This "book" was weird, but thanks for all of the fun Blogging for Books!

If you aren't aware, there is a website called "Blogging for Books" which book bloggers could sign up and get a free book, that they would then review on their website and put the review on the BfB site and then they would get a new one. I used it a lot, and found some really interesting books there. Sadly, they are closing, and even more sadly the last book I had to review from them was a total dud. 

(It was probably partially my fault because I was trying to get out of the box a little and it ended up being a step too far).

The book was : "Fliers: 20 Small Posters with Big Thoughts". The big thoughts were more like things that your friends who are inebriated say when they are trying to sound philosophical.

Like there is one, and the picture is a bonfire and the words say: "Burn your house down. Start over tomorrow while there's still time. This is what I'm talking about". Um. Ok.

Maybe I'm just too old are not funny but I flipped through this book, set it down went "well that was dumb" and didn't give it another thought until I finally sat down to write this review literally months later.

So, a less than ideal end to a fun partnership with Blogging for Books, but it was the outlier more than the norm!

Book review: "The Roanoke Girls" by Amy Engel

I picked this book because of the intrigue from the descriptions talking about dark family secrets. I thought, yaaaah there's going to be some kid in the secret room with a hunchback or the person you think is your sister is actually your mom or your dad who you thought was dead is actually alive or something like that. The secret in this book is far ickier than that.

This is a half formed, ending easily guessed "whodunnit", punctuated with a sex scene every 3 pages, and a manic pixie girl for a co-lead. I am not against sex in books, especially when suspected or unexpected pregnancy is a main thread that runs through the books but the three things the characters in the book are concerned with are: sex, food and the flimsy whodunnit plot. Everyone just felt very 1 dimensional.


And I feel bad for saying this because the author seems very nice on twitter. And the cover isn't bad. And that is really all I have positive to say about that.

Of course, and with all of my reviews, if maybe this book sounds intriguing don't let the fact that I didn't like it stop you from picking it up! You do you!

I recieved this book for free in exchange for an honest review from Blogging for Books

Book Review: "Approval Junkie: Adventures in Caring Too Much" by Faith Salie

I need to stop reading biographies of people who I don't know who they are. It has literally, never turned out well. But nothing else really was appealing to me at Blogging for Books so here we are.


Honestly, this book made me sad for Faith.


I'm obviously not a mental health professional, that is my disclaimer. But she makes a lot of comments about how she barely ate a lot of the time, and comments about how skinny she was and how super conscious she was of what she ate and how it was kind of an obsession. And then she says something like she was almost anorexic. If you're that obsessed with your weight and think about food as much as she did than you have some kind of mental disorder.


Some of the stuff that she did perplexed me. Like for days she agonized over what to wear to her divorce from her terrible first husband. Something that said professional adult but also with some sex appeal. I thought "wow, I think I'd be so happy to get myself unhitched from this jerk that I'd show up in my jammiies because I'd be so excited that I couldn't sleep!" But then the more I thought about it I got it.Things in your life aren't going as planned and you probably feel a real sense of lose of control, but you can certainly control what you wear so you throw yourself headlong into it.

I think the best thing about this book is the story of the author's mother. She sounds like a hilarious, but still serious lady who was a big influence on Faith (she did sit ups while doing her rosary, so maybe the obsession with fitness and weight came from there). And the cover is fun. But still, with maybe a slight personal bias I'm going to say  2 stars.

This book was provided by Blogging for Books in exchange for a fair and honest review

Book Review: "Liar" by Rob Roberge

When I read the little summary for this book I was intrigued: man who finds out that he will probably be losing all of his memories due to dementia sets out to put them all down. Great, interesting, fine. And it's kind of like that. It's more of a really choppy, but not quite stream of consciousness/fever dream, jump around time line about his life and his excessive use of drugs and alcohol over the years. Also worth nothing, I didn't know who this person was, but they are apparently a novelist who has put out some successful books.

 He is told that he is at a higher than likely risk for diseases like Parkinson's and dementia, due to some concussions that he got through his life (including one he got in a car accident that was so bad that he almost was paralyzed). Though I feel like he never points out that his brain also could be damaged by the EXCESSIVE drug and alcohol abuse. Honestly, the fact that he lived past 30 seems to be a surprise to him (and to me if I'm honest). He also was diagnosed with bipolar disorder which, he says, lead to some of the drugs and drinking.

