Angie Reedy
CreateSpace

Amazon | Goodreads

Looking back at her life, Bonnie recognizes a hunger for spiritual things. Throughout the course of her mixed up life, she searches for something deeper in relationships with men, experimentation with drugs, and the darker spirit world of the occult. She and her husband Tom journey across the US looking for stability, peace, and hope. Ultimately it is an encounter with Jesus that changes Bonnie’s life forever.

The dark parts of Bonnie’s journey get pretty dark. She’s witnessed some brutal things and though the narrative is gentle, reading the memories evokes deep feeling. Yet it’s a story that so many who lived through the same decades will recognize. Their children will hear echoes of parents’ stories within it.

While many memoirs relay a valuable story, Lentz’s tale also tells it well. Not only are the events relayed in a meaningful way, but the people around Bonnie come to life in each scene. Strong narrative pulls one girl’s recollections together and stitches them into a more meaningful, focused whole. True peace, Lentz reveals, can only come through faith in and relationship with a loving God.

Language Content
Heavy profanity used infrequently.

Sexual Content
Bonnie very briefly tells of being molested as a girl. She’s specific about what happened but not graphic. It’s brief but intense and may be difficult for some readers. Later, she discusses her own sexual journey – no details, but mention of encounters with boyfriends, lovers and her husband. See violence section for more info.

Spiritual Content
Bonnie feels a pull toward spiritual things throughout the course of her life. At one point, she experiments with some witchcraft with two female roommates. Those experiences become really negative. Eventually she becomes a Christian and is moved to make several big life changes as well as finding her internal self irreversibly changed.

Violence
Bonnie grows up with an alcoholic father who becomes pretty monstrous when he’s drunk. She listens to him brutalize her mother and rape her. (We realize what he’s doing through his ignoring her refusal and some references to sounds that indicate sex, things like that.)

Drug Content
Bonnie’s father is an alcoholic. She begins experimenting with drugs herself, and particularly develops a fondness for marijuana, which she smokes often over a number of years.

Review and Reminiscence: The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom

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The Hiding Place
Corrie Ten Boom with John Sherrill and Elizabeth Sherrill
Chosen Books

Amazon | Goodreads

Nazi occupation during World War II changes watchmaker Corrie Ten Boom’s life. Her deep empathy and faith lead her to become a central participant in the underground movement to protect Jews and others on the run from the Nazi government. Corrie and her family know that at any time, they may be captured and sent to the very camps they work to save others from. Still, with every new challenge, Corrie and her sister Betsie cling to their faith in God and look to Him for the path they should follow. What results is a moving, often miraculous story of a woman who not only survived terrible conditions, but who continued to minister healing to the hearts and souls of those around her – be they Jew, Gentile or Nazi.

I had wanted to post my review of this story on Mother’s Day or on Monday, May 11, to honor my mom’s birthday. The Hiding Place is her favorite book. I remember her reading this tale to my sister and me when we were young – probably only a little older than my daughter is now. I remember even then being overwhelmed by Corrie’s commitment to serve others. She’s so real about the struggles within her own heart, too – fear of prison, the struggle between taking action to protect herself and her sister versus selflessly giving to others in all circumstances. Her life story reminds us that each of us can make a difference in the lives of those around us. That courage and selfless love are available to anyone – provided they learn to live by faith.

This may have been the first account I’d ever read growing up that was about World War II, so it’s been a special story to me, too, in that my other reading and learning about that time period always bears echoes of Corrie’s story. When my daughter gets just a little bit older, I am excited to share the story of the Ten Boom family, their faith and courage, with her, as my mom did with me.

Language Content
No profanity.

Sexual Content
Corrie and her sister are forced to walk naked before soldiers upon their entrance to a concentration camp.

Spiritual Content
Corrie’s Christian faith sustains her and her sister through Nazi occupation of Holland and imprisonment in a concentration camp. She and her family frequently pray with one another and share the Bible, which they count as their most precious possession.

Violence
Corrie is beaten by a Nazi soldier – description is brief, not very detailed. She hears her sister also beaten and witnesses others who’ve been brutalized by soldiers. There’s not a lot of violent description.

Drug Content
None.

Take a Virtual Tour of the Ten Boom Museum
In looking for cover images, I stumbled onto a web site that offers a virtual tour of the Ten Boom Museum and shows some pictures of the family and shop where she lived. (It looks like possibly there are some clips from the 1975 movie too?) Click here to take the tour and find out more.