Book Addiction

The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids  by Alexandra Robbins

From the jacket flap -

High school isn’t what it used to be.  With record numbers of students competing fiercely to get into college, schools are no longer primarily places of learning.  They’re dog-eat-dog battlegrounds in which kids must set aside interests and passions in order to strategize over how to game the system.  In this increasingly stressful environment, kids are defined not by their character or hunger for knowledge, but by often arbitrary scores and statistics.

In The Overachievers, journalist Alexandra Robbins delivers a poignant, funny, riveting narrative that explores how our high-stakes educational culture has spiraled out of control.  During the year of her ten-year reunion, Robbins returns to her high school, where she follows students including:

• Julie, a track and academic star who is terrified she’s making the wrong choices,
• “AP” Frank, who grapples with horrifying parental pressures to succeed,
• Taylor, a soccer and lacrosse captain whose ambition threatens her popular-girl status,
• Sam, who worries his years of overachieving will be wasted if he doesn’t attend a name-brand college,
• Audrey, who struggles with perfectionism, and
• The Stealth Overachiever, a mystery junior who flies under the radar.

Robbins tackles hard-hitting issues such as the student and teacher cheating epidemic, over testing, sports rage, the black market for study drugs, and a college admissions process so cutthroat that some students are driven to depression and suicide because of a B.  Even the earliest years of schooling have become insanely competitive, as Robbins learned when she gained unprecedented access into the inner workings of a prestigious Manhattan kindergarten admissions office.

A compelling mix of fast-paced storytelling and engrossing investigative journalism, The Overachievers aims both to calm the admissions frenzy and to expose its escalating dangers.

My thoughts -

There is a LOT of truth to the issues presented in a book, and honestly, I’m glad someone decided to write about this stuff.  I experienced much of these issues myself while in high school; I did not go to an elite private school like the kids in this book, but I did go to a pretty tough public high school in a nice neighborhood where many students went on to really great, Ivy-type colleges.  I can’t say that I bought into the pressure nearly as much as most of these kids did, but I knew many students that did.  I also knew many of those students felt intense pressure from themselves, and also from their parents, to be perfect and successful in every single class and activity they did.  Robbins did some really great research for this book, she told the story in an almost novel-like way, and she really got to the heart of what most of these kids were going through.  All while exposing something that I believe will really cripple students once they get out into the “real world” and realize that perfection simply doesn’t exist.

So overall, an excellent book, and one I definitely think every parent should read.  No matter how old your kids are, either they’ll go to high school one day, or they’ve already been there, and either way, this book helps to understand a little bit better the kinds of pressures teens face on a daily basis.

The one problem I do have with this book is there’s virtually no discussion of class whatsoever.  There’s a good reason I didn’t get as crazy about grades and activities and getting into the perfect college in high school as some of my peers did:  I simply could not afford to.  I had to work 30+ hours a week in HS just to pay for everyday expenses, and I knew from day one that I was going to be paying for my college education myself, which meant a state school for sure, no matter what my grades and SAT scores said about me.  Furthermore, I wasn’t able to prep for the rat race in the years leading up to HS like other kids; no gymnastics classes, violin lessons, soccer practice, or math tutors for me - there simply wasn’t any money for extra stuff like that.  A key point that Robbins missed is what an incredible disadvantage there is for kids with lower socioeconomic status.  If the kids in this book, who had every advantage in the world, were terrified of not getting into the right college, and spent half their lives worrying and competing their brains out, where does that leave the kids like me, who simply do not have the time or money to compete in this way?  This is a critical discussion that I think would really have improved Robbins’ arguments, and I’m disappointed that she missed it.

Even so, I enjoyed the book, and highly recommend it, especially for those of you with children.

8 stars.