This is not an uplifting "man started doing drugs and drinking when he was 15 and eventually turns his life around" story. Though that is kind of the story. Rob is a serious alcoholic and drug user for a long portion of his life, and then gets clean for 20 years, and then falls back into his old habits.

It's probably my fault for not liking this book very much. If I had read a couple more reviews I would have probably seen that this was not a book for me. it was too nonlinear and didn't really seem to say anything. I never felt like he was bragging about his exploits. Maybe it is best read if you are a fan of his work already, then it might provide you some perspective about his writing?

I received this book in exchange for an honest review from Blogging for Books

Book Review: "I'm So Happy For You (Sort of Not Really) : Finding Contentment in the Culture of Comparison" by Kay Wills Wyma

1 sentence review: This book isn't really hoeing any new territory,  but it's all good reminders.

The best thing that this book did was be the impetus for an interesting conversation between myself and some friends about why people put what things up on the internet. We decided that while, of course, there are going to be people putting up pictures just because they are braggy mcbraggerpantses and want compliments, that isn't going to be the majority. We put up pictures of the exciting exotic things that happen in our lives because those (probably rare) moments have helped us escape our doldrums, and maybe it will help other people escape it too.

So I just got back from Mexico. I didn't put up too many pictures because I didn't want to be the braggy looking a-hole. But you would have rather have seen pictures of waving palm trees and huge waves then pictures of me hauling my behind out of bed to go into work early and then staying late every day for nearly two weeks because of my no vacation time yet, right (#newjobproblems, #firstworldproblems). We put up the pictures of the Christmas cookies that turned out perfectly because everyone has experienced the "burned to a crisp, these don't remotely look edible" cookies that are also currently in the kitchen (but in the trash).

In short, we put up the rare exciting things because everyone has the crappy boring things.

Though if I write this post on a day where I'm in a slightly less optimistic mood this post could easily turn into something less forgiving haha.


Anyway, this book.


It obviously doesn't have any magical answers to problems about being discontent. But it is heartening to know that this is a common struggle for many people.

Kay suggests trying to be genuinely happy for the person who can't stop talking about how gifted their kid is, or how nice their new car is. I think that that is a thing that will take an extreme amount of practice, but it seems worth trying, yes? (Or you can do what I do when Im super cranky about people having nicer things then me, comfort myself by thinking they're probably up to their ears in credit card debt. That's super nice of me, huh?)

She also talks about how when we compare, it sucks a little joy out of ourselves. So let's say I enjoy playing volleyball, I'm not the best at it but  I have fun doing it and it brings me joy. But then I see someone else, and they, like played volleyball in college and they look good in the short shorts and so on and so on. Suddenly I'm super conscious that I'm not as good as that other person and that takes some of my enjoyment out of volleyball. Comparison is the thief of joy.

This book really is summed up by every one of those little cliche phrases. They might be cliche but they are true.

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review

Book Review: "The Gap of Time" by Jeanette Winterson

I was kind of ready to not like this book. Some people who had reviewed it said that it was complex and it is based on one of Shakespeare's less famous or performed plays. But I gave it a shot. I had a lot of feelings about it, but none of them were all bad. And if you're not a Shakespeare fan, don't worry you can still read this book. The names are weird and based on Shakespeare, but I know you can handle that, right? I am a Shakespeare fan, but I have to admit that this isn't one I was familiar with.

The plot has a lot of twists and turns and a lot of the same themes that Shakespeare uses in a lot of his plays. Here's a taste of what you're in for:

-INSANELY jealous men who are craptastic to the women in their lives
-sweet, young love
-a kind of shifty but loveable scamp of a jester/kind of bad guy
- mistaken identity

Surprisingly no cross dressing in this one. That's another Shakespeare theme he uses a looooot.

Here were two quotes that I liked:

(upon the birth of a baby) "With no skills and no training, no college diploma or science dollars, we had made a human being. What is this crazy reckless world where we can make human beings?"

"What is memory but a rope slung across time?" (I can totally see that one being a tattoo)

This book was better than I was expecting, and I will be looking into other books that this author has written. However I don't think I will race them to the very top of my TBR. I give this book a 3.5 stars.

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review by Blogging for Books

Book review: "Black Earth" by Tim Snyder

I've never struggled so much to write a book review about a book that was so incredibly worth while and informative to read.

