“A word after a word after a word is power.” - Margaret Atwood
Banned Book Club Fiction: Realistic Fiction
Forever by Judy Blume
NOTE: I read this book in high school, so this is a reread as a “mature” woman. Here is the author’s explanation of why she wrote Forever: "This book was first published in 1975. My daughter Randy asked for a story about two nice kids who have sex without either of them having to die. She had read several novels about teenagers in love. If they had sex the girl was always punished—an unplanned pregnancy, a hasty trip to a relative in another state, a grisly abortion (illegal in the U.S. until the 1970's), sometimes even death. Lies. Secrets. At least one life ruined. Girls in these books had no sexual feelings and boys had no feelings other than sexual. Neither took responsibility for their actions. I wanted to present another kind of story—one in which two seniors in high school fall in love, decide together to have sex, and act responsibly."
In Forever, Kath and Michael meet at a New Year's Eve party. They're attracted to each other; they grow to love each other. Kath’s parents and grandmother discuss sex with her. They advise her about sex but do not explicitly forbid it. Kath’s mother said:
"It's up to you to decide what's right and what's wrong ... I'm not going to tell you to go ahead but I'm not going to forbid it either. It's too late for any of that. I expect you to handle it with a sense of responsibility though ... either way."
Kath’s conversation with her grandmother isn’t threatening nor does it shame girls who have sex:
"Just be careful ... that's my only advice."
"Of what?"
"Pregnancy."
"Grandma!"
"And venereal disease."
"Really ... "
"Does it embarrass you to talk about it?"
"No, but ... "
"It shouldn't."
Her grandmother gives Kath Planned Parenthood brochures so Kath knows where to go for help in choosing birth control. Once Kath and Michael decide their love is “forever,” they make love. Nothing tragic happens to them even though they have sex. It's the beginning of an intense and exclusive relationship, with a future all planned ... until Kath's parents insist that she and Michael put their love to the test with a summer apart...
What I like about this book:
- There are conversations about sex between Kath, her parents, and grandmother.
- Birth control is accessible and is viewed as a responsible choice.
- A teenage friend of Kath’s decides to give birth not because abortion is viewed as a horrible thing to do but because that is HER CHOICE.
- It’s a portrayal of a responsible and loving teenage relationship.
- Sex needs to be two things: (1) consensual, and (2) enjoyable for both partners. Kath had the ability and the right to make informed and responsible choices about whether to have a sexual relationship or not.
- This book had a positive effect on my life!
Audiobooks Fiction: Paranormal, Horror
The House on Cold Hill and The Secret of Cold Hill (House on Cold Hill #1 & #2) by Peter James
The House on Cold Hill is about the Harcourt family - Oliver, Caro, and daughter Jade. They move into a huge, dilapidated Georgian mansion called Cold Hill House. Although the home inspector told them NOT to buy the mansion due to its dilapidated state, Oliver insists they spend all their money on this “dream house” with plans to refurbish it as their budget allows. His plan is to live in Cold Hill House happily ever after.
The plan doesn’t work out. Very quickly after moving in, Oliver sees a mysterious woman in an old-fashioned blue dress floating through a room and a friend spots a presence in the background while on FaceTime with Jade. There are other “residents” in this house, and as the history of the house is unraveled, the forces start to become more malevolent.
The sequel, The Secret of Cold Hill, is about what happens after Cold Hill House is torn down and a new housing development is built on its site. The site is still under construction but the first two families arrive and they are very different. Maurice and Claudette Penze-Weedell selected their house for retirement. Across the street a much younger couple, Jason and Emily Danes, selected their house to fulfil their career dreams. Before long, both couples notice that all is not well in their new homes.
These are easy-to-listen-to because the reader is excellent. Plus, the chapters are very short. As “ghost stories” both were well written but there were some things that I found irritating. For example, the Harcourts and the Danes experience obviously paranormal events and they ALWAYS say, “There must be a rational explanation” – repeatedly, ad nauseum!
No, a television turning on when it is unplugged or a circuit breaker physically switching off as you stand there staring at it are not “rational” events. When cockroaches pour out of the freezer, the Danes try to convince themselves that it’s their "overactive imagination" or "the stress of moving into their new house"! Finally, each time the wife suggests leaving the house (yes, please!) the husband insists that they stay. “We can work this out.” (!?) or “We are stronger together.” (?!)
