Find Me Unafraid: Love, Loss, and Hope in an African Slum

Find Me Unafraid: Love, Loss, and Hope in an African Slum

by Kennedy Odede and Jessica Posner

Genre: Non-fiction

Synopsis:  Kennedy Odede found his first grey hair at six.  Named after John F. Kennedy, he grew up as the eldest of eight children in Kibera, a teeming Kenyan slum without sewage systems, roads, running water, or access to basic needs, like health care and education.  At ten, he was along on the streets.  Homeless and in despair at sixteen, Kennedy was given a book of Martin Luther King's speeches.  Inspired, he bought a twenty-cent soccer ball and started a youth group, determined to bring the hope he'd found into the lives of his fellow citizens.  He called it Shining Hope for Communities (SHOFCO).

Several years later, Jessica Posner, an irrepressible Wesleyan student, went abroad to work with SHOFCO and, despite Kennedy's incredulous objections, moved into his tiny house.  They fell in love.  When Kennedy was threatened by political violence, Jessica helped him win a full scholarship to Wesleyan and brought him to America.  Torn between his community, Kennedy, with Jessica at his side, decided to start a school for Kibera's most vulnerable population: girls.

The alchemy of their remarkable union and the small, joyful world their brilliant collaboration has made in Kibera have drawn the support of community members and celebrities alike.  With this support, Jessica and Kennedy have been able to provide water, heath care, and entrepreneurial programs, which now serve more than seventy-six thousand people, and have replicated this model in Mathare, another Kenyan slum.  Because of their efforts, hundreds of young girls have the potential to become Kenya's future leaders, and tens of thousands of people living in poverty have access to clean water, health care, and economic empowerment programs.  Their girls attend school every day in crisp blue uniforms and red sweaters.  Filled with hope and ambition for the future, they adhere to a rigorous curriculum and out-performing students from the most expensive schools in Kenya.  By elevating these girls, Jessica and Kennedy have started a subtle yet powerful revolution in each community, and have dedicated themselves to bringing the same resolve and enthusiasm to urban slums beyond Kibera and Mathare.

Jessica and Kennedy's story is many things: a tender love story, a tale of how true leaders are made, and an account of the successful melding of the best in two cultures.  Few have fought as tenaciously and ingeniously against poverty and hopelessness as these two young people.  Their story vividly illustrates the power of young, hopeful people to have an impact on the world, and stands as a testament to the transformations made possible by true loves.

to the book jacket

Review:  The authors of this book are truly amazing people who persevered and never lost hope that they could better their community.  Kennedy overcame so much in his life from abuse, poverty, homelessness, crime, drugs, lack of education, and more to become a leader in his community who works tirelessly to make everyone's situations better.  Jessica is an innocent student from the United States who has no idea to poverty-stricken area that she is walking into but she dedicates herself to helping others and eventually is accepted as part of the community.  I'm amazed by how quickly the two of them were able to build infrastructure once they were able to procure funds.    This book does not sugarcoat events that happened at Kibera and the atrocities that occur to women and girls.  There are parts that are not easy to read and broke my heart to learn about how other people are living.  This book is truly eye opening.  This book makes me think about my life and what I can do to try to help others.

Rating: 5 stars

Left To Tell

Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

by Immaculee Ilibagiza with Steve Erwin

Genre: Non-fiction

Synopsis:  Immaculee Ilibagiza grew up in a country she loved, surrounded by a family she cherished.  But in 1994 her idyllic world was ripped apart as Rwanda descended into a bloody genocide.  Her family was brutally murdered during a killing spree that lasted three months and claimed the lives of nearly a million Rwandans.

Miraculously, Immaculee survived the slaughter.  For 91 days, she and seven other women huddled silently together in the cramped bathroom of a local pastor's home while hundreds of machete-wielding killers hunted for them.

It was during those endless hours of unspeakable terror that Immaculee discovered the power of prayer, eventually shedding her fear of death and forging a profound and lasting relationship with God.  She emerged from her bathroom hideout having truly discovered the meaning of unconditional love-a love so strong that she was able to seek out and forgive her family's killers.

The triumphant story of this remarkable woman's journey through the darkness of genocide will inspire anyone whose life has been touched by fear, suffering, and loss.

from the book jacket

Review:  I was amazed by Immaculee in this book.  Her faith in God and her faith in hope was truly remarkable while going through such a horrific event.  My heart broke for her and all of the victims of the genocide in Rwanda.  Immaculee was hidden in a bathroom with seven women, fed minimally (for fear of discovery), had nothing to do because they needed to maintain silence so Immaculee decided to continue and further her spirituality and relationship with God.  She never lost hope that the country would make it out of this horror.  She believed with all of her being that God would protect her.  After she was rescued and discovered the fate of her family, she looked to God for comfort and managed to forgive the man who led the gang that killed her family.  How extraordinary. 

