A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Another good, yet disturbing book by Khaled Hosseini (he wrote The Kite Runner, which I reviewed previously).  It made me VERY thankful to be a woman in the US.  This book follows the lives of two Afgani women whose lives eventually intersect.  The author is obviously knowledgeable when it comes to Afgani customs and the impact the Taliban had on the country.  The lack of freedom for women over there is unbelievable.  As with The Kite Runner, this book has some difficult scenes to get through, but they come together into a compelling story that is hard to put down.

For One More Day by Mitch Albom

A short, sweet book about a depressed guy who wants to kill himself, but ends up spending one last day with his deceased mother.  Odd concept, but it works in this book.  He learns about himself and his mom and is able to get his life back on track, but not fairy tale spectacular.

We had an interesting question at our book club meeting regarding a recurring line, "...every family is a ghost story."  This refers to how the dead can sit at our table long after they are gone.  The discussion went the way of most people saying that everyone has a specific person as a "ghost" in their past.  I don't know that I agreed with that so much.  I think that we all have voices that speak to us and we may put them into that "ghost" from our past category, but I don't think just one person can fill the role of that "ghost."  I think we take so much from the people in our lives and are constantly recreating  the "ghost." As we go we can choose to listen to our current "ghost" or try a different path and see what voices we can remove or add to our "ghost."  I'm not sure I really care for the term ghost either, but that's how it's presented in the book so I'll stick with it here.

Peder Victorious by O.E. Rolvaag

The sequel to Giants in the Earth.  I liked this book better than the first.  This is the story of the youngest son of the family, that settled in the Dakotas during the first book, coming of age.  The mother is still around.  She actually adds a bit of an interesting theological aspect to this book so at least I wasn't continually wishing she would die this time around.  She makes her boys' lives very difficult and the book ends with her on her way to probably ruin her son's marriage, but now I have to read the third, and last, book in the series to find out about that.

The Proper Care and Feeding of Marriage by Dr. Laura Schlessinger

This is our book club book for the month and my first experience with Dr. Laura.  I like her approach and the relevance to all relationships in this book.  Another book that seems to summarize so much of what I have been learning about relationships over the past few years.  Some quotes from the book that I thought were particularly powerful:

- "I don't think that many marriages are stuck on communication problems, whatever they are.  I think that most marriages are stuck on people needing or hurting so much (from their childhoods, primarily) that they forget to or resist giving love."

- "...the past has tentacles that squeeze the life out of today when we have unresolved hurts and disappointments."

- "It's amazing how capable people are to place blame anywhere else but with themselves...the only control each one of us has in our relationships is over ourselves."

- In response to calls regarding spouses not telling each other things, Dr. Laura says it is a fear of the repercussions - "The repercussions mostly have to do with the communication being filtered through one's own insecurities, assumptions, and perceptions, without truly hearing the message of the other person.  What is the solution to this hypersensitivity? Manual override.  That means you work very hard to keep your fears out of the way of your ears."

This last one was a most amazing quote to me.  I've been studying a great diagram of this exact thought for the past few years and trying to learn how to deal with my "grid," as it's called in the diagram.

I hope to have time to read some of her other books and maybe even listen to her occasionally.  

As a side note, I am appalled that our library here does not carry even one of Dr. Laura's books.  The books are considered best sellers yet our library is so liberal minded they won't let any of her books pollute their shelves!  What a disservice to the people of this city that MUST pay $80 a year for the library whether they use it or not (it's all lumped into our property taxes and if you live outside the city and want a card you need to pay that amount on your own).

Stiff by Mary Roach

If your at all familiar with Mary Roach (author of a 2 page article each month in Reader's Digest) you'll know this book will have a humorous side despite it's subtitle, "The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers."  This is my pick for my book club.  It's a bit odd and out of the norm compared to the typical books we read, but I've reviewed it and it's a fun read.  Plus, I think it will provide some great discussion.  She does a great job delving into all areas where cadavers are used and the purpose of using them rather than something less "offensive."  She also does a good job balancing the morbid with her sense of humor.  It makes you think about what you might want to have done to your body once you are gone and gives some very interesting options.  I've never been much of one for a burial and this further confirmed my thoughts on it.  The process the body goes through when decaying - being eaten from the inside out by all sorts of organisms and then liquifying - is disgusting.  The donation and scientific side is much more appealing to me.  I know I will always be grateful to Mary and ??? (I can't remember the male's name) for planning ahead and  letting us explore their bodies in my college anatomy class.  It was a very respectful atmosphere and an absolutely amazing view that the average person doesn't usually get to see. 

