Book Reviews

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Book Review: “The Story of the Bible” by Larry Stone

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After the the first book I agreed to review from a publisher turned out to be a dud (in my opinion, humble), I told myself that maybe I just wasn’t cut out for the “review copy” thing. I should go back to just reviewing the books I check out of the library. It’s much less pressure that way.

Then I saw The Story of the Bible from Thomas Nelson’s BookSneeze program–and saw that the foreword was by Ravi Zacharias.

Surely if Ravi wrote the foreword, it’s got to be okay, I told myself. So I went ahead and requested it without reading another word.

What a fortuitous impulse!

The Story of the Bible arrived outside my front door, I opened it up, and was immediately hooked.

For the next couple of weeks, I never went anywhere without my copy.

“You need to see what Thomas Nelson just sent me,” I’d say as I pulled it out of my tote to pass to friends, family, and strangers. (Lucky me, I carry a nice large tote that can hold the jumbo-sized coffee-table-style book.)

“It’s the story of the writing and canonization and preservation and translation of the Bible.” I told them as they rifled through the pages.

Then, lest they miss the most exciting part, I’d direct them to the vellum envelope pages found within every chapter. “Go ahead and take it out” I’d urge.

Dutifully, they’d pull out the odd sized papers found in the various envelopes.

One started reading the writing:

Great Isaiah Scroll
The only complete Dead Sea Scroll is the Great Isaiah Scroll, discovered in 1947 by Muhammed Ahmed el-Hamed and pictured on page 25….

I could hear the quizzical expression in my friend’s voice as she read aloud. “Why on earth is Rebekah so excited about this?”

“Turn it over,” I urged.

And that’s when she discovered what I was so excited about.

Each scrap of paper within the vellum envelopes is a life-size full-color replica of a Biblical text.

A page from the Dead Sea Scrolls, pages from the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, Wycliff’s Bible and Gutenberg’s. The list goes on and on.

It’s like a museum in one glossy paged volume.

I can’t be more excited.

The text itself is in well-written, engaging prose. I had no difficulty getting through the pages–or dipping in for a paragraph here and there in casual perusal (both of which I did.)

The author writes with an evangelical bent and an obvious reverence for the Word of God. This is no dull historical story of how men have preserved a book. This is a living story of how God has spoken a book, preserved His words, and communicated His heart to the nations of the world throughout the centuries.

This book is a definite keeper!

Rating: 5 stars
Category:Christian history
Synopsis:A museum in a book, telling the story (and showing the documents) of the writing, canonization, preservation, and translation of the Bible.
Recommendation: 5 stars

For the sake of full disclosure, I received this book for free via the Book Sneeze blogger program at Thomas Nelson. All views expressed in this post are my own. I received nothing for this review beyond the book I just reviewed (which is a reward of great worth, if I do say so myself!)

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: “The Garden of Eden” by Ernest Hemingway

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It’s a rare day that I put down a book after the requisite 50 pages because I no longer want to keep reading. (I’ve done that with maybe a handful of books.)

It’s an even rarer day that I put down a book that I want to keep reading but that I mustn’t keep reading.

Yet this is what I have done with The Garden of Eden

This is the story of a young writer and his new bride, on their honeymoon in the French Riveria. It’s written with Hemingway’s typical terse prose. From the beginning, the interpersonal dynamics between the girl and the writer are fascinating–all the more fascinating by the way Hemingway tells his stories.

Unfortunately, the story starts off with quite a bit of sex (not surprising for a honeymooning couple–or for Hemingway)–and denigrates further as the story progresses.

First the girl cuts her hair like that of a boy.

Then she wants to be more experimental in the bedroom. (Given Hemingway’s somehow less-than-graphic prose in this segment I made it past this part.)

But when she starts taking on with a girl she meets–and when she practically orders her husband to sleep with the other girl–and when I realized that what was coming next was that she too would be sleeping with the other girl–

I knew I had to close the book.

Writing it out like this, so cold on my computer screen, it’s hard to believe that the story thus far was as engaging as it actually is.

It’s a perverted, immoral tale.