Rating: 4 stars

Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland

Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland

by Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus

with Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan

Genre: Memoir, Nonfiction

Synopsis:  On May 6, 2013, Amanda Berry made headlines around the world when she fled a Cleveland home and called 911, saying: "Help me, I'm Amanda Berry...I've been kidnapped, and I've been missing for ten years."

A horrifying story rapidly unfolded.  Ariel Castro, a local school bus driver, had separately lured Berry and two other young women, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight, to his home, where he trapped them and kept them chained.  In the decade that followed, the three were frequently raped, psychologically abused, and threatened with death if they attempted to escape.  Years after she was taken, Berry had a daughter by their captor, a child she bravely raised as normally as possible under impossible conditions.

Drawing upon their recollections and the diary kept by Amanda Berry, Berry and Gina DeJesus describe the unimaginable torment they suffered and the strength and resourcefulness that enabled them to survive.  Pulitzer-Prize winning Washington Post reporters Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan interweave the events within Castro's house with original reporting on the efforts to find the missing girls.  The full story behind the headlines-including details never previously released on Castro's life and motivations-Hope is a harrowing yet inspiring chronicle of two women whose courage and ingenuity ultimately delivered them back to their lives and families.

from the book jacket

Review:  I don't know why but I find memoirs such as these very intriguing.  I really love to see how people overcome such horrible tragedies, maintain positive attitudes and hope, and move on with their lives with such positivity and determination.  I certainly wish that things like this never happened to anyone and I am so glad that the end result was freedom.  These two women showed their strength over and over again in this book and I admire them and the survivors that they are.  Amanda and Gina speak frankly about what their lives were like during the ten years (for Amanda) that they were held captive.  The entries are written from journal entries that Amanda kept so most of the story is written in short snippets.  Between the journal entries from Amanda and Gina were short articles and stories written from the outside perspective.  The writing style in both the diary entries and the short articles is fairly simplistic and I had to remind myself that Amanda was abducted at the age of 16 and Gina at the age of 14 and therefore unfortunately missed out on schooling (Gina mentions late in the book after she escaped that she didn't finish 7th grade so she had to make up a lot of education at the age of 23 so she could finish high school).  I do wish that Michelle Knight would have co-authored the book as well so we could have gotten her perspective of being in the house but I may need to read her book to hear her side and what happened to her since she was held captive the longest.

Rating: 4 stars

When Breath Becomes Air

When Breath Becomes Air

Paul Kalanithi

Genre: Memoir

Summary (from Goodreads): For readers of Atul Gawande, Andrew Solomon, and Anne Lamott, a profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir by a young neurosurgeon faced with a terminal cancer diagnosis who attempts to answer the question What makes a life worth living?
 
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor making a living treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. Just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air, which features a Foreword by Dr. Abraham Verghese and an Epilogue by Kalanithi’s wife, Lucy, chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a young neurosurgeon at Stanford, guiding patients toward a deeper understanding of death and illness, and finally into a patient and a new father to a baby girl, confronting his own mortality.

What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.

Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing mortality and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a gifted writer who became both.

Marcie's Review: A hauntingly beautiful book written by a neurosurgeon diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.  It is obvious that the author had once studied literature, since his words are written simplistically, yet imbued with a heart rending poetry.  I was surprised that so much of the book was devoted to his earlier years; for some reason I thought it would primarily focus on the lessons he learned while dying.  Be prepared to cry while reading this one.

Becky's Review:  I really enjoy memoirs as they give me a peek into other people's lives and how they live.  The look into med school and being a doctor was not one that I needed to read about.  I have no interest in hearing about cadavers being cut open.  The book is divided into 2 parts-one before his diagnosis and one after.  The part before was slow and to me uninteresting since it was full of his life in medicine, something of which I really don't need to know details of.  I constant put this book down in the first chapter even though he did have a poetic way of writing and seemed very introspective.  The whole book was also very philosophical where the author delved into the meaning of what he was doing and how he was living and the meaning behind things.  It got too heavy for me and I skimmed so I could read more about his life and what was happening to him.  My favorite part of the book was the epilogue that was written by his wife.  That is the part that made me tear up.  She did mention that Paul worked on the book after his diagnosis before he passed away and it was unfinished.  To me, that explained a lot about the book and its organization.  Maybe the problem I had with this book is that I am not a very existential person and Paul certainly was.

