Review: Iodine, Haven Kimmel. Simon & Schuster, 2008.

This may be the only book I've ever read which induced me to say, "that was horrifying," as I put it down. Mind you, the entire book itself wasn't that horrifying, okay, maybe a bit horrifying. But the end was particularly so. I won't spoil it for you by telling you why.

Anyway, I'm still trying to decide whether or not I like the book. I've loved all of Haven Kimmel's previous books, the two Zippy memoirs that were popular a couple years ago, plus several novels which most people don't seem to know about. Her books are smart, interesting, and full of quirky characters. But Iodine is something completely different. It's still smart and interesting, but I have to say the characters go way beyond quirky, the book is much, much darker than Kimmel's others, and the style much more experimental and internal.

Basics: a college girl falls in love with her professor and he falls in love with her. That seems like a simple premise. But the story is complicated because it focuses not so much on the boy meets girl aspect, but on the internal life of the narrator, the college girl, who's using the alias of Ianthe Covington because for some reason she doesn't want anyone from her past to know where she is. (That reason is revealed at the end.) Ianthe is an unreliable narrator. She seems to waver between reality and a dream-state, and it's hard to tell at any given moment which is which. I found myself confused, often, about what was actually happening. This was frustrating, but toward the end we find out why Ianthe/Trace experiences the world in this manner. And then it all makes sense. Well, sort of. We are still left wondering which things in the book Ianthe/Trace imagines, and which she actually experiences.

As I write this review, I'm starting to realize that I do really like the book because wow, it is masterfully crafted. Very complicated and internal and intellectual and strange. In these aspects it reminds me of Iris Murdoch's novels, which I love, but which are extremely dark and challenging to read. Kimmel conveys the dream-like state of the main character so well. I'm supposed to be confused! I'm supposed to feel the strangeness of Ianthe/Trace's mind right along with her. Kimmel has accomplished what she set out to do! Perhaps I felt uncertain about the book just because it wasn't the sort of story I expected from Haven Kimmel.

But I take back my statement that the end contains the greatest share of horrification. It starts right at the beginning, with the very first sentence: "I never had sex with my father but I would have, if he had agreed." Whew! I should have known immediately this wasn't going to be an easy read.

3 Fiction Worlds I Would Like to Hang Out In

Lost in Books is hosting a meme with a new question each week. Here's my answer for this week's question:

1. Narnia. Talking animals sound like fun. Plus, as a "daughter of Eve" I'd probably have a pretty good chance of being a queen.

2. Harry Potter. I'd love to go to boarding school in a castle and learn magic. Though dealing with Voldemort does sound rather stressful. Maybe I can attend Hogwarts after the 7th book, once he's already been vanquished.

3. The three books after Ender's Game: Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind. There are some really stressful situations in this world too, but how cool would it be to live on an alien planet!?

Review: In Praise of Stay-at-Home Moms, Dr. Laura Schlessinger. HarperCollins, 2009.

I'm not sure why I picked this book up at the library. I've heard Dr. Laura a couple times on the radio, and found her extremely annoying: bossy, self-righteous, full of herself, and sometimes downright mean to her callers. Though I have to admit, her advice did often sound spot-on. Maybe it was the enticing title, In Praise of Stay-at-Home Moms, because I've been a stay-at-home mom for 9 years now, and let's face it we don't always have a lot of praise coming in our direction. Unless you count your 3-year-old screaming at you that he doesn't want a turkey sandwich for lunch, he wants peanut butter and jelly instead, praise.

So as off-putting as the front cover is (see giant picture of overly made-up author so as to appear plasicky), I went ahead and read the book. And while I definitely found some ego stroking in the book, as the cover implies, overall I felt uplifted by the book's praise of my hard work, and interested in some of her advice. Though apparently not interested enough to mark any particularly passages I wanted to share with you here. The book is an easy read, maybe a bit too easy for my taste, and not very well organized. It reads more like a conversation, which isn't unpleasant. And I enjoyed the multitude of quotes from radio listeners who have emailed Dr. Laura or sent letters to her.

So go ahead, if you're a stay-at-home mom and you're having a bad day and need some encouragement, this is the book for  you. You can read it in bits, quickly, when you have a few moments. But don't expect to find anything particularly new or earth shattering.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Books Completed Last Week
I read three books last week: In Praise of Stay-at-Home Moms, Dr. Laura Schlessinger; Iodine, Haven Kimmel; The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, May Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. I'm hoping to post reviews of all of these books this week.

Books I'm Currently Reading
Yesterday I started reading The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids, by Alexandra Robbins. It's so fascinating, I couldn't put it down! That doesn't usually happen to me with nonfiction books. Usually its only novels that I can't put down. Also on tap for this week is American Wife, by Curtis Sittenfeld. I read Sittenfeld's first book, Prep, and really enjoyed it, so I have high hopes for this one.