So why did I want to keep reading?

I wanted to keep reading because Hemingway truly is a master of his art, and he is tremendously masterful in this particular story.

The writer intrigued me and puzzled me. He very clearly had no desire to be involved in what his wife was drawing him into. He was uncomfortable with it from the first. Yet time after time, he accedes to her wishes. He tells her he likes her hair when he doesn’t. He cuts his hair in the same style as hers. He kisses the other girl.

Why?

Why does he continue this wicked little game?

I won’t ever know. I don’t need to know.

Yet I feel somewhat like Digory Kirke, standing by the bell and wanting so much to ring it.

Thankfully, the book was due back to the library the day I decided, so the temptation to read the rest will subside with the opportunity to do so less accessible–and I will not live to regret having rung a bell that could not be unrung.

This “review” is somewhat unusual among my reviews in not having a summary statement at the end. I feel it unnecessary to rate or provide a short synopsis of this title. On the other hand, I do feel it valuable to give my recommendation: don’t go near this particular bell. And if you find yourself hearing the warning of the Holy Spirit, as I did, over a book you’re reading–please put it down. The paradise this world offers is but a pale imitation, a twisted shadow, a tormented image of the Paradise God offers. Let the vision of the One cause you to turn your eyes from every deformed other.

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak

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What is it about books that makes them so tantalizing?

What is it about them that begs to be picked up, to be enjoyed, to be READ?

I’m not quite sure what it is…but it is a powerful force.

It’s the force that made young Liesel Meminger perform her first act of thievery: picking up a book lying half hidden in the snow by her even younger brother’s grave.

What follows in The Book Thief is a masterful tale of the power of written words snatched from snowy seclusion, from a censor’s fire, from a kindly cruel neighbor’s library.

The illiterate Liesel is taught to read by her near-illiterate foster father. Liesel reads to the Jew her foster parents are hiding in their cellar. And both the Jew and Liesel write as death looks on.

For this story is set within Nazi Germany, while the Grim Reaper is busy across the whole of Europe.

The Book Thief is a fascinating story, not the least because it’s narrated by the Grim Reaper himself.

An excerpt from the beginning of the book:

“As I’ve been alluding to, my one saving grace is distraction. It keeps me sane. It helps me cope, considering the length of time I’ve been performing this job. The trouble is, who could ever replace me?….The answer, of course, is nobody, which has prompted me to make a conscious, deliberate decision–to make distraction my vacation. Needless to say, I vacation in increments. In colors.

Still, it’s possible that you might be asking, why does he even need a vacation? What does he need distraction from?

Which brings me to my next point.

It’s the leftover humans.

The survivors….

Which in turn brings me to the subject I am telling you about tonight, or today, or whatever the hour and color. It’s the story of one of those perpetual survivors–an expert at being left behind.

It’s just a small story really, about, among other things:

  • A girl
  • Some words
  • An accordianist
  • Some fanatical Germans
  • A Jewish fist fighter
  • And quite a lot of thievery

I saw the book thief three times.

The Reaper tells the story of all his dealing with Leisel–the Book Thief, as he calls her–from her first act of thievery to her last breath. Along the way, he tells a story of men and women and little girls and boys who risked much and gained much in silent resistance to the Reich.

I found it wonderful.

Rating: 5 stars
Category:Historical fiction
Synopsis:The Grim Reaper tells the tale of a young girl inside Nazi Germany who finds herself enamored with books–and willing to go to great lengths to obtain them.
Recommendation: I greatly enjoyed this book–although it took a bit to get accustomed to the Reaper’s unique style

Interesting note about this book–This was my first, and last, adult fiction book with last name “Z”. Just so happens, all the other books my library owns by authors with last names starting in Z are either sci-fi or mysteries–books I determined from the outset that I wouldn’t include in my personal challenge. So there you have it :-)

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: “The Sweetgum Knit Lit Society” by Beth Pattillo

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I’ve maligned Beth Pattillo’s authorly name often enough (see here and here) that you probably think I’ve got a personal vendetta against her.

