Ayn Rand and the World She Made by Anne C. Heller

I just happened to see this book sitting on the new arrivals cart at the library and since I’ve really enjoyed Rand’s book I decided to pick it up. I wasn’t even sure I would read the whole thing but once I started reading I was hooked.

I’ve read three of Rand’s novels and enjoyed them but I really didn’t know anything about her personally. When I read her books I was young and idealistic and I thought her ideas were great. (To be honest, I’m not sure I completely understood them then or even now!) Now that I’m older and hopefully wiser, I’m not in 100% agreement with her anymore. I do think she had some important ideas and I think they were especially important at the time that she wrote her novels. I’m just not 100% on board now that I’ve lived a little bit of life.

Reading this biography opened my eyes to the kind of person she was too. She was extremely intelligent and she lived through some hardship but she was also a hypocrite and a narcissist. As her novels gained popularity she acquired a group of followers that behaved almost like a cult. A lot of the things that went on in her later life really turned me off of her. I still really appreciate what she did in writing The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.  Both of these books are extremely well written and for containing so much philosophy they are incredibly entertaining and well paced.

But, this review is not of Ayn Rand or her novels! I really enjoyed this biography. It was well written and it was entertaining. It was also incredibly detailed and well researched. I’m not sure how much else I can say about a biography though. If you like reading biographies or you are interested in Ayn Rand you would enjoy this book.

The Memory Palace by Mira Bartok

I’m not really sure how to summarize this book as it’s a memoir of Bartok’s life with her mother Norma, a paranoid schizophrenic. As she begins the book she’s been out of contact with her mother for seventeen years when she gets a phone call letting her know that her mother is dying. She and her sister both rush to be by her side despite everything they’ve been through. They discover their mother’s storage unit and begin the long task of sorting through it. As they do so, Mira begins to remember bits and pieces of her past and puts it down on paper. She has an interesting way of remembering things which is where the title of the book comes from. In her mind, she imagines a memory palace. In each room are specific objects that help connect her to incidents or times in her life. Throughout the book she travels through her memory palace remembering her life with and without her mother.

It took me a bit to get into the book but once I did I really liked it. The writing is beautiful and the stories are haunting. Mira and her sister have quite a childhood but still manage to get away from their mother as soon as they are old enough. Unfortunately, she continues to cause problems by calling multiple times a day at all hours, and even goes so far as to show up on their doorsteps demanding to know if their wombs were stolen and warning them of imagined dangers. At this point the sisters change their names, addresses, and numbers so that their mother cannot find them and harass them anymore. Mira has a hard time with this decision feeling that she should try and do more for her mother, knowing that she is probably living on the streets. I was amazed at her ability to feel this way after the way she was treated by her mother. (One of the memories that haunts Mira is of her mother holding a broken bottle to her neck.)

As their mother is dying, the sisters are able to come to some closure as they spend many days at her bedside. They get her placed in nice nursing home and gather her friends around. Reading of those last few days were very touching. Once again, the writing really helped to convey the emotions of the sisters. In some sense there is some relief that their mother is dying (she is over 80) but there is also some guilt, wondering if they should have done more for her. And of course there is a huge feeling of sadness and love. She is, after all their mother.

I found the story upsetting at times because of how little help they were able to find for their mother. I haven’t had much experience with mental illness but I found it disheartening that while it was obvious that Norma needed help, the sister were unable to obtain it despite all the avenues they pursued. Many times after major psychotic breaks that required hospitalization, Norma was sent home the very next day alone. Also, the sisters tried numerous times to get her declared incompetent, which they were unable to do, due to Norma’s ability to buy cigarettes and balance her chequebook. Even after stabbing her own mother multiple times in the back, the girls were unable to her any extra help.

I just had one teeny little complaint about the book…there were a few spots that just didn’t make sense. I believe this was an editing issue and there were just some missing words but something about the writing, made me wonder if this was perhaps a literary device? If so, it didn’t work for me. (There are portion of the book that were taken directly from Norma’s journals and a lot of these sections didn’t make a lot of sense either but I understand that there were included to show a small part of Norma’s thinking. These are not the parts I’m referring to.)

In the end, I did enjoy the book and found that although it was sad, it wasn’t depressing. There was a sense of peace and hope throughout the book that kept it from getting too dark.

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

This is the very first book I’ve read from the 75 I won last June. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to get to any of those books and I’m probably the last person to read this one in particular. I have to admit I was a little reluctant to read Eat, Pray, Love because of it’s popularity with the Oprah crowd and then it got turned into a movie which made me even more reluctant to read it but I’m glad I finally got over that and picked it up!

