Book Reviewer for Church

Recently I have wanted to become more active in my church and found out that there was a team that reviewed books for the bookstore. What could be more perfect for me? So I'm finally reviewing my first book after months of procrastonating. The book entitled, Gotta Have It! is about today's world of excess and how people are trying to satisfy unmet needs of purpose, hope, and security with desiring things.

The author, Dr. Gregory Jantz also wrote; Hope, Help, and Healing for Eating Disorders and is the founder of The Center for Counseling and Health Resources. I hope to learn a lot about today's obsession with possession and at least think more about the purchases I make and if I really "need" what I'm buying or if I'm trying to feed another unmet need with my purchase. Like many others in my generation, I too have made purchases that were completely unnecessary and have come to regret some of those impulse buys. But, in seeing how many toys many children have today and how silly it is that they have so many toys that some never really get played with, I have made a decision to not do the same with my own children. I know their grandparents will spoil them, but I won't buy them so many things that they cannot appreciate the value of what they already have. This may seem a bit lofty a goal for my future children, but I think it will teach them many lessons: to share what they do have, to appreciate what they have, to take care of what they have, and to only request what they really, really want.

Well, I'll keep you up to date with this book, since I have to return it in two weeks, I'll have more blogs too. I really do want to keep this blog up in the hopes that some people will read books they might not have because of my reviews.

Reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

So I'm reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo now and I kind of got into it by accident. My mom and dad were visiting friends in North Carolina and my mom wound up coming home with this book. Her friend Mary said she'd love it, but my mom doesn't have that much time to read, so she ended up giving it to me because she knew I would read it. So, Mary, this review is for you.

My mom's issue with the book was so many characters with names that were hard to pronounce. Well, the book does take place in the Sweden, so I'll give her that one. But once I got into the two main characters, or the two characters I feel are the most pivotal: Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander, it was impossible for me to quit reading the book.

So far all I know is Salander is working for an agency that essentially finds out information about people, but good dirt, like a detective agency. So Salander has been hired through her company to follow Mikael. In the meantime, Mikael Blomkvist is holed away in some estate in another city researching a family murder mystery for a very wealthy man.

Apparently Blomkvist has made a name for himself as the part owner of a financial magazine that is bent on seeking the truth about all of the CEOs of large companies and other financial superstars. He went to trial for some information he spilled about a wealthy hedge fund guy. The wealthy guy won the slander trial and so Mikael has to spend some time away from his magazine and also some time in jail.

Before he goes to jail, he is propositioned by a very wealthy man who might be able to help him get real dirt on the hedge fund guy, if he writes a bio tell-all for this man, but that is all as a guise for solving a family murder mystery that the wealthy man has spent his life trying to solve.

I don't know what is going to happen, but I have a feeling Salander is somehow mysteriously related to the wealthy guy's missing/murdered family member. No spoilers, I will find out how it ends the right way, by reading it!

My Lobotomy

This book is amazing! It only took me one week to read and I literally could not put the book down. My Lobotomy was written by Howard Dully and Charles Fleming. It is Howard Dully's memoir of his life leading up to and after receiving an "ice pick" lobotomy.

Howard's mother died when he was young and his father remarried a woman who was nothing like the loving mother Howard vaguely remembers. The step-mother tolerated Howard for a short period of time and then began a violent vengeance against him, that existed until the day she died. By all accounts, Howard was an energetic young boy who got into some trouble here and there. Nothing that would make someone want to discard him or even medically disable him. Since the story is written from Howard's point of view, there is no telling what may have really happened in his childhood home. But his father worked to make ends meet and was never at home, and the angry step-mother berated and beat poor Howard.

The step-mother, Lou, then began trying to pawn Howard off onto neighbors who took in unwanted children. When that no longer worked, Lou conviced Howard's father to look for some other place to take Howard in, citing financial burden as the reason. Lou was not satisfied, so she began visiting psychiatrists and therapists, seeking a cure for Howard's problems. The "problems" were non-existent so most doctors blamed Lou for what was happening and even went so far as to suggest she needed help. That was the last straw. Lou finally found a doctor that was willing to listen and work with her, his name was Dr. Walter Freeman, famous for the invention of the "ice pick" lobotomy that was shunned by others in the medical profession.