True, I wrote a much-better-but-still-lukewarmish-mini-review of Mr. Darcy Broke My Heart–but you’d still get the overall impression that I’m not a Pattillo fan.

The Sweetgum Knit Lit Society might have forced me to revise my opinion. I might just have to say that Pattillo is a good author so long as she gives Christianity a wide berth.

Knit Lit tells the story of a unique book club in small town Tennessee–a book club that knits a project for every book they read.

The group couldn’t be more diverse: a spinster librarian, an upper middle class housewife, a fashion forward young thing stuck in a small town dressmaker’s shop while caring for her dying mother, a not-exactly-hip-but-eco-friendly church secretary, and the ridiculously rich queen bee of the town. Nevertheless, they manage to maintain a relatively peaceful co-existence until the librarian finds a teenage girl defacing a library book and decides to make her “punishment” include attending the Sweetgum Knit Lit Society.

The introduction of Hannah, the deliquent-wannabe daughter of the last-generation’s white-trash sleep-around, to the society causes the other womens’ well-established facades to come crashing down.

Merry, the middle-upper-class housewife, learns that all is not perfect in her little suburban paradise when taking Hannah under her wing sparks conflict with her own daughter–and when her husband starts with withdraw more and more from family relationships.

Camille, the fashion forward young thing stuck in a small town dressmaker’s shop while caring for her dying mother, ends up employing the young Hannah–and when Hannah learns about the affair she’s having with a married man, Camille has to come to grips with the reality of what she’s doing.

Ruthie (the not-exactly-hip-but-eco-friendly church secretary) and Esther (the ridiculously rich queen bee of the town) have to somehow make peace from their decades-long sibling rivalry complicated by the fact that they both love (or perhaps just want) the same man.

And Eugenie (the spinster librarian) suddenly comes face to face with the future she ran from so long ago in her past–the future embodied in the no-longer-young, now-widowed pastor she refused years ago.

All in all, The Sweetgum Knit Lit Society is a wonderful story and a great piece of women’s interest fiction. The only downside was knowing that Pattillo is a pastor and still seems to have no grasp on how relationship with Christ actually impacts life. You won’t find grand themes of reconciliation, redemption, or righteousness in this book. This is a novel of the world, describing it well, but offering it no lasting hope.

Rating: 4 stars
Category:Women’s fiction
Synopsis:A women’s book club finds themselves in sudden tailspin with the introduction of a young wanna-be delinquent into their midst.
Recommendation: This was a good book in the genre of women’s fiction (that is, the book club/sewing circle/knitting club/country club sorta fiction for women). If you enjoy the genre, you’ll enjoy this book.

Categories B3RD, Book Reviews

Book Review: “The Biggest Loser” by The Biggest Losers with Maggie Greenwood-Robinson

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Did I ever tell you about the week I went on a diet?

No, of course I didn’t.

I had to quit because I lost weight.

Yes, that’s right. I’m sorry. I wanted to see how the rest of the world, the diet-following world, lives–but I had to cut the experiment short because I managed to achieve what many of them only dream of: weight loss.

Which, for me, is not really a good thing. I’m about as low as I’m comfortable going.

But I did want to review The Biggest Loser, the book written after the first two seasons of the successful TV reality show by the same name. And I wanted to do more than just give comments on the theory. I wanted to have some useful comments on the practice.

So here you go…

The Diet:

The Biggest Loser weight loss plan as propounded within this book isn’t bad. The nutrition component proposes an alternate pyramid–4 (or more) servings of fruits and vegetables, 3 (only 3) servings of low-fat protein foods, 2 (only 2) servings whole grains, and 1 (200 Calorie) serving of “Extra”. This would be significantly less than ideal from a nutrition standpoint if the servings were standard servings such as are found on myPyramid or even in diabetic exchanges. There’d be far too little grain. But it just so happens that The Biggest Loser considers 1 serving of grain to be 1 cup of cooked grain or two slices of bread (twice the size of a standard myPyramid ounce.) As a result, the diet isn’t too off balance.

It’s relatively simple and it’s low calorie without being too low calorie.

