April 2020 Book Club book- "When Breath Becomes Air" by Paul Kalinithi

Wow. This book was just. WOW.

Brandon actually requested this book a while ago, so I was surprised when someone suggested it and we already had it on the shelves. It's the story of a man that is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer during his residency. He was working in neurosurgery, and was interested in the brain from a philosophical as well as medical perspective.

Paul was newly married when he was diagnosed, and they hadn't even begun to start a family when this diagnosis came. They knew he had a death sentence, so they weren't sure if they should have a baby. Ultimately they did, and it was hard to prepare for a new life coming into a family while preparing for the end of his own.

Paul learned a lot about life and death during his residency. His first death was a mother who had premature twins that died during the first night of their lives. He struggled to make sense of it, but it was not his only experience. As a neurosurgeon, your hands are the difference between someone recovering and being paralyzed or dying during surgery. Needing to tell a family that their family member died at your hands is a devastating event. One of the doctors he was in residency with committed suicide years later.

Paul ultimately died before finishing this book, which means his wife wrote the epilogue. I cried so much through that. His sweet baby was not even a year old when he died, and she seemed so sweet.

So, what would you do when you are faced with your own immortality? Would you feel like you had done enough? Paul seemed like he was on track to change the world. It seems so unfair that his life was cut so short!

If I knew I had a year left (or 2, he died 22 months after his diagnosis), I would just spend it all with my family. I would make sure I got to see every single person I loved, and as much as I'd like to say I'd want to travel I think I would just focus on the memories I'd make at home. Because my kids are young enough that I would want them to just remember me as I am at home. I'm grateful I have more than 2 years left, so when I think of this book it renews my desire to do better!

February 2020 Book Club- "The Secret Keeper" by Kate Morton

I just got this book on Tuesday, and started it on Thursday. I wanted to make sure it was done in time for Book Club on Monday, because I heard there was a major plot twist. And HOLY COW was that right!

The premise of the book is- A 16 year old girl witnesses her mom commit a murder. She never speaks of it for 50 years. 50 years later, her mom is dying and the family comes together. She finds out there was a mystery woman named Vivien in her mother (Dorothy, or Dolly)'s life when they lived in London, and that things were not as they appeared. She decides to get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding this murder. 

The thing this made me think of is the fact that we think we know our parents from before they were married and had children, but we never really do. Laurel (the one who was 16 when the murder happened) learns that the woman she thought was her mother really had a whole past. She was a survivor of the Blitz in London, and was the only one who survived out of her whole family. She went to the seaside to start a new life, and met her husband and had children. But her kids never thought of anything beyond the happiness they had in their home. They didn't know the skeletons in their mother's closet.

Ok WOW. So much to unpack. Dolly went to London to follow her boyfriend Jimmy, and became a maid for a woman who lived alone in her enormous house. She becomes obsessed with a woman that she works with in the volunteer service, who lives across the street from them. She believes that they are best friends, and that she will inherit the estate from this woman. When Vivien says she doesn't know her, and the old woman dies without giving her anything, she blames Vivien. Dolly is convinced that she is having an affair (Vivien is married to a famous author), and tells Jimmy they should blackmail her.

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

Jimmy begins to fall in love with Vivien. while pulling away from Dolly because of her obsession and cruelty in wanting to destroy Vivien's life. Vivien finds out about the plan, and decides to give Jimmy an enormous check to 1) insult him enough to keep him away (saving him from her husband who happens to be abusive), and 2) let him run away with Dolly like he wants because she is starting to love him.

Dolly's blackmail photograph accidentally gets mailed to Vivien's house, and her husband opens it. He tells her he already killed Jimmy, and that Dolly is next. She makes it to the house Dolly is staying at, and tells Dolly what is happening and that she needs to run away and LEAVE. Right when she says that, a bomb falls on the house. You find out that it was actually Dolly who died, and that Vivien put her ring on Dolly's finger and took her place. It was her escape from the abusive life she had lead.

