Author: Taryn

Love is nothing but damage waiting to happen, collateral and otherwise.

Colliersville, Indiana is a struggling small town where everyone knows their neighbor. They don’t always have an accurate view of each other, but they’re like family: “familiar, maddening, easy to take for granted.” Community tensions flare when the owner of the local dairy farm fires all the local workers and replaces them with Mexican migrant workers. Long term residents resent their new neighbors. Suddenly, many locals are jobless and their predictable little town is filled with people they don’t recognize and who speak a language they don’t understand. By May, the dairy farm has been shut down by law enforcement and a five-year-old girl is missing. How much more can this small town take?

Life was loss. That was it. The big secret. Loss upon loss upon loss until it was hard to know if waking up the next day made any sense at all.

This seems to be my year of reading books with a bazillion characters! Each of the eighteen chapters is a different townsperson’s perspective: an investigative reporter working undercover to expose the dairy farm’s unethical practices, a racist militia man’s daughter, various people working low-wage jobs, a pill addict in rehab, a soldier, a police officer, the dairy farm CEO’s transgender teenager, and more. Daisy’s disappearance is on the periphery of everyone’s thoughts, but for the most part, everyone is just trying to make it through the never-ending days. The townspeople have theories about what happened to Daisy, but most of them are just as clueless as we are.

The people of Colliersville are tied together by vicinity, but they seem to be living in parallel to one another. Sometimes people seem to know more about what’s going on in their neighbor’s home than the people actually involved! One thing I loved about the structure is that you might form an opinion based on gossip in one chapter, but a later chapter gives you a different version of the story that might alter your original thinking. I also loved searching for the clues of how each person was connected to the larger community and discovering what they know—or think they know—about their neighbors. This is the type of book I prefer reading on an e-reader, because of the searching capabilities.

Seeing Mr. Breeder here was strange and Maria didn’t like it because he looked sad and like he might have a secret. She preferred keeping things simple between them—he was a bigot, she was a warrior on the side of right, but she worried she hadn’t really done much to advance any cause.

In Colliersville, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do things. Being different is among the worst offenses. Some hide who they are to avoid trouble. Many of the characters feel left behind by their loved ones and the world at large. Life has passed them by and nothing has turned out the way it was supposed to. They all struggle with inertia. A sense regret and loneliness pervades the atmosphere. For all the talk of personal responsibility, there’s not always an abundance of it. The self-loathing tends to direct outwards. There’s always an outside force that prevented them from reaching their full potential. The guy who failed his drug test blames Juan for stealing his janitorial job. Helman Yoder blames the government for taking his business away, conveniently forgetting that he made a conscious decision to break the law in spectacular fashion. The apartments that supposedly went downhill because of the “illegals” were always dilapidated. Much of the rising crime in that area is due to people harassing the occupants.

“Anyway, the way things change, you start to long for death,” Granny said. “I guess that’s how it’s supposed to work. When I go I won’t miss this place, I’ll tell you that much.”

President Obama gets blamed for even the most personal of problems, though some of the most visceral anger would be more accurately directed at the cycle of life. They yearn to return to the long gone good-old-days: when they were young, their kids were still safe at home, and before they experienced real loss and disappointment. Colliersville High School’s head cook Shellie Pogue admits that the town might’ve always been circling the drain, but at least when Reagan was in office she felt like she was in “good hands.” Now it feels like “the world she knew, or thought she knew, was shrinking to the size of her palm.”

They have to have something, so what they have is judgment.

There are people in Colliersville that see things a little differently, but many of them seem to keep their thoughts to themselves. Perhaps there’s a message there that avoiding hard topics and being polite to keep the peace actually has the opposite effect. One of the most memorable characters is Helen, who has just suffered a major loss. She’s fed up with everything. She has had enough of all the grand theatrics that disguise ugly things and the seemingly selfless acts done with selfish motivations.

The companies new product of choice is not even coffee, but what it calls a new category of chemicals (ginsenosides) deeprootsmag.org viagra india had to be created due to unavailability of these chemicals anywhere else in the body so anything that affects them is going to show up in erectile dysfunction. These products were affordable and had the same therapeutic actions as at the mineral water from the geyser. tadalafil 20mg cipla Common side-effects of corticosteroids include skin thinning, loss of pigment, allergic to steroids, and increased risk of heart disease, and, heart disease has been a source of cialis prescription controversy since its inception Chiropractic care in the medical field is due to the wide array of benefits that can be derived from it. As a cialis online shop its goal is to provide all the prescription medicines. I liked the gritty realism of the early chapters, so I wasn’t prepared for the mystical turn in the last quarter. [spoiler]Looking back there were hints, especially in that first chapter. Colliersville is built in an area where Native Americans were killed and there was talk of blood curses after Daisy went missing. Still, I was caught off guard by the guy talking to animals (which we find out is actually happening) and the reincarnation section. Maybe my gaps in knowledge or cynicism that prevented me from enjoying those parts. Even though I found the contrast jarring, the last chapter was emotional and beautifully written, though perhaps a bit saccharine.[/spoiler]

What she really wanted to say to him was, Do more. Get out and do more while you still can. Sing “Tonight” at the top of your lungs. Be as abnormal as you want to be. Go to prom but only if you want to, and never let someone leave you alone in the middle of the dance floor. Throw the fucking bushel basket out the window and let your light shine because what else is there, really? What else? None of us is getting out of this alive.