Marcie's Rating: 4,5 stars

Becky's Rating: 3 stars

Does This Beach Make Me Look Fat?

Does This Beach Make Me Look Fat?

Lisa Scottoline & Francesca Serritella

Genre: Memoir - Humor

Summary (from Goodreads): The unstoppable, irreverent mother-daughter team presents a new collection of funny stories and true confessions that every woman can relate to. From identity theft to the hazards of bicycling to college reunions and eating on the beach, Lisa and Francesca tackle the quirks, absurdities, and wonders of everyday life with wit and warmth. As Lisa says, "More and more, especially in the summertime when I'm sitting on the beach, I'm learning not to sweat it. To go back to the child that I used to be. To see myself through the loving eyes of my parents. To eat on the beach. And not to worry about whether every little thing makes me look fat. In fact, not to worry at all."


So put aside your worries and join Lisa and Francesca as they navigate their way through the crazy world we live in, laughing along the way.

Review: I would never have picked this book up, but it was recommended by the adult services librarian when I went to ask for a good book to read (after she had suggested about 30 that I had already read).  Each chapter is very short, I believe reprinted from a newspaper column that both women write for, written by either Lisa or Francesca.  I suppose I should have suspected this would be the case, given the title, but too many of the chapters dealt with food or body image for my liking - I had been hoping that the title was just designed to catch your eye, and that most of the book would be unrelated.  While I recognized myself in some of the articles, I didn't have much in common with the twenty-something woman with dating woes or the fifty-something twice-divorced woman with no love life and a dying mother.  And I didn't find very much of the book funny.  I guess I just am not the target audience for these writers.

Rating: 2 stars

I Will Always Write Back

I Will Always Write Back: How One Letter Changed Two Lives

Caitlin Alifirenka & Martin Ganda
with Liz Welch

Genre: Young Adult

Summary (from Goodreads): The true story of an all-American girl and a boy from an impoverished city in Zimbabwe and the letter that changed both of their lives forever.

It started as an assignment. Everyone in Caitlin's class wrote to an unknown student somewhere in a distant place. All the other kids picked countries like France or Germany, but when Caitlin saw Zimbabwe written on the board, it sounded like the most exotic place she had ever heard of--so she chose it.
Martin was lucky to even receive a pen pal letter. There were only ten letters, and forty kids in his class. But he was the top student, so he got the first one.

That letter was the beginning of a correspondence that spanned six years and changed two lives.

In this compelling dual memoir, Caitlin and Martin recount how they became best friends --and better people--through letters. Their story will inspire readers to look beyond their own lives and wonder about the world at large and their place in it.

Marcie's Review: This is the inspirational story of how an upper middle class girl and her family from America help a destitute Zimbabwean boy achieve his dreams of education.  Reading that sentence I just wrote makes it seem like this book has a white-savior complex going on, and it does, but the authors are careful to emphasize how close a friendship they shared in order to make friendship the biggest theme in the book.  It is also obvious that Caitlin grew from a shallow and spoiled middle schooler into a caring and generous high schooler, and that this personal growth was due in large part to her friendship with Martin.

I find it difficult to believe that some of the letters were written by children - they are obviously unusually talented at writing and sharing their deepest emotions.  

As I was reading, I kept wondering what I would do if my child told me that she wanted to send money to her penpal overseas.  I fear that I would be skeptical and worry that she was falling for some kind of scam, but I can only hope that I would respond as generously as Caitlin and her family and make a huge difference in a child's life.

Marcie's Rating: 4 stars

Becky's Review:  I loved reading this story about how Caitlin and Martin became friends through letters and how they helped each other become the people they are today.  They began writing letters when they were in middle school and at first their letters were about music they like and other surface topics.  Martin became desperate because of the poverty that he and his family lived in.  Martin knew he needed to stay in school in order to better his life but the family didn't have enough money. He asked Caitlin for help and from there Caitlin's eyes were opened to how privileged her life was and how little Martin's family had.  I was amazed by both families: the generosity that Caitlin's family showed and the positive attitudes Martin's family displayed even in the hardest times.