In case you aren’t already aware, Elizabeth Gilbert, the author, finds herself in a mid-life crisis of sorts after a nasty divorce and for various reasons decides she would like to take a year to travel to Italy, India and Indonesia. (Lucky for her, she gets a book deal out of it in order to pay for the year!) As she travels the world she makes all kinds of friends, learns Italian, finds spiritual enlightenment, and even (spoiler alert!) falls in love.

As much as I was prepared to hate this book, I didn’t. I loved it. The writing was a little over the top at times but I got used to that pretty quickly and was able to see past it. I also think that is probably a reflection of her personality and more realistic than if it had been toned down. Not only was this book entertaining but it was uplifting. I read it at the same time as I was reading The Happiness Project and it was the perfect companion volume. Both with similar themes but with entirely different methodology, I found each book had something to offer me in the bleakest month of the year (I hate, hate, HATE January). Eat, Pray, Love was sort of the fantasy version of a happiness project. (How many of us can afford to travel the world to overcome our depression?) I love that Gilbert was willing to share some of her deepest emotions good and bad, she really left nothing out. I truly felt like I had a front row seat to this physical, emotional and spiritual journey she was on. She learned, she grew, she changed her opinions and she found her happiness again and I loved being there for the ride. I’ve already put Committed on hold at the library so I can read more about her journey.

Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls

After reading The Glass Castle, I wasn’t sure I would like this book but I actually really did.  This is kind of a prequel to The Glass Castle.  Half Broke Horses, called a true-life novel by the author is Walls’ maternal grandmother’s story.  Lily Casey Smith was born in 1901 in a dugout in Texas.  At five, she started helping her father train carriage horses, and at fifteen, she rode 500 miles on her horse all alone to teach in a one room school house.   And that’s just the beginning!

I loved this book!  As soon as I finished I knew I had to have my book club read it and I can’t wait for the discussion we’ll have.  Lily lived an incredible life, through two world wars and the Great Depression, and she did it with amazing style.  Some pretty awful things happened to her and she just kept right on without feeling sorry for herself.  The story was amazingly upbeat because of the way she dealt with hard times.  Her father taught her that if she was going to help him break horses, she would have to learn how to fall and she applied this wisdom to her whole life.

Lily was a woman I would like to meet.  She was such a character.  Because she was a woman she was constantly being underestimated but she never backed down.  She was fired from more than one job because she wasn’t willing to compromise her values.  My favourite line in the book come when she approaches a pilot about taking flying lessons.  The pilot has never taught a woman before and isn’t sure if the “little lady” can handle it.  Lily responds with “Don’t you ‘little lady’ me.  I break horses. I brand steers.  I run a ranch with a couple dozen crazy cowboys on it, and I can beat them all in poker.  I’ll be damned if some nincompoop is going to stand there and tell me that I don’t have what it takes to fly that dinky heap of tin.”

It was particularly interesting to read about the life she and her husband led in the deserts of Arizona, first on a huge ranch and then in remote towns.  They ran the ranch through the Great Depression and made it because of their tenacity and resourcefulness.  During this part of the story, I found myself comparing the book to The Grapes of Wrath and the differences are quite amazing.  Half Broke Horses had none of the bleakness of The Grapes of Wrath even though they were dealing with the same hardships.  It could be argued that Jeannette Walls didn’t live through the Great Depression while Steinbeck did, so maybe her depiction is less accurate but I think most of the difference comes from Lily’s attitude.  She just refused to be beaten.

Another thing I enjoyed about the book was the imagery.  Most books I’ve read about the desert make it seem to bleak, dreary and lonely, but not this book.  Lily and her family were happy to be living in such a remote area and they found the landscape beautiful and by extension so did I.  It made me want to move out into the middle of the desert and work the land.  Walls definitely romanticized this hardworking lifestyle, but not so I thought it would be easy.  Just that it would be well worth all the hard work.

I really could go on and on about why I loved this book but I think I’ll leave it at that and let you all discover it for yourselves.  Also, if you’ve read The Glass Castle, reading Half Broke Horses is a must.  I found I gained a better understanding of Rosemary Walls and the choices she made.

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid:Travels Through my Childhood by Bill Bryson

Basically this a is memoir of Bryson’s childhood in the 1950s (I guess that’s pretty obvious from the subtitle)  but it’s so much more.  There’s not much of a summary I can do because it’s a memoir but Bryson covers topics like getting a free meal at a local restaurant (probably my favourite part of the book), the threat of nuclear war (which apparently didn’t worry anybody in those days), trying to get into the nudey tent at the state fair and many, many others.

I’m a big fan of Bill Bryson and this book didn’t disappoint me.  It was laugh out loud funny and always entertaining.  I know this review is kind of lame but there’s not much to say without giving away the funny bits and either you like Bryson or you don’t.