Tornado Weather shines a light on “man’s inhumanity to man.” Most of these characters don’t even treat themselves humanely because they don’t think they deserve any better. The residents of Colliersville have legitimate fears about where their next paycheck will come from and one-size-fits-all government solutions, but fears don’t always manifest themselves in the most productive or rational ways. The story of this small town reveals the importance of community and showing empathy for others. It’s difficult to hate someone once you get to know them. Will Daisy’s disappearance and nature’s fury force the community to come together? Maybe if the citizens of Colliersville can forgive themselves for their past sins, they will be able to open their hearts to each other and inject some life into their dying community.

I love when my nonfiction reading and fiction reading collide! The following books dive more into the political realm, but I saw connections to many of the perspectives in Tornado Weather

• Jon Ronson’s The Elephant in the Room includes an anecdote about marginalization. He writes about a woman who spoke at the Republican National Convention on the effects of trade policy on her avocado farm. Online spectators immediately mocked her and attacked her based on false assumptions. Ronson’s analysis: “The alt-right movement is a little more popular than in the days before polarization became such a fad on social media, before practically every faction across the spectrum hardened its position deciding that instant judgment was a more heroic stance than curiosity. When a person can’t make a speech about the struggles of avocado farmers without being torn to bits because they’re in the wrong camp, the right will inevitably benefit.”
• The Trouble with Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time by Brooke Gladstone – This book is about leaving our bubbles and trying to see the world from someone else’s point of view.
• I’m currently reading We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates (pub Oct. 3, 2017) – In the intro, he explains why a successful Obama presidency actually stoked more racial anger than a failed Obama presidency would have. There’s also a fantastic quote about the nostalgia for a past that never existed. (I’ll post it here after it publishes.)
• On the subject of reflexive blame: In real life, I’ve been shocked by the number of people who don’t even attempt applying for college scholarships because of a distorted view of how the system works—even seventeen years ago when I was getting ready to start college. Related article: White Trump voters think they face more discrimination than blacks. The Trump administration is listening (Analysis).

We believe what we want to believe. We believe what we need to believe. Maybe there’s no difference between wanting and needing. I don’t know. What I do know is that the truth can evade us, hiding behind our blind spots, our preconceptions, our hungry hearts that long for quiet. Still, it is always there if we open our eyes and try to see it.

Three years ago, high-school senior Emma Tanner and her 15-year-old sister Cassandra went missing. Investigators had little evidence to go on; all they knew was that there were two missing girls and an abandoned car at the beach. The case went unsolved, but Cass has returned home, seemingly out of thin air. She insists that Emma is still out there and she knows how to find her.

FBI psychologist Dr. Abigail Winter was haunted by the Tanner case. During the course of the investigation, she began to see shades of her own narcissistic mother in Judy Martin. She believed that the girls’ mother may have been involved in their disappearance, but no one else was receptive to her theory. The case brought some of her old traumas back to the surface. Could she have been letting her personal life cloud her perception? Cass’s mysterious reappearance may finally let her get some closure.

“Everyone I could ever trust, everyone you could ever trust, could betray you. It doesn’t matter who they are or whether they mean to do it. Your friends. Your husband. Your wife. Your siblings. Your child. Even your parents. Some people just do it and they don’t care. They don’t think twice about it. But others do it and they justify it in their heads so you can’t even blame them. They have their reasons.”

The mother’s narcissism leads to an interesting dynamic between the sisters. Each girl developed their own unique way of coping. Growing up, their home was filled with constant hostility. There was little stability in their lives because the sisters never knew which version of their mother they would wake up to. They were both desperate for their mother’s love and Mrs. Martin made them earn it. She always made snide comments to remind the girls of their place in the house. She couldn’t stand for her daughters to become close and potentially form an alliance against her, so she set out to drive a wedge between them. Emma was one of the only people Cass could depend on, but she could also be extremely cruel, rubbing their mother’s favoritism in Cass’s face.

I think there are two types of people. Ones who have a scream inside them and ones who don’t. People who have a scream are too angry or too sad or laugh too hard, swear too much, use drugs or never sit still. Sometimes they sing at the top of their lungs with the windows rolled down. I don’t think people are born with it. I think other people put it inside you with the things they do to you, and say to you or the things you see them do or say to other people. And I don’t think you can get rid of it. If you don’t have a scream, you can’t understand.

Cassandra shares a name with a figure from Greek mythology, a princess of Troy who had “the gift of prophecy but the curse that her prophecies would never be believed.” Cass shared that same burden during her parents’ custody battle. She knew that living with her mother and stepfather would end badly for everyone involved, but she learned the hard way that “seeing the future is a worthless gift if you don’t have the power to change it.” Emma talked Cass into testifying against their mother, but in a cruel twist, Emma ended up siding with their mother. Mrs. Martin easily won custody of the girls and would never forgive Cass’s betrayal. Cass lost her status in the home and Emma became the preferred daughter.
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A story is more than the recounting of events. The events are the sketch, the outline, but it is the colors and the landscape and the medium and the artist’s hand that make it what it is in the end. I had to be a good artist. I had to find talent where none existed and this story in a way they would believe. I had to set aside my own feelings about the past. … I had to be the person they wanted me to be.

The chapters alternate between Cass and Dr. Winter. Throughout the book, Cass reveals the events of the last three years. She insists that her mother is present to hear every detail. There’s something strange about the way Cass tells her story. The emotions she displays don’t always match the events she’s describing. Her demeanor is calm as she describes the last three years in horrifying detail. Her storytelling is very precise and polished. Sometimes Cass comes across like a child, but other times she seems wise beyond her years. Occasionally, Cass glances at Dr. Winter and there’s a flicker of recognition between them. Dr. Winter begins to wonder if she needs to begin paying more attention to the things that aren’t being said.