We Don’t Need Another Wave: Dispatches from the Next Generation of Feminists  edited by Melody Berger

From Publisher’s Weekly -

The contemporary essays collected by Berger, an activist and creator of The F-Word, a feminist zine for teens, demonstrate loudly and clearly that feminism is alive, well and pursuing a wide variety of concerns. Sexuality, empowerment, violence, body image, reproductive rights, child sexual abuse, the gynecologist, the morning-after pill, the “Seventh-Grade Slut” and “Sex, Drugs, and the Department of Homeland Security” are all explored, as are the roles of government, religion, and the media. The result is a mixed bag that zeros in on the experience of contemporary women who face a multitude of slippery issues; according to Berger, “the connecting theme is this: ‘I’m a young feminist and I’m going to work it!’” For her, the key is to fire up a movement-not a “wave”-and the 30 voices here, including Lisa Jervis, Alix Olson, Dean Spade and Jessica Valenti, provide many fine starting points. Especially rousing are the endcap entries, Valenti’s short, blunt rebuke of “self-hating feminists” and Jennifer L. Pozner’s plan to reclaim the media for a progressive feminist future.

My thoughts -

I thought this was a pretty decent collection of feminist thought, mostly in the form of essays.  I was entertained by many of the pieces here, and I was definitely given some food for thought by some of the authors in terms of issues I don’t typically think about on a regular basis.  Overall, I’m glad I read this book, but nothing really stood out to me TOO much as being a really inspiring, amazing piece of writing.  There were many different styles of writing and many different faces of feminism present in this collection, which was nice to read, getting different perspectives and everything.  A worthwile feminist read, but not my favorite thing I’ve ever read in the area of feminist and gender thinking.

Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival  by Anderson Cooper

From the book jacket -

Few people have witnessed more scenes of chaos and conflict around the world than Anderson Cooper, whose groundbreaking coverage on CNN has changed the way we watch the news.  In this gripping, candid, and remarkably powerful memoir, he offers an unstinting, up-close view of the most harrowing crises of our time, and the profound impact they had on his life.

After growing up on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Cooper felt a magnetic pull toward the unknown, an attraction to the far corners of the earth.  If he could keep moving, and keep exploring, he felt he could stay one step ahead of his past, including the fame surrounding his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, and the tragic early deaths of his father and older brother.  As a reporter, the frenetic pace of filing dispatches from war-torn countries, and the danger that came with it, helped him avoid having to look too closely at the pain and loss that was right in front of him.

But recently, during the course of one extraordinary, tumultuous year, it became impossible for him to continue to separate his work from his life, his family’s troubled history from the suffering people he met all over the world.  From the tsunami in Sri Lanka to the war in Iraq to the starvation in Niger and ultimately to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and Mississippi, Cooper gives us a firsthand glimpse of the devastation that takes place, both physically and emotionally, when the normal order of things is violently ruptured on such a massive scale.  Cooper had been in his share of life-threatening situations before - ducking fire on the streets of war-torn Sarajevo, traveling on his own to famine-stricken Somalia, witnessing firsthand the genocide in Rwanda - but he had never seen human misery quite like this.  Writing with vivid memories of his childhood and early career as a roving correspondent, Cooper reveals for the first time how deeply affected he has been by the wars, disasters, and tragedies he has witnessed, and why he continues to be drawn to some of the most perilous places on earth.

My thoughts -

I have always been a fan of Anderson Cooper, and I’d been excited about reading his memoir ever since it came out sometime last year.  I definitely enjoyed reading it, even though 90% of the book is some really heartbreaking, depressing stuff.  Cooper alternates between talking about his childhood/early adulthood experiences with his family (including his dad’s early death and brother’s suicide), his early experiences as a journalist in places like Sarajevo and Somalia, and his more recent experiences as a journalist in places like Nigeria, Iraq, and New Orleans.  In my opinion, this style worked really well for his memoir because he was able to tie his childhood in with different experience he had as an adult, and also tie in how some places he went to and disasters he experienced were similiar to and/or different from others he saw later in his career (for example, he compared the famine in Somalia to the famine in Nigeria, and the war in Sarajevo to the war in Iraq).  He also spent a good amount of the book tying in his personal life to his work; basically he was going through a process of self-discovery where he was learning why he feels such an incredible desire to be at the scene of every single disaster, and why he feels the need to keep moving and hates staying in one place for too long.  It is obvious that writing this memoir was very theraputic for Cooper, and he comes to some conclusions toward the end about why he is the way he is, and he begins to come to terms with his personality and the way he feels compelled to live his life.  I really appreciated reading Cooper’s memoir, and even though this is a really sad book, it is a worthwile read.

