Book Report

[stormkeeper_lovedoris]

 
No fiction this time. I started one but it was too boring to finish, so it's not on here. 

Youth to Power by Jamie Margolin – I love a good how-to book, and I love a book that gives practical advice on the age-old question of how to be an activist. So this book knocks it out of the park. Written by a young woman, the book explains how you (especially teenagers) can get involved and make a difference in the world. Grade: 8

 

Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness by Kristen Radtke – This is a graphic reflection and study on the topic of loneliness. Some of the author’s images and sections are heartbreaking, such as the part illustrating the studies done to primates in the name of researching human social needs. I liked the book best when the author shared snippets of other people’s stories, each one telling of a time they felt most lonely. The book is the kind that gives lots of ‘food for thought’ though there aren’t any neatly-wrapped conclusions here. Grade: 6

 

Project Girl by Janet McDonald – In this memoir, the author shares her life story. She has found herself in many different situations…born in the projects, successful in school when most of her siblings are struggling with drugs and other matters, declining like the projects themselves. McDonald goes from a specially-funded college prep program to Vassar to a commune to France to law school to being sexually assaulted to committing arson to spending a night in jail to being falsely accused of plotting against a presidential candidate to the ROTC to lots of therapy and lots of nightmares and then back to school first for journalism and then for law again and finally back to France. Whew! None of McDonald’s life was easy and the rape haunted her for years and years afterwards. As for the memoir itself, it is always good to get a look at someone else’s life, and she certainly has been through a lot. Grade: 6

 

Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall B Rosenberg – I got this at a Little Free Library and I am definitely keeping it! I need to re-read it and really learn these methods. Since I can’t quite do this justice, here’s a bit about the methods it teaches: “Nonviolent Communication is the integration of four things: • Consciousness: a set of principles that support living a life of compassion, collaboration, courage, and authenticity
 • Language: understanding how words contribute to connection or distance
 • Communication: knowing how to ask for what we want, how to hear others even in disagreement, and how to move toward solutions that work for all
 • Means of influence: sharing “power with others” rather than using “power over others”

I’ve likely never communicated this way and will need a lot of practice to learn it, but I think it could benefit me a lot. The author talks about understanding and verbalizing what you want and need, and relating to others, knowing that you need to connect with them and their feelings and needs before they can get your viewpoint. Grade: 8

 

The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot by Blaine Harden – “Not another North Korea!” From the author of “Escape from Camp 14”, we get the story of two men. One is the horrible Kim Il Sung. The other is a North Korean named No Kum Sok who was born into some degree of wealth before Communism came to North Korea, became a fighter pilot, pretended to be a devout follower of Kim, and managed to defect in the 1950s (by “simply” flying his fighter plane into South Korea and landing). It’s fascinating and depressing, all of it. It is good to see how No Kum Sok was able to find a better life, but devastating for all those who can’t get out of that hellhole. (Spoiler alert: years later, he learns that his best friend was executed after he defected). I had less interest in the dictator Kim Il Sung but this book is very readable. Crazy to think that Kim was basically not much more than a Korean soldier fighting in China, working his way up, turning on and executing rivals, bungling a war, pleading to Stalin and Mao to get him out of every mess he gets into, bungling the management of a small country, and ruling ruthlessly as a dictator then dynasty (and his grandson is the idiot in charge today). Grade: 8