The Seasonal Reading Challenge discussion

This is thread where you can submit reviews for the Best Review contest. The thread is open for submissions and will close at Midnight EST on February 16, 2013. Voting will start the next day and run until the end of the day on February 28th. The person whose review gets the most votes will get to design a 20 point task for the Spring Challenge.

Just a reminder that each person can only submit one review - but you can make edits to your review up until the end. The review does not have to be any particular length and doesn't have to be a positive one (i.e. you can choose to review a book you didn't like).

PLEASE DO NOT comment on people's reviews in this thread - this is for submissions only - you will be able to comment when voting begins.

SPOILER ALERT!- These reviews may include spoilers.

Think No Evil: Inside the Story of the Amish Schoolhouse Shooting...and Beyond by Jonas Beiler

So much pain, so much sadness. How do you cope? How do you get past the anger? For the Amish, you pray, you believe your loved one is waiting to see you in Heaven, and you forgive. You forgive the family of the shooter, and the shooter himself, even though he is already gone. You think no evil of the man who has ripped your life apart. He, too, suffered, and his family is suffering as you are. You offer comfort and support even as you are in need of it yourself.

I looked this book up in the middle of last week. I had no idea that the words within would be so true all over again. I almost returned it to the library unread, but I decided that instead of patrolling the internet for answers to a new tragedy, I would be better off reading about how a not-so-different community dealt with this heartache and loss.

As I read this book, I couldn't help but think of how the families in Newtown, CT will respond compared to how the Amish responded. How those of us not even involved or connected to the recent shootings are responding. Through our sadness and anger are we reaching out to others? Are we reaching out to the shooter's family? That was the part that struck me the most. 2 weeks after the Amish school shooting, a meeting was held between the Amish, the first responders, and the shooter's family. The first concerns voiced were that the Amish families didn't really know the shooter's family and that they were sorry for that. They wanted to invite the widow and her children into their homes to get to know them better. Wow. That is a level of forgiveness that I can barely comprehend, and yet, it makes all the sense in the world. She is also suffering. She not only lost her husband and her kids lost their father, but they also have to spend the rest of their lives wondering how this man they knew and loved could do this. Rather than isolating them in their pain and confusion, the Amish reached out. Could we be so brave? Could we be so compassionate? I hope we can.

How do the Amish do this? They understand that forgiveness is a choice, but that to not chose it means pain and anger in your own heart. To hold a grudge against the wife of your daughter's killer doesn't help her and it doesn't help you. The author describes forgiveness as a 2 part process: "Forgiveness is a decision to release yourself from anger, resentment, hate or the urge for revenge despite the injury you suffered AND forgiveness is letting go of hope for a different past." (page 178) Both of those require action on the part of the sufferer. It won't just happen and it won't happen easily. But the alternative is to be eaten up by hate, anger and regret. The author also states that even after you've chosen forgiveness, the anger, hate and regret will resurface, and you will have to choose again to forgive. One of my favorite quotes from the book was "they forgave, and when they woke up the next morning, they would forgive again."

I hope that in the coming days and weeks we can remember those lost and do what we can to prevent it from happening again, but without the vitriol that usually accompanies these horrific acts. Enough anger and violence has already been expressed. Please don't add to it. You have a choice. I will chose peace and forgiveness. Will you?

Peace and love for all people. Happy Holidays.

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan

I actually picked up this book as a gift for someone else, but in true Deana fashion I couldn't help reading it (very quickly!) before letting it out of my hands. I wasn't even particularly interested in the topic (I feel like books about what we should and shouldn't eat have gotten too trendy and kind of out-of-hand at this point) but the author did a good job telling his story and actually made me think a bit about what I am putting into my body.