I read the first 40% in one sitting, but I had a hard time settling back into the story the next day. I think it’s because all the different elements are jumbled together, regardless of whose chapter you’re in: the search for Emma, Dr. Winter’s backstory, the story Cass is telling the detectives, and the story she’s telling the reader. Not being able to maintain that immersion is sometimes a dealbreaker for me, but Walker’s writing still captivated me. I value a story where the author takes me from feeling one way about a character to feeling completely opposite by the end of the story. Despite the messed up things that went on in Cass’s home, I found her demeanor a bit off-putting at first. There was a moment when I began understanding her behavior and motivations (right or wrong), and that’s when this story started to worm its way into my heart.

There is evil in the world and that evil can dress up as love so convincingly that it blinds you to the truth.

Cass describes herself as “a bird on the battlefield.” She spent her entire life being caught between forces much more powerful than herself. She’s been let down by all the adults in her life. Anyone who listened to her was powerless to do anything. Cass has to be the person everyone wants her to be in order to get the people with power to finally listen to her. Could this be her one chance to finally be heard? Is she even telling the truth? Will the investigators find Emma in time? This stirring tale shows how easily our perceptions can be manipulated and how sometimes people have to be tricked into seeing the truth. Just like a narcissist has to create a perfect alter ego to protect themselves, sometimes we have to find ways to maintain the realities we’ve constructed to prevent our worldview from being shattered.

The more literary writing style of this book reminded me of Everything You Want Me to Be by Mindy Mejia. If you’re looking for more books with narcissistic mothers, you might enjoy Mother, Mother by Koren Zailckas.

“There’s are no points in life when we need to give up things we love.” – Chrissy Loader, writer and filmmaker

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“The fear of getting older is about the false notion that one’s power was rooted in the things that youth offers us—namely, beauty. My advice would be to see that for the lie it always was. Our power is never about how pretty we are. Our power is about how we live our lives. Start living it.” – Cheryl Strayed, author of bestselling memoir Wild

It’s been thirteen years since Josie’s father was murdered and twelve years since his murderer was imprisoned. The tragedy destroyed the family. Josie hasn’t talked to her mom or twin sister in over a decade. She thought she left all of that baggage in the past, but blogger/journalist Poppy Parnell is hosting a hit serial podcast that’s bringing the closed case back into the public eye. Josie panics. She’s spent the last decade trying to forget that night and now everyone is talking about it. She changed her last name and hasn’t even told her long-term boyfriend the truth about her family. As horrified as she is by the idea of the podcast, she can’t resist listening in. She begins to doubt her sister’s story, losing the only closure she ever had. Could her sister have been mistaken, or even lying, about what she saw that night? Has an innocent man been in jail for the last twelve years?  Things get even worse for the Buhrman family when Josie’s mother dies shortly after the release of the second episode. The untimely death forces Josie to come out of hiding and confront the painful past she has been running away from. Will she finally have to face the sister who betrayed her?

“The truth is never complicated. It’s just the truth. Circumstances may be complicated, but the truth is always black and white.”

It’s an addictive read, but not a memorable one. The non-generic cover reeled me in, but in the end it felt like many of the other thrillers I’ve read lately. These first-person narrators with dark pasts are all starting to sound the same: bland personalities & the obsessing over past events with increasing detail as the story goes on. However, I liked that Josie had to go back to her hometown and interact with her family again, so she wasn’t completely isolated from other people. I loved her bossy but loyal cousin Ellen! The other problem was that I didn’t have the sense of urgency that I like to feel when I read mysteries. No one seems to be threatened by outside danger and Josie isn’t driven by finding the truth. In fact, she spends most of the story pushing away the one person who knows what happened.

He also provides Treatment For Premature Ejaculation In Delhi generic tadalafil cipla find description with some exercise and medications. You need buying viagra from canada to continue the massage using this herbal oil not cures ED but also help older males to take treatment easily. In addition, chronic alcoholism can increase the risk of heart disease, which is one of the causative factors of erectile dysfunction. cost cialis viagra Orders are delivered discreetly to your exact shipping cipla viagra address with no extra costs or fees. Some of my favorite parts of this book deal with social media. Josie experiences having the worst moments of her life viewed as entertainment. Her story forces us to witness the ramifications of viewing someone’s tragedy as a guilty pleasure. Poppy claims she’s merely an objective party trying to ascertain the truth, but her sensationalist reporting leads to people harassing the family. Interspersed between the chapters are Reddit threads, Twitter discussions, Facebook threads, and podcast transcripts. The author nailed the back-and-forth between the armchair detectives! Everyone is certain their theory is the correct one. People with firsthand knowledge are eager to betray the family and share what they know with the masses for a tiny taste of fame or Internet points. The listeners create caricatures out of the Buhrmans and tend to analyze every clue in the least charitable way possible. For instance, Poppy and many of her fans assume that the Buhrman family’s reluctance to talk means they’re hiding something—but perhaps it just means they want to be left alone.

“You have to take care of the people you love or you lose them.”

What was the final breaking point between the sisters? What really happened the night of Chuck Buhrman’s death? Are You Sleeping? is a story about a family ripped apart by tragedy. One-by-one, the Buhrman women went their separate ways, taking on new identities to escape their emotional pain. Josie’s mother joined a cult and her sister turned to drugs. Josie traveled the world and avoiding forming any attachments for as long as she good. Will anyone in this family ever be able to forgive themselves? Is there any chance for closure in this family’s future? Hopefully, they’ll be able to sort out the truth—preferably before Poppy Parnell broadcasts it to her five million listeners.

When the Heron landed on the Seven dock and the lines were down, he stepped carefully out of the boat. Majestic cliffs rose up behind him. Birds called. A flock of sheep tumbled down the hill, and the smell of cut grass and smoke ran alongside the ethereal salt. The sun was hot and the wind cool. He had never, in all his life, been anywhere so beautiful.