9 stars.

High Heels to Hormones: A Woman’s Guide to Spine Careby Christina Lasich, M.D.

From the back cover -

With all the medical concerns facing women today, a healthier spine might not be at the top of your list - but it should.  Back and neck pain interferes with many women’s busy lives, but a remedy for it is easier than you might think.

Christina Lasich, M.D., draws on her many years of experience as a spine rehabilitation specialist to bring you High Heels to Hormones: A Woman’s Guide to Spine Care.  Through hilarious cartoons and short, easy-to-read, informative text, Dr. Lasich shows you how important good spinal health is to your overall well-being.

Women of every size, shape, and age will benefit from Dr. Lasich’s sound, proven advice.  Say good-bye to your sore neck and aching back and hello to a stronger, healthier spine!

My thoughts -

I received this book from the publisher to read and review on my blog, and I have to admit, I was a little nervous to be doing this.  This is the first time anyone’s requested this of me, and of course I wanted to do a good job.  Well, I’m happy to report that I really enjoyed the book so I am definitely excited to post about it and introduce everyone to this concise and wonderful little book.

I actually learned a lot from this one.  I personally don’t suffer from any serious back pain, but I do have definite aches from time to time, and reading this book helped me pinpoint when I have more pain in my back, what might be causing it during those times, and what I might be able to do about it.  There was a lot of information in this book that I would never have known - such as how important healthy foods are for your spine health, how awful cigarette smoking is for your spine (I don’t smoke, but I had no idea it had a direct correlation to spine pain!), and how terrible it is for your back to be sitting in one position all day long (I’m talking to you, all you people with desk jobs, and yes I am sort of one of them).  There were also a lot of simple things that women can do to alleviate spine pain for the long run, such as sleeping with a pillow between your legs, going for a proper bra fitting, and even taking short walks throughout the day.

In addition, each section ended with specific exercises that you should do to lessen the pain for the short term, pictures included.  These sections were especially helpful, as I think it’s very easy for women to do something if they have concrete instructions.  Better still, these exercises are nothing fancy, not difficult by any means, and they can even be done while watching TV during a commercial break or something.  This book is very short, less than 100 pages, but I think that works in its favor because it’s easy and quick to get through, and there is not a lot of scientific, medical terminology that may turn some people off.  It is definitely geared toward women, which is nice because Dr. Lasich makes it very clear that men and women’s bodies are built differently, especially in regards to the spine area, so women need different and more specific information regarding spine care. 

I really enjoyed reading this book and learned a lot from it.  I’ll be happy to pass it along to any of you bloggers, especially if you have back pain and could really use the advice.  Just comment on this post to be entered, and if you’d like to be entered twice go ahead and post about the giveaway on your own blog.  I’ll probably choose a winner sometime next weekend (June 6-8).

Thanks again to Dr. Lasich and Kathlene Carney for sending the book to me and allowing me to review it!

He’s a Stud, She’s a Slut and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know by Jessica Valenti

From the back cover -

Double standards are nothing new.  Women deal with them every day.  Consider the following examples:

• He’s a Hipster, She’s a Ho
• He’s Gay, She’s a Fantasy
• He’s Angry, She’s PMSing
• He’s Independent, She’s Pathetic
• He’s Successful, She’s a Showoff
• He’s Dating a Younger Woman, She’s a Cougar

Women are held to a different standard than men.  And mostly we just put up with it - but we don’t have to.  Jessica Valenti offers 50 solutions to 50 of the most pressing double standards that women confront.  With sass, humor, and in-your-face facts, she informs and equips women with the tools they need to combat sexist comments, topple ridiculous stereotypes, and end the promotion of insidious double standards.