Tim Snyder's "Black Earth" is a slow read because there are so many things to take in. I feel like I read a higher than average amount of WWII nonfiction books and every chapter presented me with something I had never heard before, or situations that I had never thought about. I highlighted so much in my Kindle that this is going to be a weird, disjointed review as I try to share all the facts with you. Also, word of advice, if you can read this in book form. ESPECIALLY if you're of the note taking variety. I would have gotten out a highlighter for this book which is a real rarity for me.

I learned an incredible amount of Poland, which makes me want to go there even more than I already did before. (Facts: there were ten times as many Jews in Poland as there were in Germany at the start of WWII."Jews paid more than a third of the taxes in Poland, and firms owned by Jews were responsible for about half of the foreign trade".)

There was this insane plan about rounding up all of the Jews in Europe and settling them all in Madagascar. And then Hitler just decided to kill everyone instead. But it became this like, inside joke/euphemism to the higher ups about sending people to concentration camps as "sending them to Madagascar". Hitler never let logistics or feasability get in the way of his insane plans and this one was no different.

I also thought this insight was incredibly interesting, nothing went quite as the Nazi's planned: "The western allies were supposed to defend Czechoslovakia but did not; Poland was not supposed to fight but it did; France was supposed to fight longer than it did; Britain was supposed to see the logic of peace if France fell but did not".

Find out what country switched sides towards the end of the war, what army Hitler tried to get on his side, and which country lost the most Jews (even though the Jewish population was very low to being with) and more in this insightful book.

It is a long read, I'm not going to lie to you. It's not something you'll pick up and read in two days (unless you are like, the Superman of reading.) It took me and at least a few others I know, maybe 2 months to get through the whole thing. It's an investment, but one I really recommend you make. 4 stars out of 5!

I got this book in exchange for an honest review from Blogging for Books

Book Review: "A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayl" by Ben Macintyre

I've never been able to get into fictional spy books. But here I sit, all ready to tell you about this crazy TRUE story that sounds like something the best spy writer dreamed up. Of course, if it was up to me it would end just a little bit differently...

There is quite the cast of characters in this book, and the fact that they are real makes it even better. It's also a time period full of intrigue, from the beginning of World War II, through the Cold War. The two people who the book really centers around is Kim Phillby and  Nicholas Elliott. If you couldn't tell from the title, Kim will be wearing the black hat, and Elliott is wearing the white hat. (I'm going to do my best to not give too much away, because the intrigue unraveling is the best part).

Kim's home life was rich in moolah and ridiculousness. His dad was a really well-respected expert on the Middle East, he even was a convert to Islam. However, he also brawled, drank and whored himself into oblivion so maybe not an upstanding example of, well, anything.(Another theme in this book is men who never got approval from their fathers and how it shaped them. This is a book with some daddy issues.) Kim's name isn't actual Kim, his dad nicknamed him that after the Kipling work. Kim went to all of the best schools and had the best of opportunities but always did the bare minimum to get by. After a "C's get degrees!" college education he drifted a little, until he dropped a hint that he thought it might be cool to be a spy (it didn't stop him that he had none of the skills that were required) and it happened. His true talents lay in his personality, he captivated people. He was charming and people were drawn to him instantly. When you were talking to him it was like you were the only person in the room.

Elliott also came from daddy issues and a lot of money. However, he worked hard and was dedicated to his work. He wasn't handsome, and he didn't quite have the charm that Kim had, but he made up for it by actually being good at his job. He was well liked and respected, incredibly loyal to his friends including Kim.

These 2 are fast friends as they work their way up through the ranks at MI6. While Elliott must have thought things like "Well, I have this awesome and glamorous job and I get to work with one of my best friends. How great is my life?" Kim's thoughts were more like "Well, I had dinner with Elliott and got all kinds of spy gossip. Got to make sure this get's passed on to my Soviet handlers ASAP!".

What follows is a book about terrible betrayal, near misses, paranoid dictators, weird code names and the basic crippling of spy agencies on multiple continents. And a few disastrous cocktail parties.



I loved this book. When I wasn't reading this book I wished I was. There are a lot of people mentioned in this book, but it wasn't hard to keep everyone straight. Luckily no one gets new code names often. The ending (which obviously was true and what actually happened) made me angry. It wasn't the type of justice that I would have liked to see handed out, but maybe I'm just a little bit vindictive!) 4 out of 5 stars!

*I received this book for free in exchange for a fair review from Blogging for Books*

Book Review: "Our Man in Charleston: Britain's Secret Agent in the Civil War South" by Christopher Dickey

This is going to be a short-ish review, because I don’t really know what to say about it.