So Laurel didn't know who her mom was AT ALL until just before her mom died. The regret Laurel thought her mom had over the blackmail was actually over the fact that Dolly wouldn't have been in the house if Vivien hadn't come to talk to her.

So when Henry Jenkins (her abusive former husband) came to find her that day, she knew that she needed to kill him because he would not stop until she was dead. She had escaped him for 20 years.

Book Club November 2019 Book- "Running for my Life" by Lopez Lomong

This was a gut wrenching book. Lopez Lomong was a boy in South Sudan when he was taken by the army and forced to be a boy soldier. He was trapped with boys for months, watching them drop like flies, before he escaped with 3 older boys and ran for 3 days straight. While they were running to their village, they actually made it to Kenya and were put in a refugee camp. There Lopez stayed for 10 years before he was given a once in a lifetime chance to go to America. He makes it to America, is placed with the most amazing family ever, and begins to run with his high school, college, and then in the Olympics on the United States team.

One of the lessons Lopez teaches is that he sees the hand of God everywhere he goes. When he escaped with the older boys, the cabin door didn't squeak for the first time ever. The guards were not paying attention, and they never saw the grass moving. The boys found water and food when they needed it most, and even though they didn't make it to their village they still made it to a refugee camp and they survived the ordeal. Lopez said he wishes he remembered the names of the older boys but doesn't, so he just calls them "his angels". Even the fact that he was able to write an essay in English, a language he didn't read or write, to be accepted was nothing short of miraculous.

The second lesson is the resiliency of the human spirit. While this was the "least" sad of the Africa war books I have read (I only nearly cried happy tears, not sad tears), it is still incomprehensible what some people go through. Lopez is still on the United States Olympics team. He went to the United States in July 2001, and was a sophomore in high school. This wasn't a time long ago. This was within my lifetime. He was one of the last Lost Boys of Sudan to make it to America, because 9/11 happened shortly after he immigrated here and they shut the program down.

The third lesson is the power of America. We take SO MUCH for granted what we have here. If Lopez had stayed in his village in Sudan, he would not have gotten an education. In the refugee camp, he had a basic education and learned how to speak Swahili. But he was blown away by what he saw in America. He had to learn how to shower, what a toilet was... he had barely seen what a TV was and it was a tiny thing hooked up to a car battery. To go from that to New York must have been just boggling. His parents were amazing, and did so much for him. However, he felt that he didn't deserve what he had been given and was worried that at any moment his parents would realize there was some mistake and send him back. So  he said one of the few English words he knew- "Yes"- in response to everything. It took years before he finally told his adopted parents what had happened to him.

The last lesson (which goes with the above) is the responsibility we have. We are SO BLESSED in America. How can we turn a blind eye to people suffering so much? I am pro-helping refugees. They have seen things we can't even process. Things that send a chill up my spine to even read. Meanwhile I'm sitting here in my own house with my own electricity and computer to write this blog post on. Clean water, education, and food are readily available. We can't help everyone, but we should help where we can.

I am donating to http://www.lopezlomong.com/lopez-lomong-foundation.html as part of the "Light the World" initiative, to help provide clean water to people in Sudan.

Book Club October 2019 Book- "House of Salt and Sorrows" by Erin A. Craig

This book is a YA retelling of the fairy tale "Twelve Princesses Dancing". In the fairy tale, the 12 princesses go dancing all night and have to get new shoes every day. (I've never actually read the original story, so I only know that.)

In this story, the story opens with the funeral of a girl. She is the fourth sister in a family of twelve to die. Her younger sister, Annaleigh, is the narrator. They are the daughter of a duke, who is also a widower. They have a new stepmother, who announces her pregnancy at the funeral luncheon.

 Strange things start happening at the manor. Annaleigh is not sure that Eulalie (her sister who just died) committed suicide. She investigates with the help of her friend Fisher, and finds out Eulalie had a secret lover. But before she can talk to him about the night Eulalie was going to run away, he falls to his death. She also meets this man named Cassius, whom she takes an interest in.