1964: Seven Island has been inhabited by the Hillsinger and Quick families for centuries. Each family sees themselves “as the embodiment of the true Seven spirit and the other family as more or less barbarians.” Despite the rivalry, both families have come together for the Migration, an annual event invented entirely out of thin air by the Hillsinger’s patriarch. It’s a cause for great celebration when the Seven Island sheep are sent to another island in the archipelago to graze for eight weeks. But as family friend John Wilkie observes, “these moments of perfection come more often toward the end of something rather than its beginning, that the light of every supernova comes from an explosion.” What appears to be an idyllic family retreat is actually “a fortress built on auguries of eternal war.”

The true wages of sin are to have no options, to be forced to smile while the punishment is given.

• Jim & Lila Hillisinger / Billy & Hannah Quick –  The Quick and Hillsinger families are even further interlinked when the rivalrous men happen to marry a pair of sisters. In a time where an American’s life could be destroyed with the mere suggestion of wrongdoing, Hannah’s dalliance with the Communist party leads to disastrous consequences for the entire family. The adults are always playing games with the each other. They manage information, sometimes strategically divulging knowledge to the right person so it will get back to another person in just the right way. Their chapters occasionally flashback to the 1950s, revealing the tragic series of events that molded them.

“To learn when to lie, and to whom, and how to do it well—these are all parts of the world, or at least they are part of the unfortunate world that we have left you.”

• Catta Hillsinger, 12 years old – Catta’s grandfather thinks that if the family doesn’t do their part in toughening up the next generation, the fate of the entire country is in danger of falling to the Communists. The Hillsinger men decide that it’s time for Catta to grow up, so they devise a plan to abandon him on uninhabited Baffin Island for twenty-four hours. After they leave him to fend for himself, Catta is irritated with the adults for manipulating him into a situation that he would’ve agreed to if they had just asked. He’s concerned that the “adults in his family were corrupt beyond any possibility of hope.” Catta is an intense and determined child who loves exploring the outdoors. His seriousness in the face of adversity was endearing. If death ends up being the inevitable end of this grand experiment, he plans to “find a rock to sit on, open to the sea, somewhere the [ship] could easily spot his frozen corpse when they came looking for him. He would try to die upright like someone keeping watch, and with implacable scorn on his face.” Will Catta survive the inhospitable environment of Baffin Island? If he passes the challenge, what kind of man will emerge?

Their house was not a place of safety, as she had thought. It was a coliseum. And if that was true, if her marriage was only a proving ground, or a stall for breeding violent oxen, then what was the rest of it? … Had Lila in the end not been nurturing her children, as she had believed—had she instead been fattening them up for slaughter?

While the adult drama is playing out, the kids run wild on the island. Their little cottage set apart from the main houses is a microcosm of the adult world. With no adult supervision, it’s survival of the fittest!  The children are perceptive and already learning how to maneuver within and around society’s rigid rules. As the oldest child, fifteen-year-old James Hillsinger has dominion over the kids. He relishes in his authoritarian status. He believes in rules and following orders—there’s no room for nuance in his mind.

The kids were absolutely precious, except for James who I’m 95% certain is destined become a serial killer. Many of them are already weary and untrusting of the adults. Some of my favorite moments were just the kids being kids. Billy Quick’s niece Penny befriends Catta early on. She’s a stubborn, curious child, determined to right the injustices of her small world. In one beautiful scene, she builds a bonfire with the Quick girls. The girls are intoxicated with summer, childhood, and, in Penny’s case, rage. I also loved sweet little Isa, the youngest Hillsinger. She’s the most innocent of the pack, but her even her sweet little fairy world is already being encroached on by the strict rules of the adults. The Old Man is very serious about the construction materials used to build the fairy houses. Her mother Lila marvels at “how even this flimsiest of pastimes, when repeated enough, could evolve such a tangled and specific set of rules.”

This was how the world crushes you, he thought. There was no announcement. There was no freakish blow or lightning or floods or even bears. There was no mystery, not even any struggle or surprise. It was infinitely simple. you were forced into a series of small bad decisions that slowly and irrevocably cut off your options. And then, once you were confused and desperate and worn down by hunger and cold and whatever else—when at last you could no longer move or think—then the crows came down from their trees.

There was a classic quality to the writing that suited the time and setting. The perspectives alternate frequently, switching from character to character with no notice. I enjoyed all the individual parts of this book, but I’m not sure how I feel about the story as a whole. While the details surrounding Communist witch hunts and Jim’s fall from grace at the CIA were fascinating, it was hard to beat the immediacy of the Seven Island chapters. Many of Jim’s sections were less engaging because they were conversations explaining things that had already happened and some of the financial maneuverings went over my head. When I finish reading a book, I like to feel like I have a basic grasp of the story. However, there are so many intricacies to the story and the relationships, that I’m not sure that I ever made complete sense of it all.
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We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. (1 Corinthians 15:51)

The island manager Cyrus warns against “the belief that any one person’s experience was more essential, more enlightened, or more direct than that of the congregation as a whole.” But for his employer, there is a right way and wrong way to do things. Even minor actions can have dire consequences in the grand scheme of things—any perceived weakness must be snuffed out for the good of society. Doing something extraordinary in the name of virtue is valued, whether or not what they are actually doing is virtuous. In this complex tale, the innocent suffer the consequences. They fall victim to an arbitrary, black-and-white society that batters people until they assimilate or destroys them when they resist. What will the next generation learn from growing up in the absolutist world of their parents? We Shall Not Sleep is an interesting story, but I had trouble putting all the pieces together.