My thoughts -

The good news is, I feel like this book will be really helpful for younger feminists, middle school, high school, or college women, who are just beginning to understand the ways sexism permeates their every day lives, and who are just beginning to have those light bulb moments where they realize feminism is important for EVERY woman.  This book will help those women expand their developing feminist thinking, understand how the larger world really does discriminate against women in almost every situation, and have a better idea of how to deal with these double standards when faced with them in daily life.

The bad news, however, is that I wasn’t the biggest fan of this new one by Valenti.  I am a huge fan of hers, I love her website (Feministing.com) and love her first book, but this book honestly did not provide me with any information I did not already have.  There’s a reason she chose to write about these double standards - they are SO pervasive, so obvious, such common experiences of most women that to not know about them and understand them would be a problem as a woman living in today’s world.  While I appreciate what she did with this book, I simply didn’t get much out of it.  Valenti explained everything well enough and used very current examples, but her “what do we do about it?” sections also fell a little flat for me.  Her most common solution was “call people out on their bullshit” or “don’t let someone treat you this way”.  While both those suggestions are important and should be done, I wouldn’t say either of them would actually solve these real problems or teach a more ignorant individual about the importance of NOT using a double standard.  At the same time, what else can one person really do except educate the people they know?… not much, I suppose. 

So while I think this new one by Valenti is an important contribution to feminist literature, it simply was not one of my personal favorites.  I’d still recommend reading it to anyone eager to learn more about feminism, and especially anyone who does not believe double standards exist… this book will help clarify the very real fact that these double standards do in fact infect our lives on a daily basis.

The Middle Placeby Kelly Corrigan

From the book jacket -

For Kelly Corrigan, family is everything.  At thirty-six, she had a marriage that worked, a couple of funny, active kids, and a weekly newspaper column.  But even as a thriving adult, Kelly still saw herself as George Corrigan’s daughter.  A garrulous Irish-American charmer from Baltimore, George was the center of the ebullient, raucous Corrigan clan.  He greeted every day by opening his bedroom window and shouting, “Hello, world!”  It was a colorful childhood, just the sort a girl could get attached to.

Kelly lives deep within what she calls the Middle Place - “that sliver of time when parenthood and childhood overlap” - comfortably wedged between her adult duties and her parents’ care.  But she’s abruptly shoved into coming-of-age when she finds a lump in her breast - and gets the diagnosis no one wants to hear.  And so Kelly’s journey to full-blown adulthood begins.  When George, too, learns he has late-stage cancer, it is Kelly’s turn to take care of the man who had always taken care of her - and to show us a woman as she finally takes the leap and grows up.

My thoughts -

I picked this up on a whim at the library, I was browsing the “new books” section and it just stuck out to me as something that looked really interesting.  I also tremendously enjoy memoirs, so I thought what the heck.  I’m glad I grabbed it, because this book was pretty wonderful.  Even though I’m not a parent myself, I could really relate to a lot of Kelly’s feelings.  I, too, am a grown woman most days, handling my marriage, job, finances, and everything else just fine, but when something awful happens the first thing I do is call my mom, because I know she can make anything better.  I can’t help it, it’s just instinct, and I can only imagine that when children come into the picture, my urge to go to my mom with every problem will only intensify.  Besides that, I quickly fell into Corrigan’s comfortable, easy writing style.  I felt like I was having a conversation with a friend while reading her memoir.  The chapters alternate between present day (2005 is the time period the book is mostly about) and random points throughout her childhood.  This structure makes you really involved in the current situation, as well as really curious about her childhood and what made her family the way it is today.  Overall I’d highly recommend this memoir and I’m very happy I decided to read it.

8.5 stars.

The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan

From the inside cover -

First published in 1963, The Feminine  Mystiqueignited a revolution that  profoundly changed our culture, our consciousness, and our  lives. Today it newly penetrates to the heart of  issues determining our lives — and sounds a call to arms against the very real dangers of a new feminine mystique in the economic and political  turbulence of the 1990s.