Becky's Rating: 5 stars

Garbage Bag Suitcase

Garbage Bag Suitcase

by Shenandoah Chefalo

Genre: Memoir, Non-fiction

Synopsis: Garbage Bag Suitcase is the true story of Shenandoah Chefalo's wholly dysfunctional journey through a childhood with neglectful, drug-and alcohol addicted parents.  She endured numerous moves in the middle of the night with just minutes to pack, multiple changes in schools, hunger, cruelty, and loneliness.

Finally at the age of 13, Shen had had enough.  After being abandoned by her mother for months at her grandmother's retirement community, she asked to be put into foster care.  Surely she would fare better at a stable home than living with her mother?  It turns out that it was not the storybook ending she had hoped for.  With foster parents more interested in the income received by housing a foster child, Shen was once again neglected emotionally.  The money she earned working at the local grocery store was taken by her foster parents to "cover her expenses."  When a car accident lands her in the hospital with grave injuries and no one came to visit her during her three-week stay, she realizes she is truly all alone in the world.

Overcoming her many adversities, Shen became part of the 3% of all foster care children who get into college, and the 1% who graduate.  She became a successful businesswoman, got married, and had a daughter.  Despite her numerous achievements in life though, she still suffers from the long-term effects of neglect, and the coping skills that she adapted in her childhood are not always productive in her adult life.

Garbage Bag Suitcase is not only the inspiring and hair-raising story of one woman's journey to overcome her desolate childhood, but it also presents grass-root solutions on how to revamp the broken foster care system.

Review:  I appreciated reading this memoir about the author's neglected childhood experiences and subsequent adulthood.  The author was pretty matter of fact about the events in her early life and the effects of the neglect later in her life.  I've read other memoirs about children in foster care and children who had parents who neglected them but none of them included such a frank discussion of how this impacted their later life including their relationships-both love and friendship, money sense, etc.  I found that part of the book very intriguing as well as her suggestions on how to improve foster care.

What I was missing from the book was the emotions.  I prefer memoirs that tug at my heart and really make me feel for the author and this book did not do that for me because the writing was so straightforward and seemed that just the facts were included.  Chefalo's story (the events of her life) in itself causes me to feel angry that no one helped her before the age of 13 when she asked to be placed in foster care but it wasn't the writing style that made me feel these emotions.  I feel that perhaps the purpose of the writing was to open readers' eyes to the flaws in the system, the effects of neglect, and what we can do about the system.  To me, that makes this book a little more narrative non-fiction and less of a memoir.  I did feel a call to continue my inner dialogue about being a foster parent after reading this book which to me makes this book successful.

I was provided a copy of the book by the author in return for my honest review.  Thank you so much for the book!

Rating: 3.5 stars

Alone in Antarctica

Alone in Antarctica

Felicity Aston

Genre: Memoir

Summary (from Goodreads): In the whirling noise of our advancing technological age, we are seemingly never alone, never out-of-touch with the barrage of electronic data and information.

Felicity Aston, physicist and meteorologist, took two months off from all human contact as she became the first woman -- and only the third person in history – to ski across the entire continent of Antarctica alone. She did it, too, with the simple apparatus of cross-country, without the aids used by her prededecessors – two Norwegian men – each of whom employed either parasails or kites.

Aston’s journey across the ice at the bottom of the world asked of her the extremes in terms of mental and physical bravery, as she faced the risks of unseen cracks buried in the snow so large they might engulf her and hypothermia due to brutalizing weather. She had to deal, too, with her emotional vulnerability in face of the constant bombardment of hallucinations brought on by the vast sea of whiteness, the lack of stimulation to her senses as she faced what is tantamount to a form of solitary confinement.

Like Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, Felicity Aston’s Alone in Antarctica becomes an inspirational saga of one woman’s battle through fear and loneliness as she honestly confronts both the physical challenges of her adventure, as well as her own human vulnerabilities.

Marcie's Review:  This woman's journey across Antarctica was fascinating to me; mostly because of the descriptions of the unimaginably strange and beautiful landscape, but also because of the bravery and humility Felicity showed as she strove to become the first woman to ski across Antarctica on her own.  I think she's a little bit crazy for attempting such a dangerous stunt, but I definitely admire her physical strength and the strength of character it took to keep going when facing the formidable unknown.

Marcie's Rating: 4 stars

Becky's Review:  There was something in this book that did not capture my interest for long.  I found this book a little dull and easy to put down.  I often found myself putting the book down to look something up online about Antarctica that she was talking about.  I thought there would be more adventure and maybe a little drama in this book but there really wasn't much which is a good thing for Aston!  I admire her for being able to go off alone and take on such a difficult task.  She honestly shared her struggles and emotions throughout the journey.  I do wish that she would have included map of where she went and the landforms that she was talking about.