Right before and during the civil war a man named Robert Bunch was a British man who was serving the British government as a consul in Charleston, South Carolina. Charleston kind of boggles his mind. He has to schmooze with the “upper crust” people of Charleston but he soon gets really irritated by all of their hypocrisies. What drives him really crazy is that so many of them are slave owners and think that they are doing the slaves a favor. Their reasoning is all kinds of insane. Like “hey, without us they wouldn’t even know how to (insert whatever thing they are enslaved to do). We’re teaching them something!” Like I said, madness.

Anyway, so Bunch kept writing letters to his people in England and be like “we need to keep an eye on these Southern people. They’re totally going to start sneaking slaves into this country again.” Apparently there was a time that slavery was allowed in the states, but you weren’t allowed to bring any more Africans into the country. You could already own the people already over here, and their children. (That’s an unsettling sentence to write.) But the reproduction rates of slaves were not keeping up with the demand for more workers in the south and so skeevy types were trying to think of ways and places to sneak boat loads of people into the country.

So eventually this does start happening, though not many boats get from Africa to America and offload their human cargo successfully. One of the most horribly shocking things that I read in this book was the fact that one boat had a 75% fatality rate.

Sometimes Bunch’s people listen to him, sometimes they don’t.

It was too long at 400 pages. It was interesting in parts, but I had a hard time keeping myself interested in the book. I think the epilogue might have been the most interesting part. (There was a guy who had always been really mean to Bunch and he ended up having a cancerous tumor on his face. In the 1800’s you don’t want any kind of cancer, let alone face cancer). I gave the book 2 stars. Meh.

I recieved this book in exchange for an honest review from blogging for books

Book Review: "A Letter to My Mom" Created by Lisa Erspamer

It was not by accident that this book about moms is up on the blog a few days before Mother's Day. (It's the 10th. Just in case you'd forgot. Or were confused because stores started advertising for it in early April and it through your sense of time off.)

This isn't going to be a super positive way to start out a book review but whatever I'm going to do it anyway. Sot his book is apart of a kind of series ("A Letter to My..."). This is the third book in the series. Anyone want to guess what the first two are? Maybe "A Letter to My Spouse?", "A Letter to My Children?" Those would be good guesses. But no, the first two are "A Letter to My Dog" and "A Letter to My Cat".

When I read that my response was "Um...what? Are we ranking cats and dogs above parents? Were the publishing companies more eager to publish letters written to cats and dogs than someone's Mom? Does that order seem weird to anyone else?" So I thought that was strange. I don't know if anyone else would care.

Anyway, now that I've ragged on what I'm sure are perfectly lovely books, let's get to the book at hand.

There isn't much explaining to be done: the whole book is made up of letters from children to their moms. A few sons but mostly daughters. Some people are famous (Suze Orman, Kristin Chenworth, Josh Groban) but others are just everyday people. Everyone wants to say thank you. But for a lot of different reasons. The author's letter talks about how her mom woke her up every morning "with a silly song and a spray bottle of water". And all I could think about how irritated I was when my mom would flip my light on in the morning to wake me up when I was in grade school. If she came in bearing a spray bottle we would have brawled :)

I'm not going to rate this book because that seems weird ("I don't know if I was convinced just how much this person loved their mom..."). But I will say if you're looking for a sweet short book to gift to a mom (or mom figure) this would be a pretty safe bet.

Want to win this book? Pop over here  to enter a giveaway!

I received this book in exchange for a fair review from Blogging for Books

"The Porcelain Thief: Searching the Middle Kingdom for Hidden China" by Huan Hsu

Huan Hsu is an ABC (an American born Chinese) in Salt Lake City. He implies that being an ABC, not Mormon in "lily white" SLC made him feel like quite the outsider.  He had (and still has) family in China but never felt the need to go and get in touch with his roots or anything like that. He knew some Chinese from  his parents when he was a child but it fell almost completely from his mind as he aged.

Then he hears a story, about his great-great grandfather that changes that. His ancestor lived in Xingang, a town on the Yangtze river that was invaded by the Japanese in 1938. When he knew the Japanese were coming, this man buried the collection of porcelain and money under their house. There was never the opportunity to come back to retrieve it. Huan begins to wonder what happened to the valuables, and being a journalist, decides that this is something he needs to investigate. Luckily, his uncle owns an incredibly successful business and gets him a job at his company, which is how he gets the visa to stay in country. Huan doesn't actually spend much time working, because he doesn't really know what is job is...which is a problem. He spends his time trying to improve his Chinese and figure out how he will execute his plan of finding this porcelain, and contacting distant relatives who might be able to help him find the land that he needs to dig on.