In the end, Lou got what she wanted. Howard's father consented and paid $200 for Howard's outpatient lobotomy. It was administerd by electroshocking the patient into a comatose state and then lifting the eye lid and forcing an ice pick like instrument between the eye and the ocular cavity. It was often unsuccessful and even cause death for many patients. Howard was lucky in that he didn't die, but he spend the next 20 years of his life in and out of asylums and juvenile detention facilities. In some cases he was sent to schools for "special" children.

But, a lobotomy is never the cure for normal child like behavior. Howard finally ended up on the streets, drug addicted and an alcoholic. He was constantly burdened with the thought that he may have been a terrible person or committed some heinous crime in order to deserve a lobotomy at the age of 12. He then spent the next 10 or so years trying to find out what happened and why he was given a transorbital lobotomy. The rest of the book is devoted to Howard's pursuit of the truth before all the people involved in his life as a child died. It is terribly sad, but somehow uplifting. It is a must read for those of you that are interested in memoirs and the life histories of troubled people, or vicitims of ignorance.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

It has been way too long since I have gotten back to my blog. Work has kept me really busy, but I was inspired and felt like writing tonight.

When the Tim Burton version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was coming out, I knew I had to see it. I loved watching the Disney film and felt that Tim Burton could work wonders with that template and make a much more adult-feeling version of the children's classic. But, like any bibliophile, I had to re-read the Carroll classic first. I was not surprised that it was full of the same strange characters, but I was happily surprised to find I had not remembered much of the story as Carroll imagined it.

Not only did Alice follow a white rabbit, but she also heard the story of Father William, spyed on a fish and a frog footman, and danced a lobster quadrille with the mock turtle and a gryphon. If you too forgot these wonderfully silly parts of the story I recommend you pick up a copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and re-read the strange children's classic.

I'm not sure if Carroll intended this as a story about the dangers of drugs and drinking on the youth, as Jefferson Airplane thought. But I know there is more to it than a quirky and nonsensical story. Maybe the short afterward written as the thoughts of Alice's older sister are the true intentions of the whole story. Maybe, it is just a plea for grown-ups to remember what it was like to be a child.

Sookie Stackhouse Series

It has been a long time since my last entry. Work and job hunting have kept me very busy. But, I never stop reading so I have some book updates for those of you who are curious. I am now on the 7th of the 9 book series by Charlaine Harris. Popularly referred to as the Sookie Stackhouse novels, each one is like a murder mystery/romance/fantasy story all wrapped up in a neat package.

For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about. The Sookie Stackhouse novels are written about a modern world where Japanese scientists created synthetic blood and thereby allowing vampires to come out of hiding and be a part of the human world in exchange for promising not to harm them anymore. Sookie Stackhouse is the heroine of these novels and her talent for reading minds gets her involved in the underworld of supes (supernatural beings) that live among us. She befriends vampires, shape-shifters, werewolves, werepanthers, faeries, demons, witches, and other such make-believe creatures that are absolutely real in Harris's novels.

Each novel centers around a conflict/problem in which Sookie is somehow involved. Her talent for mind-reading is usually what helps to save the day. But sometimes it is her connections with very powerful beings that helps her out of tight spots. Unfortunately, her relationship with all these beings is usually what causes the problems to begin with.

I hope that some readers will see the value in such entertaining stories and read them for that reason alone. But if the books don't entice you, check out the HBO series based on these novels, True Blood. I hear it's not really the same as the books, but for some of us tv is a more powerful medium. Enjoy!

Bram Stoker's Dracula

For those of you who don't know, I spent my summer immersed in vampire literature and lore. I began this trip down a dark and stormy path with none other than, I hate to say it, the Twilight book series. Before you laugh or applaud secretly, you must know that I had no intention of reading the series, but after most of my intelligent female students and even some of my male students were talking about nothing but these books, I must admit I became curious. So, I took the plunge and four books later my thirst for more vampire lit was ignited. While I recommend the Twilight books, I also inform my fellow readers that it is not the most creatively written series, but it does well to entertain page after page.

Once the Stephanie Meyer books were put to rest on my overflowing bookshelf, I decided to begin where all vampire literature begins, with Bram Stoker's Dracula. It had been years since I picked this book up and attempted to read it from cover to cover. When I was in middle school, I saw The Phantom of the Opera at the Fox Theatre in St. Louis and was determined to read it and other books that were as famously recreated on stage and screen. Dracula was among these stories. But, to my middle school reader chagrin, I had to put the books down because they were more difficult to read that I had anticipated. Now as an adult with a BA in English, I had much more luck reading Dracula and understanding it.