Even though I rolled my eyes many, many times while I listened to these books, I did find them enjoyable. James is a gifted writer and has a talent or characterization. Plus, he adds touches of humor within the haunting plots. After listening to these books, you can bet that if I wake up and find my bed rotated 180 degrees while I slept, I am "outta here!"
Nonfiction: Memoir, Spirituality, Science
In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife by Sebastian Junger
In 2020, Junger, 58 years old, had a near-fatal health emergency (a ruptured aneurysm on a pancreatic artery; his odds of surviving, even with timely medical intervention, were around 10%), and while doctors at the hospital worked frantically to save his life, Junger had a profound near death experience that forced him to consider the possibility of an afterlife for the first time.
“My dead father appearing above me in a trauma bay is the least of it. When I tried to find the ICU nurse who had suggested I try thinking of my experience as something sacred rather than something scary, no one at the hospital knew who she was; no one even knew what I was talking about. It crossed my mind that she did not exist. My experience was sacred, I finally decided, because I couldn’t really know life until I knew death, and I couldn’t really know death until it came for me.”
Junger shares his family history and upbringing. We can understand that an encounter with the afterlife would be a shock in his family of atheists and scientists. He goes on to share all sides of the debate: stories from those who encountered the afterlife during near death experiences; perfectly rational explanations from scientists regarding brain activity at the time of death; and stories from others, like himself, who understand and believe in the science but who nonetheless had profound near death experiences that seemed to promise a continuation of the consciousness after death. And when Junger gets to the latest in quantum physics - explaining how unlikely the existence of the universe, and our place within it as sentient beings, really is - it’s easy to be persuaded to believe in something more.
In My Time of Dying is an intriguing account of Junger’s experience: part memoir, part investigation into the nature of reality, and part personal processing of his experience and consequent research. This book is only 162 pages, but it is well written and interesting throughout. Junger expertly blends awe and reason – an excellent book.
Nonfiction: Self Help
Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad by Austin Kleon
Although I already knew many of the ten things listed, Keep Going is a review of good habits.
One concept that stood out was dumping the idea that one's passion or hobby should be turned into a vehicle to make money. Kleon states, “Art is for life, not the other way around.”
It reminds me of people, who when they learn I’m a runner, say, “You should run a marathon.” I believe, “Running is for life, not the other way around.” I don't need to turn my passion into a competition to "win." I run to run. Artists don't need to turn their creations into money. They create to create. Art is FOR life.
There were a few quips that resonated with me:
- Forget the nouns: Do the verbs. – “I don’t’ know what I am. I know I am not a category. I am not a thing – a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process.” – R. Buckminster Fuller
- Pay attention to what you pay attention to: “Tell me to what you pay attention, and I will tell you who you are.” – Jose Ortega y Gassett
- To change is to be alive: The Dunning-Kruger Prayer – “Let me be smart enough to know how dumb I am and give me the courage to carry on anyway.”
This book is a little shot of motivation to help you stay creative and remain true to yourself. It encourages you to take time and let the creativity in your life filter through.
These basic terms lay the foundation for the life experiences in Tunnel 29 and The Wall.
- Iron Curtain: The boundary that symbolically, ideologically, and physically divided Europe into two separate areas after World War II.
- Cold War: The geopolitical, ideological, and economic struggle that emerged between capitalism and communism from 1945 to 1991.
- Communism: The ideology of the Soviet Union and other countries; a system of government in which the state controls all social and economic activity.
Nonfiction: History, Cold War
Tunnel 29: The True Story of an Extraordinary Escape Beneath the Berlin Wall by Helena Merriman
NOTE: The author, Merriman, is a journalist and podcaster. She interviewed 80-year-old Joachim Rudolph in his apartment in Berlin in 2018 for a podcast. The interview lead her to write this book detailing how 29 people escaped from East Berlin to freedom in the West by tunneling under the Berlin Wall at the height of the Cold War.
In August 1961 the Berlin Wall was erected, not to keep people from coming into East Germany but to stop the flood of East Germans leaving. If people from the East tried to escape, they were shot or imprisoned.
In 1962 Joachim and four friends began to dig a tunnel from the West to the East to help people escape. It was an audacious plot. It took careful planning, hard work and sleepless nights to dig 400 feet of tunnel. Complicating their efforts were the border guards, the Stasi, and spies. It is estimated that 1 in 6 people in the East were spies. Who can they trust? Who can they not trust?