What I like about this book is that Huan doesn't romanticize his time in China.(Which is not to say that he doesn't really like parts of his experience, because I think he does). He gets pissed about things. Like kids popping in the street, or the little girl peeing in his apartment hallway right by his door. Or the pollution. Or the fact that it seems like all traffic laws are optional. Or the bureaucracy. Or the cultural peculiarities: like if you give a man a green hat it means he's a cuckold.You don't ever gift anyone a pair of shoes.Or you don't wear white or black to a wedding.

Also, the Chinese language is a beast to learn, and Huan even had some background.He talks about homonyms a lot (which I had to look up because I couldn't remember what a homonym was. Wikipedia says its  one of a group of words that share the same spelling and pronunciation but have different meanings). Like, the Chinese word for cockroach is a homonym for "filth wolf". Eek.

One of my favorite parts of the book was hearing the English names that the Chinese workers had picked for themselves. A man in the legal department is named "Superiority" (as someone who works in the legal field I'm just going to let that joke make itself.) There's also people named: Hebrew, Leafy, Vanilla, Quake, Cream, Bison, Ares, Feeling , Bear, Ivy, Kobe, Charming and Hyper. There's so many more. All of them equally great.

You also learn a lot about porcelain. I thought the porcelain hunting part was one of the less interesting parts of the book, even though it was the impetus for the whole thing.

This book also made me realize that I should read a couple books about the Cultural Revolution, Mao, and the Red Guard. I seem to be pretty deficient in knowledge in that area. And what's a couple more books on an endless "to-be-read" list? (Shrugs shoulders.)

I liked this book. I thought that the parts on general Chinese history, and the day to day living in modern China were the most interesting. I give it a high 3 out of 5 stars.

I received this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review

Book Review: "Near Enemy" by Adam Sternbergh

I don't know if any of you read it but a great book came out last year called "Shovel Ready". The cover was drool worthy and I loved the story. Here's the goodreads summary:

Spademan used to be a garbage man. That was before the dirty bomb hit Times Square, before his wife was killed, and before the city became a bombed-out shell of its former self. Now he's a hitman.

In a New York City split between those who are wealthy enough to "tap into" a sophisticated virtual reality for months at a time and those left to fend for themselves in the ravaged streets, Spademan chose the streets. His clients like that he doesn't ask questions, that he works quickly, and that he's handy with a box cutter. He finds that killing people for money is not that different from collecting trash, and the pay is better. His latest client hires him to kill the daughter of a powerful evangelist. Finding her is easy, but the job quickly gets complicated: his mark has a shocking secret and his client has an agenda far beyond a simple kill. Now Spademan must navigate the dual levels of his world-the gritty reality and the slick fantasy-to finish the job, to keep his conscience clean, and to stay alive.

Love this cover!

So, spoilery, obviously Spademan survived the first book because the second book is here and stars him! (If you think that the first book sounds intriguing, I'd encourage you to stop reading this review and go pick it up. Don't want to spoil it for anyone! Ugh, now I remember why I don't review sequels that often, but I love this series and wanted to share!) :)

So Spademan is still alive, and after narrowly escaping with his life the first time, is back to his normal job. Killing people with a box cutter for money. The change this time around is that he's a family man. Persephone (a name I love, that would probably never actually give to anybody) and her baby are stowed safely out of reach from the fanatics who have anger from the breakdown of her dad's megachurch. Spademan is out on a "job" when his intended target tells him something very disturbing. It was always the assumption that when you were "plugged in" to thecomforting virtual reality that was created, you were safe. You could be killed in this alternative world, but all it would do was force you to wake up in the real world. Lesser, Spademan's target and someone who becomes an important part of the book, says that he saw someone die in the "limn". And it was permanent.

This lures Spademan into a world of cops (some dirty, some good), a shadowy "off the books" political figure, an alluring nurse, and a host of other characters, some from the first book. Everything isn't as it seems and Spademan knows that it's not in his best interest to trust anyone. But he can't do it all himself. What will that cost him?

Also there's a character that lives in the Cloisters of New York City. Apparently it's still beautiful and impressive even without the art in it. #NewYorkCityBucketlist. Anyone been and want to tell me about it and make me jealous?