She and her sisters find a secret passageway to different parties that happen around the land every night.

That's all I want to share right now because there are some crazy plot twists that I don't want to give away. We read this in our book club in October because it is slightly creepy and has to do with death and ghosts. There's also a main character named Camille, which was exciting and *spoiler alert* she doesn't die! Yay! If they make this into a movie it will be a good teen movie. Lots of romance, beautiful dresses (which I wish I could wear sometimes!), suspense, and just enough scare factor to keep you super into the book. The plot twist is mind bending, and it makes you wonder what is real and what is fake.

Book Club August 2019 book- "Where the Crawdads Sing" by Delia Owens

So my friend Susan started a book club here! I'm so happy about it, because it's giving me a chance to really kick up my reading.

The first book was "Where the Crawdads Sing" by Delia Owens. I have seen the picture on the library website, since it is popular. So I'm glad she picked it out!

The book opens up with a scene of a man's body being found in a swamp. They don't know who killed Chase Andrews, but they had some suspicions. 

The first half of the book were memories about a girl named Kya (born Catherine) who grew up in the swamps outside a tiny town in North Carolina. She is abandoned by her family at a very young age (like ages 6-8), but somehow has the drive to survive. She sells clams to a local store run by an old "colored" man named Jumper, and makes rudimentary food. CPS comes to bring her to school, but she gets made fun of so much that she only goes one day.

Her older brother, Jody, has a friend named Tate that recognizes Kya and helps her. She learns to read and write, and eventually falls in love with Tate (in a way). She has no way of knowing what human emotions are or how someone should act besides the animals that she has seen. Tate prevents anything from happening at the last minute, and eventually goes off to college.

Meanwhile, she meets Chase, who wants to spend time with her. He shows interest, and one day when Kya is in town she sees him with his arm around another girl. He blows her off, but comes back and apologizes. They eventually go on a trip together, where he takes her virginity and she does not like it. He gets engaged to another girl soon after, and Kya writes him off.
She had been documenting the animals that she has seen, and Tate finds a professor who publishes it. This gives her money that allows her to not only survive but begin to thrive for the first time in her life.

Shortly after this is when Chase's body is found, and Chase's mom is sure it was Kya. He wore a shell necklace that she gave him every day, even after he was married. However, Chase was the type of person who had multiple affairs and could have had many enemies. Ultimately, Kya was arrested and thrown in jail.
The next whole part of the book is the courtroom and trial. It was a big shift in narrative, losing all of her descriptions and talking about the nature around her. Instead it's very matter of fact and cold. It's obvious from the get-go that the prosecution was very biased against Kya. There was no real solid evidence against her. There were no fingerprints period, which was suspicious. But nothing to suspect her.
(SPOILERS AHEAD- if you haven't read it don't keep reading!)

Ultimately the jury did not convict her. However, Tate spent so much time and emotion invested in Kya's trial that he didn't notice his dad's failing health. His dad passed away shortly after. Kya and Tate got common-law married, but never were able to have children. They lived in her house in the swamp, and Kya died in her 60's, and while Tate was cleaning out her things he found out that she was also an accomplished poet. One of her poems talks about luring a man to his death, and pushing him off the tower into the swamp.



So, my thoughts on the book.
It showed how judgmental people can be in regards to "other" types of people. The prosecution had suspicions but they had many other people to look into. Why not the wife, since he has had many affairs? Why not the significant other of a woman that he had an affair with? But those were all "our" people in the town. Kya was an outsider and had been marginalized her whole life. She was an easy suspect.
It was fitting that she never got legally married. Why would she try to fit in with the government that had failed her this whole time?
It is sad that she wasn't able to have children. But since she found out her mom had a mental breakdown and left when she was 4, it makes me wonder if she would have handled having a child. Not having a nurturing presence in your life could have made it difficult to know how to raise a child. (I know it is possible, but she had a very feral childhood.)


Overall, a good read! Some of the descriptions are a little mature for younger audiences, but it was definitely engaging.