“Endure. I have done it and so can you.”

Years ago, the ancestors escaped the ravaged Wastelands to colonize a small island and start a new society. They wrote Our Book to line out the strict hierarchy and structure that would dictate their lives. Their descendants still follow those rules. Life in the agrarian society can be brutal, especially for girls, so the children are given a taste of freedom in the summer. They’re allowed to run wild until they return home in the fall. As one of the young girls is heading home at the end of this year’s summer, she sees something so shocking that she can’t keep to herself. The other girls are reluctant to believe her because it contradicts everything they’ve been taught, but the bit of forbidden knowledge begins to sow the seeds of discontent.

Mother says she’ll feel different when she’s older, and Lenore Gideon told Vanessa she doesn’t have a choice anyway. Vanessa suspects they’re both saying the same thing.

How could I resist a book described as “Never Let Me Go meets The Giver“? There were also shades of The Handmaid’s Tale, Lord of the Flies, Kindred, and The Village (movie). I recently commented to someone that I’ve always been drawn to dystopian novels because I’m trying to recapture the feeling of reading The Giver twenty-five years ago. Gather the Daughters definitely rose to the occasion! I was so captivated by this story. What grabbed me most about Melamed’s writing style was the subtlety. It was engaging because she allows the reader to figure out many things for themselves. The intricacies of these characters’ belief system are revealed gradually. It deals with a disturbing topic, but it’s not graphic. The characters talk about it euphemistically, so I wasn’t immediately 100% sure if I was correct about what was happening. Admittedly, it may have been a bit of denial on my part. WARNING! This book contains content that may be triggering for some readers: [spoiler]Abuse and incest are built into their religion.[/spoiler]

 “My whole life, I’ve learned to not question things. It doesn’t do any good, really. You usually learn what you didn’t want to learn, and still don’t know what you wanted to know.” A sigh. “I mean, knowing things, it can really hurt.”
“But Mrs. Adam,” whispers Vanessa, clinging to the hand on her jaw, “what if the hurting isn’t the most important part? What if it’s not even worth considering?” She swallows. “What if you were going to hurt anyway?”

The girls won over my heart completely. They have little control over their lives or bodies, but the cult can’t control every aspect of their thoughts. Some of them are more rebellious than others, but even those that are reluctant to challenge the system still find their own quiet ways to rebel. In one touching chapter, the girls imagined the types of islands that might be out there. Their visions reflected what bothered them most about their society. There are four girls we get to spend the most time with:
• Amanda (almost 15yo) – She was happy to be married so that she could escape her father. Now that she’s pregnant with a girl, she realizes she’s merely changed her role in the process.
• Caitlyn (13yo) is meek, but has an inner strength that she’s not even aware of. The entire community sees the bruises all over her body, but she insists her father doesn’t hurt her. She claims she just bruises easy. When she witnesses a shocking event, her role within the group of girls begins to change.
• Janey (17yo) is the oldest of the children. She starves herself to delay the onset of womanhood. She is fiercely protective of her sister Mary. Janey isn’t scared of anything and that terrifies people. If anyone is going to be able to get through to the girls on the island, it’s her.
• Vanessa (13yo) is a curious, clever child. Her father’s position as a Wanderer gives her rare access to books. I loved the interrogation techniques she used to extract information from adults. She questions everything, but thinks it’s futile to entertain any ideas of escape.
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She mulls Mother’s impotent grief. A thought that Caitlin has been trying to suppress abruptly rises to the surface: if she leaves, if she is not there to stand in front of Mother and absorb Father’s violence, what will happen to Mother? But another voice, one that has been driven down even deeper, suddenly sings forth. She should be standing in front of me.

In this book, the subjugated are trained to assist in their own subjugation. There are multiple signs that the women aren’t happy with their situation. For instance, male births are celebrated while girl births are grieved. Regardless, they are willing to bear the burden for the good of their society because it’s a part of life, just like the seasons. It’s seen as disrespectful to the ancestors to even suggest changes. There’s no room for dissent. By the time the girls are old enough to articulate themselves and fully comprehend what’s going on, they’re resigned to their fate. Women aren’t allowed to congregate in large numbers without male chaperones. Many keep quiet because they have no opportunity to discover that they aren’t alone in their doubts. The harmful ideas are so ingrained in their society that the dissenters begin to think that they are the ones who are defective. There’s also the threat of divine retribution. Vanessa worries the ancestors will hear her thoughts and punish the entire community. It’s repeatedly mentioned how important it is to prepare children for their roles, with some adults pushing to start preparing them at even younger ages. When the children of Gather the Daughters were singing a disturbing nursery rhyme, I was transported back to a scene in Kindred where Dana sees the slaves’ children pretending to hold a slave auction. In that moment, she realizes just how easily people can be trained to accept horrifying things.

“You have to talk to the girls again,” says Mary. “You have to talk to them about everything you know. Everything.”
“I can’t. They’re too…too young.”
“Wait for them to be old enough to understand,” yawns Mary, “and they’ll be adults. And then you can’t do anything.”

The author Jennie Melamed is a psychiatric nurse practitioner who specializes in working with traumatized children. She explains her motivations for writing this book in the following article: Exploring a Cultish Culture: the behind-the-book story of Gather the Daughters (excerpt included). How does the horrifying become an accepted part of a society? It’s an interesting exploration into the way cults operate and their methods of indoctrination. It also made me think about what parts of our own society are widely accepted but may be disturbing with some distance. The one thing I didn’t love is that the ending. It left me a little wanting. It’s a perfectly fine quiet ending, but I was left with so many questions. I can’t help but hope we get another installment. Nevertheless, I’ll be looking forward to reading anything Jennie Melamed publishes in the future.