The problem? It’s really hard to cook like this. There are recipes in the back of the book–and a few of them look good–but you’d have to be pretty creative to keep this diet from getting dreary. For my part, since I work all day and often have extra activities at night, I don’t have time to be in the kitchen all day–and the “grab and go” or “quick prep” options get old quickly. I can only eat so many smoothies or cottage cheese with vegetables or baked/grilled chicken breasts. I need me some OIL, some real FAT.

I was hungry all the time. It stunk.

But I did lose weight. So it does work.

Other than the 4-3-2-1 plan, the chapter on nutrition had plenty of information, about half of which was correct. It gave tips on label reading (generally a good idea), suggestions for including more fruits and vegetables (some decent advice, some ridiculous like “potatoes make you hungry”), what to drink (suggested that you can burn extra calories by drinking your water cold–sorry folks, but ice cold water does not a diet make.) While following the recommendations found within the chapter on nutrition won’t hurt you, quite a bit of it is unnecessary or based on tenuous (at best) science.

The Exercise:

The exercise component of The Biggest Loser varies depending on an individual’s starting fitness level, but includes cardio workouts and circuit training (cardiac speed resistance/stretching).

I’m not a fitness expert, but the recommendations for exercise seem fairly consistent with the recommendations of organizations such as the American College of Sports Medicine (as well as MyPyramid)–increasing activity to 60 minutes of moderate to high intensity aerobic activity on most days of the week.

The Rest:

While the diet and the exercise sections of this book weren’t awful, they weren’t anything extraordinary (or anything extraordinarily accurate) either. What might really make this book useful is the collection of strategies found in chapters two and five.

Chapter 2 helps the reader explore his motivations for weight loss and gives some tips for getting organized for weight loss. Two of the organizational tips are very useful: Buy a food scale or use measuring cups and spoons to measure out your food and keep a food journal. The ideas for motivation are also useful. However, the chapter could easily encourage people to think that weight loss is somehow a panacea that will make their life all better. It’s not. And sometimes, one needs to make some basic quality of life/self respect changes in order to make weight loss happen (as opposed to the other way around).

Chapter 5 has participants from the first two seasons of the television show sharing some of their own strategies for weight loss. This, I think, is probably the best part of the book. A lot of weight loss (or healthy eating in general) is about finding what works for you, with your lifestyle. The more ideas you hear, the more likely you are to find something that will work for you.

The final chapter gives instructions for starting a Biggest Loser challenge of your own with friends or in your workplace.

Eh, if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

For my part, I prefer to look at better indicators of overall health rather than simply at numbers on a scale.

But if you’re interested in weight loss or interested in the Biggest Loser show, you could do worse than following the recommendations found in this book.

Rating: 2.5 stars
Category:Weight Loss
Synopsis:The Biggest Loser coaches and participants from seasons 1 and 2 of the show give a basic diet and exercise program as well as tips for weight loss.
Recommendation: This plan won’t kill you. It’ll probably help you lose weight (if you can manage to stick to it). But it’s not for everyone–and likely very difficult to fit within a “normal” (that is, ridiculously busy) life.

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: “The Adoration of Jenna Fox” by Mary E. Pearson

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What does it mean to be human?

What makes me myself?

Is it the endless combinations of A T G and C that make up my DNA?

Is it the way my environment has shaped my genetic material such that I am expressed as a specific phenotype?

Or perhaps it is my memories that make me myself. Perhaps it is the collection of information and experience stored somewhere within my brain that makes me myself.

Then again, maybe it is some ethereal thing, something beyond my physical makeup, such that even if my physical being were to be completely annihilated, I would still be–and be complete.

Jenna Fox wakes up after a year-long coma to find that she’s not quite sure who she is.

She’s walking around in an unfamiliar body, remembering unfamiliar ideas.

She’s living in an unfamiliar world, watching videos of an unfamiliar her living an unfamiliar life.

She’s just starting to get comfortable in her own skin, just starting to remember herself, her life, her family…

when the truth smacks her in the face and she finds herself at square one again.

Who is she? What makes her herself? Is she herself? Or is she merely a product of her parent’ unceasing adoration?