It's still not an easy read, but the torrid tale is so dark and horrific as to make the work while reading it all that more worthwhile. One thing that makes the reading more difficult is that the story is told in a series of journal entries and letters from some four or five different characters and first names are not readily used. What is interesting is how easily I slipped from 21st century life into the Victorian-era without any trouble. That is what a well-written book should do, completely transport you from your environment to that of another, without a hitch.

The basic plot is that of a man travelling to Transylvania to work out some business with his boss's client, a Count Dracula. Once in the wagon, the main character, Mr. Jonathan Harker, knows that nothing good will come of this visit to a strange land among strange people. Harker is kept captive by his host, Dracula, and all hell breaks loose as Dracula begins to leave his mark on the important people in Harker's life. As Dracula wrecks havoc in Harker's life, Harker regains his wits after many fearful nights and is determined to destroy his captor. And so the hunt begins for the vampire known as Count Dracula. A vampire's many forms and powers are explained in the story as well, which allows you to compare the original vampire to those of today's books.

What I found most interesting about the Twilight series and Dracula, is the way in which the time period plays a huge roll in the characteristics of the vampires/monsters. Stephanie Meyer, being raised a Mormon in today's world of XXX and Romanesque debauchery, writes of vampires that abstain from drinking the blood of humans, and avoid any real relationships with humans. This is the opposite of the vampire in the Victorian era, where showing your skin was a disgrace. The Victorian vampire was full of blood lust and stirred in women a hidden sexuality unknown to them. When there is too much sex, monsters are more conservative in their interaction with humans and when there was no sex, monsters were the embodiment of something that could cause in men and women sexual deviancy.

So, if you want to learn of the original vampire and test my current theory on monsters and when they exist, pick up Dracula and find out how the obsession with the vampire in literature began.

Let the Right One In

During the fun weekend of Kristy's bachelorette party I was able to finish a book I had been reading for a couple of weeks. Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist was first published in 2004 in Sweden, and then translated by Ebba Segerberg into English for publication in 2007. I first found out about this story from my husband, who rented the movie from Blockbuster Online. He thought it was going to be a bloody vampire movie. When we sat down to watch the film, we found out it was something much different. The film was dubbed over in English so I'm not sure how the real actors sounded, but it was an interesting story none-the-less. In the film, you get the feeling it was meant to be a child-like love story with some vampire blood lust in between.

After watching the film, I found my way into a Borders and low and behold, found that the movie was a book first. As usual, I had no idea since this was a foreign film. What I found most interesting was that the book was said to be, "Absolutely chilling." by L.A. Banks. What was a love story on film, became a much more bloody vampire story in written form. I don't know that I can use a rating for the books I read, because I have a habit of loving them all, for one reason or another. And this book is no exception.

The book is mainly about a young boy in 1980's Stockholm who is an outsider. He is the skinny little boy who is bullied by the other kids in his class. The boy, Oskar, doesn't learn to defend himself until he meets and becomes best friends with Eli, a strange little girl that seemingly comes from nowhere. This is the central story in the book, but as the book progresses you learn more and more about how Eli's arrival effects others in this small Stockholm subdivision. Among the minor characters are a group of older alcoholics who haunt a local Chinese restaurant. Their story is filled with despair, especially as some start disappearing. You will also get to know Oskar's bullies, teachers, and mom and dad. Some will stick out as people that Oskar feels comfortable enough with to tell the truth to, almost. He always falls short of being honest with every character but Eli, and Eli, in turn tells Oskar the truth about her life as she knows it.

This story is full of strange characters who find themselves in terrible situations. But the backbone of the story seems to be the blossoming friendship between two pre-adolescent children who have found a kindred spirit in one another, despite their obvious differences. The story is sprinkled with bloody vampire encounters that are reminiscent of 30 Days of Night and new information for Americans about modern vampires in Sweden. There may be a political purpose to telling the story in 80's Stockholm, but that was lost on me since I don't know much about Stockholm in the 1980s.

If you like vampire books and enjoy foreign films, you should check out the novel and film entitled, Let the Right One In.