Three decades later,  the underlying issues raised by Betty Friedan strike  at the core of the problems women still face at  home and in the marketplace. As women continue to  struggle for equality, to keep their hard-won gains,  to find fulfillment in their careers, marriage and  family, The Feminine Mystique  remains the seminal consciousness-raising work of  our times.

My thoughts -

This book is one of the most important feminist works of all time, if not THE most important feminist work.  It took me awhile to get through, because Friedan researched the heck out of this thing.  It’s full of statistics, citations from literary journals, interviews with real women, and quotes and stories from popular books and magazines.  I’m so glad I finally got to this book, though, because it is so incredibly important.  Reading Friedan’s book makes you wonder where in the world we’d be without it.  She has made such an important contribution to women’s lives today that there simply aren’t enough words to effectively describe how crucial this book was/is.

Having said that, it’s remarkably sad to me that many of the issues she was sure would be solved by the 80’s are still serious issues today.  She cites Roe v. Wadeas a monumental step for women’s rights, but that decision is now being questioned and attempts to revoke it have been made, and will continue to be made, by politicians and judges on both sides of the political spectrum.  Friedan talks about how gaining access to child care and financial resources for women to further their educations and professional training is one of the first step to women’s freedom, yet today we still struggle with both these obstacles.  Only the middle and upper classes can afford quality day care for their children, and most women cannot even dream of having the financial ability to go back to school after having children.  Sexual harassment in the workplace, the glass ceiling,  and the great pay divide still trap professional women to this day.  Even worse, the word “feminism” now has such a negative connotation associated with it that most women, professional and otherwise, are completely turned off from using it to describe their personal beliefs.  It’s hard that these are still such pressing problems, in 2008, but as long as there are still people working toward solving them, I have not given up hope.  Millions are women do continue to be inspired by people such as Friedan, and the modern feminist movement reflects that.

My favorite part of The Feminine Mystique is the epilogue, when Friedan explains how she started NOW (the National Organization for Women) and made it such an unbelievably powerful and successful organization from nothing.  This section is the most hopeful of the book, although one can see how many of the issues are still here today, it is also evident how much NOW has accomplished in its relatively short history, and what an amazing woman Friedan really is.

10 stars.

‘Tis by Frank McCourt

From the book jacket -

Frank lands in New York at age nineteen, in the company of a priest he meets on the boat.  He gets a job at the Biltmore Hotel, where he immediately encounters the vivid hierarchies of this “classless country” and then is drafted into the army and is sent to Germany to train dogs and type reports.  It is Frank’s incomparable voice - his uncanny humor and his astonishing ear for dialogue - that renders these experiences spellbinding.

When Frank returns to America in 1953, he works on the docks, always resisting what everyone tells him, that men and women who have dreamed and toiled for years to get to America should “stick to their own kind” once they arrive.  Somehow, Frank knows that he should be getting an education, and though he left school at fourteen, he talks his way into New York University.  There, he falls in love with the quintessential Yankee, long-legged and blond, and tries to live his dream.  But it is not until he starts to teach - and to write - that Frank finds his place in the world.  The same vulnerable but invincible spirit that captured the hearts of readers in Angela’s Ashes comes of age.

My thoughts -

As many of you probably know, ‘Tis is the sequel to Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt’s first memoir about growing up poor in Ireland.  While I liked this continuation of McCourt’s life, it didn’t come anywhere close to living up to his first memoir.  AA was just amazing, I fell completely in love with that book and reading about McCourt’s family and his life completely captivated me.  With ‘Tis… well not so much with the captivation this time.  I mean, I was definitely interested to find out what happened to him after he left Ireland, so it was especially enjoyable to read about all the good that happened in his life.  And McCourt definitely has a way of writing his life that makes it read like a novel; he can obviously understand and relate to all types of people, which is why he can write the characters in his own life so well.  So this is not a bad memoir, by any means, it’s just difficult to live up to something as magnificent as AA and do as great a job.  Just didn’t quite get there, in my opinion.