She discovers that grief is a liquid. It passes thickly down her throat as she drinks water and pools soggily around her food. It flows through her veins, dark and heavy, and fills the cavities of her bones until they weigh so much she can barely lift her head. It coats her skin like a slick of fat, moving and swirling over her eyes, turning their clear surfaces to dull gray. At night, it rises up from the floor silently until she feels it seep into the bedclothes, lick at her heels and elbows and throat, thrust upward like a rising tide that will drown her in sorrow.

It’s only important that you remember that behind every disease is a person. Remember that and you have everything you need to travel through my country.

One month after his film was accepted into the Sundance Film Festival, Irish filmmaker Simon Fitzmaurice’s foot began going limp. The sensation passed, but his symptoms continued to escalate until they couldn’t be ignored any longer. At only 34-years-old, Simon was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease/a form of MND). Over the next two years, “the seesaw balance of strength and weakness” quickly began tipping more towards the side of weakness. When the disease took away his ability to breathe on his own, Simon’s doctors said it was the end. They began to counsel him on his end-of-life options, but Simon knew it wasn’t his time to go. Surrounded by the love of his family and friends, there was so much to live for.

I want to live. Is that wrong? What gives a life meaning? What constitutes a meaningful life? What gives one life more value than another? Surely only the individual can hope to grasp the meaning of his or her life. If not asked if they want the choice to live, it negates that meaning.

ALS is an unpredictable disease that progressively destroys the nerve cells that control voluntary muscle movement. While the disease takes so much away from a person, there’s still an opportunity to lead a full life. Simon advocates for patients to be made aware of all their options and allowed to decide their own fate. There are many technologies that help improve the quality of life of ALS patients: “The disease takes your ability to speak. But it need not take your voice.” Simon is still able to control his eye muscles, so he wrote the entire book using an eye-gaze computer.

It’s very much a filmmaker’s book! This short, evocative memoir is composed of fragments–the memorable scenes that constitute a life and poetic bursts. He doesn’t always take a straightforward approach to telling his story. Just when it seems the story is ending, he darts back to his coming-of-age years (“What is man?”) and then returns to the present (“I’m still man”). I actually didn’t appreciate this section until I went back over it later: “How much spans the divide between Before and After? What is Man? How much can be taken away and what is left?”

I do not eat or drink or walk or talk the way you do. I don’t breathe without a machine helping me day and night. I cannot move my arms or legs. And yet. I’m still man. I’ve lost so much. And yet. I’m still here. I feel everything. The slightest feather touch anywhere on my body. And my heart is alive. To meaning. To value. To love. Which is all it’s ever been about.

It’s Not Yet Dark is a beautiful testament to the love of family and life. I read this book because I was curious about the medical side of things, but my favorite parts ended up being the Fitzmaurice’s love story and his description of precious moments with his children. Sometimes the quietest moments are the most powerful. Simon Fitzmaurice is an example of the full existence that can be led after all seems lost. When he was diagnosed, he was given a prognosis of three to four years. Defying the odds, he is still watching his children grow up and producing films nine years later. He doesn’t deny the daily struggles, both emotional and physical, but the sacrifice is worth it to extract all he can out of this fleeting, fragile life. It may not be the life he would have imagined for himself, but it’s still a life.

This worst https://www.unica-web.com/archive/2003/wmmc.html viagra no prescription dysfunction can be treated by using Kamagra. Once you consider all these sales uk viagra aspects you will be in a better position to buy the products. Most men can cope with super viagra online this problem without any specific treatment. How to Deal with Impotence Linked to Mental Disorders A man having mild or moderate depression can depend on family health, especially from partner in dealing with ED ED medications like levitra price will help a man overcome albeit temporarily the effects of erectile dysfunction by analyzing approx. 3,724 men that were aged 20 and above. The emotional trailer for the It’s Not Yet Dark documentary gives a good sense of the tone of this book. Its release date is August 4, 2017. His wife Ruth’s memoir I Found My Tribe coming out in Spring 2018. If you like this book, you might also be interested in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby.

LINKS
• It’s not yet dark for filmmaker Simon Fitzmaurice – Simon’s story
• How Ruth Fitzmaurice found her tribe in Ladies Cove, Greystones
• My Name is Emily trailer– A film made after his diagnosis. It stars Evanna Lynch, the actress who played Luna Lovegood in the Harry Potter series.
• Breathing and ALS – This handout from the ALS Association Greater Philadelphia Chapter outlines some of the benefits and problems with ventilation for ALS patients.
• Wild and Precious Life by Deborah Ziegler – A few months ago, I read a book about a young woman who made a very different choice when confronted with a terminal diagnosis. Brittany had a very different outlook on life, but there’s a very similar issue at the heart of both books: dominion over your own body.
• I’m currently reading Admissions by Henry Marsh, and this quote about the ease of assuming your future state of mind when you’re well stuck with me: “When you are feeling fit and well, it is relatively easy to entertain the fantasy of dying with dignity by taking your own life, as death is still remote. If I don’t die suddenly, from a stroke or a heart attack, or from being knocked off my bicycle, I cannot predict what I will feel when I know that my life is coming to an end – an end which might well be distressing and degrading. As a doctor, I cannot have any illusions. But it wouldn’t entirely surprise me if I started to cling desperately to what little life I had left.”

Every experience is a potential life lesson. Even if you don’t appreciate it at the time, each struggle in the present is preparing you for something else in the future.

