Lies! I told you I wouldn't read until my nursing credits were done. Baloney, I guess.
These books slid down without a hitch, like ice cream on a Sunday night. I especially enjoyed the mindlessness of number 24.
Sometime, I'll give you a update on me; but for now, I'll just say I'm overall happier and better than I was a couple months ago.
21) Healing from the Heart: The Inherent Power to Heal from Within (book and two CDs) by Judith S. Moore
This system is brilliant. It was homework for a physical and emotional wellness class I'm taking. I loved it!
I've told you several times I struggle getting through books with no plot. Well, this is a Christian-based self-help-type book...but it's two parallel stories! No bullet points, no lists, no subtitles, no boring stuff! It's a liiiiiittle on the cheesy side sometimes, but many things are better with cheese. Wouldn't you agree? Eat it.
We meet chronically-ill Anne who is being taken care of by "Grandmother." Meanwhile, Grandmother tells Anne Native American stories about Running Wolf, a boy with a lame leg who seeks inner peace and great wisdom.
There are six chapters. Each updates us on Anne's healing and improved perspective, tells us about Running Wolf's self-discovery and adventures, and has an accompanying track on a CD. The CDs contain meditations and guided imagery. It's a little fringey, and therefore right up my alley. They are relaxing and healing. I kept grasping bits of sageness, not really understanding how I was even recognizing and subconsciously incorporating them. It feels deliberate, but there is a passive, painless healing that happens. It sounds hokey, but it works for me. It's gentle and slow, like a loving grandmother. It got right in my heart and rooted out darkness, replacing it with light.
Marie Osmond wrote the foreword for this book and used it for healing her own heart. She listened to the fourth chapter's track over and over again, for example. That's one great thing about the CDs: you can cycle through the "Dream Picture" you need as many times as you need. I've had pricey counseling sessions that are less effective than these tracks. While it won't fix everything all at once, the feelings will be a bit more manageable with every round of spiraling out of it. And eventually, it's small, and you're somehow okay.
I feel greater peace having been gently and lovingly counseled by Grandmother. It is beautifully written and a book for the ages. This book is a gem. Five stars!
22) Soundless by Richelle Mead
I totally judged this book by its cover. It's gorgeous! I passed this book over and over in stores, thinking, "Ugh, if I didn't have so many books in the queue, I'd totally get this." Then one day, I saw it on discount in "lé Walmart" (makes me feel so classy), so I grabbed it faster than a baby grabs at a pristine, frosted cake, and it became mine.
Soundless.
High atop a cliffed mountain, a village of miners lives entirely dependent on the valley below for its food. Each day, the villagers send precious metals down a zip line; and each day, the mysterious line keeper below sends as much food as he thinks the village deserves. But it's never enough; excess is the stuff of legends.
Fei and her sister are deaf, just like the rest of the village. The people went deaf several generations before, and now, many are beginning to go blind and are forced to become starving beggars. As Fei begins to contemplate the reason why, she miraculously begins to hear again. Will the village be accepting of her ability? Will Fei be able to feed the village and stop the blindness? A fantastic adventure awaits!
This book is a really fun story. It made me think differently and used really intricate language sometimes, which I enjoyed. Also, the concept was intriguing. Finally, it takes place in some place like China, so I was able to go on a brief, imaginary holiday to the place, all while reading at a middle-grade level.
Unfortunately, I "edited" the entire book. Sometimes when you have authored a novel, you start looking for the next device that will move the story along. I found myself thinking, "We need more information or a guide here. Enter a new character? Well, how convenient." The layout felt classic, but it had so many intriguing concepts that I stayed interested to the end. Fifty-five pages from the finale, I couldn't predict what was going to happen. So even though I "edited" a lot, it still contained quite a bit of genius, and I recommend it.
For innovation, a beautiful cover (it matters this time!), and a great story, I give this book a hearty 3.5 stars.
23) Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague by Geraldine Brooks
This book is as uplifting as it sounds. The title references the plague ("The Black Death") that ravaged England in 1666, and a phrase spoken by Jehovah in the Bible preceding the very first plague in recorded human history, sent by Moses to Pharaoh of Egypt.