Becky's Rating: 3 stars

Orange is the New Black

Orange is the New Black

Piper Kerman

Genre: Memoir

Summary (from Goodreads): With her career, live-in boyfriend and loving family, Piper Kerman barely resembles the rebellious young woman who got mixed up with drug runners and delivered a suitcase of drug money to Europe over a decade ago. But when she least expects it, her reckless past catches up with her; convicted and sentenced to fifteen months at an infamous women's prison in Connecticut, Piper becomes inmate #11187-424. From her first strip search to her final release, she learns to navigate this strange world with its arbitrary rules and codes, its unpredictable, even dangerous relationships. She meets women from all walks of life, who surprise her with tokens of generosity, hard truths and simple acts of acceptance.

Review:  Quite a few reviews of this book focus on how Piper seemed to have such an easy jail sentence because she is white, blonde, educated and cute.  While the term she served in prison did seem to be easier than what I would have imagined, she approached her sentence with a sense of humility and repentance that I found refreshing.  There was surprisingly little drama, fighting and violence in her minimum security prison, and so there wasn't really much drama in her story.  I've only seen one episode of the show, but I suspect I'll like the book better just based on the blatant mean-spiritedness and lesbianism evident in the first episode of the show that just wasn't a big deal in the book.  On a separate note, this book could really make you think about the benefits of a jail sentence for a non-violent criminal, and what could or should be done to improve the punishment for non-violent crimes.  It would be interesting to discuss this book with a book club.

Rating: 4 stars

Clara's War

Clara's War

Clara Kramer

Genre:  Memoir

Summary (from Goodreads): On 21 July 1942 the Nazis invaded Poland. In the small town of Zolkiew, life for Jewish 15-year-old Clara Kramer was never to be the same again. While those around her were either slaughtered or transported, Clara and her family hid perilously in a hand-dug cellar. Living above and protecting them were the Becks.

Mr Beck was a womaniser, a drunkard and a self-professed anti-Semite, yet he risked his life throughout the war to keep his charges safe. Nevertheless, life with Mr Beck was far from predictable. From the house catching fire, to Beck's affair with Clara's cousin, to the nightly SS drinking sessions in the room just above, Clara's War transports you into the dark, cramped bunker, and sits you next to the families as they hold their breath time and again.

Sixty years later, Clara Kramer has created a memoir that is lyrical, dramatic and heartbreakingly compelling. Despite the worst of circumstances, this is a story full of hope and survival, courage and love.
 
Review:  Oh, this book was heartrending!  Along the lines of Anne Frank, Diary of a Young Girl, this book recounts a teenage Jewish Polish girl's struggle to hide from the Nazis during World War II.  While Clara talks about the unbelievably terrible things that happen to all of her friends, family, neighbors, schoolmates and acquaintances, she also makes a point of talking about the strength, courage and hope that her family had, and the bravery of the family who hid them for almost two years.  There is plenty of tragedy in this book, but that message of courage is the one that really stuck with me at the end.  It is amazing how anyone survived the circumstances that her family did.

Rating: 5 stars

Orchard House

Orchard House

Tara Austen Weaver

Genre:  Memoir

Summary (from Goodreads): For fans of Anne Lamott, a profoundly moving memoir of rediscovering, reinventing, and reconnecting, as an estranged mother and daughter come together to revive a long-abandoned garden and ultimately their relationship and themselves.
 
Peeling paint, stained floors, vined-over windows, a neglected and wild garden—Tara Austen Weaver can’t get the Seattle real estate listing out of her head. Any sane person would have seen the abandoned property for what it was: a ramshackle half-acre filled with dead grass, blackberry vines, and trouble. But Tara sees potential and promise—not only for the edible bounty the garden could yield for her family, but for the personal renewal she and her mother might reap along the way.

So begins Orchard House, a story of rehabilitation and cultivation—of land and soul. Through bleak winters, springs that sputter with rain and cold, golden days of summer, and autumns full of apples, pears, and pumpkins, this evocative memoir recounts the Weavers’ trials and triumphs, detailing what grew and what didn’t, the obstacles overcome and the lessons learned. Inexorably, as mother and daughter tend this wild patch and the fruits of their labor begin to flourish, green shoots of hope emerge from the darkness of their past.

For everyone who has ever planted something that they wished would survive—or tried to mend something that seemed forever broken—Orchard House is a tale of healing and growth set in a most unlikely place.
 