I did find a review where one commenter stated that Bryson was a commie and the reviewer agreed.  I’m not sure where that came from but it could have something to do with the fact that it was pretty obvious that Bryson was not a huge fan of McCarthy.

Read for: Canadian Book Challenge 4

Intended for recent graduates, this quick little read is a little bit funny and a little bit advice and insight.

Even though I’m not a recent graduate, I definitely found this book to be a worthwhile read. Despite dropping out of high school, Fox argues that he still managed to learn everything he needed from life.  As the subtitle suggests, he learned from the twists and turns.  And he takes this opportunity to share those lessons with the reader.  The thing that makes this book different than the 37 million other advice books out there is Fox’s humour and his attitude.  As we all know, Fox is funny, and this book doesn’t disappoint in that corner.  But what surprised me (but probably that’s just me – apparently he’s known for being an optimist?) was how positive he was about life in general and his in particular.  A lot of times I avoid advice type books because I wonder what makes this guy so great that he thinks he can give me advice?  (For example: I read The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch and while it had a lot of god stuff in it, it mostly just annoyed me.)  But something about Fox’s attitude and his sense of humour made this one readable and enjoyable.

Read for: Global Reading Challenge

Wow, was this one ever intense!  Immaculée was a university student who had travelled home for easter in 1994 when the Rwandan genocide began.  As a Tutsi, she and her entire family were in danger.  She managed to make it to a neighbour’s house where he hid her and several other women in a tiny bathroom for over 100 days while the country literally went insane killing over a million Tutsi people.

I had heard of the Rwandan genocide before but I didn’t really know anything about it.  As I was reading this book, not only was I disgusted by the attitudes of the people responsible for the genocide, I was amazed by how quickly the general population adopted those same attitudes and joined in on the killing.  I am astonished by the capability of human beings to act in this manner, to be so cruel to each other.  In many cases, Tutsis were hunted and murdered by people who had been their neighbours and close friends.  And what they did to children?  Unforgivable.

I think what bothers me the most about the whole thing though is that we, the so-called civilized nations just sat back and allowed this to go on.  We knew what was happening but it took over three months before anyone was willing to enter to country to try and stop the slaughter.

This book made me so angry and sad.  It’s especially saddening to know that this is not a unique circumstance.  It happens all the time.  Why do we as humans feel the need to divide ourselves along racial lines?  Why do we have to feel superior to other races, sexes, religions?  And why does that feeling of superiority give us permission to imprison, enslave, torture and kill those we view as inferior?

I think this book (and others like it) are so important for us to read so we can take steps to prevent these kinds of things from occurring.  What struck me most was that Immaculée’s father was so confident that nothing was going to happen.  On the eve of the genocide, his children tried to convince him that they should leave but he wouldn’t believe that anything could go wrong.  How often do we think that way about where we live?  How often to we read books about the terrible things that go on in the world and think “That could never happen here.”?  “It’s ok for me to be a little bit racist because that could never happen here.”  These are the kind of attitudes and thoughts that eventually lead to hate crimes.

The subtitle for this book is “Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust”.  I think this is a little misleading because Immaculée was already very religious before the genocide began.  There is definitely a lot of religion in the book as she is a very devout Catholic but it never bothered me.  It wasn’t preachy or in your face religion.  It’s just what got her through this difficult time in her life.  Because she was able to forgive the killers (which I am astounded at – I can’t even forgive them and it didn’t happen to me!)  she was able to move on and get past this terrible thing that happened to her.  She was able to be happy again.  Amazing.

This is a book I think everyone should read although you may not enjoy it!

Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America by Firoozeh Dumas

Read for: This review by raych on books i done read

Well, this book is exactly what the title says it is…a memoir of growing up Iranian in America.  It was a nice short little read and it was enjoyable.  The chapters were a little disjointed but it didn’t really bother me.  It’s almost like a collection of short stories or essays rather than one long story.

While I enjoyed reading this, there were a few times when I felt like saying, “that’s not growing up Iranian, that’s just growing up.”  I have never experienced the racism she has but there were a lot of situations that I could totally relate to.  (I happen to have a first name that nobody can ever pronounce properly, I feel your pain Firoozeh!! I’ve been called the craziest things and people have a habit of throwing extra letters in there on a regular basis.  Fritzy Dumbass though?  That’s a good one.  I had a good laugh over that one!!)

Now, granted, I have no idea what Dumas had to go through in her growing up, but there were a couple of times I found her to be just a teensy bit whiny about things.  I can’t really come up with any examples because it wasn’t really over specific incidents, it just seemed to be an attitude that shone through sometimes.

Overall though I did enjoy reading the book and it was definitely entertaining.