The Adoration of Jenna Fox was my first ever dystopian novel–and oh what a first!

Set only a hundred or so years from now, The Adoration of Jenna Fox sees the world continuing on its current trend of helicopter parenting and biomedical advances–with disastrous results.

Adoration is a meaty novel, full of thought-provoking ideas about personhood (as mentioned above) as well as about ethics in medicine, genetic engineering, and beyond.

Nevertheless, this is by no means a novel intended as a text book. The Adoration of Jenna Fox is an engaging story in and of itself–and one that begs to be read, even if one would rather not think about the issues it raises.

Yet force you to think about the issues it does. This is no propaganda piece, intended to convince the reader to one side of a spectrum or another. Instead, it is does exactly what a good book ought–it forces the reader to think through sides of an issue he might not have thought about before, challenging his ideas regardless of which “side” he might have originally found himself on.

(For the record, I’m a conservative, evangelical Christian who believes that humans are created in the image of God and have intrinsic worth as such. I’m also the sister of a student of biomechanical engineering who is doing his graduate research with adult stem cells and who is always sharing fun stuff about manufactured skin and transplanted blood clots. And I found plenty to make me think in this book–things I agreed with and things I didn’t.)

This is a novel I highly recommend.

Rating: 5 stars
Category:Young Adult Dystopian Fiction
Synopsis:Jenna Fox seeks to discover who she is after a year-long coma leaves her in the dark–and discovers that who she is is scary.
Recommendation: Absolutely read this one! (Parents might want to read through it first before passing it on to their children–I’m not sure exactly what age group this’d be appropriate for, but I’m thinking probably older rather than younger. Like seventeen, eighteen year old kind of older. At least, that’s what I’m guessing. Not that the content is necessarily inappropriate–there’s a bit of girl/boy stuff but much less and less explicit than the usual YA fare; and a bit of violence I think–but I think the concepts and ethical questions would be much for a younger teen to think through.)

I originally added this book to my TBR list based on reviews from Diary of an Eccentric and Jennifer of 5M4B

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: “The Liturgical Year” by Joan Chittister

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Some people fondly remember Saturday morning cartoons. I remember Saturday morning radio.

In my youngest years, it was Mr. Nick and Jungle Jam and Adventures in Odyssey on KGBI-our local Christian radio station. Later, it was Reasons to Believe’s weekly radio program streaming from my Dad’s laptop as he prepared his breakfast or took his shower.

RTB has since dropped its radio format–but I’m still listening. Now I’m listening to RTB’s resident theologian and philosopher Kenneth Samples on his “Straight Thinking” podcast.

I have a lot to learn about logic and philosophy and theology, but one thing Ken has taught me is the components of an argument.

First, an argument requires an assertion (a truth claim). Second, an argument requires facts to support its assertion.

If all you have is facts, you don’t have an argument–you have only information. If all you have is assertions, you don’t have an argument–you have only opinions.

Which is exactly what you’ll find in Joan Chittister’s The Liturgical Year: the spiraling adventure of the spiritual life.

Chittister makes plenty of claims about the liturgical year…

“…The liturgical year is one of the teaching dimensions of the church. It is a lesson in life.”

“In the liturgy, then, is the standard of what it means to live a Christian life both as the church and as individuals. The seasons and cycles and solemnities put before us in the liturgical year are more than representations of time past; they are an unending sign–a veritable sacrament of life. It is through them that the Christ-life becomes present in our own lives in the here and now.”

“In every age, the liturgical year exists to immerse its world in the current as well as the eternal meanings of the Christian life.”

“Like the voices of loved ones gone before us, the liturgical year is the voice of Jesus calling to us every day of our lives to wake our sleeping selves from the drowsing effects of purposelessness and meaninglessness, materialism and hedonism, rationalism and indifference, to attend to the life of the Jesus who cries within us for fulfillment.”

but she rarely, if ever offers any information to support her claims.

I explained/complained about this to my little sister when I was four chapters in–and Grace urged me to read the rest of the book. Maybe it would get better.

I was certainly hopeful that once Chittister finished her introduction she’d get down to presenting some real arguments–or at least some useful facts with which I could build my own arguments.