Almost everyone knows Kevin Hart’s name by now, but that wasn’t always the case. In his memoir, he tells the story of how he became an “overnight success that was only sixteen years in the making”–from a shoe salesman whose biggest dream was to become a Nike rep to a world-famous comedian. It wasn’t always a smooth, upward trajectory and there were many lessons to learn along the way.

It just takes one person to say one thing, and your whole life can change. If success happens in part by chance, then the more you expose yourself to it, the luckier you will be. I worked hard in order to get lucky.

I don’t follow Kevin Hart’s career closely, but he’s one of those comedians that makes me start laughing the moment they appear because I know it’s about to get hilarious! This book will be most interesting for Kevin Hart fans and those who are interested in the lives of stand-up comedians, but his insightful advice is relevant to anyone seeking success. At 400 pages, it was denser than most celebrity memoirs I’ve read. Hart outlines every pivotal step of his career and the teachable moments he encountered along the way. There are funny parts, but it’s more serious than I expected. As a warning, he gets a little personal sometimes and there were parts that were a little TMI for my tastes. My favorite part was Kevin’s positive attitude. He says one of the traits that served him best was the ability to “shoulder shrug”– being able to see the big picture and not hold on to any negative emotions.

It’s easy to complain about your life—how tough it is, how unfair it is, how stressful it is, how everyone else has it much better. But if you step into the life of someone you envy for just a day, you’ll discover that everyone has their own problems, and they’re usually worse than yours. Because your problems are designed specifically for you, with the specific purpose of helping you grow.

“Growing up, the best thing I ever had was nothing.” I grew up with a strict mom and no freedom, so the parts about his childhood resonated with me the most. I would’ve found these sections very reassuring as a teenager! His mother was a strict disciplinarian who was determined to not repeat her earlier parenting mistakes. She developed a regimented schedule that made it impossible for young Kevin to find trouble. His dad was an unpredictable man who struggled with drug addiction. He was always putting Kevin and his brother into dangerous situations. One of my favorite parts was when Kevin had to choose between the “comfortable dictatorship” of his Mom’s home or “uncomfortable anarchy” at his Dad’s home. It wasn’t always easy to see at the time, but the trials of his childhood helped him develop a strong work ethic: “It turns out that the things I hated most as a child are the same things that serve me the most as an adult.”

I’ve learned so many valuable lessons in my life, and this was one of the most important: Do your best, always. Because you never know who’s watching.

In fact, it is wiser to consult your doctor first before having best pharmacy shop levitra 20mg uk these pills, since your doctor knows your medical history and he would know better if it is suitable for your health condition or not. All medicines shall be discreetly shipped to your doorstep with the online cheap pfizer viagra purchasing of the product. Yeasts are part of the normal flora of the body to enhance sexual power. pfizer viagra generic Imagine what affect it can have for you. viagra canada deliver Kevin admits that his comedy material wasn’t always ready for the big-time. It took a lot of practice and studying of other comedians to refine his act. He had the key realization that “an entertainer makes you laugh, but an artist makes you understand.” To fully grow as an artist, he had to stop hiding behind the character of “Lil’ Kev the Bastard” and develop his own voice. He also emphasizes the importance of constantly learning and remaining ready for anything, so you can seize all the opportunities that come your way. There are so many instances in his career where the big jobs fizzled, but the least exciting offers and meetings propelled him further into success. He reiterates how important it is to treat others with kindness because no one finds success alone. In a creative field, it’s not always going to be applause and accolades. After he finally experienced some mild success, he also got to experience becoming box-office poison. He recounts many of the low points and how he learned to overcome knee-jerk defensiveness to handle unsupportive friends and family, difficult crowds, and rejection more effectively.

While he had high standards for his career, he didn’t always live up to those same standards in his personal life. He writes honestly about his most shameful moments: his toxic marriage that became violent and a DUI. He realized that he was repeating his parents’ mistakes and exposing his children to some of the same hardships that he and his brother had to live through. Fortunately, he was able to learn from his mistakes and break the cycle.

In most action movies, one person rises out of a humble beginning to discover that they have been chosen by destiny to save the world. But that’s not how it works in real life. You rise out of your humble beginning to become part of a community, and it is only together and as equals that we will save the world.

I got a lot of value out of Kevin’s worldview and life advice. After reading his memoir, I would describe Kevin Hart has a hard worker with a positive attitude. His persistence, commitment, and adaptability helped him find success in a competitive field. The tale of his journey to success is a reminder that what may look like a series of consistent successes from a distance is actually a never-ending emotional roller coaster full of ups and downs. I have to end this review with one of my favorite Kevin Hart bits: Ostriches. It cracks me up every time!

Success is not an excuse to stop; it’s a reason to move the goalposts farther out and accelerate. There is no destination, just a journey. And that journey is to keep building on top of what I’m building.

Ages 6-9. A charming picture book about one of the United States’ most recognizable landmarks. The Statue of Liberty has many symbolic features, but it’s her right foot that captures author Dave Egger’s imagination. She’s perpetually in motion! Where is she going? Where has she been?

This book made my heart swell! The conversational style makes it fun to read aloud. The first half is filled with fun facts about the Statue of Liberty, many that were new to me. I loved the paper collage style on many of the pages. It reminded me of how people from different backgrounds came together to create something new. You can see examples of the playful and colorful illustrations on illustrator Shawn Harris’s web page.

Liberty and freedom from oppression are not things you get or grant by standing around like some kind of statue. No! These are things that require action. Courage. An unwillingness to rest.