Favorite sentence in the book:"Power is often built on the back of ruin". (True that)

What I like about this book: I love the writing. The sentences are crafted like you're reading them in Spademan's head. It's like stream of consciousness except it makes sense and doesn't drive you crazy. Our man is "just" a garbage man, but he's smart and clever and surprisingly kind for a professional killer. It's not that long, about 300 pages, and it moves fast! You regret there isn't more (well until the next book, right Adam Sternbergh, RIGHT?) It bums me out that it kind of ends on a cliffhanger, but what are you gonna do, authors gotta eat :) A 3.5 out of 5 stars from this girl!

Book was provided for free in exchange for an honest review from Blogging for Books

Book Review: "The Invisible Front" by Yochi Dreazen

Mark and Carol Graham were kind of your normal military family. She followed him around the world with each new assignment, from Germany to Korea and all around the United States. They had 3 kids, Kevin, Jeff and Melanie. All of the kids were close, probably due to the fact they constantly had to change schools and often only knew each other. This was a family where military service was seen as one of the highest callings you could have.

Jeff always knew he wanted to be in the military. He was friendly and gregarious, but also an incredibly hard worker and very smart.

Kevin was also very smart, but was more reserved and introspective. He didn't know if the military life was the one for him, but some pressure from his family and the fact that the ROTC would cover his schooling in exchange for some military service made him go that path. Kevin suffered from depression and mood swings. Mental illness ran in both Mark and Carol's families, but it was never really talked about.

Kevin hangs himself just as military career is about to start. Jeff dies in Iraq about a year later.

This is obviously emotionally devastating for the remainder of the family. What makes an already terrible situation worse is the different way that the family is treated after each of the boys deaths. Jeff's funeral is attended by hundreds of people, he's called a hero, people say the Graham's should be proud. When Kevin died people were less supportive, especially a few of his ROTC instructors who told his parents that Kevin was a coward and was probably in hell. (Yeah, said that to his parent's faces.)

Mark and Carol's eyes are opened to the problem that the military has with dealing with mental illness and it's treatments. If your superior officers find out that you go to therapy it could negatively affect your career. If your peers find out you could be ostracized and even harmed. Military suicide is not a small problem. In 2004, 67 soldiers committed suicide; in 2005, 87. And that doesn't even take into account when a soldier harms others (I think everyone can remember at least one incident of hearing a soldier that shot their spouse, maybe others and then themselves.) Mark and Carol begin several different initiatives to help soldiers get the help that they need, even though Mark knows that he will ruffle many feathers and that it could negatively affect his career (he does and it does).

One thing that the author only talks about in the epilogue is the link between military sexual assault and military suicide. We will probably never have accurate numbers about these incidents because so many sexual assaults go unreported for fear of reprisals. I'd be interested (and probably really saddened and disheartened) to know more about this.

 (On a side note, women who serve in the military are , I don't even know. They need all of our respect and help when and if they need it. I could never be in the military so the women who are brave enough to face the dangers they do will always have my humble thanks and utmost gratitude. Rock stars.)

Basically here's what it boils down to:

- The stigma against mental illness needs to stop. It prevents people from getting the support and the help that they need in many cases. This doesn't just include the people who are sick but their family and friends as well.
- Human beings need to be decent to each other, it's really not our strong point but we need to try harder.
- The attitude in our armed forces needs to change. If you have PTSD you're not a "coward" or a "pussy". You're someone who has been traumatized and needs help. The Graham family is working so hard to make this a reality.


You know how sometimes you read a book and the subject matter is hard and frustrating but the book is well written and you learn so much that you're so glad you read it? This is one of those books. 4 out of 5 stars.

* I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review from Blogging for Books*

Book Review: "Brave Genius: A Scientist, A Philosopher, and Their Daring Adventures from the French Resistance to the Nobel Prize" by Sean B Carroll

Albert Camus and Jacques Monod were probably not two people who you would have randomly thrown together to be bestest of friends and yet these two men were bonded for life by extraordinary, sometimes terrible, events. The fact that they each lived through WWII to be friends beyond those dark days was an achievement on it's own! I'm going to break each of the men down separately and then we will get them together.

Albert Camus was born in (French) Algeria in 1913. He grew up incredibly poor. When he was younger he was an ardent Communist (this would change). He was married twice, and fathered twins with his second wife, but he juggled so many lovers and mistresses that I don't know how he kept them all straight.