Alas, my hopes were futile.

I’ve forced my way through two-thirds of this book, feeling obligated to give it a fair shot since I’d received my copy free from the publisher in exchange for my review.

But the truth is, if I hadn’t received this for free, I wouldn’t have wasted my time. I’d have read my obligatory 50 pages and called it quits.

The few bits of actual information found within these pages are pretty interesting–or would be if they’d have been extracted and presented as a five page essay. As a 200 page book, split by Chittister’s continued ramblings and unsupported assertions, they’re worthless.

I can’t in good conscience recommend this book.

Rating: 0 stars
Category:Spirituality
Synopsis:Chittister gives lots of opinions about what the liturgical year is–without a lot of information to back it up
Recommendation: No.

I think it probably goes without saying that the views provided in this review are my own–but for the sake of full disclosure, I received this book for free via the Book Sneeze blogger program at Thomas Nelson.

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: “Bright-Sided” by Barbara Ehrenreich

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Half-full or half-empty?

The perennial question has always puzzled me.

Which one exactly is supposed to mean optimism?

Is it better to have fullness, even if the fullness is not complete–or is it better to know that one does not have complete emptyness?

But however difficult I find it to determine the optimistic choice, it’s not hard to figure out which one is the right choice.

The optimistic choice is the right choice.

Of course.

Or at least, so says our culture–where optimism is considered a virtue and negativity a sin.

But what’s so great about optimism? And is negativity really as bad as it’s made out to be?

Barbara Ehrenreich explores these questions in her Bright-Side: How the relentless promotion of positive thinking has undermined America.

As is apparent from the title, Ehrenreich is not convinced that positivity is the answer to all life’s ails. In fact, she’s willing to blame positive thinking for any number of societal ills.

Ehrenreich begins her narrative with her own story of being a breast cancer victim who was overwhelmed and put-off by how the breast cancer machine (the activism groups, support groups, online discussion boards, awareness campaigns, etc.) pushed positivity into everything, as though breast cancer were a rite of initiation to be celebrated rather than a disease to be mourned over.

She moves quickly from this personal story to tell the story of self-help industries built around positive thinking: success coaching and prosperity preaching in particular.

According to Ehrenreich, positive thinking as a philosophy was a reaction against the Calvinism of early America–which Ehrenreich describes as “a system of socially imposed depression.” Apparently, “the focus on happiness [was] itself an implicit reproach to Calvinism.” So, thinkers like Mary Baker Eddy (founder of Christian Science) and Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (founder of the New Thought movement) reacted to the harsh strictures of their upbringing by pushing for happiness. Enter positive thinking.

The problem with positive thinking, to hear Ehrenreich explain it, is that positive thinking borrowed too much from Calvinism’s work ethic and sense of sin. While Calvinism used work to escape the evils of this world, positive thinking made positivity into the “work” that allows one to escape the “sin” of negativity.

Looking back, I’m kind of amazed that I finished this book. Ehrenreich’s complete and utter lack of understanding of Calvinism, particularly American Puritan Calvinism is laughable. Her portrayal of Puritan America is unjust.

However, her portrayal of the sugary-sweet positivity that has seeped into American churches and corporations is often spot on.

Her critiques of the supposed “science” of happiness are straightforward and worth considering. (The weakness of the correlational studies which “prove” that positive thinking leads to any number of positive health or lifestyle outcomes, the pseudoscientific nature of the “equations” set to describe positivity’s effect, the lack of attention paid to studies which support the null hypothesis, etc.)

In general, I think I agree with Ehrenreich’s conclusion: It is better to see the world as it truly is rather than to see it through rose-tinted glasses of “positivity” (or the dirty lenses of pessimism, for that matter).

What I don’t agree with is, well, everything else Ehrenreich says. In addition to vilifying our Protestant forebearers and criticizing those who seek silver linings in clouds like breast cancer or layoffs, Ehrenrich takes the opportunity to jump on her favorite hobby-horse: poverty. According to Ehrenreich, poverty is the result of positive thinking’s insistence on a free-market economy; but “positive thinkers” put down those in poverty as being there because they just don’t think positively enough. To hear Ehrenreich describe it, it’s a vicious cycle that pretty much destroys everyone–except those evil robber barons in the top x% of the American economy, who trample all over the little people…

Ad nauseum.

