Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer

The full title for this book is Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, and I really feel that the subtitle is the least superfluous subtitle in the history of books. Or at least in the history of books that I have read. If I had to choose one word to describe this book, I would have to go with "violent."

Under the Banner of Heaven tells the story of a double murder committed by two fundamentalist Mormons because, essentially, God told them to. But instead of just focusing on the murder and the trial, Krakauer delves into the violent history of Mormonism. The short history (the religion was founded under 200 years ago) of Mormonism has been colored by bloodshed, both committed by and against Mormons. I am not a Mormon, so the history of the religion was new to me. I had read the memoir of a former polygamist before, but she didn't really go in to the history of the church the way Krakauer does. I picked up this book after seeing it recommended several times in the comments section on Jezebel articles about the trial and conviction of Warren Jeffs.

Well, I didn't pick up the book. I picked up the audiobook, and that may have been a mistake. I've been in the car a lot the last few weeks, so I grabbed the audiobook to listen to during my drives. Now, I am no stranger to violent fiction. I started reading Stephen King novels when I was in 9th grade. However, listening to the description of how an 18 month old had her throat slashed to the point that she was nearly decapitated.... I almost vomited in my car. I'm not sure if it was the fact that this is a true story or if it was actually hearing the words out loud.... but it was very unsettling. I guess if I was reading the physical book I could have just skimmed that paragraph, but in the car I didn't have that option. I just turned the radio off and drove in silence until I had worked up the courage to turn it back on.

If you're not so much interested in all the blood and guts, but you are interested in legal proceedings, I would check out this book in order to read about the trials of the murderers. They truly believed they were acting out the word of God (one of the foundations of Mormon beliefs is that all believers have the ability to communicate directly with God). There is a really interesting debate on whether this kind of belief is a delusion. If the belief is a delusion, is the believer then incompetent to stand trial? Does this mean that all religious zealots would automatically be ruled incompetent? Could no person of faith be held responsible for their own actions?

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith is a great book. Check it out if it's something you're interested, but you've been forewarned: it's definitely not for the faint of heart.

Stupid History by Leland Gregory

I really feel like I need to start out this review by stating that I did not pay for this book. I downloaded it because it was Barnes and Noble's Free Friday selection a month or so ago. Sometimes you get what you pay for.

This book had real potential. Stories about people being stupid? Sign me up! However, most of the stories aren't really about people being stupid, but about how somewhere along the way we twisted history so that we believe something that isn't actually true. This book sets out to tell the truth, but I can't actually attest that it does so, because there doesn't seem to be any footnotes or sources listed by the author. He could be making all this up for all I know. I wanted to tag this review as "Non-Fiction?" but I don't think we can have question marks in tags. And I haven't actually finished the book, so maybe there is some sort of bibliography at the end. I don't know.

But the absolute worst part of this book, pardon my French:

THE MOTHER FUCKING TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS. There are so many typos in this book, I can only assume the author wrote the whole book while drunk, didn't spell check, and then skipped the editing stage and went straight to publishing. I started out highlighting errors I came across, but it became too tiresome after a while.

The stories themselves are fairly amusing, but I just can't deal with the typos. I'm glad I didn't spend money on this book.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

"It's not fair! She's the most important person in the world and her family living in poverty. If our mother so important to science, why can't we get health insurance?"

Henrietta Lacks is responsible for the polio vaccine. She helped create the HPV vaccine, and numerous other medicines and cancer treatments. And she did it all after she died in 1951. While she was at Johns Hopkins Hospital receiving treatment for cervical cancer, a sample was taken from her tumor that never died. The cells are still growing and reproducing today. And her family had no idea until decades later.

Reporter Rebecca Skloot tells the amazing story of Henrietta's life, her death, and her family. While people were making millions selling HeLa cells (named for the first letters in Henrietta's first and last names) to labs around the world, her children were struggling to get by. This is a remarkable story and one I think everyone would benefit from reading. It's not just the story of one woman's incredible legacy, it's also the story of what it was like to be a black patient in Baltimore in 1951. Henrietta's cousins believed that doctors from Johns Hopkins were kidnapping black people off the sidewalks at night to do medical experiments on them. It's the story of a family coming to terms with the fact that their mother was possibly the single most important person in medical science in the last century.