Tunnel 29 is so much more than an account of one escape attempt. Merriman weaves historical facts and background into the tunnel tale seamlessly. This is an eye-opening account of life in the early 1960's, the Stasi, Border Police, and neighborhood spies. Through the escapees’ stories we can learn why freedom was so meaningful that people risked their lives and the lives of their loved ones to escape.
“Picture Book” Nonfiction: Memoir, History, Cold War
The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain by Peter Sís
NOTE: The Wall was the 2009 One Book One Community selection in Loudoun County, Virginia (where I was a public librarian). Even as a reread, this book is simply fantastic! The Wall is a valuable history lesson, and an emotional story of a young man whose imagination and creativity allowed him to endure the times of authoritarianism in Czechoslovakia.
Sis uses annotated illustrations, journals, maps, and dreamscapes to show what life was like for a child who loved to draw, proudly wore the red scarf of a Young Pioneer, stood guard at the giant statue of Stalin, and believed whatever he was told to believe.
But during his teen years he began to question Communist control and why he couldn’t draw what he wanted. The Czech people were denied art, music, and books unless it was approved by the government.
Then news from the West slowly filtered into the country. Sis learned about beat poetry, rock 'n' roll, blue jeans, and Coca-Cola. He let his hair grow long, secretly read banned books, and joined a rock band.
Slowly, the Iron Curtain began to recede resulting in the Prague Spring of 1968. Sis was a teenager who wanted to see the world and meet the Beatles. For him and millions of other Czechs this was a magical time. It was short-lived, however, brought to a sudden and brutal end by the Soviet-led invasion.
However brief, Sis had a glimpse of new possibilities. He understood creativity could be discouraged but not easily killed. In 1982 traveled to Los Angeles, California to create an animated film about the Czech Olympic athletes. Sis did not return to Czechoslovakia. Instead, he remained in the US and was granted asylum.
I grew up during the Cold War, but it was one of those things that existed in the background of my childhood. I was told that Communists were “bad’ and "not nice”, but I never really got it. Now I get it. The Wall is a great history lesson about life in an authoritarian country.
Nonfiction: History, Memoir, Politics
An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s by Doris Kearns Goodwin
I can’t describe this inspirational book better than the publishers! “Dick and Doris Goodwin were married for forty-two years and married to American history even longer. In his twenties, Dick was one of the brilliant young men of John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier. In his thirties he both named and helped design Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and was a speechwriter and close advisor to Robert Kennedy. Doris Kearns was a twenty-four-year-old graduate student when selected as a White House Fellow. She worked directly for Lyndon Johnson and later assisted on his memoir.
The Goodwins’ last great adventure involved finally opening the more than three hundred boxes of letters, diaries, documents, and memorabilia that Dick had saved for more than fifty years. They soon realized they had before them an unparalleled personal time capsule of the 1960s, illuminating public and private moments of a decade when individuals were powered by the conviction they could make a difference; a time, like today, marked by struggles for racial and economic justice, a time when lines were drawn and loyalties tested.
Their expedition gave Dick’s last years renewed purpose and determination. It gave Doris the opportunity to connect and reconnect with participants and witnesses of pivotal moments of the 1960s. And it gave them both an opportunity to make fresh assessments of the central figures of the time - John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, and especially Lyndon Johnson, who greatly impacted both their lives. The voyage of remembrance brought unexpected discoveries, forgiveness, and the renewal of old dreams, reviving the hope that the youth of today will carry forward this unfinished love story with America.”
As I learned from reading White Trash last month, the poor were at the heart of LBJ’s Great Society reforms including programs to eliminate poll taxes and voting discrimination, and education and health funding. Many Americans benefited from the Great Society programs! This is how Dick Goodwin described working on the Great Society: “The White House was boiling with excitement and activity, … We all felt that way. This is what it was all for. We wanted to – no, not wanted to – we believed we were about to make the country far better from top to bottom. It was an awesome, intoxicating time.”
I am left with a deep appreciation for Dick and Doris Kearns’ contributions to our nation. I agree with Doris – “We are clearly in the midst of a profound ‘testing time’ today, and at such times, I have long argued, the study of history is crucial to provide perspective, warning, counsel, and even comfort.”
I believe we will survive our “testing time” and that there are still public servants who believe they can “make the country far better top to bottom.”