Jacques Monod was born in Paris to a French father and an American mother (from Milwaukee, no less!). Incredibly bright from a young age he studied biology at Sorbonne before the war. He was married and had children. I'm not going to pretend to really comprehend what he studied but it was genetics and DNA related.

But that's almost all in the future. Our story begins as the Nazis stomp their way into France. Both men are in Paris, and witness the occupation. Both men want into the Resistance. They worked for underground newspapers, they helped coordinate parachute drops, they passed along information in many ways. They risked their lives everyday. They grew close and even after the war ended were like brothers. They once went out to dinner with 2 other men to discuss something, and the 2 other men both commented on the men's connection. That they could finish each other's sentences, and seemed to guess what the other one was thinking. 

Both men would win a Nobel Prize; Albert in 1957 and Jacques in 1965.

I wanted to adore this book but it didn't quite happen. There were things that I really liked about this book. There were little tidbits of great World War II information spread through the first part of the book. There's talk about all kinds of naval skirmishes and attacks up in the scandinavian country area that I had never heard about, for example. Or Monod's risking almost everything to help a scientist get out of occupied Hungary after the war ended. When it kind of lost me was when it would get really heavy into the science, especially when the book just focused on Monod a little later in life. It was a little much for this science illiterate. I give it a high 2 or low 3 stars? It should probably be higher but it was really just dragging for me by the end. If you'd ask me to rate it it in the middle I'd probably give it a 3!

Also, doesn't Camus kind of look like Topher Grace in this picture?

I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for a fair and honest review from Blogging for Books

Book Review: "Empire of Sin: A Story of Sex, Jazz, Murder and the Battle for Modern New Orleans" by Gary Krist

"I doubt if there is a city in the world where the resident population has been so divided in its origin, where this is such a variety in the tastes, habits, manners and moral codes of it's citizens" -Fredrick Law Oldmsted.

(He has nothing to do with the book but I love Fredrick Law Olmsted. That is one interesting life! Here's the wiki page for him in case you have the curious!)

I love history and architecture, but New Orleans never has appealed to me. Which is weird, because history and architecture and cemeteries are all things I love. Maybe I will come around to it, but I feel like I already know so much about the city from this super interesting book!

The book focuses on New Orleans between the years of 1890-1920, especially in the areas that the title has already told you: sex, jazz, murder, and really control of the city. (Though to be fair the sex part of the title could have probably been "vice". Even though there's a lot of talk about brothels there's also talk about booze and gambling. Though they mostly happened in the brothels, so touche.)

Sex (and/or vice) were a big part of the scene in the Storyville section of New Orleans, where all the fun/seedy stuff went on. There were brothels that catered to all tastes and desires and to all different types of people ("black, white, jew, interracial"). There was of course people (like Carrie Nation) who wanted to reform New Orleans and make it a respectable place. There were mixed results (there's the "battle for modern New Orleans.)

This book taught me more about jazz than I ever knew before, I feel like a regular Lisa Simpson! It highlights many famous jazz musicians, including Louis Armstrong. He was the first/most famous musician who brought jazz into mainstream America. Whenever I was reading a section about him I kept singing his part of "Hello Dolly" in my head. ("Hello, Dolly...this is Louis....Dolly, it's so nice to have you back where you...beloooooong". Haha!) They also talk about "Jelly Roll" Morton who got so rich playing jazz that he had a diamond implanted on his front tooth. In the early 1900s. Newsflash to modern rappers: swag and grills were not your idea.

They talked about some super gruesome murders in this book. I will give you a math equation to show you: Sleeping victims + several axe chops to the face  = gruesome murders with lots of blood on the ceilings.  I remember seeing something about this on some show about hauntings on the history channel. Here's some more information about it. Also most of these (multiple) murders go unsolved. Sleep tight lovelies! 

Random/favorite observances:

- "New Orleans was the first American Metropolis to build an opera house, but the last to build a sewerage system". Priorities fail. I mean I'm all about the fine arts but I'm way more about flushing toilets and not having cholera.

- The Italians were really really not popular with a lot of people in the city. Learned lots of ethnic Italian slurs from some of the quotes! Eek!

-New Orleans seemed to be doing okay as a pretty integrated city but then there were a lot of Jim Crow laws enacted that really set the city back from where it had been.