For a good part of the book Skloot tells about trying to get to know the Lacks family so she can include their perspective in the book. She meets a wall of distrust from the Lackses, until she is able to befriend Deborah Lacks, Henrietta's only living daughter. Once Deborah begins to trust Rebecca, the story really starts to come together. Deborah begins to move from being angry over the fact that her mother's cells were taken without permission, to just wanting people to know who her mother was. That's this book.

Abby read this book before, but I don't know if she ever wrote about it because I couldn't find her post in the 3 minutes I looked for it before I started writing. But I picked up this book mostly because she recommended it so highly, and I'm glad she did. When we got the book in at my library I thought it sounded kind of science-y, but most of the book was focused on Henrietta's family. I would recommend this book to anyone. It's a great read, and a fascinating true story.

Peep Show by Joshua Braff

Braff's Peep Show is a strange read. I didn't love it, it left a bit too much unresolved. Not in that "it makes you think" way but in a "and then he stopped writing" way. But it is an interesting story full of bizarre, flawed characters and it definitely dropped me into unfamiliar territory. I think this one sentence from Amazon's summary pretty much sums it up: In the mid 1970s, 16-year-old David Arbus is caught between his mother, whose Hasidic faith is becoming more and more central to her life, and his father, who runs a Times Square porn theatre.

So basically young David is thrashed back and forth between these two strange and polar opposite worlds, neither of which seems like a healthy environment for a young man. He's essentially unwelcome in his mother's life because he's refused to join the Hasidic faith, but he's not sinner enough to want to jump into the family business on dad's side either. David and his father cause a bit of a rukus and David is unceremoniously ousted from his mother and sister's new life and forced to take up with his father and his father's stripper/former porn star girlfriend. The book sticks pretty closely to the major events in the father's life over a 3-year period, but only as they're experienced by David, which feels odd. There's a lot of insight into changes in the porn industry in the mid-70s and also into the lives of Hasidic Jews. A jarring comparison to say the least, and an interesting one.

I was disappointed with the ending which resolved nothing (even negative resolution would have been more satisfying), but it's an interesting read from a young author. Braff has a good voice and an enjoyable writing style. His characters are well-developed and believable in their strengths and flaws. I'm thinking of picking up his first novel, The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

The Help is not a bad book, but it does deserve some criticism for falling into the "White Savior" trope. One of the three main characters in the book is Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan, who has just moved home to Jackson, Mississippi after completing her college degree. She wants to be a writer, and eventually she gets the idea to write a book about what it's like for black women working as maids for white families. She enlists the help of her friends' maids, Aibileen and Minny, and eventually 10 more maids join. And they write the book, change the names, publish it anonymously, and everyone lives happily ever after. Well, that last part isn't 100% true.

I can see why this book became so popular with reading groups. It's a really quick read (downloaded it to my Nook from the library Thursday night, finished it this afternoon) and there's really no controversial material. I mean, it's clear who is right and who is wrong. These characters don't really have layers. The protagonists don't have any real flaws, and the antagonists don't have anything but flaws. Celia Foote probably has the most layers of anyone in the book, both good qualities and bad, and she's a tertiary character at best. The only controversy could be whether or not Minny actually put shit in Miss Hilly's pie. That is not a euphemism.

So, while it certainly wasn't a perfect book, it was enjoyable. This was Kathryn Stockett's first novel, and she clearly shows talent for pacing and an ability to tell a story. This wasn't exactly a mystery or a thriller, but there were still times that I had to keep reading and reading just to find out what happened next. However, there were some stylistic choices that grated on my nerves. The book is told from three different perspectives: Skeeter, Aibileen, and Minny. Stockett writes Aibileen and Minny's chapters in a Mississippi accent, but not Skeeter's. Now I'm sure there was some dialect differences between society girls and the domestic help, but it really bothered me that the white girl apparently thinks and speaks in perfect standard English, while the black women speak like caricatures. There was also a moment in a chapter told from Minny's point of view where we get Skeeter's inner monologue. That's just sloppy writing, and something that should have been taken care of in the editing stage. She also does that thing that you see all the time in historical fiction where the writer points out something (for no reason) that was new or meaningless in the setting of the novel but has significance to the reader thanks to historical perspective. Like having Skeeter watch the news and hear about a conflict in Vietnam that probably won't last too long. Vietnam is never mentioned again and has absolutely nothing to do with the story. Writers just throw stuff like that in because they think it's clever, but more often than not it comes out clumsy.