Review: This book made me want to dig up my yard and plant a huge vegetable garden, except it also made me realize that I really don't have time to take care of a big garden right now.  Unlike the author, I would prefer to have a life with friends and family and other non-garden things in it.  There were some beautiful descriptive moments, when talking about the meadow and the orchard and the arching blackberry vines, reminiscent of magical childhood gardens like The Secret Garden.  I preferred reading about the challenges in gardening, rather than remembrances of the author's unhappy, neglected childhood with her distant workaholic mother.  

Rating: 3.5 stars

84, Charing Cross Road

84, Charing Cross Road

Helene Hanff

Genre:  Memoir

Summary (from Goodreads): It all began with a letter inquiring about second-hand books, written by Helene Hanff in New York, and posted to a bookshop at 84, Charing Cross Road in London. As Helene's sarcastic and witty letters are responded to by the stodgy and proper Frank Doel of 84, Charing Cross Road, a relationship blossoms into a warm and charming long-distance friendship lasting many years.
 
Review:  It was interesting to get a little glimpse of post-WWII life in England, and the author certainly seemed like a nice, quirky person who had a gift for writing short and entertaining letters.  But I don't understand why this collection of letters was published as a book.  Perhaps it would have made more sense if I was an avid reader of the obscure classic books and letters that peppered the letters.  Although I suspect I would still be wondering why someone's correspondence was being published, and why she saves all those letters anyway.

Rating: 2 stars

Life from Scratch

Life from Scratch

Sasha Martin

Genre: Memoir

Summary (from Goodreads): It was a culinary journey like no other: Over the course of 195 weeks, food writer and blogger Sasha Martin set out to cook—and eat—a meal from every country in the world. As cooking unlocked the memories of her rough-and-tumble childhood and the loss and heartbreak that came with it, Martin became more determined than ever to find peace and elevate her life through the prism of food and world cultures. From the tiny, makeshift kitchen of her eccentric, creative mother to a string of foster homes to the house from which she launches her own cooking adventure, Martin’s heartfelt, brutally honest memoir reveals the power of cooking to bond, to empower, and to heal—and celebrates the simple truth that happiness is created from within.
 
Review:  The idea of cooking dishes from every country in the world was an intriguing one, and I enjoyed reading about how the author selected her recipes and what her family thought about all the meals.  The stories about her past were interesting, too, but I couldn't help feeling that there must have been more going on with her mother than she admitted to.

Rating: 3 stars

Enrique's Journey

Enrique's Journey

Sonia Nazario

Genre: Non-fiction

Summary (from Goodreads):  Based on the Los Angeles Times newspaper series that won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for feature writing and another for feature photography, this astonishing story puts a human face on the ongoing debate about immigration reform in the United States. Now a beloved classic, this page-turner about the power of family is a popular text in classrooms and a touchstone for communities across the country to engage in meaningful discussions about this essential American subject.

Enrique’s Journey recounts the unforgettable quest of a Honduran boy looking for his mother, eleven years after she is forced to leave her starving family to find work in the United States. Braving unimaginable peril, often clinging to the sides and tops of freight trains, Enrique travels through hostile worlds full of thugs, bandits, and corrupt cops. But he pushes forward, relying on his wit, courage, hope, and the kindness of strangers. As Isabel Allende writes: “This is a twenty-first-century Odyssey. If you are going to read only one nonfiction book this year, it has to be this one.”

Review:  While reading this book, I learned a lot about the plight of Central American children illegally immigrating to the United States, and was horrified by the violence many of them suffer during their journey.  While Nazario doesn't seem to try to sway readers to a certain point of view on immigration, I felt that her book made me think about immigration in a different way - a HUMAN way.  And that regardless of how I felt about the illegal immigration issue in general, Nazario's book serves to remind us all that these are human children  that we should be caring about.

However, the book read like a compilation of newspaper articles rather than a novel, and the character of Enrique could have been developed better.  It felt more like a retelling of the things that happened to Enrique on his journey, juxtaposed with stories about other immigrants, and I would have liked to know more about how Enrique was thinking and feeling.

Rating: 4 stars

Population: 485

Population: 485

Michael Perry

Genre: Memoir

Summary (from Goodreads):  Here the local vigilante is a farmer's wife armed with a pistol and a Bible, the most senior member of the volunteer fire department is a cross-eyed butcher with one kidney and two ex-wives (both of whom work at the only gas station in town), and the back roads are haunted by the ghosts of children and farmers. Michael Perry loves this place. He grew up here, and now -- after a decade away -- he has returned.