Of course, whenever you read any book like this, you need to take it with a grain of salt. After all, the author is trying to win you over to his side of an argument. So of course he will cite lots of studies that agree with his viewpoint (regardless of what the rest of the scientific community thinks of those studies) and completely ignore studies that disagree. And as someone who knows a little bit about the academic community, the papers he is citing surely did exactly the same thing ... talk about the parts of their study that prove what they wanted to prove, and leave out the rest. He even complains about the other people doing just that (and cites some examples of studies funded by different "food" producers that have questionable outcomes) but doesn't acknowledge that the studies he is citing could have similar problems. So, that said, do your research. Google some of the things he is talking about. Google the studies he mentions and see what other people (reputable people! not just Joe Schmoe on the street! And also not movie actor(esse)s... they may be famous but they are not nutritional scientists... come on now.) have to say about those studies.

However, he did bring up a lot of good points. And there was a lot of history in there; theories on why we got all hung up on the "nutrients" instead of the "food" in the first place. About how the government has affected both what we eat and the way things are marketing based on laws. And a little research shows that these things did happen... although of course it is just speculation about exactly why things turned out the way they did "because" of those events. But it does make me think about why exactly I choose to eat this food instead of that one, or whether I really should choose the "non-fat" yogurt.

I think the biggest impact this book made on me was that it caused me to look into joining a CSA (community supported agriculture) effort in our area. A few of my coworkers participate, and the idea always seemed interesting to me... but we are really bad about cooking at home and eating fresh veggies in general, so I wasn't sure it would be worth the money. But we have talked about eating at home more, and I do generally LIKE veggies ... The authors arguments in this book (plus reading a little about CSAs and farming in general on line) convinced me that it is worth it, provided that I find the right CSA. Some will donate the veggies that we just won't eat to homeless shelters, which seemed like a good start to me. Some of them even let you have a say about which veggies end up in your box in the first place, which is nice as well. In addition, since they are not large single crop farms, they can do crop rotation and keep the nutrients in the soil naturally instead of having to use a ton of fertilizer.

I recommend this book as long as you don't assume that everything said in it is absolute truth. He definitely will make you think and re-evaluate what you are eating, though!

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

"Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, an' tho' a cloud's shape nor hue nore size don't stay the same, it's still a cloud an' so is a soul. Who can say where the cloud's blowed from or who the soul'll be 'morrow?"

So it is for the souls in Cloud Atlas, a novel of nested stories. The time period and characters are different in each story, but it's clear that many of them share souls with each other - they ARE each other, reborn.

The first story takes place in the late 1800s and we enter it like a powerful drill digging into the crust of the earth. Each story - there are six - takes our drill deeper, and forward in time, until we reach the core, a story set several hundred years in the future. We don't stop there, but on the other side of the core we continue on through the same layers in reverse, until we arrive back at the surface, in the 1800s, where we started.

The six stories are connected in many ways. Not only do the characters share souls, but each protagonist reads or hears the story of the one who came before them. Additionally, the stories together serve as a history of human greed and desire for power, ultimately leading to the end of civilization as we know it. One character writes: "In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction. Is this the doom written within our nature?"

I was fascinated by this novel. It wasn't the individual stories exactly - they are strong and well-written, but not mind-blowing - it was the interconnection between them. Mitchell captures and builds his themes in these very, very different stories in an astounding way. I can honestly say he does this better than any other novel in stories I've read before. The threads are woven beautifully and almost magically - the book IS the fictional symphony (one character composes a musical masterpiece called Cloud Atlas Sextet) that gives it its name. His experiment absolutely succeeds.

I also enjoyed the thread of repeated events or experiences - as one character says, "we cross, crisscross, and recross our old tracks like figure skaters." - coupled with the ongoing revelation that there really are no patterns. It's so easy to find patterns in history and turn them into theories and laws after the fact, but that can never ensure a certain outcome in the future.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes thought-provoking contemporary literature. Cloud Atlas is beautifully imagined and its stories will stay with you.

"Souls cross the skies o' time... like clouds crossin' skies o' the world."

This topic is closed.
The Best Review poll will open today and you may vote until the end of the Goodreads day on February 28