Anyway, this could have been a good book. It’s certainly a fascinating topic. But Ehrenreich’s biases make it just another “complain about conservatives and scream that the sky is falling” story.

Just like everything Ehrenreich writes.

Someday, I’m going to wise up and stop hoping that she’ll break out of her ideological narrowness. Until then, I guess I’ll just have to settle with writing rather pessimistic reviews of her books.

Sorry to be a downer.

Rating: 0 stars
Category:Optimism? Journalism? Pseudo-political commentary?
Synopsis:Ehrenreich briefly refutes the cult of positive thinking–and then complains for a good long time about the condition of America and how things are getting worse rather than better and…
Recommendation: Yeah. Not sure I really need to say anything more than I’ve already said. I’m not recommending this one.

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: “Much Ado About Anne” by Heather Vogel Frederick

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In my experience, lit about lit or books based on books tend to follow a fairly typical pattern.

You know, high school students perform “Romeo and Juliet” only to find that their own lives parallel the play in ways they never imagined (and generally don’t get until the end of the story.)

So I was expecting some orphans or a precocious redhead or at very least someone in need of a bosom friend when I picked up Much Ado About Anne.

When I got a couple chapters into the book and still hadn’t started to see parallels, I got a bit nervous.

It wasn’t what I expected at all.

And that’s a good thing.

Heather Vogel Frederick’s Much Ado About Anne doesn’t try to recreate Anne of Green Gables (as though another author could do it better than L.M. Montgomery!) Instead, Much Ado About Anne finds the mother-daughter book club experiencing their own story while reading through Anne’s story in book club.

Two great conflicts rise in the lives of the book club girls: first, their mothers invite the oh-so-stuck-up Becca Chadwick to join their club–and then Jess discovers that her family may be forced off their ancestral farm.

The girls (and therefore their readers) learn interesting factoids about L.M. Montgomery thanks to one girl’s librarian mother. And, just like good bibliophiles, they find ways of relating what they’re reading to their own lives.

And so, they realize that Becca is a Pye, and must be tolerated as a Pye. They relate to the utter mortification Anne felt when she dyed her hair green–although, of course, their mortification is over something entirely different. And they emulate their new heroine by naming the lands around them with fanciful names.

I enjoyed this book a great deal. It has just enough Anne to make it worth its title–but not so much Anne that it’s lacking any substance of its own.

I’m glad I took the opportunity to take a glimpse at Anne through the eyes of four fictional middle-school girls. As a long-standing Anne-fan, I found myself thrilled with these girls’ glimpses of Anne–and I’m willing to bet that this book would be a great way to introduce a young reader who’s reluctant to read “old” books into the great story that is Anne. Once she’s read this, I can almost guarantee she’ll want to read the “back-story”–the novels the mother-daughter book club read and discussed and applied to their own lives.

Rating: 4 stars
Category:Middle grade fiction (female)
Synopsis:The mother-daughter book club gets busy reading Anne of Green Gables, dealing with their very own Josie Pye, and racking their brains to save Half Moon Farm.
Recommendation: Great for lovers of Anne, or lovers of YA fiction/young chick lit, or anyone who wants to introduce a younger girl to the joys of Green Gables.

L. M. Montgomery Reading ChallengeI read this as a part of Carrie’s L.M. Montgomery Reading Challenge. Check out the link for more people’s comments on L.M. Montgomery. Visit my books page for more book reviews and notes by me.

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: “The Science of Sexy” by Bradley Bayou

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I’ve always considered science a pretty sexy thing.

Then again, I’m a bit of a nerd.

Lab coat and glasses and all that.

But that’s not what Bradley Bayou’s talking about in his The Science of Sexy. No, Bayou is interested in teaching YOU (and ME?) how to dress “sexy”.

