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Book report
Jul. 21st, 2012 05:46 amMy goodness – this was a fantastic group of books. What’s even more odd is that most of them are fiction, and I’ve always believed that I prefer non-fiction. Yet I loved every novel in this crop. I guess I need to read more fiction!
Dirty Secret: A Daughter Comes Clean About Her Mother’s Compulsive Hoarding by Jessie Sholl – I’ve found that memoirs can really vary in quality. I like reading about people whose lives are interesting, but just because there is something atypical about them doesn’t make for a great memoir. Recently I began reading but couldn’t finish (due to the books being BORING) a memoir by someone who had agoraphobia and another by someone who had face-blindness. So….I was ready for anything when I opened this memoir, by the daughter of a hoarder. I couldn’t put it down. The author describes her mother’s life and her interactions with her mother, she keeps the pace brisk, and she got me to care about her. Sholl shares her struggle with trying to help and “cure” her mother, realizing at some level that she can’t live someone else’s life but agonizing for the situation she is in. The subject of hoarding does interest me; I have a close friend who is a hoarder. Sholl provides illuminating tidbits of research on people who hoard and what is going on in their heads. (What I can’t figure out, though, is why my friend who hoards doesn’t display any of the other characteristics typical to hoarders. Sholl tells us that many hoarders also suffer from perfectionism, OCD, a lack of empathy, they tend to move/walk/drive slowly – slower reaction times overall, they may idealize and build up a person in their head only to tear them down later, attachment disorder, and more. But I don’t think there’s anything unusual about my friend other than her hoarding!). The book did contain one homophobic lapse by the author but putting that aside for now*, this was a fascinating read that I polished off in a day or two. Grade: B+
The Help by Kathryn Stockett – I wasn’t going to read this book. Like a lot of people, I was like, ‘Do we need another book where Black women the maids of white women….and to top it off, it’s written by a white woman!’ To make a comparison, one of my favorite books is Marion Zimmer Bradley’s “The Catch Trap”. But I do remember someone commenting that The Catch Trap is a book about gay men that is written by a straight person for straight people. Is “The Help” a book about Black people that is written by a white person for white people? That is a legitimate point and legitimate criticism, but risking derision, I am going to put that question aside and just admit that I read and liked the book. I decided to read it after my friend A said she happened to get into it at her parents’ house as she was doing her laundry. I am always in need of good audio books so that I have something to listen to in the car, and my library did have this one on CD, so I gave the audio version a go. The four voice actors (including one of whom who had stared in the movie) were phenomenal. And any time a novel has a strong plot and interesting characters, then I’m there – and the plot and characters here were stellar. Sure, there were a few problems (you have your textbook-evil Southern belle, you have a male character who goes from jerk to Prince Charming in ten seconds flat, and then back again to jerk), but I say this one deserved to be a best-seller. I was really hooked. Grade: A
More books, and of course more detail on the homophobic part in “Dirty Secret”, behind the cut.
( Read more... )
Dirty Secret: A Daughter Comes Clean About Her Mother’s Compulsive Hoarding by Jessie Sholl – I’ve found that memoirs can really vary in quality. I like reading about people whose lives are interesting, but just because there is something atypical about them doesn’t make for a great memoir. Recently I began reading but couldn’t finish (due to the books being BORING) a memoir by someone who had agoraphobia and another by someone who had face-blindness. So….I was ready for anything when I opened this memoir, by the daughter of a hoarder. I couldn’t put it down. The author describes her mother’s life and her interactions with her mother, she keeps the pace brisk, and she got me to care about her. Sholl shares her struggle with trying to help and “cure” her mother, realizing at some level that she can’t live someone else’s life but agonizing for the situation she is in. The subject of hoarding does interest me; I have a close friend who is a hoarder. Sholl provides illuminating tidbits of research on people who hoard and what is going on in their heads. (What I can’t figure out, though, is why my friend who hoards doesn’t display any of the other characteristics typical to hoarders. Sholl tells us that many hoarders also suffer from perfectionism, OCD, a lack of empathy, they tend to move/walk/drive slowly – slower reaction times overall, they may idealize and build up a person in their head only to tear them down later, attachment disorder, and more. But I don’t think there’s anything unusual about my friend other than her hoarding!). The book did contain one homophobic lapse by the author but putting that aside for now*, this was a fascinating read that I polished off in a day or two. Grade: B+
The Help by Kathryn Stockett – I wasn’t going to read this book. Like a lot of people, I was like, ‘Do we need another book where Black women the maids of white women….and to top it off, it’s written by a white woman!’ To make a comparison, one of my favorite books is Marion Zimmer Bradley’s “The Catch Trap”. But I do remember someone commenting that The Catch Trap is a book about gay men that is written by a straight person for straight people. Is “The Help” a book about Black people that is written by a white person for white people? That is a legitimate point and legitimate criticism, but risking derision, I am going to put that question aside and just admit that I read and liked the book. I decided to read it after my friend A said she happened to get into it at her parents’ house as she was doing her laundry. I am always in need of good audio books so that I have something to listen to in the car, and my library did have this one on CD, so I gave the audio version a go. The four voice actors (including one of whom who had stared in the movie) were phenomenal. And any time a novel has a strong plot and interesting characters, then I’m there – and the plot and characters here were stellar. Sure, there were a few problems (you have your textbook-evil Southern belle, you have a male character who goes from jerk to Prince Charming in ten seconds flat, and then back again to jerk), but I say this one deserved to be a best-seller. I was really hooked. Grade: A
More books, and of course more detail on the homophobic part in “Dirty Secret”, behind the cut.
( Read more... )