This book was great! I try not to compare every really interesting book to an Erik Larson (it's a compliment those books are great) but they are similar! Highly recommended if you love: jazz, history, true crime, mob stories and so much more! I give it 4 out of 5 stars!

I recieved this book for free in exchange for an honest review from Blogging for Books

Review: "Trapped Under the Sea: One Engineering Marvel, 5 Men, and a Disaster Ten Miles into the Darkness" by Neil Swidey

Do NOT read this book if you are claustrophobic, don't like being damp, being underwater, or anything like that. This book will probably make you very anxious! It made me kind of anxious and I'm not any of those things.

Boston's harbor was disgusting, dirty and stomach churning just to look at. The city government decided that this had to change. They designed a tunnel, miles underground and incredibly long to funnel all of the grossness out of the harbor and farther out into the ocean.(Not better for anything involved, but less visually disgusting for the fine people of Boston).

This project is unlike anything else ever attempted. And the commercial welders who work on the project now that there are some risks involved because so much of the technology is new and untested. (They were joking that they could be on the Discovery Channel because of all of the new things happening). Things go well for awhile, but then there is a horrifying accident leaving some divers dead, some traumatized and fingers pointing at who exactly is to blame.

Also commercial diving is super scary and I don't know how any of these wives/girlfriends/parents/kids could function knowing how much danger they could be in at any random job.

I  found the book incredibly technical, which I understand why that is. I however, was more interested in the relationship between the men, the accident and the aftermath.It's also a lot of names to keep straight I'd have to re-read a lot to make sure that I was thinking of the right person.

I recieved this book for free in exchange for an honest review from Blogging for Books

Book Review: "A Curious Man: the Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert "Believe it or Not" Ripley

Leroy Ripley (he later went by his middle name, Robert, and used Leroy for his middle name) grew up in Santa Rosa California. Gangly, awkward, shy among girls, desperately poor and almost comically bucktoothed, his childhood was not easy.One of the few things that staved of the taunts of his peers was his cartoons, mostly caricatures of mutually disliked teachers! Through hard work, dedication and some chance he got one of his cartoons published in a SF newspaper. But he knew if he wanted real success (like that of popular cartoonist at the time Rube Goldberg-you know the weird machine guy) he would have to go to New York City, which he did.
(Ripley also survived the great San Francisco earthquake.Even though SF is the focus of that terrible event, Santa Rosa actually sustained more damage (proportionally) then any other city, and a higher per capita death toll. This kind of scarred him and he would not talk about these events to very men people for the rest of his life).

It was a slow slow start but Ripley began to gain notoriety, especially for his sports cartoons. Eventually his newspaper sent him on a trip to Europe and Africa where he drew thousands of cartoons illustrating his travels and the strange things he saw there......There is a lot more to the story but that is our heroes beginnings!

(Ripley's first book came out in January of 1929. It was 188 pages and sold for $2.50. It was a bang up success. Many people tried to duplicate it's success but none came close.)

He continued to travel all around the world. He loved China, was horrified by a lot of the things that he saw in India, and thought that the people of Hawaii were about the darn nicest he'd ever met. He kept himself out of both world wars, but he always did work for veterans. He hated Hitler, but he hated what the Communists were doing to his beloved China even more. Spoilery- people even think that the fallof China to Communism was one of the reasons for Ripley's relatively young death of a heart attack at 59.)

Here's a quote that I think basically sums up the whole book: "The shy awkward misfit loner had become the champion of the freakishness of others. By celebrating the weirdness he made it mainstream, becoming one of the most widely read and influential syndicated cartoonists of his day-and among the best traveled men in history". All it takes is a few good turns of fate, hard work and a little bit of talent and you can move mountains, no matter where you started!

I would have never ever guessed that the Ripley's Believe it or Not that we know today started out as newspaper cartoons. If I had to have hazarded a guess, I would have said that maybe it was a radio program, you know when someone talks in that old timey voice about you know, a man who hopped on one foot for 15 miles or something.

My only qualm was that the book was pretty long and fairly stuffed with details.Neither of these things are bad per se, but I felt the book went on for longer than it should have because of all the details that they tried to shoehorn in.

I really wonder what he would of thought of his empire today. Would he have been pleased that it was still around? Would he have worried that some people think it's just a little cheesy? Would the internet worried him because so many oddities are just at fingertips 24/7? Deep thoughts! :) I give it 3 out of 5 stars, good content but maybe a little too much of it!

I recieved this book for free in exchange for an honest review from Blogging for Books