6.5 stars.

**To continue with Weekly Geeks, if anyone has read and reviewed this book (or any others that I’ve reviewed, including Speak!) please send me your links and I will post them on this page.**

Under The Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith  by Jon Krakauer

From the back cover -

Jon Krakauer’s literary reputation rests on insightful chronicles of lives conducted at the outer limits.  He now shifts his focus from extremes of physical adventure to extremes of religious belief within our own borders, taking readers inside isolated American communities where some 40,000 Mormon Fundamentalists still practice polygamy.  Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the renegade leaders of these Taliban-like theocracies are zealots who answer only to God.

At the core of Krakauer’s book are brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a commandment from God to kill a blameless woman and her baby girl.  Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this appalling double murder, Krakauer constructs a multilayered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, polygamy, savage violence, and unyielding faith.  Along the way he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America’s fastest growing religion, and raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief.

My thoughts -

I found this book to be fascinating.  I’ve done some research in the past about Mormon Fundamentalism, and it has always left me sad, scared, and mostly angry.  Pure and simply, it is a disgustingly patriarchal culture of chronic misogyny and horrific physical, sexual, and emotional abuse to women and children.  The God I subscribe to does not tolerate any of the above behaviors, and it makes me very sad to read about people who are raised their entire lives thinking that this is the way God thinks.  So because of that, this is a difficult book to read; there is a lot of information and anecdotes by practicing Mormons that made me sick to my stomach and VERY angry. 

Beyond that, the book is full of the history of Mormonism (the world’s fastest growing religion, and the only religion that was created and developed in the modern world) and the differences between the Fundamentalist group and the non-Fundamentalist group.  While that section of the book was interesting, truthfully I was bored in parts and I ended up skipping pages here and there.  It definitely added to the story, but I am just not a person that enjoys reading about wars and battles, and there were at least two chapters fully devoted to the battles that the earliest Mormons fought to keep their religious freedoms alive.  Some people may love those sections, while personally they were my least favorite parts.

And interspersed with all of this is the story of the Lafferty brothers’ brutal murder of one innocent woman and her even more innocent baby.  The parts devoted to this read very much like In Cold Blood  (which I read not too long ago, check out my review) - reading like a novel but a completely true story.  Krakauer even spent a good chunk of the book examining the killers’ mindsets and upbringings, very similar to what Capote did in his true murder account.  I was definitely kept interested in the Lafferty brothers’ story, but just like earlier in the book, I felt completely sad and disgusted by their lives and by their thought process. 

Under The Banner of Heaven  is a very good book, meticulously researched and very well thought out, but it is also very, very sad and may make you want to punch a hole in your wall.  So I’d recommend reading it, but I’d also recommend doing so with caution.

8 stars.

Full Frontal Feminism:  A Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters by Jessica Valenti

From the back cover -

Feminism isn’t dead. It just isn’t very cool anymore. Enter Full Frontal Feminism, a book that embodies the forward-looking messages that author Jessica Valenti propagates on her popular website, Feministing.com. Covering a range of topics, including pop culture, health, reproductive rights, violence, education, relationships, and more, Valenti provides young women a primer on why feminism matters. Valenti knows better than anyone that young women need a smart-ass book that deals with real-life issues in a style they can relate to. No rehashing the same old issues. No belaboring where today’s young women have gone wrong. Feminism should be something young women feel comfortable with, something they can own. Full Frontal Feminism is sending out the message to readers — yeah, you’re feminists, and that’s actually pretty frigging cool.

Question - I’m thinking about purchasing another copy and doing a giveaway, simply because I feel that this book is a really important one and I would love to share it with a budding feminist out there.  Please let me know if there would be any interest in this giveaway at all, because I’d be purchasing another copy (obviously, I want to keep mine) so I won’t do it unless people actually want to win it.  So let me know if you’d want to read this book!  Thanks