Last week I finished:
I've always been drawn to the 1950s. I like the optimism of that post-war era. The economy was booming, and so were hospital nurseries. It seems like America kind of lost her way in the 1960s, but the 50s were clean, wholesome, and kid-friendly. I grew up in a tiny rural farming community that, even though I was growing up decades later, still felt very much like the 1950s. We had party lines, church picnics, drive-in root beer stands, a siren that went off every day at noon. In many ways, it was idyllic. That's why Bill Bryson's
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid was so much fun for me to read. It felt like Bryson was writing about my childhood. I started reading this one on audio, and I was so charmed, I switched over to my paper copy so I could relish in it a bit longer. (I highly recommend the audio version, which is read by Bryson himself, though.) In this memoir, Bryson discusses all of the high and low points of life in the 1950s with his signature whit. He talks about walking to any street corner in town and meeting up with a thousand other unsupervised kids (it was the Baby Boom, after all) and the antics that ensued. He talks about the fear of Communism and nuclear war. He talks about the introduction and unbridled consumption of convenience foods. After awhile, it almost felt a little too comprehensive (as Bryson's writing often is); there wasn't a topic left untouched. I enjoyed every minute of it. It's one of my favorite Bryson books, behind
One Summer and In a
Sunburned Country. If you're looking for a fun read about a simpler time, full of nostalgia that you may or may not be able to relate with, this is a good choice.
My rating: 4 stars.
Note: This one does contain the odd bit of "language" and much talk of prepubescent heterosexual lust.
I've read a number of books written by Fundamentalist Mormon women who escaped the fundamentalist teachings, polygamy, abuse, and poverty of their youth, but I don't know that any of them has disturbed me quite as much as
The Sound of Gravel. This book is very much akin to
The Glass Castle (which was not about fundamentalists) in its horrific poverty and tragically unsafe living conditions, but this one also had sexual abuse. The story is this: Ruthie is the fourth of her mother's ten children, several of which are physically and/or cognitively disabled. Her mother is one of four sister wives to a sometimes violent man who cannot support the dozens of children he's produced. The family shuffles between Mexico and America, eking out a living however it can, including selling pine nuts in a grocery store parking lot and welfare fraud. The stepfather is domineering, the mother is meek, and it's discovered that several of the children are being abused. I mistakenly thought that if I listened to this one I'd be less affected by its terrible themes. And yet, I did keep listening because I wanted to see the redemption. To leave a story like this midway without resolution is somehow worse to me than listening to everything and having a happy ending. The happy ending comes at the very end of the book, as a epilogue. Structurally speaking, I would have enjoyed a longer happy ending. I'm having a hard time recommending this book. I kept asking myself
what is the purpose of books like these? If it's to raise awareness and spur folks to action to help families like this (though what on earth would you
do for them?), that's one thing, but it just felt so private and I felt like such a voyeur reading it. It's a book full of such hopelessness and powerlessness, I often felt sick to my stomach. If you "like" heartbreaking books, books about religious extremism, books about folks triumphing over horrible childhoods, this is your book.
My rating: 4 stars.
The third book I finished last week about unique childhoods is Firoozeh Dumas'
Funny in Farsi. This is the memoir of an Iranian American girl, and it's told with humor. This book, and its follow-up,
Laughing without an Accent, has been on my TBR for ages, but for some reason I kept ignoring it. I happened upon a cheap Kindle deal and decided it would be my October in-between book as it's easy to pick up and put down when I have a few minutes to read. I really enjoyed it. Much like Bryson's book, it told about childhood experiences with a bit of good-humored embellishment. I loved reading about her large extended family, all living within a half-hour of each other, her father's fascination with Vegas, and about how odd certain American foods and holidays seem to a foreigner. Dumas came to America as a child before the Iranian hostage crisis, in other words, before America turned a distrustful eye on its Iranian immigrants. If you like learning about other cultures and immigrant stories, this is a good one.
My rating: 4 stars.
And last but not least on my memoirs dealing with childhood is Ron Fournier's
Love That Boy. I'd picked this one up when it came out because it was a memoir that also dealt with presidential history, which combines two of my favorite genres. I left this book feeling duped, though. Everything I'd read about it, including its subtitle, seemed to suggest this was a memoir that dealt with fatherhood, presidents, and road trips, and while the book did incorporate all three, it was much more about parenting in the new millennium than anything else (think
All the Joy but different, as you'll see in a minute). I didn't know I was getting into a parenting book, and I kind of resented it. Fournier is a journalist who covered the White House and Washington politics for years. He's the dad of two daughters and a son, Tyler, who has Asperger's. Tyler excels in some things but has a lot of trouble with others such as having conversations, picking up social cues, identifying other peoples' emotions, organizing, and writing. Fournier seems to have an inordinate amount of trouble accepting his son. He had capital-E Expectations about what and who Tyler would be, and Tyler doesn't measure up. His wife tells him to take Tyler on presidential history road trips (in which he meets presidents Clinton and Bush 43) to bond with his son and teach him the proper ways to interact with folks. Mostly, though, the book is snippets of interviews with other folks who have kids who don't measure up to their expectations and quotes from experts on how important it is to fix the kids. Or something. I don't know, I mostly skimmed the distressingly narcissistic parental parts. This book left a bad taste in my mouth every time I set it down. I've never met parents so disturbingly goal-oriented and out of touch with the enjoyment of their children. I know how hard it must be to try to raise a child with different abilities from most other children. I understand you might have to alter your expectations, but I never knew there were this many parents who seem unable to do that. As someone who didn't raise children of my own, perhaps I shouldn't comment, but as a stepmother, I can say that I've had years of experience with having children who aren't what you expected. There were years of agony, but a lot of joy, too. I'm still working on being present and nonjudgmental. The most important thing is that your kids never feel that your love is conditional, and the parents in this book failed so transparently with this. I just didn't like the tone of this book at all, but maybe someone raising an autistic child and who struggles with the ability to accept and love that child, would find this useful.
My rating: 2 stars.
This week I'll be reading:
I Capture the Castle has been on my TBR for a long time, and I've been hoping to get to it all year. Now's the time. I'm looking forward to some fiction after all the memoirs I've been reading lately.
My next audiobook:
I'd requested that my local library purchase Miss Burma on CD, because not a single library in the system had a copy. It finally came in last week, so that's my audiobook this week. The audio quality is poor, but perhaps I'll get used to it?