Unable to polka or repair his own pickup, his farm-boy hands gone soft after years of writing, Mike figures the best way to regain his credibility is to join the volunteer fire department. Against a backdrop of fires and tangled wrecks, bar fights and smelt feeds, he tells a frequently comic tale leavened with moments of heartbreaking delicacy and searing tragedy.

Review: I read this book for my bookclub, but I don't know that we will find a lot to discuss when we finally get together.  It caught our interest because it is about small town life in a Northern Wisconsin town, and the description sounded like it would be dramatic and probably funny.  Unfortunately, the description wasn't a very accurate summary of the book, as it dealt more with the tragedy involved in being a volunteer fire fighter/paramedic than with the comedy.  I felt like the author sometimes tried to hard to use fancy language and provoke deep thinking; while I love books that use SAT vocabulary words and make me think, I don't like it to be too obvious.  Having said all that, the stories were quite interesting, and the descriptions of small-town Wisconsonians accurate, at least as far as I could tell.

Rating: 3 stars

Wild

Wild

Cheryl Strayed

Genre: Memoir

Summary (from Goodreads):  A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again.

At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State—and to do it alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than “an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise.” But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone.

Strayed faces down rattlesnakes and black bears, intense heat and record snowfalls, and both the beauty and loneliness of the trail. Told with great suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild vividly captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.

Review: I don't often read memoirs, but the story of a single woman hiking the Pacific Crest Trail was too intriguing to pass up.  I wasn't sure I would like Cheryl, since she was a messed up, promiscuous heroin user, plus she was completely naive and unprepared to go backpacking on her own.  But her story drew me in, and I enjoyed reading about how she grew and changed during her adventure.  The writing was fluid and easy to read, and the descriptions of the vistas along the trail made me want to go hiking -- with a lot more preparation and care than Cheryl! 

Rating: 4 stars

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Genre: Non-Fiction

Summary (from Goodreads):  The life Kamila Sidiqi had known changed overnight when the Taliban seized control of the city of Kabul. After receiving a teaching degree during the civil war—a rare achievement for any Afghan woman—Kamila was subsequently banned from school and confined to her home. When her father and brother were forced to flee the city, Kamila became the sole breadwinner for her five siblings. Armed only with grit and determination, she picked up a needle and thread and created a thriving business of her own.

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana tells the incredible true story of this unlikely entrepreneur who mobilized her community under the Taliban. Former ABC Newsreporter Gayle Tzemach Lemmon spent years on the ground reporting Kamila's story, and the result is an unusually intimate and unsanitized look at the daily lives of women in Afghanistan. These women are not victims; they are the glue that holds families together; they are the backbone and the heart of their nation.

Afghanistan's future remains uncertain as debates over withdrawal timelines dominate the news. The Dressmaker of Khair Khana moves beyond the headlines to transport you to an Afghanistan you have never seen before. This is a story of war, but it is also a story of sisterhood and resilience in the face of despair. Kamila Sidiqi's journey will inspire you, but it will also change the way you think about one of the most important political and humanitarian issues of our time.

Review: I wanted to love this book.  Kamila's story is certainly inspiring and deserves to be told; she sounds like a phenomenally brave and resourceful young woman.  The author had clearly done her research about life in Kabul during the Taliban era, and she did a good job bringing that terrifying time to life.  I certainly learned a lot about how the Taliban came to power and how they treated women during that time.  However, the writing style was overly simplistic (perhaps because the author had been a journalist previously?) and I would like to have seen much more depth to the main characters. 

Rating: 3 stars

Until I Say Good-Bye

Until I Say Good-Bye

Susan Spencer-Wendel

Genre: Memoir

Summary (from Goodreads):  In June 2011, Susan Spencer-Wendel learned she had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)--Lou Gehrig's disease--an irreversible condition that systematically destroys the nerves that power the muscles. She was forty-four years old, with a devoted husband and three young children, and she had only one year of health remaining.

Susan decided to live that year with joy.

She quit her job as a journalist and spent time with her family. She built an outdoor meeting space for friends in her backyard. And she took seven trips with the seven most important people in her life. As her health declined, Susan journeyed to the Yukon, Hungary, the Bahamas, and Cyprus. She took her sons to swim with dolphins, and her teenage daughter, Marina, to Kleinfeld's bridal shop in New York City to see her for the first and last time in a wedding dress.