My Antonia

One of those books I was supposed to read back in High school and chose to go the Cliff Notes route instead. My book club read it this time around so I needed to be able to participate in the discussion and I really enjoyed it. I'm racking up quite a list of "settling" books, but they each cover a different time period so they've been interesting. I had thought this book was about Antonia (obviously got the idea from the title), but the narrator used Antonia more as a way to convey the world in which he grew up. It was also interesting to note some commentary on the author as prefering to write from a male perspective so she could admire the females in the story fully since was supposedly a lesbian. Anyway, the book was about various families settling in Nebraska from different European countries as well as the main family who was already established there. It talks of their interesting relationships and their hardships. I really liked the grandpa of the narrator, but I kept hoping Antonia's mother would die. She was just a bitter, selfish lady. Antonia was certainly to be admired for the life she made for herself and her family despite the extreme poverty.

The Shack by William Young

WOW!!!  A well written, fictional book that really makes you think.  A friend gave this to me last week and I flew through it.  The actual story is sandwiched in the middle of a very sad circumstance (abduction and brutal murder of a 6 year old daughter) but it could be applied to any difficulty in our lives.  It wrestles with the age old question of "Where's God when horrible things happen?"  There are some areas I had difficulty with, but it wasn't fair to judge them before finishing the book and they really didn't detract from the story.  It did a great job summarizing so much of what I've been wrestling with and learning over the past few years.  If you're trying to figure where God fits or if He even really does fit in this world and your life I would highly recommend this book.  It doesn't answer all the questions, but it definitely gets you started thinking.  I don't want to give away the whole thing so that's all I'll say for now.

Mrs. Mike

A GREAT book, written by Benedict and Nancy Freedman.  This book takes place in the late 1800's through WWI with a young girl (16) moving from her city home to her uncle's ranch in Canada to help her breath better.  She falls in love immediately, with Mike, of course,marries him and follows him to the upper reaches of Canada where he is assigned as a mounty.  The majority of the book is spent following their lives in this harsh and unforgiving environment as they make a home with various Inuit tribes, Mrs. Mike being the only white female around.  I don't like romance books and this is a love story, but it is so much more than that as well.  You get a good feel for the pleasantly simple life they lived, but the harshness of it all affects everyone so deeply.  Another good historical fiction novel.  

As a side note, this book was written 30 years ago, by the authors, before kids entered their lives.  It had such continued success that they have just recently written a sequel to this book now that their kids are grown.  It takes place during WWII and follows one of the daughters of Mrs Mike.  It's on my book list for the future.

The Kite Runner

A wrenching book by Kahalid Hosseini.  I knew the movie was coming out soon and wanted to get this read beforehand in case I decided to see the movie.  The book was well written and a good read, but it was very disturbing.  I'm not sure I could sit through this movie, depending on how graphic they choose to be with it.  It's about a rich boy coming of age in Afganistan when the Taliban take over.  He grows up with his dad's servant's boy as his best friend.  He slowly learns to see this boy as more than his servant's son, but it takes a long while with some difficult turns.

The Dead Don't Dance

A good light read for bedtime, but with some good messages throughout.  It's fairly predictable and can bring some tears, but a good first book by Charles Martin.  I actually had another book of his on my list, but since that wasn't in at the library I chose this one instead.  It's about a young couple experiencing some trials in life and their interaction with those around them while going through it.  It is hard to put down once you start it.  Andy was just checking it out in a moment of boredom before bed and ended up finishing it in 3 days.

Giants In The Earth

This is an old book originally written in Norwegian and then translated into English by OE Rolvaag.  I enjoyed the story of Norwegian emmigrants traveling from their home country to settle in the Dakotas.  I did feel like I was constantly waiting for something to happen throughout the book and  nothing real big happened until the final paragraph of the 532 page book.  Disappointing at first, but when I found this was the first of a trilogy I was ok with it.  I look forward to reading the next book in this series when I get time and have a warm fire to curl up by - those Dakota winters are brutal.  Historical fiction has been a favorite of mine for some time now so this book was right up my alley.