Her Right Foot tells the story of the Statue of Liberty’s long journey from Paris, France to New York Harbor. She’s a gift of friendship that came to represent hope and freedom for the millions of people seeking refuge and opportunity within America’s shores. The author theorizes on why Lady Liberty’s work will never be done and why she’ll never be content to stand still. It’s a timely reminder that our freedoms and ideals must never be taken for granted. Like the famed statue, we must always remain vigilant and keep moving to protect the values we hold most dear.
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LINKS
• The Statue of Liberty was built to welcome immigrants – that welcome must not end by Dave Eggers
• A NEW COLOSSUS: The story behind the Statue of Liberty’s unexpected transformation into a beacon for refugees and immigrants

Alexander Hamilton was once forgotten, but he’s returned to the spotlight thanks to a popular Broadway musical. Embarrassingly enough, there was a time when I mostly associated him with a 1993 Got Milk? commercial! If you are looking for an accessible account of Hamilton’s life and his role in the American Revolution, this graphic history might perfect for you. Hamilton is one of America’s Founding Fathers and the first secretary of the Treasury. He played an integral role in shaping the United States’ political, financial, and legal institutions. This graphic history takes us from his childhood in the West Indies to his death by duel on July 12, 1804. It discusses the assets that made him invaluable to the war effort and building a new nation, as well as his contradictions and fatal flaws. However, this story is just as much about the birth of the United States as it is about a singular man. The author takes a broad view, placing Hamilton into the context of the era and American history. It outlines the beliefs that drove these revolutionaries, but also the fears, doubts, hopes, and writings that influenced their ideas. It also provides important context for activities and attitudes that seem quaint now, like duels and the thirst for war.

The tendency to see the founding fathers as invaluable statesmen and sages who capably delivered up a nation to flourish for hundreds of years obscures the fact that, in many very real ways, they were white-knuckling it through completely uncharted waters. … There was no script to follow on how to be an effective American leader.

I’m a big fan of both Hamilton: An American Musical and graphic nonfiction, so I had to give this book a try. Reading it confirmed that I’ll never be able to read a book about Alexander Hamilton’s life without the relevant lines from the musical instantly popping into my head! (And I’ll never be able to say “Hercules Mulligan” in my indoor voice!) This book is only 176 fully-illustrated pages, but it’s jam-packed with information. I usually look to the graphic format to inject a little heart into a subject, but this one is more academic in style. There’s an unavoidably large cast of characters, so it’s impossible to get too attached to anyone! It’s heavy on the text and light on the dialogue. Much of the content would have been easier for me to read in paragraphs rather than comic book style, but the graphic format makes the content easier to digest. The illustration style is perfect for the time period being discussed. If you’d like to get a feel for the artwork, there are some excerpts online: Six-Page Preview | More Pages from the Illustrator Justin Greenwood. I could this book being an excellent educational resource for older students or a precursor to a more in-depth text. Longer texts are usually more enjoyable to me if I’ve read a broad overview first. I was actually glad that I had listened to the musical before reading this book, because I was better able to appreciate the broader themes and was less overwhelmed by all the new information.

“Give all power to the many and they will oppress the few. Give all power to the few, they will oppress the many. Both therefore ought to have power, that each may defend itself against the other.” – Alexander Hamilton

One thing this book really excels at is showing the fragility of the new republic. Conflict was not only with outside forces, but with each other. Tensions were further aggravated by post-war problems, like crippling debt and dealing with Loyalists. The book opens with an excerpt from Sir Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha (1680): “The desire of liberty was the first cause of the fall of Adam. … The greatest liberty in the world (if it be duly considered) is for the people to live under a monarch. … All other shows or pretexts of liberty are but several degrees of slavery, and a liberty only to destroy liberty.” It’s accompanied by gorgeous “Fall of Adam” illustrations that continue to reappear throughout the story as the author lines out the deep divisions over what path the new nation should take. Many people, Alexander Hamilton included, felt that “pure, unchecked democracy” was “mob rule.” They worried that liberty “made men slaves to the worst aspects their own nature” and that the “high-minded, experimental republic might end in dictatorship.” Hamilton believed in the revolution, but didn’t want it to go “too far”; he didn’t want “revolution, rebellion, and fragmentation” to become the new American way-of-life. Others were repulsed by that line of thinking. They risked their lives fighting a strong, centralized power. Why would they want to set up a government that looked remarkably similar what they just fought against?  With so many strong feelings on both sides, how would they ever strike a balance between states’ rights and a strong central government?

Shades of the early conflicts continued to rage on through the decades, and even today: rural vs. urban, “North and South, different economic interests, factions in Congress, schools of constitutional thought.” The Founding Fathers are often idealized and viewed as a monolithic entity, but a balanced portrait of these complex people makes the story of the United States’ birth even more remarkable. This book reveals how uncertain and risky their undertaking was. Despite the incredible odds they faced, their grand experiment continues on 241 years later.
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LINKS
• If you enjoy this book, you might be interested in seeking out author’s other graphic nonfiction titles: The United States Constitution and The Gettysburg Address.
• How Old Were the Leaders of the American Revolution on July 4, 1776? – Many of them were so young! Fun fact: Andrew Jackson, the seventh U.S. president, was only 13 years old when he was captured by the British during the American Revolution. He’s the only prisoner of war to become president. (Source, 2)
• Thomas Jefferson vs. Alexander Hamilton – a concise table of viewpoints. (PDF) “Hamilton and myself were daily pitted in the cabinet like two fighting cocks.” – Thomas Jefferson
• A quote from Condoleezza Rice came back to me as I was reading: “One of the great things about representing this country is that it continues to surprise. It continues to renew itself. It continues to beat all odds and expectations. You just know that Americans are not going to be satisfied until they really do form that perfect union. And while the perfect union may never be in sight, we just keep working at it and trying.” (November 5, 2008)