The author wrote this historical fiction novel based on research she found in the town of Eyams, Derbyshire, England, or "Plague Village" as it was known. Anna, a common woman made heroic through extremity and scarcity, describes in first-person reflection the horrors of the plague that riddled her village of about 330 people. By the end, she has transcended roles in the Restoration period of England, having achieved a new confidence.
The book is told from near the end at first, then reflects backward a year or so and moves forward. We get to know members of the town as Anna observes the basest and noblest of human behaviors. Puritan liturgy influences the town toward black-and-white thinking (though the new clergyman is vastly liberal comparatively), and we see witch hunting a good thirty years before Salem. So THAT'S fun. So many times I wanted to rescue wives and children from abusive situations and give women a rallying, feminist speech for the time. But Anna is good at keeping it together despite the pain of daily living and finds personal gifts she didn't know she had. I like her resilience.
I loved this novel for nearly a hundred pages. Then my affection waned with each disturbing image. These were dark, dark times. There were so many ferociously off-color bits that are now lodged in my visualization. If I wasn't a nurse and had the stomach of an iron cauldron, I wouldn't have withstood the gore (and it wasn't all medical). So I digested the book as quickly as I could to get the bitter taste out of my system. Perhaps I would have quit partway if it hadn't been a book club selection, but I wanted to know what would happen. The story had a good arc, and I loved the diction and that my understanding grew. The writing felt archaic yet accessible. It will be an interesting discussion.
I pray humans will not have to endure such depravity, ignorance, isolation, and superstition from a plague ever again. 2.5 stars for graphic writing and subject matter--this one hit me hard. (It doesn't help that I'm something of a germophobe.)
24) Brunette Ambition by Lea Michele
I would be a women's lifestyle magazine monger is it weren't for all the ads, skimpy pictures, and things I just don't care about. I do enjoy how-to lists and healthy recipes and reading about fashion trends. Reading laudable articles about my favorite celebrities is really fun too.
So when I learned that Broadway and TV star Lea Michele had written her own lifestyle how-to book (albeit a few years old), I was excited to see what she had to say. Lea touches on many topics in the book, from her at-home exercise routine to a luxurious spa day using kitchen ingredients to two-day meal plan with recipes. She talks about her simple wardrobe, the value of friendship, tasteful makeup looks, and hair care. I ate it up in just a couple of reading sessions.
But before all that tiptastic stuff, I got to know Lea better in the book through her retelling of her personal life before Broadway and the lessons she has learned through her career, like professionalism, being amiable, learning all you can from mentors, etc. I can tell this book was aimed at teenagers because of her fan base and the generic, benign advice, but I really liked it anyway. I flicked through the pages aimlessly devouring instructions for DIY exfoliating scrubs and learning that a good rule of thumb is to have classic clothes and trendy accessories. I won't live out all of her opinions, but I have already given myself a spa morning and evaluated my lipsticks.
Even though Lea sounds down-to-earth, and I like a lot of her ideas, she and I are quite different. Lea is a self-proclaimed "Broadway diva" (which has positive connotations in New York), and she has people: a personal trainer, hair and makeup artists, a stylist, and a tailor. Also, she is unattached and doing okay in the green department. I can't decide on a whim to spend a weekend at a spa with my girlfriends or fly to New York. But it's cool. I don't mind reading about her world for a short time. It's just that this book isn't going to be 100% relatable to very many people.
Still, it's flippantly mindless and delightfully so. I'm giving it five stars for the extended faux magazine fix!
25) Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
This book was recommended to me by a friend, and I give it four stars (swearing). It is a novel told in a compilations of emails, notes, letters, faxes, an emergency room bill, and more. Sometimes it is narrated by a teenage girl whose mother (Bernadette) has gone missing.
I grew the most tense two-thirds of the way through the book when the plot got messy (i.e. unraveled and required massive resolution). Usually this happens for me one-third of the way through. But I enjoyed the uncharacteristic pace and formatting because it kept things so interesting for me. The characters are fascinating, and I wish I could explicate here some of my thoughts on some of them, especially Bernadette who taught me that artists mustn't be suppressed. I identify with her struggle to only do what she thinks she's supposed to do because of fear, rather than to do the things she is passionate about. It makes me wonder if many people do the same, and what kinds of problems develop from it.
This book has made me think, and so I continue to enjoy it. (Thanks for the recommendation, friend!)
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