December books- Share Your Shelf

The following were the books that I read in December:

Linking up (late) with Joanne, Tanya, Marilyn and Jennifer

Where You Once Belonged by Kent Haruf- This book is set in fictional Holt, Colorado and tells the tale of a larger than life small town crook who comes back to town after leaving and having been gone for eight years. Haruf is a good writer and I enjoyed reading this character driven book. However, the ending was super disappointing. I don't need endings to be all good and super neat and tidy by any means but this book's ending was terrible...

Heat and Light by Jennifer Haigh- Enjoyed reading this character driven novel based in a small town in Pennsylvania dealing with the issue of fracking. Various characters on each side of the issue come to life and it's easy to see why some in this small town welcomed the drills into the town and onto their property while some opposed it. Haigh is a great story teller and wonderful writer. 

The Last Flight by Julie Clark- This book reminded me a bit of a John Grisham book where the events of the book as told are super far fetched and the plot is incredibly unbelievable. The author also uses the trope of "men bad, women good" to an annoying degree. I don't think there was a single good or even decent male character anywhere in the book. (Though that sort of tracks with the overarching unbelievable nature of the book.) And yet. I really enjoyed the book! It tells the story of two women who meet at an airport and at almost the last minute, switch airline tickets with each other so that they'll go to different destinations than their purchased ticket states. The reader knows that one of the woman is fleeing from her abusive, well powered and connected husband. The other woman's story is revealed throughout the book. I found the book hard to put down due to wanting to know what was going to happen next to each woman. Oh, also one of the planes that one of the women is on crashes. Yet maybe she survived? 

The Lies I Tell by Julie Clark- Of course I sought out another book by the same author. This book was also cleverly and well written with a completely different plot yet somewhat similar vibe to the Last Flight. The plot in this book was completely unbelievable and you betcha, the two main men's characters ranged from Very Bad to Even More Very Bad. And yet. I enjoyed it! It centers on two women, one of whom was cheated out of her family's home by the Even More Very Bad man and so she seeks revenge on the man. The other woman suspects the duplicity of the first woman and decides she wants to write a tell all of the duplicity. She doesn't know the full story and wants to find out.

While Time Remains by Yeonmi Park- Yeonmi escaped from North Korea after enduring a lifetime of fear of worrying about doing anything that would anger the regime and of being hungry from living in a country where the regime starved its people. She wrote a book about what she endured to escape to China (she touched on it in this book and it sounds so awful). This one is her second book and it's about her thoughts on America since coming to live here in 2015.

From the back cover,

"After defecting from North Korea, Yeonmi Park found liberty and freedom in America. But she also discovered a chilling crackdown on self-expression and thought that reminded her of the brutal regime she risked her life to escape. When she spoke out about the mass political indoctrination she saw around her in the United States, Park faced censorship and even death threats.

In While Time Remains, Park delivers a warning for Americans by highlighting the dangerous hypocrisies, mob tactics, and groupthink that speak in the name of wokeness and social justice. No one is spared in her eye- opening account, including the elites who claim to care for the poor and working class but turn their backs on anyone who dares to think differently.

Park arrived in America in 2015 with no preconceptions, no political aims, and no partisan agenda. With urgency and unique insight, the bestselling author and human rights activist reminds us of the fragility of freedom, and what we must do to preserve it."

One of the pervading thoughts I had while reading this was one of immense gratitude that the election turned out the way it did! Many people in prominent positions whose political ideology is progressive leftism are not tolerant of other viewpoints. If that statement rings false to you, please read this book! It will disabuse you of the notion that the political Left is tolerant.  

Back to the book- Yeomi noticed this intolerance for anything other than left wing political ideology when she was a student at Columbia University. She was upbraided for liking Jane Austen (Austen perpetuated the patriarchy in her writing or something nonsensical like that) and mentions the high value that every classroom was a "safe space" where students were guaranteed to not feel uncomfortable (unless their opinion fell outside of the groupthink's position on a topic).

There are so many great quotes/lines from the book and this post would be fifty paragraphs long if I listed every erudite statement. Here is just one good one...

"I started to believe, as I still do now, that the only way to think for yourself is to ignore mainstream media, and largely forget the daily news cycle and connect instead with the great minds of the past, who know of our problems better than we do ourselves. There is a reason why the great books of Western civilization are all banned in dictatorships."

I cannot recommend this book enough! I would be happy to send a copy to anyone who wants a copy of it to read. You had better believe each of my children received a copy of this book for Christmas. It's one thing for them to hear me talk about many of the themes that Yeonmi touches on in her book; it's another to hear the same themes from someone born in an authoritarian regime. 

Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan Peterson- Kind of shocked that this book has sold 10 millions copies, primarily because it's a long tome. I didn't know that many people had it in them to read such a long book- I'm impressed! On Amazon, there are over 81,000 reviews...

The book consists of twelve rules for life- for chaos to not run rampant in one's life. Peterson is brilliant and extremely well read in philosophy and great works of literature. Yet he is able to articulate his thoughts- through personal anecdotes from his clinical observations to what he's learned from history and works of literature- and conveys them quite convincingly in an easy to read and understand format. He posits that curing society of its greatest ills requires each person to accept responsibility for his or her actions, to be honest... and well, you'll need to read the book to find out the other ten :). I thought the second half was much better than the first half. (I found myself skimming through some loooong paragraphs in the first half of the book.) I didn't agree with Peterson on a number of things pertaining to Christianity, the age of our planet and a few other things but thought that his "rules" overall made a lot of sense and following them would help to lead to living a fulfilling and meaningful life. (Though I don't think this book is the end all- be all authority on how to live one's life- the Bible is that!) The rule on parenting was particularly really good- every parent of a young child should read it!