Both of these books are quite long, so if I actually finish them both this week, I'll be surprised.

Click here to participate in this meme from J. Kaye's Book Blog.

Review: NurtureShock, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. Hachette Book Group, 2009.

Forget everything you've read about child-rearing. And forget trusting your instincts. According to NurtureShock, everything you've learned (or felt instinctively) about how to raise your kids is wrong. But not to worry, if you read NurtureShock you'll finally be able to get it right! Lucky for us, the authors have collected all the scientific studies about child-rearing that have obtained real results, as opposed to those with dubious results but which have become inflated by the media and preached as fact (which, according to this book, is pretty much every popular study of the past 20 or so years).

Wow. This is quite a claim, and I was pretty skeptical as I started to read this book. But I have to admit the book contains some pretty convincing debunking of some popular child-rearing theories, such as the theory that you need to constantly tell kids how great they are in order to raise their self esteem. Not so much. Apparently it's better to praise kids for working hard, and for particular achievements, instead of just praising them in a more general manner, such as "you are so smart!"

So debunking. Yes. But I don't know about you, but I've heard this new theory of self esteem before. Possibly even in some popular parenting magazine. I've also already heard about how important sleep is for children, and how it effects their performance in school. And about how testing, especially testing of young children, doesn't really tell you much. So it seems that many of these theories are already out there. That NurtureShock's claim of "new thinking about children" might be a bit of a stretch.

Still, it's nice to have all these theories in one place, presented with the actual research that supports them. And the book definitely contains some new theories that I've never come across before. Here are a couple I particular liked:

"In taking our marital arguments upstairs to avoid exposing the children to strife, we accidentally deprived them of chances to witness how two people who care about each other can work out their differences in a calm and reasoned way" (p. 194).

"...the predictive value of self-discipline in many cases are better than those of IQ scores. In simpler words, being disciplined is more important than being smart" (p. 174).

"When I began this research, I would have thought the main reasons teens would say they lie was 'I want to stay out of trouble,' ... But actually the most common reason for deception was, 'I'm trying to protect my relationship with my parents; I don't want them to be disappointed in me" (p. 139).

So, do read NurtureShock. There is a lot of good stuff in here: research to support what you've already heard about raising kids, and maybe a few things you haven't heard before. And the book is nicely organized; the writing style clear and concise. Just try not to let the overblown claims in the introduction keep you from delving into the first chapter.

On My "To Be Read" List

CULTURAL CRITICISM/SOCIOLOGY

-Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketers' Schemes, Sharon Lamb and Lyn Mikel Brown
-Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, Neil Postman
-The High Price of Materialism, Tim Kasser
-The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite, David Kessler
-Capitalism, the Family, and Personal Life, Eli Zaretsk
-Take Back Your Time: Fighting Overwork and Time Poverty in America, John de Graaf
-Post-Capitalist Society, Peter Drucker
-The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement, Jean M. Twenge

Review: Sacred Hearts, Sarah Dunant. Random House, 2009.

Confession: I don't enjoy thinking critically about books of fiction. I read fiction for escape, for entertainment and relaxation. I don't want to have to think about it too much. (This probably explains my love/hate relationship with my English major in college.) So my review of Sarah Dunant's lovely novel is going to be short. As will most of my reviews of novels.

So here you go. Sacred Hearts -- I liked it!

Well okay, I guess I could say a little bit more about the book, if you twist my arm. Sacred Hearts is a work of historical fiction, which I always find fascinating. It's an entertaining way to learn more about a particular historical time period. So in this case, if I trust the author's claims of historical accuracy, I now know a lot more about late 1500s Italy than I used to. The story centers on a convent in Ferrara, Italy, and particularly on one novice who's family has put her into the convent against her will because of her illicit love affair. The main character, Zuana, the dispensary nun, alternates between wanting to help the young novice find happiness, and wanting to obey her abbess and do what she thinks is right in the sight of God.

The writing in this book is lush and detailed, the characters feel authentic, and the story is gripping. But the thing I find most fascinating in this book is the tremendous tension between politics and piety, and how the convent abbess must balance these in order to protect the nuns within her care. The abbess must keep the powerful families of the city happy in order to secure not only money, but also protection from other religious authorities who have threatened to cut off the convent's small luxuries and their connections with the outside world. I also find it interesting how the nuns have more power and more opportunities to develop their interests and talents than do women in the outside world. The dispensary nun particularly embodies this, for in the outside world she wouldn't be allowed to create medicines and function as a doctor, as she does inside the convent.

So all in all, I'm glad I randomly picked this book up from my library's new book section! I'm putting her Sarah Dunant's other books on my TBR list now.