I chose to read this book because my mom and grandma read it and really liked it, and I want to take them to see the movie when it comes out at the end of summer. It's not the best book I've ever read, but it was really good. I know I've kind of picked at the faults of the book a lot in this review, but I think it's a worthwhile read. A solid B, even a B+ in parts. I didn't live in Mississippi in the early '60s, so I can't tell you how accurate the storyline is or isn't. So if you're a nerd like me and you have to read the book before you see the movie, go ahead and pick up The Help. The trailer looks like the film will be a decent adaptation. I saw the trailer before reading, so I had the actresses' faces in mind while reading, and I think they did a decent job casting.

The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant - Dan Savage

So on APW's recommendation I read The Commitment. And I hearted it (though it seems I never blogged about it). So like any obsessive reader I had to pick up more books by the same author.



I loved The Kid just as much. Savage is great at weaving his personal story with politics, humor and stats. Basically, Savage and his partner decide to become parents via open adoption and the book tells that story while educating the reader on adoption law, gay rights and Savage's relationship with his own family.

The story starts with Savage in the mire of negotiations to donate sperm to various lesbians. When things fall apart he and his partner go down the rabbit hole of adoption. It's an expensive hole full of paperwork. And straight people dealing with infertility. They end up matched with a homeless, pregnant street kid and finally, finally go home with a baby. Its an emotional experience but also a tedious legal proceding and a rather dull wait. Such is adoption, apparently. There's a lot to take in, and it's totally worth it.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who is interested in adoption, thinking about having kids or is passionate about social justice and finding homes for kids. Totally amusing and educational. My favorite combination.

The Church of Dead Girls by Stephen Dobyns

Well. That was interesting. I picked this book off the library shelf because I was intrigued by the title. I thought it would be a simple whodunnit serial killer mystery, but it's really not. It's more about how the suspicion infects the members of a small town, and how it escalates as each girl goes missing. Also, it's very slowly paced, which isn't normally something I would expect from a mystery novel. But I don't read a lot of mysteries, so maybe the pace isn't actually that unusual.

While the pacing does help build the suspense, I really think the book could have been fifty pages shorter. I know the author was trying to give the reader a sense of the town, but honestly, at some point you just want to know who the killer is. And it took forever. By halfway through the book only one girl had gone missing.

The book starts with a prologue describing the room in which the girls' bodies are found. It sets a gloomy mood for the rest of the book. As each of the three girls go missing, you read about the parents and town members searching and praying for the girls' return, but you know the truth. The girls are dead, tied to chairs in someone's attic, dressed in weird decorated robes, surrounded by melted candles. It's the "church" of the title, and it's a very creepy mental image. The most suspenseful part of the book is wondering if Sadie, the young girl whom the narrator lives near, is going to be one of the dead girls.

The book really spends most of its nearly 400 pages describing how the anxieties and suspicions of a small town grow and grow. At first everyone assumes that it must be someone from outside of Aurelius, because certainly none of their friends or neighbors could have done it. As each successive girl disappears, the townspeople become more and more suspicious of anyone whom they perceive as different. It's really a great examination of how a small town turns on its own members. And the big reveal in the last few pages was definitely unexpected. I found myself thinking "how on Earth did these people live with this psycho and not suspect something was up?" And then I remembered that I live in a small town where a three-year-old was stolen out of her own home and murdered, and the president of our library board was convicted of possession of child pornography in Canada. Those incidents are unrelated, btw. There are evil people everywhere, even if you don't suspect them. Terrible things happen all the time. I mean, Criminal Minds has to get its plot ideas from somewhere, right?