She also wrote this book. No longer able to walk or even to lift her arms, she tapped it out letter by letter on her iPhone using only her right thumb, the last finger still working.

However, Until I Say Good-Bye is not angry or bitter. It is sad in parts--how could it not be?--but it is filled with Susan's optimism, joie de vivre, and sense of humor. It is a book about life, not death. One that, like Susan, will make everyone smile.

From the Burger King parking lot where she cried after her diagnosis to a snowy hot spring near the Arctic Circle, from a hilarious family Christmas disaster to the decrepit monastery in eastern Cyprus where she rediscovered her heritage, Until I Say Good-Bye is not only Susan Spencer-Wendel's unforgettable gift to her loved ones--a heartfelt record of their final experiences together--but an offering to all of us: a reminder that "every day is better when it is lived with joy."

Marcie's Review:  I cried and cried while reading this book, but in spite of that, it's a beautiful, heartwarming, uplifting book.  Susan acknowledged some of the unhappy thoughts and bad feelings she'd had following her diagnosis with ALS, but she chose to focus her time on making joyful memories with her family.  This book was such a good reminder to give my kids an extra hug and choose joy every day.

I had a few complaints, namely that the chapters were, at times, a little jumpy, but I decided to overlook that in my rating given that she wrote the entire book on her i-phone using only her right thumb.  What an amazing accomplishment! 

Becky's Review:  I enjoyed reading this book and I admire Susan for having written it even though it was so difficult for her to do so.  I also admire Susan for her attitude after being diagnosed with ALS.  The book was a little disjointed and a lot of it focused on her life before ALS rather than how she lived with joy after her diagnosis.  I love to read memoirs but this one fell short for me-it was lacking the emotion that you find in good memoirs.  There were moments where I teared up-especially the part when she took her daughter to New York.  She does write the book as more of a journalist and just includes the facts.  I wanted more.

Marcie's Rating: 4.5 stars 

Becky's Rating: 3.5 stars

The Power of Habit

The Power of Habit

by Charles Duhigg

Genre: Non Fiction

Synopsis: A young woman walks into a laboratory. Over the past two years, she has transformed almost every aspect of her life. She has quit smoking, run a marathon, and been promoted at work. The patterns inside her brain, neurologists discover, have fundamentally changed.

Marketers at Procter & Gamble study videos of people making their beds. They are desperately trying to figure out how to sell a new product called Febreze, on track to be one of the biggest flops in company history. Suddenly, one of them detects a nearly imperceptible pattern—and with a slight shift in advertising, Febreze goes on to earn a billion dollars a year.

An untested CEO takes over one of the largest companies in America. His first order of business is attacking a single pattern among his employees—how they approach worker safety—and soon the firm, Alcoa, becomes the top performer in the Dow Jones.

What do all these people have in common? They achieved success by focusing on the patterns that shape every aspect of our lives.

They succeeded by transforming habits.

In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed. With penetrating intelligence and an ability to distill vast amounts of information into engrossing narratives, Duhigg brings to life a whole new understanding of human nature and its potential for transformation.

Along the way we learn why some people and companies struggle to change, despite years of trying, while others seem to remake themselves overnight. We visit laboratories where neuroscientists explore how habits work and where, exactly, they reside in our brains. We discover how the right habits were crucial to the success of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, and civil-rights hero Martin Luther King, Jr. We go inside Procter & Gamble, Target superstores, Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, NFL locker rooms, and the nation’s largest hospitals and see how implementing so-called keystone habits can earn billions and mean the difference between failure and success, life and death.

At its core, The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, raising exceptional children, becoming more productive, building revolutionary companies and social movements, and achieving success is understanding how habits work.

Habits aren’t destiny. As Charles Duhigg shows, by harnessing this new science, we can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives.

From the author's website

Review: I love psychology and this book immediately grabbed me during the first section because it was all about brain research and what the brain looks like when habits are formed.  That to me was very interesting to read.  I was really hooked for a while. The author split the book into 3 sections: how habits affect people, how they affect business and how they affect societies.  After a while the book seemed to get a little redundant.  At times I had a hard time figuring out how the content the author was writing about related to habits.  At the very end (the last page or so) the author tied everything together.  There was also an appendix that talked about how you can change your habits which I found to be very informative and I wish there had been more of that in the book.  The book dealt more with how habits are formed and the science behind them rather than how to change habits.  It was a good read but I don't think it would be a book that everyone would find interesting.  I think it is for a specific audience.

Rating: 3 1/2 stars