**Interjection: Just thought of President Obama’s claim last year that insulation is sexy–and am envisioning someone dressed in insulation. Yeah, not quite.**

Bayou suggests that “sexy” is really all about symmetry and giving the illusion of an hourglass figure. His “science” is simply a collection of tips to help you dress YOUR body (or MINE?) to make it appear “hourglass-like”.

For an (admittedly soft) scientist like myself, I find Bayou’s “science” a bit mushy. The “science” in this book consists of measuring your shoulders, bust, waist, and hips and using those measurements to match you into one of four basic body shapes. Then, using a chart reminiscent of the size charts for pantyhose, you determine which “color” you are (12 different height/weight combinations). Having done this, you can now go to your “fitting room”, one of 12 chapters, which will give you hints and tips for dressing your unique figure.

The basic premise of the book isn’t bad. I agree with the whole symmetry and balance thing. I understand the hourglass illusion thing.

But is it really worth a whole book?

I’m not sure.

Since I’m only one woman, it just so happens that exactly four pages of this book directly applied to me–pages 246-249 for the “tall, medium hourglass.” These pages told me pretty much what I’ve already learned. I have a pretty decent body and my trick is to not cover up or de-emphasize my waist (and to not overemphasize my boobs, but that’s another story altogether). One new piece of information I learned from this book? I learned that apparently Bayou “thinks of [me] as a tall Play.boy bunny.” Marvelous. I’m ecstatic. (He did, thankfully, qualify that that doesn’t mean I have to or should dress like one. Whew–that’s a real load off my shoulders!)

Anyway, in order to more accurately assess the value of this book for those who may not be blessed (or cursed) with the body of a bunny, I took some measurements from willing guinea pigs (my mother, my sister, two brothers, and a slightly less willing father) and took a look at how they should dress in order to be “sexy.”

My little sister pretty much disagreed with everything Bayou said about her figure–but I couldn’t decide whether that’s because his recommendations were bad or because Grace is a teenager who’s into the “counter-cultural” thing (by which I mean into fitting in with her group of friends who refuse to let anyone but one another define them.)

Mom felt that the recommendations given for her body shape were just flat out wrong. They didn’t correspond with what she had experimentally found to be flattering in the past. So she started leafing through the book until she found some recommendations that were similar to what she finds flattering to her body type. She explained her problem to me and asked that I re-measure her. I did–and lo and behold, we’d classified her wrong!

The tricky thing about Bayou’s classification system is that the difference between a triangle shape and an hourglass shape or an inverted triangle and an hourglass is a 5% difference. Which for Menter women, at any rate is a difference of less than 2 inches. So if you get measured incorrectly, it can really throw off your readings.

Once we got Mom classified properly (as an average height, medium build, inverted triangle), the recommendations were spot on.

My brothers and Dad all ended up as “Tall Plus Inverted Triangles” (imagine that!) They were quite disappointed t not have breasts, since Bayou counseled those with their body shape that “Another blessing is that if you have breasts to play up, you can create cleavage to help create a sexy look.” Which began an interesting discussion of who had the bigger man-boobs. But I (and they) digress.

From my family’s perusal of this book, it seems a fairly sound system–as long as you do your measurements and calculations right. (For those of you who don’t remember percentages, to determine whether something is within 5% of your waist measurement, multiply your waist measurement by .95 to get the lower limit and by 1.05 to get the upper limit. If your waist is 40 inches, this’ll be 40x.95=38 and 40×1.05=42.)

Of course, even at the fairly low Amazon price of $11.90, I think this book’s a bit pricey considering that you’ll get about 60 pages of reading (20 pages at the beginning which basically say “I know what I’m talking about, I dress famous people” and 40 more that give general fashion strategies). Only four pages will directly apply to you.

So while this might be a worthwhile book to check out of the library and spend a max hour perusing, it’s probably not worth buying.

Rating: 2 stars
Category:Fashion
Synopsis:Figure out your custom “shape” and read recommendations for making you look sexy (in other words, hourglass-like)
Recommendation: The recommendations aren’t bad, but I certainly wouldn’t buy a book for 4 measly pages of pointers.

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